I Need Your Help to Help You
Dear Game Plan owners -
I am in need of your help for the next installment of my shotgun guide - the SDU-1. I have been scouring schematics and looking at boards and manuals and one of the things I am looking to put together is a table which will help you to easily identify where the problem is when a solenoid goes bad. Unfortunately, I do not own every Game Plan machine made nor have access to the documentation for every one. Additionally, GP made it very difficult because their solenoid numbering and power transistor use changed from game to game (with very little consistency.) For example, did you know the knocker was always hooked to Q1 on the SDU (when a game was equipped with a knocker) but could be numbered 07, 11 or even 020 in the solenoid test depending upon the game? And that early uprights used Q6 for the outhole kicker but later models used Q14? Knowing all this and more will make it easier when troubleshooting and swapping boards as well as replacing components.
Anyway, if you own ANY GP game and would like to help, there are three things you can do:
1 - go to your machine and run the solenoid test. As it runs, make note of the solenoid number on the display and which solenoid is actually firing. Then compile the list and post it. For example:
Model 110 cocktail (Real, Rio, Black Velvet, etc.)
010 - outhole
020 - knocker
030 - chime d etc etc
being sure to note if a number comes up and nothing happens.
2 - if it's still in your backbox, take a photo of the solenoid and switch identification page that is stapled to your insert board and post it with your test results. Or if you can't/won't/don't know how to run the solenoid test, please consider posting a photo of this page anyway. Even if you don't have a manual this will help you in identifying which solenoids are firing during the test.
3 - lastly, if you have any documentation for your machine and it's not already posted on IPDB, please consider scanning and posting the info to Jay for inclusion in the database, especially things like playfield and backbox schematics and parts listings. These oftentimes have revision notes on them and these can be quite useful in tracking down important changes that were made along the way. And I'd be willing to take a copy by email as well since Jay takes a while to get things posted.
Thanks in advance for any help you can render and look forward to the next installment soon.
viperrwk