I have been reading Pinside for a while, but I am a new member. I am also the proud new owner of a Fish Tales pinball machine, that I purchased a few months ago.

While I am a tech guy at heart and not scared to get my hands dirty, I am new to pinball ownership. Everything that I have fixed, or tried to fix, is from all of the helpful people on the forums. I had really hoped to find a solution to my problem without having to bother anybody. So far, I haven't been able to find a thread with a fix to my specific problem.

Since purchasing the machine, we have played it many, many times. Everything worked great, up until I started having issues with the game randomly shutting off. Without getting into too many details, I will say that due to a couple of issues, I ended up replacing the driver board with a new Rottendog board, along with a new Fliptronics replacement (also a Rottendog). I also had to replace a plug that was burnt.

Although a little expensive to replace, I didn't mind replacing the boards, since I plan on keeping this machine for a very long time, and understand that it is 26+ years old at this point.

After doing all of this, everything was working fine, except for I was getting a 'switch 36 error' upon testing at startup. During multiball, the catapult was slow to kick the balls back onto the playfield, but it had been fine before I started getting this error.

I did a switch edge test, and found that the switch wasn't registering. I replaced the diode and the switch, and no more error. The switch now registers in the test, but I seem to notice the same behavior in multiball.

I have traced the wires back to the plugs, and checked/reseated them, but the problem still exists. I also cleaned the optos at the reel, and they seemed pretty dirty. Tried it again, but still the same result.

Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could try next? Keep in mind, I am new to testing things, and still getting my feet wet using my DMM. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the reply Allibaster! I checked out the catapult, and it seems to be working freely. It looks like the ball sits down all the way on the switch, so it seems to be working right on that end. When the catapult launches the ball, it actually comes out at a normal speed, but the time between the launches is too long. Usually, or at least on my machine, by the time the first ball is hitting the flipper, the second ball was launching out. Right now, by the time the second ball comes out, the Auto Cast timer is up.

It seems like the catapult is fine with launching the ball, but the switch isn't telling it that it is ready to go. The new switch and diode both test fine, but there is definitely a longer pause between ball launches during multiball.

Thanks ArcadiusMaximus! The optos were pretty dirty when I cleaned them before, but it didn't seem to have any effect after testing again. Is there a way to tell if they are actually functioning properly, besides the testing menu? I'm not getting any errors when running through the tests.

As far as the multiball question, it definitely is launching the first ball due to multiball, but after that I am not sure. It is sometimes doing a ball search when it launches the third ball. That doesn't happen every single time, but I have noticed it more than once.

Thanks for all of the replies! I am going to change the drive belt, and I will let y'all know the results. While looking around, I also found something that didn't look too good to me. It looked a bit butchered, and a little burnt. I have attached a couple of pictures.

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I want to thank everybody for the help! I ended up replacing the belt for the reel, and I also replaced the A-13901-1 board. After I replaced the board, things seemed a little better, but I was still having the slow multiball launches. After replacing the belt(the old one was more loose than the new one), it was behaving about the same.

I went back and looked at the new switch that I had put in, and it didn't seem to be sitting as high anymore. I think it was just from being used a little, the switch button in the plastic itself was just not sticking up as much out of the plastic. I bent the metal arm that comes out of the switch, up a little to make better contact with the ball, and now everything is good again... Or as my twin brother told me, "I broke multiball". Yep, it's right back to it's old self, draining balls just like normal! Haha!

Anyway, I am not sure of how much replacing the board and drive belt helped, but I know that it didn't hurt. That stuff wasn't very expensive, so I figured it was worth it anyway. The old belt was slightly loose, so I do think it was causing some of the problem.

I wanted to come back and post what my experience was, so that maybe it would help people in the future. I always hate when posts end without someone listing the resolution, so I hope this one can help someone.

Thanks to everyone for the help... y'all are the best!

Daniel