Have another issue with my Solar City I'm trying to solve. The far right Drop Target on the 5-Drop bank is not scoring the bonus at end-of-ball. When the drop gets hit, it scores properly as do the other drops. When the ball drains, the Bonus Unit kicks in and scores 1,000 points for each of the downed drops except this one. Checked all the switches at the drop target back and all seem good. Getting good continuity from the switches to the bonus stepper unit. This drop is #14, the last contact on the bonus unit. I cleaned and adjusted the stepper unit and the switches at the drop. This stepper unit has been worked on before I got it and was missing some parts. I was able to get the parts and put it back together. I noticed that the contact on the wiper board for #14 had been worked on and replaced, Blue wire from switch at drop bank to #14 had been re-soldered. Again, checked continuity from all contacts on wiper board back to the drop switches. When the bonus unit runs, it stops at #14 as it should since it is the last contact on the board, then the drops reset as they should once the ball runs across the ball return switch.

It doesn't look like there is an "individual" wire going from the drop switches to anywhere other than the Bonus Unit so not sure why only one of the drops is not scoring it's bonus. The Bonus Unit handles that, and it looks to be working.

Not sure what I'm missing here, must be something at the Bonus Unit?

Ok, so I have a couple of ideas on this now. On the bonus stepper unit, it goes around 15 steps, 1 for each possible downed drop target. At the last one, there is a switch stack on one side of the stepper that changes state on that last move, at least partly to "tell" the bonus count relay it's done when a pin on the stepper opens a NC switch. May be using the wrong terms again, but maybe not. Anyway, the 2 thoughts/questions I have are:

1) Switch on Bonus Unit Opening too Early - maybe that switch is being opened too quickly before the fingers on the wiper have a chance to touch the contacts at #14 on the wiper board, essentially turning off the bonus relay before scoring the drop that gets counted at #14 on the wiper board. Tried adjusting that switch a bit to see if it would stay open just a bit longer at that last step on #14 before the switch opens. That didn't seem to work yet, but I still think this might be the issue, just need to adjust it a bit more?

2) Starter Position of Bonus Unti Wiper Assemby - It could be possible that wiper assembly on the bonus stepper is not correctly installed. Mine was missing, I had to find the parts and put it back together with the help of the forum here, but maybe I have something wrong. The main question I have on this is ..... when the bonus stepper finishes stepping around (and before it gets reset to 0), should the 2 fingers be on the contacts at #14 OR should they be sitting on the board without contacts below? Mine stops at #14, thinking it may need to stop AFTER #14? If so, that may mean that the starting point for the wiper fingers is not correct right now. Not sure how to tell from the schematics where the wiper fingers should be at reset. Attached is a picture of where the wiper fingers start before the bonus unit runs. The outer finger is on the first contact and the inner fingers is not on any contacts.

Ideas?

Thanks

BonusStartPosition (resized).jpg

So, is the "end position" before the bonus unit gets reset past position #14 sitting directly on the bakelite?

Thanks Again Rolf!

Rolf, is was in-fact the start position of the bonus unit wiper. Moved the bonus unit wiper start to position "0" (one beyond where it was) which is the yellow wire-contact as expected on Solar City as it is on Target Alpha. Now it's counting down 0 -14 (15 steps) and going into bakelite after getting that last contact which is the last drop target.

It's scoring the bonuses correctly now for the downed drops!!!!

Sweet, thanks for the help as usual.

Cheers, David

Hi Eric, I still need to do some testing on this, need to add a second player and see if things keep functioning "what I think" is correctly. One question for you as I can't get to the manual or schematic this morning, how do you get to double-bonus? I have never seen it score 2,000 per downed drop target. Not sure, maybe Solar City doesn't have that bonus. I did notice that on the last ball (mine is set to 5-ball) it will sometimes score 2,000 extra after the bonus scores for downed drops are added. Haven't not read over the overall game functions and play settings, that may not be right or not ..... maybe there is a double-bonus setting that is not set on mine, who knows. I'm bad about not looking over all the extra settings that can be made and may or may not be set by the previous owner.

Thanks, David

Thanks Eric, made some adjustments to the DX Relay now and things are a bit better.

However, now I'm facing a problem that keeps coming and going but I think it's finally more consistent. It seems that if I turn off the game before an end-of-game, next time I turn it on and start a game, the game will start except the first ball will not kick-out. So I manually push it into play and the game starts. However, when it drains nothing happens, it doesn't register the ball draining. If I knock down a drop target the game seems to start working. Next time the ball drains it kicks it back out after scoring bonuses and advancing the ball count. If I play to the end of the game now and start a new game, all is well. As soon as I turn off the machine during a game, same thing happens again. It's like the game doesn't fully reset unless you pay to the end. Maybe the player unit needs something .... This iis a problem when working on a game or when my young son's friends come over as they NEVER play to the end of a game.

David

Rolf, the Q-Relay is pulled in when I turn the game on, the "Game Over" light is on. When I start a game it releases and "Game Over" goes out, "Player 1" is lit as is "Ball 1", but no ball kicks out. Closing the outhole switch manually does nothing. If I then manually put the ball in play, all I need to do is score 10 points or more and close the outhole switch (ie simulate ball drain) and the game starts working. It seems like the part at the very beginning where the first ball just won't kick out. I was looking at the DX Relay which is called 1st Ball Relay I believe and checked the switch adjustments and cleaned it. Still nothing. Feel like it's a switch adjustment somewhere not completing the first ball sequence.

The ball is definitely in the outhole.

When the problem happens, I can kick the ball out via the Ball-Return-Relay and the game plays ok for that ball. What's interesting is that ON THE FIRST BALL the ball needs to score points or else when the ball goes into the outhole, nothing happens, no bonus scoring, nothing. If I score points based upon 100 or 10 points everything starts working from there including the ball kicking out after bonus scoring. On the second ball and after, no points need to score and all is well. If on that first ball I score something based upon 1,000 points, it scores it fine, but upon draining nothing happens. That is just very weird.

Another thing I thought about is that an entire game is played and all goes well until the end, the bonus unit runs and closes one of the switches on the bonus unit on the last movement of the stepper, after scoring that bonus points. So when a game starts that switch is closed. When I read the attached info that came from one of the online pinball guides it mentions that if a game has a bonus unit that switch may need to be closed for the outhole switch to then tell the "O Relay" to run. That's at game startup. When a game is being played when the ball goes into the outhole the bonus unit runs ansd closes that switch before it is reopened when the ball crosses the trough switch as you pointed out. It seems like one or two times when I started the games and expected it was still in the "bad" state, I had the playfield up and noticed that with the ball in the outhole the game ran the bonus unit before kicking out the ball and starting a game. COuld it be that this should happen everytime and is not?

By the way, I do have a schematic for the game and it's a good copy from PBR, I just can't understand what I'm looking at very well.

Thanks, David

Gottlieb EM Startup Sequence (resized).png

Hey Rolf, thanks for hanging in there with me. Attached is an image from the schematics, hopefully useful.

The workaround does work. Remember too that once I go through an entire game the workaround is unnecessary.

I was thinking the "DX Relay" (1st Ball Relay) was part of the problem and xcleaned and gapped it, but that didn't work. Maybe I didn't get it right or something.

R/ David

20170228_143229 (resized).jpg

Hey Rolf, I did some adjustments to the DX Relay, what a pain in the tailbone. First I just made it worse, but then I worked at it a little more. After the last tweak, the problem has gone away ....... at least for now. I can stop in the middle of a game as many of the kids do, just turn the game off with the ball in the shooter lane (happens ALL the time). When I turn the game back on it starts up fine and kicks a ball out. If it drains without hitting something in the 10/100 points, it kicks another back out and ball count stays at "1". Played a few games trying to force it to fail by turning it on/off at odd times, but still working for now. Later I will try doing the same thing in a 2-player game. I always forget to testing multi-player too, making sure there aren't other problems before people come over.

Let me bang on it a little and see what happens. Really cool game, but man it is finicky and tricky to troubleshoot for us novices.

I can still attach other schematic pics too later tonight or in the am. I would like to try and better understand how to read a relay on the scehamatic. I have a hard time tracking a stack of switches back to other relays, switches, score motor, etc.

Gotta run out to get my son now though.

THANKS Rolf