Brother, you need to check over that sound board and power supply. Have you done any of the stuff from vids guide for Williams systems? A lot of it doesn't apply cause of the rottendog combo board

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-bulletproofing-williams-system-6

Also mark otner (Google it) and pinrepair.com have good info.

I'm no guru, lots smarter cats on here than me but those guides are the starting points when I did a full board rebuild.

I'm thinking the shooter switching needs a clean and the sound board checking over. The various guides talk about the various fault and Audit code displays and what they mean

I'm betting that the game won't start because all the balls aren't in the trough. Lots of games are like that.

1497 2 is not an error code. It's something like the game number, or something. All firepowers will read that (maybe also contains the software version?)

If you're losing your sound mid-game, I would expect some sort of bad connection. Start a game, and while its sitting there, open the backbox and start wiggling connectors and see if you can duplicate the issue. I predict you'll find a bad connector somewhere.

Not too familiar with the Rottendog MPU...is that an MPU/driver combo? If so, 75% of your potential problems just went away.

Good luck,
Jeff

+ 1 for the connectors. Has it been repinned?

Firepower is well known for having an error in its leaf switch construction on many of the switches in the game. One of the blades is installed (or was riveted) such that the wrong side of the contact touches the other contact- in other words, the two leaves should have the larger side of each contact rivet facing each other, but on Firepower the (small) peened over shank of one rivet contact is touching the contact side of the other contact rivet. This wears throught the gold flash on the correct contact and makes the leaf switch intermittent. If you clean it properly (pull a piece of paper between the contacts) the switch will work fine for a while - days to weeks usually. So the leaf with the wide contact touching is ruined, and must be replaced, and the contact on the other leaf corrected.

You can try and turn the undamaged leaf over and replace the one that was damaged, but the best way to fix is to buy new contact rivets from Steve Young at Pinball Resource and replace both sides. Unsolder, remove and disassemble switch. With a Dremel, grind off back of rivets (both leaves). Clean the contact leaf with fine sandpaper and install new contact rivets (wide faces facing each other) and peen over their shanks using a small hammer while the contact face is on a non-damaging surface (I use a short length of pine 2x4 with a layer or two of duct tape on it).

Also, if you are using an original driver board, check that the switch drive resistors have been replaced w/ zero-ohm jumpers. If you don't know what that means, someone here who is a drive board expert could elaborate. Helps improve reliability by allowing a higher switch voltage.

Generally with a Firepower you will have non ending problems unless you replace all connectors, male and female, fix all the bad switches, make sure you have good sockets for the chips and check the socketed chips for blackened, corroded legs.

Fun game, but tough to get reliable sometimes.

Don C.