Take the balls out and enter switch test. Drop a ball into outhole. It's number should appear on the display. Continue to solenoid test. Let it run until outhole coil pulses. If it never fires you've probably a bad driver transistor.

yup! You got a fried transistor tip 120.
Try to replace with a tip102 and you
might have to also change the pre-driver
2N4401. Finally, you might have to replace
the logic 7408 gate ic chip; as the games get
older the gate logic starts to get flakey.

The Ball Release is solenoid 1, that's Q14, Q15 and part of IC1. You can try a quick test by clipping a jumper to the tab of the transistor and then touching the other end of the jumper to ground. If the coil fires, it's a bad transistor most likely.

You should also check the type and rating of the F2 fuse. With the coil cooked that badly, I think it should probably have blown. Make sure it wasn't overfused if your other solenoids are still working. If they aren't, the fuse is probably popped.

Ball release solenoid is controlled by Q15 (which I've highlighted in red for you). As others have said, you may want to replace the pre-driver transistor (Q14) [2N4401] as well.

Screen Shot 2017-01-08 at 6.23.13 PM (resized).png

That doesn't necessarily mean that you're transistors/logic are working properly, just that you have proper connections and power from the driverboard to the solenoid.

As others have stated, if you've already replaced both Q15 and Q14 with their proper replacements, you may want to go farther upstream and replace IC1 which is a 7408 chip.

I Had the same problem with my Firepower. I just got it for Christmas. This is my first pin. Followed the great advice on this thread and now it's looking like it's going to be a long night of drinking and enjoying my machine, While also basking in the greatness that I feel for fixing it myself and not paying someone to do it!!!

Thanks guys!!!

Cheers!!!

This is good advice. The jumper test simply tells you that everything else down to the coil is good and the transistor isn't going to ground as it should. This could be because the transistor is bad OR those components that drive it are bad. Since you've replaced the transistors, there is a high likelihood that the portion of the 7408 that drives that transistor is bad. I'd pull it, add a socket and plug in a new 7408. If you have a logic probe, you could probe the associated pins on the IC to see if they are active but replacing is pretty easy and cheap.

It would be IC-1, but why are you not testing this first?