Hook
Data East, 1992I am working on a Data East Hook. The chase light rope is not working. In looking at the manual, I don't see any test information. I found the chase board in the upper right of the back box. It does not have any fuses or such to replace.
Any ideas on how to get started on troubleshooting it?
Thanks,
Hank
Can someone with a hook take a picture of the chase board and the wiring harness in the back box. In mine one of the harnesses coming out from the board goes into a connector to a larger connector just to the left of the board. The receiving cable connector has wires without corresponding wires on the chase board harness. Is this normal?
I'll get a picture the next time I visit the machine.
Thanks,
Hank
Thanks! Your pictures are real clear.
Will you take a picture of the Z connector connecting the wiring harness to the light chaser board in the back box. If you follow the cables from the chaser board at least one (from CN2 I think) they go to a Z connector. That is the where I have the question.
Cheers,
Hank
The chase light board is also used in the Data East Star Trek 25th anniversary also, and the board has been reproduced if you need a new one. Try the usual sources for one, or it is easy to fix your old ones. The star trek chase lights usually burned out due to no insulations on the wires in the chase light blue tubes, but this was fixed with hook, so hopefully your lights are fine.
Hammerhead1550,
Right now the whole lighting does not work so I'm not sure if it is the string, wiring, board, or ?
Do you have any guidance on how I would trouble shoot to determine if it is the board or one of the other major components? I'll start by checking the voltages, but any additional pointers are greatly appreciated.
I see that Marco Specialties has the board, if that turns out to be the culprit.
Cheers,
Hank
Quoted from nworker:Hammerhead1550,
Right now the whole lighting does not work so I'm not sure if it is the string, wiring, board, or ?
Do you have any guidance on how I would trouble shoot to determine if it is the board or one of the other major components? I'll start by checking the voltages, but any additional pointers are greatly appreciated.
I see that Marco Specialties has the board, if that turns out to be the culprit.
Cheers,
Hank
These are 12v, right? Take a 9v battery and test the rope light at it's z-connector before it heads into the backbox. It should light up. That's what I did with my Star Trek when I was reproducing the ropes a while back.
Goonie,
Great! I'll give that a try.
Where did you source your light rope? Just in case it turns out to the light string itself.
Cheers,
Hank
Patofnaud,
Wonderfully clear picture. I think my machine is different with only a four pin connector on the PCB side, which looked odd and is what prompted me to seek a picture. I'll check out what I have and report back.
The gray wires in your picture don't match the wires on the board, so they much go to another location in the back box after they leave the Z connector.
Cheers,
Hank
Quoted from nworker:Goonie,
Great! I'll give that a try.
Where did you source your light rope? Just in case it turns out to the light string itself.
Cheers,
Hank
Well, my Hook rope is original. The ST rope I made myself, which is a different color/length. It took a while to find the right rope, but i sourced it all myself and just made them with LEDs. PITA given each LED has to be hand soldered to the wire in order to fit in the rope okay.
Well if you look at the manual, and on page 67/68 you will see the chaser board. It's fairly basic. You have 3 inputs, 5VDC and GND.
Make sure you are getting 5VDC.
It has three TIP122's that drive the lights. If any one of them were bad you would get some lights but not all. Odds are fairly remote that all 3 would go bad.
Those 3 TIPs' are driven by a 74HCT240 which I believe is a tri-state inverter/buffer. If that chip has power, and the 3 inputs are toggling, its the only active component on the board.
Only thing in front of that is the voltage filter and 1 cap. Just make sure your getting 5vdc.
So if it was me, I would attack this as;
o Check input voltage.
o In selftest for the rope light, make sure the 3 inputs to the module are toggling.
. If no toggle, its not the chaser board.
. If it is toggle'ing verify the output toggles.
. If the output toggles and rope is dead, check the Z connector pictured above.
o If that Z connector is good, look at the Z connector under the playfield that I have marked with a green marker in my first picture. Note that the in and out pins/color do not match.
. check for signal toggle at the connector also.
Goonie,
So does the chase board essentially connect the 12 VDC to ground for a string of lights attached to a particular orange/XXX wire? The string of lights is really a three groups of lights? By doing this in succession, the effect of walking lights is achieved?
Thanks,
Hank
Quoted from Goonie:These are 12v, right? Take a 9v battery and test the rope light at it's z-connector before it heads into the backbox. It should light up. That's what I did with my Star Trek when I was reproducing the ropes a while back.
Yes you can use a 9 volt battery to test the light strings to eliminate them as the problem. If you have a copy of clays data east repair guides, he talks about checking the rope lights.
Patofnaud,
Perfect. You verified how I thought it worked. I'll give it a try and let you know what I find.
Thank you for your wonderfully clear input. This really helps!
Cheers,
Hank
Quoted from Patofnaud:Well if you look at the manual, and on page 67/68 you will see the chaser board. It's fairly basic. You have 3 inputs, 5VDC and GND.Make sure you are getting 5VDC.It has three TIP122's that drive the lights. If any one of them were bad you would get some lights but not all. Odds are fairly remote that all 3 would go bad.Those 3 TIPs' are driven by a 74HCT240 which I believe is a tri-state inverter/buffer. If that chip has power, and the 3 inputs are toggling, its the only active component on the board.Only thing in front of that is the voltage filter and 1 cap. Just make sure your getting 5vdc.So if it was me, I would attack this as;o Check input voltage.o In selftest for the rope light, make sure the 3 inputs to the module are toggling.. If no toggle, its not the chaser board.. If it is toggle'ing verify the output toggles.. If the output toggles and rope is dead, check the Z connector pictured above.o If that Z connector is good, look at the Z connector under the playfield that I have marked with a green marker in my first picture. Note that the in and out pins/color do not match.. check for signal toggle at the connector also.
This is a great explanation on the steps to trouble shoot it.
What Hammer says is true.
Look at the picture of the Z connector I had up top with the green marker on it.
The one wire by itself is common to all 3 lights strands.
The three orange (on the input side) are the 3 individual strands.
You can disconnect the Z connector and using a set of alligator clips, hook (no pun intended) one side of the batter to the common wire and the other side of the battery to each strand one at a time to ensure they are good.
If none of them light, you have a broken common.
If one strand does not light you have a broken strand.
Chase Light Z Connect.jpg
I knew the z connector was different on my machine.
That being said, I don't think that is the root cause of the problem. There is no 5VDC going to the board. Of course I went down to the game and forgot my glasses. I was able to test the power, my DMD has BIG numbers, and no 5 VDC. There was 12 VDC at the playfield z connector. I picked up the manual and came back home to get my fricking glasses and take a look at the manual 
Ok looks like someone hacked that connector.
On the left side you see from top to bottom you see your output to the 3 strings and just below that the +12V that comes in from the P/S to feed the lights.
Note: +5VDC is on the input of the chaser board but that is to just run the chaser board and not for the lights.
Now look at the right hand side of that picture. You have 1 strand on pin 1, and strand 2 and 3 jammed into pin 2, and putting power on pin 4 which has nothing on the other side.
I bet if you take that hacked connector and slide it down one pin matching up the grey to grey and the black to black, you will see you rope lights get better. They still won't be all 3 strands because of that double up on pin 2.
As for your last 2 wires that are not there at all, grey/red and grey/back.... I'll have to look through the prints to see where those actually come from.
Update: Looks like the board is an earlier version without the discreet TIP 122s.
I followed the testing:
1. Grounded orange wires at the playfield z connector and that lit up the lights
2. Grounded orange wires at the backbox z connector and that lit up the lights
3. Grounded orange wires at the PCB and that lit up the lights.
4. Retested the 5 VDC and found it was making it to the PCB.
At that point I looked carefully at the PCB and discovered it was not the one described in the manual. I guess I'll purchase a new, updated board as everything else that I can test seems to be working. I'm assuming the CPU signals are okay. Does that sound reasonable?
Cheers,
Hank
Those boards have a habit of blowing up the ULN output driver chip. Maybe get a replacement one with the more robust transistors or at the very least replace the chip
Before I go and order the PCB, I'll clean up the backbox z connector per Patofnaud. Thanks so much for the guidance.
Cheers,
Hank
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_1147178_-1
$.49 before shipping.
Patofnaud,
I haven't made another house call to clean up the connector. I didn't notice the shifted wires so that might be all that is wrong once I get the connector cleaned up. It might be that one of the transistors in the ULN2003 is blown. If that is the case, I'll order up one the parts from Jameco. At under a dollar vs ~60 for rev B of the board, it is worth the effort to change out the part and see how long it lasts. Then I have time to make the case for getting the updated board
Thank you again for all your help. I learned quite a bit from this latest adventure and look forward to getting this baby completely up to snuff.
Cheers,
Hank
I picked up a new chase light board with discrete TIPs, plugged it in, and no lights 
Could it be that the gry-wht and gry-blk wires on the zconnector are not there? They don't go to the chase board, but perhaps they are involved with the lights.
Thanks,
Hank
Did some more testing with the new board in place.
1. 5 VDC is on the board
2. Grounding the tabs on each TIP lights a different string.
3. The Zconnector is correct, except for the missing gray wires.
4. The CN1 connector goes to the CN3 connector on the CPU Board
Dang, looks like all of the components are powered and the basic wiring is correct. Any other ideas or suggestions on what it might be?
Thanks,
Hank
Thank you Patofnaud. I don't understand the schematic for CN3 on the CPU board and can't seem to locate where the two missing wires would be going.
I think that might be the key to this. I'll get a couple of connectors and fix that up. Great pictures.
I see that your CN3 connector is 12 wide and mine is 9 wide, but the last 3 three on my game don't have a header.
What is that connector above your z connector in Picture #3?
Thank you so much. I am on the road and will not be able to get back to you for a bit with the results. Have a very Merry Christmas!!!
Hank
Looking in the Hook manual;
Backbox Wiring Diagram page 45, connector CN3 pins 7, 8 and 9 are your chase lamp outputs. They are repurposing the segment drivers that would have gone to the segmented plasma display that you do not have in Hook (uses a DMD instead). Those are the 3 blue wires that go directly to your Chase Lamp driver board inputs.
CN2 pin 1 is a repurposed Strobe 16. No clue what they are doing with that.
Still busy doing xmas stuffs, I'll get to my machine tomorrow.
Quoted from nworker:I see that your CN3 connector is 12 wide and mine is 9 wide, but the last 3 three on my game don't have a header.
Ha, yeah. I'm a dork and didn't like the way it look when I restored my game, so I put a new connector on there. I figured, it is a 12 pin header...it should have a 12-pin IDC - even if it is to nothing. 
Quoted from nworker:What is that connector above your z connector in Picture #3?
Yes, sorry, should have pointed out that it's not stock. That is the plug for an LED remote control/power unit. I put an LED strip behind the topper on my Hook to light things up a bit. Always looked way to dark up there and this really does it justice. An easy install and ties right into the games 12v-power.
Goonie,
Do you have a picture of the LED remote/power unit and how your topper looks. Sounds pretty cool.
Patofnaud,
Okay that makes sense. I looked at the schematic and didn't think there wasn't a segmented display to drive. Thought I was reading it all wrong. Thanks for taking the time and I look forward to hearing what your machine looks like.
Cheers,
Hank
Sure, no problem. It's set to color changing at the moment. I spliced the 12v right off the connecter running on the right side of the backbox. The red and black wires feed/power a standard LED controller. I can grab a pic of that later...cell phone just ran out of juice.
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Well I finally got a chance to visit Hook today. I connected the Gry/Blk to CN2-1 and Gry/Red to CN3-1. No Joy so I started tracing where the wires went from the Zconnector. Well they go down under the playfield to a 9 pin connector to nowhere...
Will someone look at their Hook and take a picture of what is connected, if anything, to the connector.
In looking at the schematic for the chase board in the manual, all of the connectors to the chase board are there, I just don't know what triggers the chase lights. Do they just run independent of everything else?
Cheers and Happy New Year!
Hank
I just looked under my playfield and I can't find that type of 9 pin anywhere.
I do have a open 9 pin straight inline IDC connector up near the TYFASSI Flipper board. I'm assuming it is used to Imports or a different flipper board.
As for the hook lights, under the playfield where the Z connector is you will have coming in the 3 orange wires which select the 3 different light strands (by going to ground in that chase module), and the one grey wire which is the common +12V to the lights.
All 4 come down from that Z connector in the backbox. (Along with the 3 other wires were have no idea what they are used for and you have missing)
The three orange ones come from the chase board, they get their 3 inputs from the re-purposed 3 outputs off of the CPU that would have been for a segment display off of CN3 Pins 7,8, 9.
The +12V (Grey/Wht) wire come from the P/S off of CN6-3. According to the picture of the P/S in the manual, CN6-3 is +12V but there it shows N/C (Not connected). So that is a documentation bug.
The lights are not timed/random but driven off the game. What happens is you should always have 12V on the grey/wht wire. The CPU then sends out one of 3 signals off CN3 that tell the Chase board to ground its corresponding line. 12VDC on one side of the rope light + ground on the other = lamp on.
If you have +12V at the chaselight connector, you should be able to dissconnect the orange connect off of the chase board and ground each one at a time and light up that section of the rope light to prove continuity from the chase board all the way through the rope.
Just went back to my machine to look for your missing "9" pin.... It's a 6 pin.. Look closer at your pic.
And it connects to that other connector laying below it. Although it looks like yours has only 2 wires in it from the pic, mine has all 6. I'll look at the prints and see what that is.
Patofnaud,
You are so right about the 6 pin connector. I should have looked at that closer
Any help on the wires going from the 6 pin underfield connector is appreciated. It is odd that it just ends from the back box and there is that 2 pin connector sitting there with no home. Other than the non-working chase lights, the game appears to be operating correctly.
As to the testing. I determined that 12 VDC is coming to the chase light board. 1/3 of the lights light up when I ground each of the transistors on the chase light board, which proves the continuity from the chase light board to the playfield.
I'll verify continuity from CN3 to the chase light board. If that is good, doesn't that mean that the CPU signals are not making it to CN3 or that the signals are not being generated?
Thanks,
Hank
Quoted from nworker:I'll verify continuity from CN3 to the chase light board. If that is good, doesn't that mean that the CPU signals are not making it to CN3 or that the signals are not being generated?
That is correct. Also verify that the chase board is getting the +5v it needs to do it's thing.
Also what is odd is that your 2 pin connector has 2 of the correct color wires as that 6 pin. Almost like there is an option like a ticket dispenser or something that was installed/removed.
I did a fast look at where that 6 pin goes. I can't nail it down in the prints, and if I look at the connector wire they go into the big bundle that goes up in the head with about 300 wires in it. Of the 300 I see about 6 of every color that is in that small connector.
Curious. I'll look at it some more.
Patofnaud,
No luck getting it working. I'll be back down at the machine later this week. I just don't get it as there is power getting to the board and all of the other diagnostics check out.
Hank
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Tilton, NH
