My Pop-A-Card has developed a problem whereupon starting a game causes the ball count unit to decrement down to 4 balls to play instead of staying at 5. It does this extra decrement only on game start. During game play it all works correctly, both subtracting and adding balls.

Anyone seen an issue like this before?

Dave

Rolf was on the track. The problem was definitely due to the 1st Ball Relay but only because that relay was not holding on when pulled in. Here's a schematic snapshot:

IMG_1771 (resized).JPG

You can see the J relay coil in the center. That's the 1stBall Relay. It passes through the score reel reset switches then runs through a switch on the SB2 relay. That switch does other things and those were working so I ruled it out. At first I was focusing on the J relay switches themselves but they all looked and worked well. It finally occurred to me that there was no way it was ever going to work as when the J Relay pulled in for a fraction of a second, the ball was kicked to the plunger and over the trough switch long after the J Relay had disengaged. That's when I realized something should be holding the J Relay on until SB2 is dropped out after the game starts. Not much in that circuit so I started looking at the reset switches and found a bad one on the 100s unit. That unit would actually reset fine but one of the two NO switches wasn't closing when at Zero. I guess one switch must be in the stepper circuit for the reels and the other for the 1st Ball Relay circuit. Adjusting that switch did the trick