Just curious if anyone has any new ideas, Same problem with random idol hits. New optos (PBL and Marco), new opto board, new transistor and resistors for that section of the switch matrix. Works perfectly fine in test mode, everything looks ok.

No additional lighting. I have seen other posts with people claiming that the flashers have supposedly caused phantom hits with the idol; so as a test I did disconnect the lower flashers and a couple lights in that area and that had no effect.

I am curious if anyone has the specs for the leds that are used in the opto boards. I think if I can find a led with the same wavelength but with a higher mW output that would help compensate for a 16 year old hazy insert.

I had more important things to do and other projects lately so I basicly walked away from this for the past month.

The optos are not mixed, I originally had some from Pinball Life but read in a couple of the threads about people having issues with the the ones they got there so I ordered some from Marco witch are currently in the game. The insert I already polished up as well as possible, there is just some bad crazing that nothing short of replacing the insert will fix. I can't find anything loose and banging on the playfield or shaking the machine does not cause any reaction.

Now that I have begun to look at this problem again this is looking like some bizarre software bug, it is 100% repeatable and behaves the same way over many games.

-Ball 1 and 2 Idol will be lit at the beginning of play, it will not trigger until opto is broken and will score 1 idol hit as it should.
-Ball 3 idol will light for less than a second after ball served into shooter lane you will hear the idol audio and the opto will turn off, this is not counted as an idol hit.
-During the entire game a shot into the lower bumpers or the scoop will only light the idol for 1-2 seconds before you hear the Idol audio and the opto truns off, this also will not score an idol hit.
-During muliball the idol will be on an score hits correctly.
-The only time when I am getting extra idol hits scored is during the bonus countdown; it will add a idol hit and then score one more than the number of hits. (ie. upon draining you have 5 idol hits, when the bonus countdown starts it will always add one extra and you will hear the idol noise, the display will then tell you that you had 7 idol hits even though it only added one, beginning of the next ball it will display that you have had 6 idol hits.)

Hopefully I was clear enough in my explanation, but as I said all of this is 100% repeatable and not random at all.