Hello IJ Williams Owners -
I'm having a small issue that I cannot figure out and was hoping someone has seen it and can give me some guidance. I was playing a game this evening and during Well of Souls mode I was draining a ton of balls into the ball lock area for the big points. At some point during the barrage of balls that entered into the ball lock, the Ball Trough Assembly (A-16317) didn't release them all to the Idol and the game thought I had balls left that never made it back in play. Apparently the ball(s) were stuck in the tray under the ball lock. After subsequently going into test mode I was able to have the ball(s) that didn't make it through released and all was well again.
But now about every 3rd or 4th ball lock, it doesn't make it's way to the idol. All other times it does though...which is strange to see the inconsistent behavior. Subsequent to the ball not releasing to the pop up area, I can hear the solenoid attempting to pop the ball up over and over again as it expects the ball to have been released. To make matters more entertaining, if its a ball 3 lock, the game gets confused and starts the music and light show multiple times as it thinks the balls should be being released when they are not. Eventually the stuck ball makes its way through, and then the problem repeats after a few more successful ball locks.
What's very odd is that sometimes I hear the solenoid trying to pop up a ball up into the idol even when all balls are all in the bottom trough already or already in play. I even heard the solenoid popping during attract mode a few times right after the problem appeared!
No errors in the program, no issues with the operation of the solenoids in the test menu. All wiring looks clean and intact. I also cleaned both sets of optos in the A-16317 trough. Cycling the power didn't help either. To me this sounds like the optos may be bad? I'll change the fuse tomorrow at F103 and inspect the main driver board for any issues but after those troubleshooting steps I'm out of ideas besides replacing the optos.
Any advice is highly appreciated! Last time I had a weird issue like this it was in the bottom trough and it was solved by performing a ball drop into the bottom trough while in Tests - Switch Edge. I'm hoping it's something simple like that...