I assume you tried cycling power.

Will it respond if you try to reflash the firmware?

you can't flash firmware on whitestar. it's a rom swap.
It is most likely a CPU board problem. Is there any alkaline damage around the battery pack?
The 6264 ram below and to the right of the battery pack have any corrosion?
Try reseating all the socketed chips on the CPU board and report back.

Cycling power is just a fancy way of saying "turn it off and turn it back on" which you already did.

I would go with CPU/ROM problem as well. dgoett is right, no firmware flashing on Whitestar but there's a lot you can try before you should buy new ROMs. Try reseating all the socketed chips on the CPU as dgoett suggested and go from there.

Remove the translite, check fuses and whether all leds are lit on power and MPU board. Check batteries too.
This'll help troubleshooting further, if you dont have a manual download one

My mistake on the firmware, sorry. My Rings has been gone too long.

While you're in the head, give a press on all the gray ribbon cable connectors..

Great suggestion. Or, maybe even better, reseat (pull out and plug back in) each gray ribbon cable. This effectively "cleans" the connector pins. It's an old Clay trick that has helped me quite often with these kinds of strange issues.

You could even take some more time and re-seat *all* connectors in the back box. Just to make sure all connections are solid.

But please make sure you plug everything back in the right way, especially with ribbon connectors, these can be inserted 1-pin offset and you don't want that. So use a good light to make sure all is connected properly *before* turning the game back on.

Hope that helps!!

Yeah, I was gonna say that then remembered Stern likes to hot-glue the ribbon conns. Trying to pull them off can be nigh impossible. Couldn't remember if Rings had the glue or not.

Didn't know this. That seems stupid. Bet THAT makes for easy troubleshooting.

Also try reseating the game eprom. Find that this is the problem some of the times with a resetting whitestar game.

yes, that chip is the main game eprom. I would recommend changing it and probably also getting someone to change the socket for that chip.

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/EPROM1871
New A10 EPROM for Lord of the Rings $10.00

I would definately change this as its the source of your strange behaviour.
Have someone replace the EPROM socket with a nice Machine Pin Socket as kbliznick suggested

You're gonna need someone to do some detailed board work. When you get battery acid damage it can be minor or severe. Usually not something that someone is gonna be able to fix at your location. They need to put the board on a bench and it could take hours. I would suggest sending it to Coin Op Cauldron.

http://webpages.charter.net/coinopcauldron/brepairs.html

Some pinsiders can do board repair as well. Barakandl maybe?

Can't go wrong with sending it to Clive. He does my boards when I can't figure them out.

I had a similar problem as it was due to a failure of a proprietary chip on the power board. It took almost 4 months before K's Arcade could get the chip from stern. Bought a replacement board in the interim. Try swapping out with another white star board.

Sending the board to Clive at Coinop Cauldron would be my suggestion as well. Will cost under $150. The only downside is that he might be a little backlogged. The good news is that you have 2 other games to play. When you disconnect the game just take a few pictures or label the connectors so its easy to hook it back up. Should take 5 min to remove and replace.

Clean the battery corrosion, and replace and damaged parts (eprom).

But if it plays and is just missing the lights now that you've clean it up and reseated the cables then replace the controlled lamp fuse that has blown.

The flashing the controlled lamps really bright on and off (and blowing the bulbs and fuses) is sign of battery corrosion on the whitestar boards, they go into this state when they can't load their rom; a crappy failure mode, but a sure sign that there is a problem around the rom socket.

When the controlled lamps get flashed in this manner they get over powered and then the controlled lamp fuse blows. Then you get no playfield lamps. That seems to be where you are now...

The manual is available here.... http://mirror2.ipdb.org/files/4858/Stern_2003_The_Lord_of_the_Rings_English_Manual_complete.pdf

Page 1 lists the fuses, you're looking for F22, controlled lamp fuse; replace with correct size replacement fuse.

Make sure you clean the corrosion off the machine, and not just close it back up if you fix it, else the corrosion will continue to eat at and harm the machine and the repair later will be much, much worse.

Or buy your ROMS from me and support a pinsider

I'd recommend using a good quality wipe socket. Machine pin sockets are evil

Trust John. Got my Safe Cracker ROM today. Thanks for the fast service.

I am in Stafford and have a LOTR. While I won't be up in Winchester any time soon - if you want to remove the board and bring it to me - we can go through it, replace the socket (I should have plenty) and test it in my game before you leave. Just a thought - and the only thing it will cost you is gas and your time getting here. Cheers,
Ray

John sells new chips at low prices. Plus he uses those fancy holographic sickers.

Kudos to Ray!!

Dude, this is the best thing about Pinside.
Guys like you, helping guys like the rest of us.

I've got Ray on speed dial.

Thanks guys. Happy to help whenever I can! This forum has helped me tremendously over the last couple of years and I am very grateful. Any time I can pay it forward - I most definitely will jump at the opportunity!

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