Joker Poker
Gottlieb, 1978Score displays on my Gottlieb Joker Poker solid state machine are acting up. When I turn on the machine each display for each of the 4 players show all 1's across the 6 positions and the current high score of 929,801 (1st photo).
When credit button pushed, each displays shows 1's straight across all 6 positions (2nd photo)
Any ideas of what to check first or what the cause could be? I am OK with fixing EMs but solid state machines are more of a mystery to me.
Thanks.
Turn the game off. Pull the display data connectors and check them for broken (contact flange gone) or sprung (lost springiness of contact flange) female pins. While you're in there check ALL connectors for the same problems.
Once connectors are confirmed good, with game OFF disconnect all four player displays and Credit/BIP display. Reconnect P1. Power up. Still shows 1s? Power off. Disconnect P1 and connect P2. Repeat with P3 and P4. NEVER connect or disconnect displays with game ON.
There should be a diag button inside the door that will step through to a display test. See how that looks after dealing with connectors...unless dealing with connectors fixes it.
Results?
Update: removed connectors and tested individually...no change. I inspected closely, the chips Z16 & Z17 and re-seeded them. That seemed to correct the problem, at least for now. Will continue testing over the next few days. If I am lucky, it was just a loose connection on those ICs.
Quoted from njPinWiz:and re-seeded them.
The term is re-seat, not re-seed. You are seating the chip in the socket.
Quoted from njPinWiz:That seemed to correct the problem, at least for now. Will continue testing over the next few days. If I am lucky, it was just a loose connection on those ICs.
Are the legs on the chips tarnished, dirty, or blackened? I usually clean them off with a rectangular pink rubber eraser.
Quoted from njPinWiz:Thanks Force for clarifying the terminology...legs on chips seemed fairly clean so I didn't do anything to them - am always worried I will break them off. But I like your idea of using a rubber eraser.
Just rub down the leg from top to bottom...NEVER side-to-side.
I had the same issue with my Close Encounters. Replaced the old power supply board with a new Rottendog board. Problem solved.
When get display issues like this on my SS JP i found it was usually bad batteries causing memory issues, I think anyways.
What I would have to do is replace the batteries than on the next boot go through all the audits and hit reset on the CPU for each item. Then they would no longer have random digits.
Thanks Slogan & pinfarmer for your suggestions. I had replaced the power supply board about a year ago when I bought the machine, so that component is good. It is time to change the batteries, certainly can't hurt. JP is playing and scoring well now - re-seating the connectors and cleaning the legs of the two chips seems to have worked.
Replaced with a brand new board? Or older, original board type, refurbished, etc.? Mine was doing the same thing, would be fine one day then the next, it was goofy. When I was dealing with this problem, I read that those old p/s board were basically crap, mainly because of age. Anyways good luck, hope you can solve, not seeing the proper score is always a drag!
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Branchburg, NJ
Sarnia, ON