(Topic ID: 117318)

Game Plan Experts? Poor Solenoid Performance

By jay

9 years ago



Topic Stats

  • 3 posts
  • 2 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 9 years ago by jay
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#1 9 years ago

I have an Atilla the Hun that works but the pop and sling solenoids are very sluggish, often responding to a switch hit after the ball is gone. I've cleaned up the crappy caps on the main board and rebuilt the pops to no avail. Any thoughts?

#2 9 years ago

Your first step would be to run the switch test and test the suspect switches with a ball to see if they are responding properly.

The pops and slings have nothing in common switch-wise. They are driven by two different strobes and the returns go through different LM339s on the MPU board. If it was a strobe problem you'd have issues with other switches as well being slow to respond. If this is the case, test the 74154 at U14.

If the switches all test OK, you could have a problem with the SDU board. But if that were the case then all solenoids would be slow to respond since the solenoid addresses are generated through the same circuits for all solenoids from the MPU board.

The 8255 PIA at U17 could also be suspect. You could also have a connector problem either with a socket, or the pins on the boards or the connectors themselves, especially if the battery ever leaked and you have damage as a result.

More testing is necessary to try and further isolate the problem.

viperrwk

#3 9 years ago

Thanks for the reply!

All the playfield solenoids other than the flippers (two slings and three pops in this game) are slow to respond but they're not consistent. Sometimes a sling will fire with okay power and in time to redirect the ball, and other times it's very late. I haven't noticed if the drop target resets are slow but that would be more difficult to tell I think. If I run the switch test, all the switches register but I'll try and see if I can spot any delay between a switch closure and the scoring on any of the regular feature switches.

There was a small amount of battery leakage on this board in the past but nothing that appears to have seriously compromised traces. It's quite minor compared to most acid damage I've seen over the years. The IC socket for the chip right beneath the battery mount does look a bit suspect though, so I can clean that up—might even have a spare holder. Not sure which chip that is or what it's for though.

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