Hello Everyone,

Last winter I picked up a SS Cleopatra as a learning and repair project. I ran into a number of issues and ended up walking away from as the weather turned warm. Well it is cold again and I have gotten the bug to get this thing working so I can play it instead of stare at it in the corner.

I set it up the other day, unplugged everything in the head unit (nothing going into the power supply), to see where I was. As soon as I turn the unit on the kick out solenoid locks on and I am trying to understand why that is happening. I am still very new to pins so nothing is obvious to me yet.

Now to give some more information, inside the body I only have the larger power transformer hooked up. The smaller one is currently not connected as it is suspect. Again, everything in the head is disconnected as well.

Should I suspect the solenoid is bad or should I be looking elsewhere? With so much disconnected and only the one solenoid locking I am not sure where else to look. I am looking for posts or write-ups on testing solenoids but any help would be appreciated!

All of the boards are currently disconnected and nothing is plugged into the power board. What transistors would be in play at this point that could be causing a problem?

I measured the coil and it, A-5195, was reading at 11.7 ohms which looks to be in spec.

The small transformer had what looked to be wax melted out of it. I am not sure how to check all of the voltages on it. If you have advice or can point me to something I would appreciate it. Because it looked melted is why I disconnected it and everything in the head and then tried to turn the machine on.

I measured the coil and it, a A-5195 coil, was reading at 11.7 ohms which looks to be in spec. So something else is triggering it to fire with just the large transformer connected. I even unplugged the chimes, knocker, etc. I will try to trace the wires back and see if I can figure anything out. I am really new to all of this so I am grasping at straws at this point. Any advice would be appreciated.

One thing to add, when I originally picked up the machine it did turn on to general illumination without the coil locking on. The small transformer looked in bad shape (wax melted) so I disconnected it with the intent of learning how to test it or find a replacement.

Could the coil be locking on simply because the small transformer is not there and so something is not flowing correctly?

Well I spent some time over the weekend and re-did the required ground modifications (didn't like my original soldiering job), repined all the connectors, and started the testing cycle over following the process on pinrepair (http://www.pinrepair.com/sys1/index.htm). Through the process I discovered that the driver board I had in the machine appears to be faulty. I had an extra and when I put it in the outhole solenoid stopped locking on - Yeah!

I was able to get the game to power up, including the 5 second delay with relay click, but I am still having some issues including no sound during game play and displays not displaying correctly. After verifying power levels and connections I pulled off my MPU board to find that the connectors look like this:
IMG_1119.JPGIMG_1120.JPGIMG_1121.JPG

Here is an example of what the displays look like:
IMG_1122.JPG

Now I know that I can get a replacement board but understanding that this game will coin up and play and the remaining issues seem to be sound in game and displays is it worth trying to fix the board? Can anyone fix these boards? Or should I just face that I need to buy and Pascal or Ni-wump (sp?) replacement board?

Thank you for the reply Grumpy. I like the idea of restoring and utilizing the original board. Any guide or guidance that someone can point me to on the process to re-tin the pads? I am a far cry from an electrical engineer :/

Thank you for the deeper explanation Grumpy, I will give it a try and let you know how it goes!

Part of it to me is a learning experience. I am new to pinballs and this Cleo is my pet project. I want it done so my family can enjoy it but at the same time I am enjoying the learning process and getting to know the system and its parts. Another factor of it is just cost. I have no expectation of making money on the machine and I am working on it for the love of pinball, not for financial gain. I may have already put more into it then I can ever get back.

But at the same time my "play" money is limited and so I don't want to spend where it isn't needed. If some soldering will bring the board and game back to life then it is worth it to me to spend the time doing it as I am in no hurry. If in the end I need to spend the money to get the machine going - then I will. But two hundred saved on this one is two hundred towards the next project pin!

OK, I am admitting defeat, at least for now, with the CPU board. I have ordered a Pascal CPU board and I will see if I can get the game up and running with it. Maybe one day I will go back to see if I can get the CPU board working for the sake of information but I am looking for some forward progress over the Christmas holiday.

In case you were wondering - after I reworked the connectors on the board I was able to get 2 displays to read correctly but two were still not working correctly, I was getting a coil lock, and some odd behavior on a couple of playfield parts. If I still have the same issues with the Pascal board I will go back to the drawing board but it is worth a try. Plus I think the attract mode will be a nice added feature.

As of today 1/7/15, the Pascal board just got into the US. Three weeks travel from France to the US.

I have been redoing some pins on the connectors (a couple I did but didn't like), cleaning up the playfield, back box, and base cabinet, and installing the fuse between the large and small transformer while I wait. Excited to get this pin alive, but no real progress at this point.

So I got the Pascal board this weekend and had a chance to get it installed. As for the timing of the shipping, it took about three and a half weeks from shipping notice to on my door step just as an FYI for those looking to get one.

So far I really like the board and I am excited to play with more of the options. But it was easy to install, set to free play, and enable the enhanced attract mode which I really like.

But...Getting it installed showed me that I have at least two open issues at the moment that I need to address and I am looking for any advice on them.

1) The yellow rollover at the top of the playfield is not behaving correctly. Every time I start a game it automatically scores as if it was engaged when the ball has not even been kicked out yet. Also when I press either flipper it adds 500 points every time. If I actually press down the rollover it will not score or react at all. I disconnected the switch on the rollover and it stopped the odd scoring behavior but of course it does not engage at all this way. I tried replacing the switch with an extra I had but it has the same behavior. It appears as if the switch is constantly connected but I am not sure what to look at?

2) Lazy chimes: During game play the chimes do not really ring out. They seem to hit ok for coin up (starting a game) but only the 10's chime sounds consistently during a game. I can hear the others trying to moving once in a while but they are not chiming. Per pinwiki I thought that maybe the weather strip they sit on was worn out making them not able to travel correctly but it looks to be in pretty good shape. During the coil test the 100's and 1000's chime barely move. In fact I will have to double check if they move at all. It is just not as interesting with only 10's ringing out. Do they just need more lubricant? Is there anything else I can look at?

I feel like I am now getting close on this one!

Thanks for the advice Ken Layton.

#1 - I will take a look at the diodes tonight and see if I can find a bad one. My physical check of rollover switch didn't show anything wrong. But I changed it out anyway to test the theory of a bad switch and had the same results so I do not think the swith itself is the problem. I found this discussion thread related to diode testing (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/switches-and-diodes-and-drop-targets-oh-my-beginners-guide) and it sounds like that might be the magic.

#2 - I will look at cleaning the unit and maybe replacing the sleeves.

Well I feel a bit silly… I spent the time last night tracing and de-soldering the diode associated to the yellow lamp at the top of the playfield and soldering in a new one. When the diode was out I turned the game on and confirmed that the light didn’t go out and score as soon as a game started. The rollover could not score of course but I thought I confirmed that the problem was the diode. But once I put the new diode in place and started a game the problem was still there! It was not the diode at all.

Not sure where to go next I went to the manual wanting to find out what wire went from the switch to the CPU thinking that it could be a bad connection. When I looked in the manual I found a list of switches and I found the line associated with “Yellow Lamps”. Wait….”Lamps”…with an ‘S’. That is when it hit me that the yellow rollover at the bottom of the playfield is tied with the yellow rollover switch at the top of the playfield. When I inspected the switch at the bottom of the playfield I found that there was no gap in the switch so it was always closed and every time I started a game it was instantly scoring and holding the switch open!!!! A simple minor adjustment on the switch to separate them corrected the issue – lol

With that adjustment the game is completely functional except for the chimes. The 10’s appear to work correctly but the 100’s and 1000’s will not ring out during game play. As I mentioned above I can hear them move slightly in the cabinet but they are not making contact with the chime during a game. They do make noise when I start a game though. I will take the unit apart to look for signs of physical damage and maybe clean the unit a bit but if anyone has any ideas I appreciate any help I can get so I can have this working 100%.