So I picked up a Firepower on the cheap. The good news is everything is there and it boots and plays. The bad news is there are some sound problems that are unfamiliar to me as to how to diagnose. I am comfortable working on Sys 11 and WPC machines but have not had an early solid state before. Initially, when I got the game, the sound would cut out part way through the game. Only way to get it back on was to power cycle. Now I’ve got it working consistently by reseating all connectors associated with the sound board and giving both volume pots good back and forth turns to get any potential crud out. but there is still no speech and once the game ends, sounds continue on and do not stop unless you turn the game off. Not sure where to start here. Also, how do I activate free play? I assume it’s an option on one of those dip switches on the CPU but not sure which one. Thanks for the help, excited to get this thing in better working shape

So here is the sound board. Looks like it’s been recapped and poorly reflowed the pins. On at least 1 connector. A couple of pins looks are soldered together and looking at the paths may not be a problem but it’s not pretty. I’ll try reflowing remaining pins. Can someone confirm correct dipswitch setting for speech and sound?

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I redid the power supply as well and a few sounds that were not there before seem to be back but still finicky on if any sound plays. Some sounds seem glitched. Errors seem to happen when ball passes through the fire lanes

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ChrisHibler do you see anything that stands out as wrong? I’m fine to remove components but I am very new at the logic of this era of board sets

It should be note that using the test button triggers no speech but does cycle through sounds without any pause. During gameplay, if the sound does activate, the music seems to play as normal and when some sound effects are triggered the correct sound plays and when others are triggered a high pitched noise plays in place of what should be a sound and then music resumes. Sometimes triggering this sound effect stops all music from playing and the game goes silent.

Confirmed after watching others sound test that mine is not functioning as expected. It will play through all of the sounds as expected but when it comes time to play where the speech should be, it immediately starts the sound test over. This makes me think either something is jumpered wrong or the speech roms may be bad as it’s not even attempting to play speech

I took the pics of the sound board before I reflowed anything. Flicking those switches seems to do nothing to the sound test. Still is not even attempt to play. The mixer pot on the rectangle board is working so I know that the main sound board is detecting the other board connected. I’m not sure if it’s a corrupted rom or not as the game doesn’t even attempt to play speech during the test still

Yes, there is no pause for speech I’ll look into those components.