I just pick up up a LAH that was non working. I stripped the playfield down and cleaned it. replaced all fuse clips. New Bridge rectifiers (all). Checked all fuses. Reflowed solder.

Game boots fine and All looks well but still having a few issues.

-will not eject a ball
-when I push flippers the ball launch and the ripper solenoids fire (but activate very weakly) { <---This is the weirdest one for me }
- the ripper does not fire during the "ripper" test
- Also of note during diagnosis test:
-coil fire tests no coils fire until what seems to be one cycle has run... then the backbox lights flash once then the coil test begins again... and then only some coils fire (pop bumpers, kickers near flippers, few others).
-during lamps test. All lights display and flash during that test but the lamp "row" and "column" test... nothing happens.

So maybe a few issues going on at the same time.

There are only like 4 caps on the CPU (MPU) board. I could change them out in about 5 minutes. Hard to imagine that is my problem thought.

No battery acid damage at all but there Is a pretty major hack job on the circuitboard of the MPU near the CN12 connector.. It appears that a transistor fried the circuitboard sometime in the past and there’s pretty much no trace left on the back of the board and the prior owner did what he could to pack it all together. He used to tip122 transistors? Is that appropriate for this transistor replacement in this area? If this is the problem area is crappy repair job may have been the reason that I ended up getting the machine when a faulty repair did not fix the problem. However this area may have nothing to do with my problem.

uPDATE: The replaced transistors are q25 (crane motor) and q26 (drop target) and do not seem to be to related. ...?

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If it is an MPU board. I can do a MPU swap. I rescued a boardset from a WWF a few years ago. And the WWF MPU is a nice un-hacked board. What chips do I need to change out here?

(shown is my WWF board)

Is it just the one marked with the white label marked WWF?

IMG_9861 (resized).jpg

Good News / Bad News. I have eliminated the MPU as the problem. I swapped my LAH chip on an old WWF MPU board and the identical problems persists. So what is next?

I have replaced all caps on the board with the exception of the (4) 4700UF 25V at C4 & the 1000uf 63v at c1

my voltages are

TP1 5.09v
TP3 15.00
TP4 11.81

So voltage seems good

I will replace the caps at C1 and C4 when they arrive but the larger caps on this board are a BITCH to change out without damaging traces. Like I said before all solder at header pins was reflowed and are good. using the WWF board is not an option it is bad.

Did this... no problems.

Hold the phone... I replaced my PPB (playfield power board)with the only WWF one and half my issues corrected themselves. But I am getting no flashers on the flasher test (none!) and on manual coil test (which also activates flashers ) the coil are firing okay enough during test (not all but most) but then when a flasher test occurs a coil fires instead of any flasher. So the coils are firing twice in some cases, once on their correct coil test.. and then again on the following flasher test.

Weird

Okay... I did not want to waste anyones time on simple stuff I could research on my own. So I dug a bit deeper on this. I was fortunate to have some spare parts from a few other DE games. I swapped out the MPU Boards and both worked fine. Swapped out 3 PPB board, one of them a known working board. As I said before Powerboard was giving good power on all test points. SO....

I was blowing the 3A fuse on F7 on all the PPB boards which installed (they all blew instantly.) This seem to result in, or it occurred at the same time of Q46 transistor blowing. (okay if I am going to be very honest here... on the last attempt I over-fused the F7 to a 5 amp and the transistor blew with a puff of smoke)

I pull up in my manual and Q46 is 1L 6-Ball Assembly Lockout and 1R Top right Police Lights flashers

So what am I looking for her in the 6-Ball Assembly area? (I will of course check the R police flasher on the top, but since they have been enclosed in their plastic for years I do not foresee a problem (unless it is with the wires leading to them.)

(Full disclosure I have recently removed a ton of parts (including the 6-Ball Assembly) when i stripped the PF down to bare wood on the topside and removed every scoop / crome part to polish. Honestly I could have re-solder something wrong or maybe my coil is bad in the 6-Ball assm???)

and I have already reflowed solder on boards and replace several related connectors on the Power board and PPB board... so I do not think I am have a connector issue.