I think this machine falls into the Solid state category. I realize this isn't a true pinball, but it is to a young kid. I bought this for my almost 2 year old. So, I have a little time to repair this project! He does understand to push buttons and gets all excited when things happen, lights flash characters jump around etc..

I wasn't able to find much information on the net or in the forums about these machines. I thought I would start a thread about this one and what I'm doing or learning along the way. Also, for any help or advice! I have no schematic and I'm going to have to trace wires out to see what goes where! The good thing is? It does not look overly complicated, the machine is really basic.

The problems that I've found so far

-The flippers don't work.
-Some of the lighting doesn't work
-one of the connectors got so hot it un-soldered itself from the board!!! That's where I stopped looking for problems and turned the machine off.

The connector that melted off was numbered by one of the previous owners. After looking at the board? I think maybe the numbers are wrong. I'll throw this on here to see what anyone else thinks.

The board is labeled "input" and "output". The number 12 in the connector picture is coming from the transformer. I'm just taking a guess here, but would think that should go on the "input" instead of the "output"?

Number 11 goes out to the game or to another board. I would assume this is the "output"?

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated!! I'm going to ignore all previous labeling of connectors and try to start fresh. I have to trace wires out anyhow to learn where they go! Luckily the main circuit board is factory labeled. door, solenoids, lights, etc...So that helps!!

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Can anyone that has knowledge in repair, tell me what was trying to be achieved here? And to be honest? I really don't know (yet) what it is they were jumping across. This area of the board looks like it was played with a little. Maybe to try to solve the flipper problem? It's the solenoid section of the board. I know this from tracing the traces back from the solenoid connector that was labeled.

These circuit boards have to be the heaviest boards I've ever seen in my limited experience with machines!! Really thick and seem to be really well made!!

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And here are the missing parts areas that I have found so far. If I could just find a picture of these areas off of a good machine, I could build what's needed here. If anyone has a picture of these areas? It would be greatly appreciated if you could post them here or send me in the direction of them!! I spent a little time on the net and haven't found a picture yet. I'm kind of jumping all over the place right now, just to get an idea of what's needed for the machine.

I'll post more when I find or learn something else. I'm going to start back at the plug and work my way in trying to test or understand everything along the way. I'm not a great writer, but I'll try to add things as I learn them to the thread for anyone else that may run into the same problems in the future. Maybe these machines had the same basic problems?

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I'm replying to my own post because I've figured out this issue first thing. After tracing the wires and traces out. The P11 or "input" is supposed to go to the Transformer. The "output" comes from a relay on the circuit board and runs to the backbox for lighting. These connectors were misnumbered at some point and this is why the back box lights didn't work and the connector melted off the circuit board.

If someone runs into this issue with this game? P11 goes to the Transformer, and P12 goes to the back box lighting. I'm almost sure! I'll update and change if I find that I'm wrong!

Found another part of the lighting issue, after the connector un-soldering itself out of the board a second time!!!!!!

Anyone see anything wrong with the bulbs that were in there? (ya..and I've done it too on other equipment.)

Gotta use the right bulbs or things won't work and get hot!! I've learned this from my own experience!

I also can't believe that section is not fused! I'll fix that next, by getting closer to the right bulbs, since I'll be guessing They are 12 v so the auto parts store up the road should have something, and adding a fuse to that line to solve any future fire hazards.

Added...I used 90LL from the auto parts store. I'm sure they are much cheaper elsewhere. So far they have worked fine.

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Lights are now working! The transistors and circuit board fuses(look kind of like resistors) were bad going to the flippers, Q23-Q25, . I think part of this was caused because someone put 20amp fuses instead of 2 amp fuses in the fuse box, causing the fuses on the circuit board to blow when the transistors were shorted.

I didn't have the exact transistor around. so I just used one that was close to try it for now ,IRF530(use at your own risk, as of now I have a few hours on the machine with no problems using that part. ). And now I have the lower right flipper! I think the flipper issue is solved.

Another problem that I found was 3 of the character solenoid fuses blew. That will be something to look into next!!

Added...The character Mosfets(Transistors) were bad. I've changed 9 in the that section of the board to the IRF530 with no issues yet....

It's coming along!

I'll post some pictures of the whole machine when I get a chance.

Thank you for the above replies!!

A couple of friends wanted to see pictures of the whole machine. And since there isn't much out there on these I took pictures of the different areas.

Never mind the background mess, I have a couple of projects going on in the garage and tried to cut most of it out.

The first are of the whole machine and playfield.

The machine frame is partly built out of 2x2 square steel! I've seen utility trailers built out of weaker materials! The panels are a very heavy sheet metal, I could actually climb on the very top of the machine and not hurt it! Not even make a dent or wave in the sheet metal!! This is a very heavy machine!! Good thing it was apart to bring it home! I don't think We would have been able to load and unload with just a couple guys. Plus I have a cap on my truck the machine wouldn't have fit anyhow. I can't hardly budge the thing now that it's together.

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Here are some pictures of behind the back glass(plastic), and in the lower cabinet. The lower cabinet by itself was another heavy piece! Nothing about this is light except the heavy plastic playfield! The playfield is the lightest part. Oh!! And the caps in one of the below pictures! Are the biggest caps I've seen so far in a machine! They are bigger than pop cans! 2 1/2in across and 5 in high!

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It plays like a regular pinball, The flippers are down hill where the ball travels. The pictures don't show it well, but the playfield is molded plastic, it has tunnels, hills, etc.. The ball is about 2 in around and is a heavier plastic ball. It drains and is shot on the right side, it's like a trough formed in the plastic. We were able to half way play it last night. I had one flipper working and we were just messing around with it.

I haven't done much today. Cleaned up some areas that had tape adhesive. And mounted the dangling fuse board. I really don't stay on one thing. I kind of jump all over the place. Here's some pictures of the fuse board. It's a simple fix. It was originally held with double sided tape. I took some nylon type tubing and cut about 1/4 in. spacers, then screwed the board in place! No tape, can be removed easily if need be....

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Here's a picture of the flippers. The play field has a cut out for the oval piece under the flippers, you line the flippers with the oval piece and lift the playfield up. Notice the little fans to cool the coils! I thought that was a cool idea! They work like regular flippers. Just reversed on the shaft to look like clubs. The pivot point is at the small end. The upper flipper is the small white one. I read somewhere online that these were built using Data East parts. I haven't pulled it apart to compare yet.

The loose wires in the picture are to the speakers, I had to unhook them! Even on their lowest volume setting the sound echos through my neighborhood if I'm out here at night working on things. That's another project!! Getting some pots or something to turn the volume down lower!! Someone in the past added resistors but they are still loud!

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All lights and Flippers are now working!!

Today....

My son likes to be right in there when I'm working on stuff, which is great!!! But after taking the stretched token door wires out of his hands every time I turn around for a min., and replacing them. I decided to run to Home Depot and find some locks! Cheap, but do the trick and make the machine look a little better. The doors aren't flopping around and will keep little hands out of trouble!

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Thank you!

And yes!! The spare set is already stuck in one of the 2x2 tubes above the machine! He likes to hide keys!!! We usually find them stuffed in the couch or in the toy box.

Other than a few minor problems every thing seems to be working now!! Only time will tell.

I have one light inside the cave not working, I have to trace that out and find out why. I also have the missing outhole and ball release mechs. to figure out and build.

The past couple of days I worked on the display. There were what looked like 150 or so LED's out or not working. I took the display out, started marking the LED's that were bad, and noticed some were coming on and others were going out. HMMMM...almost all of them were loose from cold solder joints. After trying to flux, add new solder, and making a mess? I filed the tip on my cheap soldering iron to hit both leads to pluck them all out! 560 LED's later? I wondered what I had gotten myself into!!!!!

Solder sucked any remaining solder, drilled each hole, tested all LED's, fluxed board and parts, and started reinstalling! Yep!! Not one of the tops on the "this is fun" list! I didn't think I'd ever get finished!!!!

Now, the board works like new!! And I'm not bugged by missing LED's.

The pics may be out of order.....

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My next project, which may take me a while, is to figure out how to build the outhole kicker from the cave. I found a few parts down in the machine that I believe are for that mech. or that will work for it. I want to try to make it so that it's not destroying any of the original parts, or least mod as possible to the original plate, in case I end up finding the correct parts one day.

By looking at the rest of the machines construction, I think the coil was nutted to a plate and this piece with the spring slid(pic below) in the coil. I think It was probably a simple design. I have some old Gottlieb coils in a box to experiment with to see what I can come up with.

It's a pain fishing the ball out of the cave every time we try to play. That's first priority now!! Well? and digging the Cherios out that my son smashed into the coin slot!! He had the right idea! He knows something goes in there! Maybe.....I'll modify a slot to work on Cherios?

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Oh! The loud volume problem is solved now too...There are settings in the computer for volume. There is also a battery on the main board. After I installed the battery, set the volume setting, it has stayed nice and quiet. Before it wouldn't even hold the setting even while plugged in. It needed that battery to hold the setting. I guess..... So the added resistors to the speaker were removed. I think someone along the line added those to try to quiet the machine down. They are no longer needed.

After taking the Cave kicker Bracket off the machine. I bent it around to about the shape that looked like it should be. Also, took the tape off the part that was found down in the cabinet. After cleaning the glue off of the part, looking at the wear marks, I'm pretty sure this is close to what the cave out kicker mech. should look like, Minus coil and spring and maybe a slide or something to keep the part straight. I'm just taking a guess since I can't find a picture anywhere yet of what it looked like. Now, to find and mount a coil or something!!!

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This works as a hack fix. Just working with whats laying around. Works great!! Except I keep blowing fuses and transistors!!!!!

I have A shorted transistor (3rd one tried so far) and a blown fuse(went through a hand full),but I can make it work by taping something across the fuse holder. So, I know it will work as soon as I can figure out the electronic part of it and what I'm doing wrong.

I'll clean it up, paint and maybe add a return stopper later, just trying to get something working for now.

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duplicate...

Thank you!! This stuff is fun!

Thanks for the replies and the Help!

And yes!! This is the same machine from the above link. And....I do have to admit, after meeting with him when picking up the machine, He was a very pleasant guy to talk to, he went out of his way to help figure out how to load this thing(I think it was a big paper weight thread reference), it took some time. He also had to put up with my nonsense of Emails trying to make a trade for about a week. Hey? I had to try!! haha Frustration can get to us sometimes! I've been there too! Not defending that thread, just saying my experience was pleasant.

I forgot to mention......I smoked the first coil I tried!! Yep! All the smoke got out! It still stinks in the garage! It didn't make a sound! I was down in the bottom cabinet with a meter, started smelling something, at the same time my wife said..."Hey!!! The machine is on fire!!!!"...Ooops! There went the coil! The garage still stinks a day later! The coils are coming out of a parts box and it may have been shorted to begin with, I have no clue. I found another one and I'm back at it!

Here's where I'm at........The coil and Hack of a mech. works great!!!! No blown fuses or smoke! Well? yet today! There is still plenty enough time left today to let the smoke out of more parts!!

Here's my problem....The coil locks and releases, about every 15 sec. I'm new to electronics, but I have a few off the wall guess's. Maybe the mosfet has some kind of safety? And when the coil locks, it shuts it down for so many sec. then tries again? I thought of this, because that is how the flippers work, there are no end of stroke switches, if you hold the flipper too long it will shut down on it's own after about 10 sec or so. I do believe that was a design thing and not a problem. Since there really is no reason to hold a flipper in this game that long and I think the coils might over heat if they were held there for a long period of time, a kid proof simple design maybe?.....

Or, another bad Mosfet, even if it tested ok, but ,I am using used parts that are laying around and it could be a bad part.

Or....I fried something further up the line. To check this? I'm guessing....Pull the transistor from the board, and see if the board gets a signal difference at where Mosfet leg should be? At least if there is fluctuation in v. when the eyes are activated, I'll know that is working like it should up to that point in the board.

Those are my crack pot guess for now!!

I may have hit a road block!! This might be over my head! So, this part is going to take a while......

I found out my transistor is good, Q31, for anyone that tries to work on one of these with out a schematic. I'll put all the transistors that I figured out below to help make it a little quicker for someone else later on.

I have a 15 to 20 second, then a 5V pulse that activates or closes the gate(?) on the transistor activating the coil for a second or two, over and over, while the game is in play. The sensors are good that are supposed to activate that solenoid! I switched them with a known good set from the machine to make sure.

So....I'm kind of lost now! I have some more guess's. But? That's about it! It's like the machine is stuck in a loop, just for that coil.

Without a schematic.....I now have to sit down, study the board, study the IC's and try to figure out how each one is working, then maybe start checking them up the line....If I can figure all of that out?!!

I'm trying to locate the chip, or whatever that opto sensor operates. I thought that would be a good start. Maybe the computer sees that opto as tripped(?) and is trying to clear the ball out of the way. This only happens in game play and with that solenoid(coil, I know, I know, I use the two words for the same thing. ) only. Since, I know the sensor and wiring are good, I'll try to find what's next in line in that direction too.

Anyhow....Here are the transistors and what they operate, in case someone needs this. They won't have to spend the same time I did figuring this part out.

Giving a list of wire colors is kind of pointless, Seems like each plug and system in the game are using the same colors for everything. And that's easy enough to figure out, just have to unplug all connectors when chasing wires. Dead End them all, and they are simple to trace with a meter.

Q20= Pebbles character coil
Q21= Fred character coil
Q22=Rear Flipper
Q23=BAMBAM character coil
Q24,Q25 operate left and right flippers, I'll Edit this later...
Q28=Ball Release coil
Q29=Dino Character coil
Q30=Barny character coil
Q31=Cave out hole kicker coil

I made my own descriptions, but it's simple enough to figure out.

I have the opto's almost figured out, I'll post that later....

I tried unplugging the opto even! It still did the same thing. I'm getting to new areas of things that I really don't know all that much about.

Here's what I've done. I tested for voltage at the opto, I had somewhere around 10v. I then switched the set with another set on the game that I knew worked. Since it only does this in game mode, I got the game into game mode and unplugged everything from the board. Just to see if by chance something was shorting outside the board. I was still getting the 5v trigger reading at the same kind of intervals at the transistor for that coil. Since this board has so many of the same types of IC's, I even switched those from one section to another. With no change, that doesn't mean anything though since I have no idea what I was switching around, I may have missed that circuit completely. Right now I'm trying to follow traces round the board, but...Still kind of lost at the moment.

On the flippers? It ended up being transistors, and board fuses.....So far, It hasn't failed again. I changed out all of those transistors in the solenoid section. Some of them may have been good, but they seemed really touchy, The type I have in there now seem a little more stable, not as glitchy, if that makes any sense. But the original flipper transistors were shorted to all legs they were toast for sure.

Right now in between following traces. I'm listening to youtube video's on electronics while changing out the caps on the board. I had new ones laying around and figured it wouldn't hurt anything, may as well use some of this stuff up. Something to do...

I see what your saying now. It has to get the signal to tell the cpu to stop. I know it fires first thing when the start button is pushed. But maybe that is supposed to do that just in case a ball would happen to be stuck. Then after that, it's just cycling? Since there is no signal to stop? Maybe?

Now, on the opto's, all of them have two wires that are common to all, then there is a different wire to each one. Those all go to the same plug except the cave outhole and the ball release. On intitial start up, the ball release and cave outhole both fire at the same time. Checking the ball release, it's not cycling. I don't have a coil there, but I checked it at the wires and transistor.

So, now I have to figure out how that opto signal wire works. Maybe I could try to fool it manually and see what happens. That signal wire from the opto is new to me and I'm not sure how to even read or check that yet. I do know when I was trying to figure it out on other opto's I was triggering them with just the touch of my meter. It would send the machine crazy. So I would have to restart it to get it to clear up. I stopped messing around because I didn't want to burn anything up.

I'll try what you mentioned above to see if it's working, I have a card some where that is supposed to glow from the infrared.

The flipper parts were all there. It was the cave outhole and the ball release parts that were missing. I'm not very organized when I write, I jump around a lot!

Thank you!! That helped a lot!

I went back and retested a couple sets of optos(ya, I couldn't sleep until I understood ), the signal wire stays at 5v on this machine, then when the beam is broken, the signal jumps to around 10v.

It still didn't shut the cycling of the coil off. I'm guessing this was the reason why the coil was missing in the first place, the original had the same problem. There is a deeper problem maybe?

I also found that the opto's, have to be tripped in order to shut down some of the lighting. I'll try to explain what I mean.... If the ball rolls into one of the caves, there is an opto at the beginning of the cave that turns on lighting and triggers sound, middle, and end of the ball path. If any of those are tripped? They all have to be tripped in order, to shut off the cave light. The machine gets kind of stuck if they are tripped out of order.

I also noticed, I have a target, and a light that aren't working now. I'm going to try to solve those. Those could be stuck or shorted too causing the cpu to cycle, or interrupt is stuck(don't know the words) ? It's worth a try!

Worst case, and since this is for my son to push buttons and watch lights, I could do away with that whole mech and just make it so the ball rolls out of the cave. I kind of hate to do that. But that is a 'give up" option at some point. I'm not to that point yet! I want to figure it out. The challenge part of it!

I'll try to figure that out. All except two, opto signal wires go to one section. This is one of the two that goes a different way and in the switch matrix plug instead of the opto plug. At first I thought it was a wiring problem, then I found the ball release opto, runs to the same plug. I traced to the leg of a chip last night. But I want to double check. I got a little confused..... ok, ok,............ a lot confused, on the truth tables. I'll recheck then post the chip, I want to make sure I'm on the right chip and leg. I was getting a little tired when I did it the first time.

I think it's a really cool looking game! Not much going on, I think there are only six targets. But a great game to have for young kids! I figured worst case? The cab could be lowered and made into,with sharp area covered, into a bed for a young kid! But I'm past that point...It will work....I think?

Thank you!!

If I can get this one straightened out I'd like to eventually make a longer vid about these. That is the only one I could find!

I'd like to eventually find a couple more of their games. I've never heard of ICE before I found this game. They have some really cool looking games.