Last night I started getting a Check Fuses F114 & F115 error message. Funny thing is, I got it initially during a game. I don't remember exactly what the game was doing or where the ball was (it might have gone into the Kickback spot or that coil firing might have happened after). But when it happened, I could feel / hear something pop. F115 fuse indeed is blown. The kickback coil fired and the shooter lane coil fired out another ball just after it happened, but the flippers weren't working. I watched this for another few seconds and shut the game off.

When I powered it back on, that's when I got the F114 and F115 error message. And presumably until that's resolved, you can't do anything else with it.

I looked everything over in the backbox and nothing looks obviously burnt or leaking or charred. I pulled out both fuses F114 and F115 and checked them with my multimeter. F114 was okay but F115 was blown. I put a new confirmed good fuse in both spots. F115 is a 3/4 A Fast Blow (even though the manual shows Slow Blow) and F114 is an 8 A fuse. I bought the Getaway fuse kit from Marco a while back. Powering it back up again, this time with the backbox door open and I could see F115 blow immediately right in front of me. F114 is still fine.

So I started searching the forums and find this really great tech write-up: https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#Check_fuses_F114_and_F115_message

One comment in that article mentions a loose mechanical connection of the fuse holder to the PCB. My F115 fuse holder does have a little wiggle to it. I thought, great, that's probably it. I pinched the metal tabs a little closer together and installed another good fuse (3/4 A FB). I also felt around some of the other fuses near it and noticed F116 was a little loose to the touch. Not the fuse holder, but the fuse could be rotated a little. This may have been from an order of fuses I got that were closer to 6.0 mm on the ends instead of 6.3 mm. I put a proper sized one in and it is now snug too. Just trying to be thorough in mentioning, as I'm not sure if that would be related at all?

Ok, so I power it up again and same thing. Fuse F115 blows right away. I did make note of the 7 LEDs on the power driver board. According to the manual, LED's 1,2,4,5,6,7 are all supposed to be lit normally and LED 3 is normally off. My game right now has LED's 4,5,6 lit up, but 1,2,3,7 are all off.

I feel like this means I somehow lost my 12V supply. Does that sound right? I'm not sure where to check next though. Any ideas or suggestions?

The diagram on that article shows how the connections are to J114. It seems like there's got to be a short somewhere to blow that fuse. I can check any components or connections for voltage or continuity, just let me know which ones will help diagnose the issue. Much appreciated!!

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I checked some of the voltages as suggested in that article underneath the diagram. Here is what I got:

The banded side of D1 gave me 16.85 volts. The article said it should be 18 minus 0.5 to 0.7 volts, so this is a touch low (or my meter isn't calibrated).
The banded side of D2 gave me 16.24 volts. Again, article said it should be the value from D1 minus another 0.5 to 0.7 volts. So low compared to the expected 18 volts initially, but not compared to what is actually coming from D1.
And then I tested the top leg of the 7812... and got nothing. This should apparently show the 16.24 volts coming from D2 and if it isn't, suspect the trace between the D2 and 7812 or a fractured solder joint at the 7812.

So this is probably it, right?

Next step would likely be to completely remove the power driver board from the game, get it on a workbench, turn it over and inspect what that trace and connections look like from the backside?

One additional note... when I tested those voltages this morning, I noticed LED 7 was lit up. I'm not sure if I missed that last night or it changed, but it is on. So the ones off are just LED's 1,2,3 of which LED 3 is supposed to be off.

LED 1 is the "+12vdc switch circuit", normally on
and LED 2 is the "high/low line voltage sensor", normally on

Thanks for that. I appreciate the explanation and how all those different components connect. I will definitely follow your advice after I get some more fuses. The correct, slow blow fuses that is.

Speaking of which, I see some odd discrepancies in the documents and online about that fuse.

I ordered the Getaway fuse kit from Marco and they included the fast blow ones for this 3/4 Amp fuse. Not sure why. I've attached a picture of the baggie it came in. You can see the ones they refer to as AGC are the fast blow and the MDL ones are the slow blow.

There's also the diagram from that PinWiki tech page which shows FB drawn on the end of the fuse in the F115 location.

I agree with you that it is shown in the manual as being a slow blow though. On the Fuse List (page 1-40) it shows it as F115 +12V switch matrix, 3/4 A S.B. The same again on page 2-8 on the parts list for the power driver board.

Looking at the parts list for the Getaway, when you search for "fuse" it gives you part number 5730-09797-00 and calls it "fuse 3/4 A 250V" but neglects to indicate SB or FB.

If you turn around and search for this part number 5730-09797-00 on the Marco store, it pulls up this product: https://www.marcospecialties.com/control/keywordsearch?SEARCH_STRING=5730-09797-00

Which unfortunately is listed as the AGC-0.75 fast blow version of that fuse.

If you search manually for the right slow blow fuse, you can find it here: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/MDL-0.75

It just seems like Marco got mixed around on which one was meant to go into the Getaway, and like you mentioned, other similar system games.

I'll need to order some of these slow blow fuses as I don't have any good ones at the moment to be able to continue my troubleshooting.

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Ok, I continued troubleshooting with the FB fuses I had. The only connector that now blows F115 is the J210 one on the MPU.

What should I be looking for now?

Ribbon cable condition?

My batteries are only two months old and look ok.

Hey... ok, I tested U20. I measured resistance across pins 9 and 10. I was wondering what end you start counting from, but for an 18 pin chip, 9 and 10 are the middle pair from either end so it wouldn't matter (as far as I can tell).

I got 11.73 KOhm. (or 11,730 Ohms) So a little more than the 200 Ohms you mentioned, but a lot less than the 1,000,000 Ohms it should have been.

Guess I'm replacing that U20 chip then? Question for you: does this U20 chip just pull out of its socket on the board? Or do you need to unsolder it and then resolder it? I am kind of hoping its the carefully pry out variety like the ROM chips and not the solder iron routine. I see Marco sells them individually and also as part of a little semiconductors repair kit. I've never done any of these types of repairs, but was hopeful I could tackle this one myself. I can more than likely find someone local to help me if need be. I don't know very many local pinball owners yet is all. Thanks.

Thank you for the diagram.

I retested on those last two pins opposite the notch and got 76 Ohms. So exactly as predicted being under 200 Ohms.

Does U20 just pry out or is it soldered in place?

Thanks for the tip. I have pretty much zero experience on fixing boards and don't think this is what I should be learning on. I know of a couple guys in the area that I understand do board work and I'll have to get in touch with them and figure out how to proceed. At least I know what needs to be done now. Better than guessing at it.

Agreed on getting the batteries off of there. I also have a Party Zone and while it doesn't have the NVRAM, it at least has the battery holder relocated to somewhere that isn't going to drip on anything and ruin it.

Glad you mentioned that. I was just thinking about how this happened. And if I got my board repaired whether something would cause it to happen again. Here’s a picture I took earlier today.

...for the board repairs, looks like I might be dropping off a few different things with whoever I might be able to find to help. I have my original accelerator board with Q8 and Q9 failed that needs repairing. I bought a brand new board to get the Supercharger working again. Do you think the U20 failing could be related to that? I read somewhere about how balls can get jammed up in the supercharger somehow and short between bulbs. But I don’t think that happened on mine when my fuse popped. All three balls were down in the trough after shutting the game off.

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Do any of those resistors look burnt to you? I can take a zoomed in photo of any of them if you want a better look. I don't see any obvious ones at first glance.

I can measure resistance across any or all of those resistors if it'll help figure it out. Let me know what kind of values I should expect and I can make a table and systematically go through them and record what I get.

I don't normally do anything under the game with the playfield power still on. The only exception was a couple weeks ago I was testing one of the 3-lamp boards that hold the green/yellow/red lights and wiggled it from underneath trying to see what portion was loose enough to cause the intermittent green light.

I hadn't actually done much on the Getaway for a few days prior as I just got the World Poker Tour game and was focused on it. The only thing I did do out of my norm was to use the coin door reject light bulb holder (round base) to test a couple unknown condition bulbs from the WPT machine. I unscrewed the bulb holder from the right side coin slot and then used it to put in and take out a few different bulbs to see if they worked or not. Then I put the regular bulb back in the Getaway and reattached the holder to the back of the coin mech assembly.

Do you think that might have messed anything up or shorted something out? It all worked ok still after I did that and when the fuse originally blew, the coin door was already back closed and doing it's attract mode normally. About the only thing I can think of that I may have inadvertently pushed something together that isn't meant to be touching is when I take the balls out of the Getaway to raise the playfield, I reach under and push up on the shooter lane lever arm to push the balls into the shooter lane so I can take them out by hand. I don't reach in there with the power on, but maybe I have bumped my hand into something I shouldn't have and then it shorted things on me? But again, it happened mid-game, so it would need to have been something that moved together only after I started playing and things were already closed up. Could be some rogue screw or washer I suppose that decided to fall down onto the wrong thing? I haven't scoured it since it happened looking for such a thing though.

Ok, just tested those 8 resistors. Still have to go do the 2nd part you mentioned with testing the U20 itself.

I see on the diagram those resistors are numbered R67 to R74 from right to left. My measurements were:

R67 = 0.996 kOhm
R68 = 0.992 kOhm
R69 = 7.9 Ohm
R70 = 0.997 kOhm
R71 = 0.997 kOhm
R72 = 0.996 kOhm
R73 = 32.5 Ohm
R74 = 11.3 Ohm

So five that appear to be ok and three that are not?

Looking at the schematic, these 8 resistors are tied into the 8 switch columns? What is this telling us?

Is any of that hinting at a switch or two that might have gotten shorted to the playfield? Or the initial cause to all of this I guess is what I'm wondering? Like you said, trying to get to what made it all happen so that once my board is repaired, it doesn't happen all over again. Thanks for all the help with this.

Ok, here we go. I did those resistance measurements on U20. I see some patterns, but they didn't get up to the 2 MegOhm range you mentioned.

With the 10 pin black lead reference:

1 = 10.73 kOhm
2 = 10.86 kOhm
3 = 10.94 kOhm
4 = 10.81 kOhm
5 = 10.76 kOhm
6 = 10.99 kOhm
7 = 11.01 kOhm
8 = 10.47 kOhm

11 = 11.3 Ohm
12 = 32.4 Ohm
13 = 0.996 kOhm
14 = 0.996 kOhm
15 = 0.997 kOhm
16 = 7.9 Ohm
17 = 0.992 kOhm
18 = 0.995 kOhm

With the 9 pin black lead reference:

1 = 10.67 kOhm
2 = 10.86 kOhm
3 = 10.89 kOhm
4 = 10.77 kOhm
5 = 10.72 kOhm
6 = 10.97 kOhm
7 = 10.99 kOhm
8 = 10.46 kOhm

11 = 66.7 Ohm
12 = 85.9 Ohm
13 = 1.072 kOhm
14 = 1.072 kOhm
15 = 1.072 kOhm
16 = 74 Ohm
17 = 1.067 kOhm
18 = 1.074 kOhm

I have the J210 connector on the MPU board still unplugged while I was doing this. Didn't know if this mattered, but wanted to mention it. The fuse still in F115 is the same one I last used to test, and it was good because of leaving that J210 connector unplugged. Everything else is intact or connected. The three balls are not in the trough though, I took those out for the time being.

On the 3-lamp board, I was able to reflow just that one pin for the green light and it has been working again ever since.

Question about those connector pairs... if you can put the single connector in either J206 or J207 and then again with the other connector for J208 or J209, do you think this might have masked a potential problem or failed resistor? Like do those connectors go to their own resistor sets? Or am I not understanding how those redundant pairs of connectors work?

I redid the resistance testing on those 8 resistors with the J206/7 and J208/9 connectors unplugged. Basically the same numbers as before:

R67 = 0.996 kOhm
R68 = 0.992 kOhm
R69 = 8.0 Ohm
R70 = 0.997 kOhm
R71 = 0.997 kOhm
R72 = 0.996 kOhm
R73 = 32.4 Ohm
R74 = 11.4 Ohm

Good stuff. Thank you very much for helping me get here. I think I have also found a local person to help me repair the boards, move the batteries off, replace C2 on the driver board.

So if those three resistors are bad plus the U20 chip, would there have been a typical cause for their failure? Just age and eventually they go or perhaps saw some battery acid at some point in the past? Did we rule out a playfield switch short with those resistance tests?

This is a video I took of my game in attract mode a whole five minutes before that U20 thing happened.

You can see the error dot after the free play on the DMD. I didn't check it this time specifically, but I was getting an intermittent diverter error. It showed up sometimes after turning the game back on and sometimes it didn't. It almost always reset itself, either by the time you played your first game or during the first game after you shot the supercharger. Occasionally though the supercharger wouldn't work for real and I usually shut the game off, waited a minute and turned it back on.

I think this is what it did that first game I played right before the F114 and F115 fuse message appeared. I recall shooting the supercharger, having it not get accelerated by the magnets, fall out and then that was all that happened before it popped the fuse. I felt like the game wasn't always powering up entirely or properly. Like it didn't always get all the components or boards lit up in some sequence. I was just about to order a replacement ribbon cable set when this happened, thinking maybe the boards aren't talking to each other the way they are supposed to. It was the intermittency of it that had made it less clear what has been going on.

You guys have all been really awesome. I got in touch with another forum member here that lives local to me and I'm going to take my boards over to him for the repairs. He has a few games of his own so can test them to make sure it's all working which is perfect. We're going to look after the U20 chip and the resistors that are bad and I'm also going to get that C2 on the power driver board replaced with new. It doesn't look wet or anything, but sounds like it's a bit of a ticking time bomb so will do it before it goes off.

Here's a quick vid I did before pulling the boards off the game:

And a couple of the boards laying on my dining room table. I tried to zoom in better on that C2 piece to show it clearly. It doesn't look deformed or anything.

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Here are a couple of pictures of that opto interface board. It looks a little iffy when you get this zoomed in on it. I don't know what that orange coloured goober is there. Had never noticed it beforehand. I am running a brand new accelerator board right beside this one. I lost the Q8 and Q9 (at least) transistors on my original. Supercharger stopped working and this is the board the issues got narrowed down to.

I also have been looking over the playfield for those switches in the matrix to see if any of them are rubbing or touching a neighbouring GI light or flasher or coil. One that seems like it could be close enough to touch is that red light switch on the middle lamp board. This is the same board I had been messing with where the green light didn't work. I think there is still a sliver of daylight between the edge of the bulb receptacle and the backside of that leaf switch, but a decent hit and maybe it pushes back just enough to make contact. That exact red light switch is prime time to get a direct hit hard because of where it is and with nothing in front of it. I don't know if that did happen, but it's a possibility. Some of the other light bulb holders look too close and I'll go over all of them and pivot any I don't like a little farther away.

I did notice earlier that the little tent shaped top of the shifter switch bracket is in contact with one of the screws on my right flipper stack. Now technically these screws should be insulated from everything else because of that sleeve that runs down the middle of the stack, but is this a potential problem? I was thinking I might make new holes off to the side and reattach the flipper button leaf switch at a slight angle to get the stack screws away from the shifter. After reading the discussions on the shifter switches being backwards for some set-ups, I think those brackets got turned around and the ample space if mounted with the switches the other way around became too little space with the way it is right now.

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Not sure!!

So I pulled the board off and had a closer look. It almost looks like the amber they used for the special effects in the Jurassic Park movies. Like it had a glimmer to it. I poked at it a little and it crumbled away. Not sure what it is or where it came from. Could have been one of these acid insides to an electrical component? Not sure.

I did check the resistance to those R5, R6, R7 components and the manual says they are 220 Ohms and that is pretty much exactly what I got for all three. So whatever that goop was, it didn't seem to negatively affect the resistors. Not sure about the LM339 piece it was also a little bit on. Would I check that the same way as I checked the U20 piece earlier? Does anyone have a similar set of pin testing instructions for those LM339's?

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