Hello Game Plan group. I was recently sent a link to this thread, but had already started one for the lighting issue I’m having on my SS II. If you wouldn’t mind taking a look and seeing if you have some ideas I would appreciate it. After that gets resolved, I’ll bring the rest of my problems here from then on. Only slightly kidding.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/sharp-shooter-ii-all-insert-lighting-is-out#post-6952281

If this selection of drop targets is any indication, I could still uncover a few interesting odds and ends.

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I think we are in similar situations. None of my controlled lighting in the playfield is working. I am getting power from the braid just fine, can ground the tabs for the light sockets and make them work, and have voltage at each of the drivers on the light board. So power is getting all the way back to the light board. I am down to thinking either the chips on the light board are bad, or the signal from the MPU isn’t coming through.

Would all of the chips be bad?

Is there a ROM just for lights, or is that on a ROM on the MPU with other code? The rest of the game plays normal.

If all of that is fine, then maybe it’s a connection from MPU to light board. Have looked at that a little, but haven’t gotten very far. That was where I stopped the last time I was poking around.

Pins returning from the lights, or getting data from the MPU? Typically anyway.

Mine is still all incandescent bulbs. I grounded a few and they light up, so it’s not a situation where 100% are burned out.

Can you elaborate on the strobe from the MPU a little bit? What did you do and what did you check, and then how did you resolve that? I’d love to check my SSII against what you did.

Cool info. Hopefully I’ll get to dig into it in the next few days with my o-scope wielding friend so all this info will help as we poke and prod.

Listening to the latest Silverball Chronicles episode they mentioned doing a Gameplan episode at some point, so that’ll be cool.

What size legs are these games meant to have? My game came with a pair of 28.5” and a pair of 31”. With the levelers all the way in it makes it about 7*.

While we are at it, are these the right flipper coils? At the 7* my game is at these still feel a little strong. Spinner tips are nice but shots to the saucer bounce out more than they sit.

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The coils in my game are a Williams part number. I think a list of System 6ish games came up when I found the part number. I’ll order the right coils and see what happens. With my 7* slope thanks to the long back legs the ball is flying all over the place and one plastic guide is broken. More will follow if things stay as they are.

Sharpshooter 2 by the way, since I don’t think I mentioned that.

What's tje situation as far as adding LEDs to inserts, specifically Sharpshooter II? Are they good to go, or do they need resistors or Yoppcycles?

Any tips and tricks to prevent this? I can do it on both sides if I trap up and let the flipper drop. Game is at 5* currently.

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This started happening recently. No idea what is causing it and power cycling it will make it go away, but only for a random short period of time. Thoughts?

Is there a kit or a list of all the caps I should replace in the sound board of a SSII?

It will do this after a random amount of time. Sometimes it is 5 minutes, sometimes it’s 45 minutes.

I put the sound board back in and had it on and playing for hours today. The beeping didn’t happen in all that time, so maybe it was a connector with a bad connection and reseating it did the trick. Will pull the connector to the MPU if it happens again and see what that does.

Can we do NVRAM on these? My battery was moved off the board and now seems to not take a charge. Would rather NVRAM if possible and eliminate the battery.

SSII. Does it need the battery to be on coin play? My battery is not original and is remote, and won’t hold a charge. When I got the game it was starting with 99 credits and alternating between 0000000 and blank score displays, so no high score in memory.

I am trying to take it off free play and the manual says dip 8 being set to off does this. This is dip switch 8, right? It’s off and when I power up it is still coming up with 99 credits. Actually the credits window is blank until you press start, then it starts a game and shows 98 credits left.

Am I doing something wrong, or needing to do something else to turn off free play?

Also, I have some pretty noticeable speaker hum when the displays are lit. When you power it up and the displays blank out because there is no memory of a high score it is noticeably buzzing when those go lit and off.

Another weird thing was after a game, you would assume that would be high score, but in attract mode it acts as if there is no high score yet. Is this still a battery thing, or a dip switch needing to be on to use a high score?

The game is rocking and I’m ready for it to be in location, just have to learn these last few things, so any tips would be appreciated.

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Ok, the memory caps will be here in a few days. I will put that in and see what weird stuff it clears up.

Woot woot! I got my memory caps in and put one in SS2. Doing that and letting it charge for a while and power cycling it did not turn it off free play, not remember that it needs to record a high score, instead of just flashing 00. That was a bummer. Next I pressed the red SW 33 and that fixed everything. It is set on 1 credit per coin, so I will have to change that, but this was a big step.

Anyone have pointers to reduce the buzzing from the speaker in attract mode when it turns the displays off and on? When they are off it’s fine but when they are on there is a pretty noticeable buzz. I don’t need it gone, but if I can reduce it a little I’d like to. Thanks.

Whoa, great info. I don’t have a pot to do that with but I will put it on the list and give it a go down the road.

Thanks. I really like this layout and this game and I’m sure it will be enjoyed at my location. The biggest location in town that has closed had an SS1 several years ago and I loved playing this quirky layout.

Wellllllll shoot. Just turned on SS2 after being off for a few days with the memory cap installed. The game went back to free play mode and had no high score stored. I left it on for a few hours so I would imagine the cap was getting charged. Maybe not enough? I will check voltage when I turn it off and then again tomorrow. What do I need, 3V going to a pin of a RAM chip for it to keep settings? I’ll see if I can find that pin in the manual.

Here is my memory cap after letting it charge up for a while. As soon as I power the game off the cap starts to drop very quickly. It’s been off for a while and it just dropped below 1.5v and still going.

5.5v 1.5F. I was reading that 1F was on the lower side of things but should still hold for a month or two.

Should I be looking at a single diode, one per chip, or might there be several?

U9 is a 74C32, so that’s good news.

Are these the two diodes? I can’t find a layout drawing to confirm, but they fit the bill. They are both measuring .600 one way and then .700ish the other way. I’m sure it’s best to have one leg removed, but wondering if that’s required in this case.

Removed one leg of both diodes and both check out fine. It might be as easy as the cap is bad. I have a few others so I guess I’ll swap it out and see if that’s any different.

Two more tests to report. I had two different caps charging off the game and got them up to 5v and then turned off the game and unplugged things from the MPU to see if the cap would slow down on the discharging. Spoiler, it was still dropping fast with all connectors removed. Something on the board is doing the draining.

Last test was to charge up one of the caps again with the boards and then remove both connections of the cap to the board. It might not matter, but I did the - side first and it started dropping fast. I did the + side as fast as I could and then it slammed on the brakes. It went from 5 to 4.5 in the time that it took me to remove the second wire and now after maybe 30 minutes or more has gone from sub-4.5 to 4.331v. With the meter on it it will slowly drop and I have been turning it off in between checks.

U9 looks original based on the way the solder looks. Very uniform, not done with an iron. Are 6, 7, and 8 normally socketed? Mine has sockets and the socket overhangs the through holes enough that I can’t tell without removing the board again.

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I am considering it, as even off the game the memory caps are depleting faster than I would have thought. I’d like to see if there is a reason why my MPU is draining the battery that came with the game (not original) and these caps in case it can clear up any issues I don’t yet know about.

Very cool, I did not once that site existed. The blue bar along the left makes it pretty hard to see things on a phone, but will try on a computer later.