I remember when I had mine having similar issues, couldn't get multiball started. On mine it ended up being a problem with a small board under the playfield near the left front side.

Is it only those two switches out? I ask as I had this on a Evel Knevel , owner said 3 switches not working , when it was eight not working . Turns out the molex pin had fallen apart in the housing.

Star rollovers on Bally need switch caps on them, make sure they're there and not one side clipped. If they're gone, add them. They lengthen short switch pulses so the mpu can see them and react accordingly.

https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=CCD-0.047uF-100V

Also, if the gold plating is gone on either switch contact, it's just not going to be reliable.

Those two switches are daisy chained together & then to the 6 blue/green targets on the left side.

The white wire with a yellow band connects from MPU-J2 pin 4 to the lagoon saucer, cave saucer & then to the targets.

First I would check for a physical break in the white/yellow cave wiring near the playfield edge - these wires get caught & damaged on the edge of the playfield when you raise/lower the playfield. Follow the two white/yellow wires from the lug till it clears & goes into the loom. On my game these exact white/yellow wires have had the insulation scraped through from this.

Assuming the 6 drop targets are registering individually (not just the bank resetting) then it's not a MPU-J2 pin 4 connection problem, check continuity between the white/yellow common wire on the targets to the lagoon/cave white/yellow connection & also continuity between both lagoon & cave trap to MPU-J2 pin 4.

Check their are two white/yellow wires connected to one lug on both the cave & lagoon switch.

I don’t believe they are meant to award points or make a sound. I believe they are there to tell the mpu when the ball has cleared the saucer so the drop targets can reset.

That’s not their purpose at least according to my game, if I bypass the rollover & lock a ball, the targets reset as normal.

Those two rollovers have a very specific function that is not always known about.

They come into play when you have a two or three multiball occurring & one of the balls lands in either the cave or lagoon saucer. At that point the targets for that saucer do not reset (they do not reset during mulitball) now this rollover target is ready to be actioned - when you roll the ball over the rollover towards the locked ball you get a speech call “help me” in essence the locked ball (the mermaid) is asking for help to be released.

This is my favourite speech call in the game - I always go for the locked ball in multiball to get the rollover & speech call.

I just realised you may not have know about how they work so they appear to not work, when they actually do - I should of thought of this first. I think a lot of people must think they relate to the the ball locking in & out the saucer as MrArt2u suggested. I probably did as well when I first got mine years ago & may have discovered it by accident with a shot to a locked ball.

Glad it's sorted. That's a nice Fathom you have, assuming it's the same one you had for sale - probably one of the best originals I have seen for sale in OZ & was a reasonable asking price too.

Rollovers also score 50k, when “activated”.
2x in MB is 100k a shot, not bad, but no lit spinner.

I never noticed the 50k score going with the speech call - That is well worth going for to get 100k.

With the 50k indicated next to the rollover & not scoring it with the rollover in general play probably added to people thinking the switch is not working or thought it was related to the saucer.

DANG, I'm not going crazy after all!!! I too thought there was something wrong with the game. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why the inline drops wouldn't reset after capturing a ball again DURING multiball! And then the ball smacking into the captured ball (also during multiball) just seemed like it shouldn't happen that way. Now I understand the callout "HELP ME" when a ball hits the other trapped ball during multiball. I've also noticed that hitting the three "fish tail" drop targets (of the same color) only once will release that captured ball during the multiball scenario. I SCOURED the internet looking for different game scenarios, rules, and gameplay, or situations where the inline drop targets don't reset when a ball is captured, and came up with nothing......until I read this thread! It all makes TOTAL sense now! WHEW!! These nuances are one of the reasons why this game is so great, IMO!

Glad you found this! yep, for sure, the nuances definitely add to making this game so great. The same thing drove me nuts in the 90s (pre-internet) when I first got mine until the penny dropped on day - I assumed it was a fault as I didn't have any reference.

Also worth noting is the home ROM version upgrade is a must as this utilizes the speech that is stored in the original ROM code but remains unused. The extra speech phrases added to this ROM fit perfectly just like they should have been there.

Wow, thanks!! Mind blown (again)! I just now watched a YouTube vid of a sound test on Fathom, and there were a few sounds I’ve never heard on my game! “The trap is SET!”, “Air supply gone!”, and “Mermaid’s revenge!” among them, and I going nuts wondering under what conditions these call outs occur. Some time back I was reading about this home ROM modification, and assumed that these call outs were already in my game’s arsenal, but since I’ve only had my game a couple of months, I was trying to figure out what (other than the ROM modification) I had to do to hear them! Seems weird to me knowing that these sounds are included in the original ROM code, but go unused. Anyway, I’d be MORE than eager to take advantage of this upgrade to the ROM, but after looking at, I wonder if it’s beyond my skill set. I’ve only been involved in this awesome hobby since last fall, and I’ve learned TONS regarding the mechanics of my two games, but board dynamics seems WAAAY beyond my expertise. Ya think I could install the upgrade myself??

You need to upgrade the MPU U2 & U6 ROMS (only) to the HOME ROM V4 version found on this page below under ROMS in order to enable these extra call outs that are already stored in the Squawk & Talk board's original speech ROM.

https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=829

Those extra call outs are only executed when using the Home ROMS. Their is also a skill shot feature added as well. The "Revenge" call out already exists in the regular ROMS - you get this call out when high score to date is beaten.

Apparently, I didn’t understand the rules either as I have been needlessly troubleshooting the rollover switches in front of the cave and lagoon traps. Good news, those switches work fine

With a new understanding of the rules, I wanted to see what would happen when I started a multiball and then re-locked a ball in the cave trap during multiple. Here I confirmed the rollover switch worked as I got the call out “help me” when shooting the captive ball. Then I triggered all of the six bank drop targets in an attempt to release the locked ball. However, I noticed that one of the drop target switches was not registering hits. Turns out it is the top most green switch with the white/yellow wire common to the rollovers.

I tested continuity from the switch on both the white/yellow and white/blue wires back to the MPU and everything rings out clean. The switch was working fine yesterday (just installed new caps) until I did my experiment today.

Keep in mind all the switches and contacts are new. I finished this restoration several years ago and had to put the game in storage when moving. I just pulled the game out of storage and set it up last week. The only thing I did yesterday was add capacitors to the rollover switches, but that shouldn’t have affected any of the wires connected to the switch, so not sure what’s going on.

Any help would be appreciated.

Update:

Looks like the diode on the green drop target is toast, which is why the switch will not register. The diode is connected to the cave and lagoon rollover switches via the white/yellow wire. Could installing the caps on the 2 rollover switches have fried the diode? Not sure how, but usually the problem is related to the last thing you touched - in my case, adding the caps at the rollovers.

Doubtful

What may have happened is when you have fitted the cap to the cave trap switch, you would have needed to move the wiring out of the way for this switch to some degree to solder the cap in, the wiring for the rollover switch & the power wire to the memory coils are bundled together. That bunch of wires are so close to the edge they usually get squashed or the insulation sheared from the edge of the side rail. Mine have at least 3 wires squashed & insulation sheared.

You may have caused a short from an exposed bare wire(s), check all of the wiring carefully in that area for this & also the lugs on the coil that has the burned diode.

Replaced the diode. All good. Not sure what I did, but everything is working now.