So, the power supply board has been replaced in the past? Was it replaced with an original working board or a rottendog replacement?

Are you getting +5v LED lit and staying lit on the CPU? If not, and it's a new rottendog board, there could be an issue with cracked/cold solder joints or burnt connector on CN1 and CN2 (the big connectors that bring power to the power driver board).

You should check the +5v filter cap installed inside the cabinet to make sure you've got stable +5v to your MPU. Do you have a DMM?

Absolutely. It is the giant hulking blue capacitor installed right onto the cabinet in the lower left.

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When these go out of spec (which they do when they reach the age of 20+), the voltage ripple is enough to keep the MPU from booting, as it cannot maintain a solid +5v. The fact that you had to turn it on/off over and over suggests this could be your issue.

Take your Multimeter and set it on AC volts (not DC) and place a probe on either side of the metal leads of that capacitor while the game is on. You're looking for a number around .3vAC. Anything higher than that, and that cap is bad and needs to be replaced. Polarity for probing doesn't matter.

You should also measure the +5v test points on the MPU. Set your Multimeter on vDC, and place the black on the gnd test point loop and the red on the +5v test point loop located I believe in the top/middle of the MPU. Anything lower than 4.9vDC means you have issues elsewhere that are pulling down the voltage. Could be the smaller +5v filtering cap on the MPU.

There should be + 5volt and 12 volt test points on the power driver board that you can quickly check with your Multimeter set to DC voltage. There should be a ground point on the board also. Not 100 percent sure about the rottendog boards.

Good luck, let us know what readings you get and we'll move on from there.

So THAT'S WHY you agreed to moderate--FREE help desk! (you know i'm kidding) Don't worry--you'll get it figured out--but I certainly know how it feels to be TEMPORARILY stumped--we all do.....

Not being able to upload pics was one of the bugs fixed in iOS 8.01 - download that. I helped!

8.0.1 will break your cellular connection, so don't update yet! Lol.

That's a lamp voltage capacitor, it has nothing to do with the 5VDC logic rail. The cap to be concerned with for non-boot issues is located on the power supply board, it's an 18,000 mfd 25 volt capacitor at C4.

Often the meters show symbols, V for Volts followed by a symbol for AC or DC, or the display shows "VAC" or "VDC" after the reading. Best to find a tutorial online, sometimes you can even find them as videos for your specific make/model of meter.
05_testing_page_001_1-515.jpg

AC is the white portion on the top right labeled 200V and 600V. DC is on the top left with marks between 200mV and 600V.

Sorry for the mix-up on the filter cap for the +5v. Regardless, your lamp cap tests fine in AC, so leave that large blue capacitor alone. Listen to what Wayout said about the location of the one on the MPU. Once you can upload pictures of those toasted components we should be able to figure out what happened. I'd keep it off the power until we see what fried.

start at the power supply rebuild it properly top to bottom or buy a Xpin power supply, data east has the worst ps boards.... then see what happens when you power up...chances are you have other problems but it wont troubleshoot worth a hoot with a flaky power supply.

She replaced the PSU with a rottendog.

Because of this, the power supply component section will probably be different from the original board. So, not sure if the usual C4 cap is associated with the primarily 5v BR on this or not. If using the DMM, she can determine the cause of issue lies on the Rottendog board, then I would contact Rottendog directly.

However, being that it seems the +5v and PIA are reacting normal from what I've read, there may be a boot issue on the CPU rather than in the PS.

Hard to say without seeing the damaged board, but constantly having to cycle power to get a game to boot is usually a sign of a bad cap. In this case, you need to focus on the MPU board caps, since your rottendog seems to be supplying +5v as your testing showed.

If the +5v filter cap failed on the MPU, it could have taken out some components along with it. Hopefully it is something easy that you can repair yourself.

Hmmm - V~? This sounds shady. Looks to me like you measured 4V AC. When you get it back together, we can advise you on some better test points, how & where to measure it, and what you should be seeing.

Usually, the power supply replacement would do the job. You did the right thing there. It would be rare, but not impossible, to have a new PS board bad as well. Multiple measurements should actually be taken on both the PS and CPU. Even if the caps and filtering is good, you can still have problems with cables and connectors cause enough of a voltage drop to mimic this symptom of intermittent booting. I've certainly seen it on System 11s.

Yikes. That doesn't look good. That burnt IC is a 74ls08 Quad 2-input AND Gate. Those white things are ceramic resistors.

You've got a number of bad/failed components there. Looks like the PIA that controls the Solenoid drivers burnt up, a few decoupling capacitors and a resistor burnt up, and it took out the 74ls08 logic gate that selects which coils fire. The SIP pack(s) next to it could be dead as well.

The game won't boot if all the PIAs do not check out, which explains why it is locked up on boot. All of those components need to be checked out. Also, the reason for the failure needs to be looked into. Were any coils locked up/on at any point or did you notice anything odd the last few times you were playing it? The game itself also is going to need to be examined on the underside of the playfield. The problem could still be on the underside and the same thing could happen again with a repaired board in place.
I wouldn't be surprised if you've got a failed/melted up coil or have coils missing diodes. And you'll need to test out all of the TIP102 drivers as well. You're going to want to send this out to someone. Not something you'd want to attempt to repair if you've never done board work.
Did any fuses blow?

Hi blondetall,
So I hope I can help simplify some troubleshooting.

I would take your JP MPU that you removed and just connect CN17 (power cable just to the right of the battery pack) to it in your LAH. No need to remove any other cables to do this. Hold the board with the palms of your hands against the edges, not touching the front or back of the board. Then apply power (You would want someone else to turn it on to keep from wanting to grab the board.) If the PIA still is lit, there is a logic problem. If the the PIA turns off and the blanking LED turns on, then the board booted up ok and there would be a different issue in JP causing your MPU not to boot. (Only power is needed to the board to see if it will boot up.)

Personally speaking, The 74LS08 does not look burnt to me at all. Constant hot areas like the ceramic resistors for the lamp circuit tends to attract the most dirt in that area than any other inside the backbox. This black dust should easy be removed with alcohol and a paper towel or Q-tips.

If you determine the MPU is not booting up in LAH (and it seems you will), it is time to decide to send it to someone to look at. Boot up issues are not quick nor easy to repair. It will be very time consuming on the forum to get any quick help without tons of back and forth questions, answering, testing, etc.

So this is just a quick board troubleshooting technique I use.

Then you can decide if you want to play your JP or LAH more. If you want to play JP, then you can move your LAH over to JP. Though you would have to look at both MPU boards and see if LAH also only has one game ROM. If it does, you only need to move the ROM and you should be playing again. If LAH has 2 ROMs, then you would need to move a jumper to use it in JP since it has only 1 game ROM.

Now a theory of why your shaker motor is out.

I believe your original power supply did in fact have a problem with the +5 volts. I had worked on 3 Data East games with a shaker motor that had that problem. When it gets around 3 volts or less, it causes the shaker motor to start trying to turn and you may start feeling or hearing it moan. If the 5 volts is not repaired and the machine and left on too long while trying to diagnose it, the shaker motor will start to pull too much current and either blows out the fuse (on the shaker motor board that is mounted to the left of the motor on the left side of the cabinet wall) or even worse, it will cause the big transistor on the PPB board to short out. This recently happened on my JP.

So you should pull and check this fuse for the shaker motor if you or your husband has not yet done so.
Hope that gets it going for you.

The black area you see on the metal board ground plate in the backbox definately is from heat/dirt. The MPU does not look like it is all that bad to have made the ground plate to look that bad. There is a very good chance that MPU is not even be the original board. Again, you can use alcohol and a paper towel to wipe that off. You probably want to get alcohol in a spray can if you want to clean the black dirt of the connectors. I don't see anything that would concern me there.

Far as the slightly darker area on the back of the MPU, constant heat to a board will just discolor it. The front of the board, definately has black dust around those white ceramic resistors.

This is a good question. Though, since tblondetall did not mention any clunk of a coil locking on during powering it on or any burned coil smell, I am just leaning toward a logic failure just that you mentioned for the PIA LED staying lit. Just sounds like a simple part failure.

I do have 3 Data East MPU also that have the same boot up failure and I know they did not experience any locked coils that would have attributed to the PIA LED staying lit. (Boards just crapped out.) Seems like what happened here. Now if I can just get the time to fix the ones I got.

I'm not seeing any burnt components, certainly see some dirt. The back of the board where it is dark is just discoloration from heat generated by the power resistors (white thingies) over time. No worries.

Also note from the meter pic:
Don't use that 600V AC range selection for measuring. You won't really need that anywhere in the pinball. Use the 20 VDC range for DC measurements less than 20 VDC (3 clicks left of the off position), for such items as measuring logic power. Use the 200V DC range 1 click to the right when measuring DC more than 20VDC, such as solenoids. Use the 200V range AC scale for AC measurements such as incoming mains power or filter ripple measurements (2 clicks to the right of the off position)

Looks like the traces running to one of those 74lsxx ICs to the PIA there could be little toasty. The resistor to the left of it isn't too near those sand resistors and heat source too. Hard to say I guess until they get cleaned up with some q-tips and rubbing alcohol.

Blondetall, one quick and easy test to see if a component is burnt up is to literally just touch it with the game off. Burnt up resistors and caps usually kinda fall apart when you press on them.

Heat rises and the black dust is light enough to travel with the heat. Actually some of this may even clean off a bit easier by using a half inch or so dry paint brush. A big paint brush works very well for just getting dust off from a board sitting out in the open for many years.

fyi, one of the two relays under the playfield could be bad and not operating Rex. I had that issue getting mine going after a bad power supply event like this on mine.

they sell relays with plug and play wiring harness but there a few bucks, you can buy a relay and a base cheap and wire it up yourself, that's what I did.

B.

Any Pinsiders sorta local to you that can make a pit stop?

...the sad part is...even if I lived in a room in your house, I wouldn't be able to help...

Then the person could sleep under the machines.

I think you may want to do the opposite. Pull the LAH MPU and put it in JP, and swap the program EPROMs from LAH and put the JP ones in place. I don't think any jumpering changes are needed, but someone correct me here if I am wrong.

You want to start with just powering on the MPU with just the +5v CPU power, nothing else connected. See if you get the LEDs for booting to light. It is just a single connector. Connector CN17 I believe.

Your LAH MPU is a known working machine (except for your flipper issues now, sorry). Putting the JP board in LAH could cause issues on your LAH. Then again, the opposite is true if there are issues on the underside of your JP. But ultimately you want to confirm a faulty MPU on your JP first. If you put the LAH board in ur JP, and you have the same non-booting issues, then you know your JP MPU is not the issue and it is most likely a power supply issue. You can then try and put the LAH MPU with the JP roms into the LAH backbox, connect just the MPU power connector, and see if it boots up (no other connectors). If it does, it is definitely the PSU on JP.

If you get the LAH MPU board to boot with just the CPU power connector in JP, you can switch it off, add in the other connectors and reboot.