Hagerstown, MD
Hey Pinsiders!
I just picked up by first solid state game. It's a Data East Monday Night Football and I'm pretty excited to have it. I paid $1950 for it from a local arcade picking family, so not much information on the history of the machine (OK, no information at all).
Yesterday morning I posted some videos I made in the Data East thread with some of the issues I was having.
#1 issue is that the plunger or shooter or whatever that is supposed to launch the ball out after 'kick-off' does not shoot the ball out. According to my basic troubleshooting, this is firing when I do the coil tests in the game menu. Moreover, the correct 'kick-off distance' does register when you use this shot (audio announces the kick-off return yardage), however if I do go into one of the kick-off holes, I have to lift the playfield to get the ball out of the channel under the kick-off ramp. I can avoid this by releasing the plunger at full strength, where it goes into the 'touchback' ramp (same as the bomb ramp) and comes out into the playfield, but it ruins the first move of each turn.
#2 I believe I have somewhat resolved -- the game was saying "extra ball" basically every time you hit something in the playfield, rendering the game unplayable, as you could never get to Ball #2. I did a factory reset of the machine last night in the submenus and this is no longer happening -- you can now play a pretty regular game after the factory reset.
In addition to the kick-off kick-out issue above, I have found some other gremlins that are causing me some more issues before I can worry about the cosmetics or decals or anything.
#3 One strange gremlin is that after a game is over, and the MNF theme song starts, the coils start a pattern of firing for whatever reason and during this process, all of the balls that are stored in the game by the plunger (3-ball multiball) end up ejected by the plunger by the time the theme song ends. So, if I start a new game, it will say ball missing. If I try to plunger the balls out of the kick-off lane and into the bottom of the playfield to get the balls back where they need to be, inevitably one of the three balls in the line will end up in the 'kick-off zone' and then I have to lift the playfield to get it to roll out. Once all three balls are back where they were before the great coil dance, the game can begin.
#4 -- Something is off with the scoring. It's hard for me to pin down exactly what, because I don't know anything about this game and I know even less about pinball machines as a whole right now, but something isn't adding up right. I was playing 2-player with my GF last night and there were several times where I could tell the points weren't lining up with the action on the playfield properly. The yardage advancing / touchdown / field goal seems to work properly, so as far as I can tell, but I do believe there are some issues related to pinball points scoring that I am unable to identify yet.
#5 -- The machine was advertised as working and because I am an idiot, I stuck my arm up in the head unit when it was in the van on the way back to try and disconnect some of the connectors without raising the head or removing the front glass yet. I believe that my arm inside the head unit may have damaged something on one of the PCBs and that could be the root cause of most of these issues. I've got a ton of photos below for referencing.
OK, that's all my questions! As a general statement, I own a very small medical device manufacturing company which is using FDA clearances on products that were developed in the late 1980s early 1990s, so I am pretty familiar with EPROMs, through hole PCB parts, soldering (built wiring harnesses through college for the company that I now own), etc but by no means am I an electrical engineer, nor do I have a detailed understanding of the interworkings of the technologies. I'm just referencing my experiences so you have an idea of my level of understanding at this moment. I do have an electric volt meter at home with probes for testing and troubleshooting as needed, and as mentioned, I am a bit of a soldering god, but you'll see some lazy crimps I did for some wires that had been twisted together before and had to be cut to get the head unit off the cabinet (3 wires) -- just wanted to get it set-up quickly when I got it.
Onto the photos! I've got this thing STEEP by the way, probably too steep, front feet on the ground and rear feet most of the way backed out.
Please, if you see anything out of place or anywhere I should look to test, let me know! I did print off the 52-page Service/Owners Manual from IPDB.org yesterday and that is how I managed to do the factory reset. Even the factory reset, I sat there and had to read the instructions about 5 times before I understood what the process was to get it accomplished with the STEP/F/R buttons by the door, so treat me as such, please! You won't offend me.
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