I'm posting this for all you techy people out there and hope you can shed some light on to these strange boot up screens on my Lord of the Rings. I'll say this that once it's booted up it plays fine with no problems whatsoever. All switches, lights , sounds and game play is normal. It's just my OCD that is compelling me to ask for your guidance because it's just an annoyance. Anyway machine has lots of mods including the shaker motor, when it's booting up I get strange messages saying "Standard Audit 233 Not Defined" and there are others but different ones. There's also the Coil malfunction alert, but as I said once it's booted up there are no errors or issues playing the game. The one thing I notice is that there seems to be display errors showing the high scores when it's starting like "DAFE" instead of "DAVEY", it's the same no matter if it's in fast boot or slow boot although the errors are different. I'm attaching a couple of videos to show the start up sequence in both fast boot and slow boot. I'm thinking it may be one of the ROM's that are going out but I don't know it's perplexing. Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance guys.

@lotr_breath, thanks for the tip. however I bought this about 2 months ago, previous owner did disclose these issues on start up, but like I said game plays without any problems after it's booted up. The only mod he had was the palantir mod. Since owning it I have added a lot more mods to it, lighted Gandalf staff, color DMD, lighted flipper buttons, Volcano mod, interactive LED backbox, a full LED conversion with LEDOCD board, and the issues are still there maybe a little more than before, if I'm being honest. The reason I was thinking display ROM was because of the strange misspelled names when booting. But I could be on the wrong track here with those Standard Audit not defined errors, coupled with the display errors. Do you think a board could be going bad? But if it was wouldn't it give issues when playing a game? I can play for 2 hours and have no problems with the game play at all, except draining frequently LOL

This has the shaker motor, display ROM is 10.0, and the 10.02 chip and the pal chip, shaker works great.

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PinballManiac40 No there were no batteries in when I got the game.
I thought the NVRAM was the chip below the battery holder to the right of the CPU chip is that not right? When I brought it home I didn't get an alarm about opening the coin door so I'm assuming it has an NVRAM chip in it. Thanks

PinballManiac40
I zoomed in on that chip and there is no markings on it at all, it's just blank. I've just ordered an NVRAM chip from your link, I will try installing a set of batteries and let you know. Thanks,

@pinballmaniac40

My bad on the chip, here's a better picture of it.

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Added a new fresh set of batteries and same strange behavior on start up. I think I will try @lotr_breath suggestion and try removing the CPU chip and straighten the pins when zooming in on it the left side does look a little different from the other side. Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

Ok I'm now confused whether I do have an NVRAM chip or not, could somebody please confirm whether that chip is an NVRAM chip or not.

@yeoldpinplayer that blob near U405 appears to be solder and you are more than welcome to come and flip a few games in the name of science of course any time, just shoot me a PM.

I do have the display rom 10.0 and the cpu 10.02 rom and the gold le pal chip installed for the shaker motor which is working without any problems

Thank you Pin_Guy I'll remove the batteries as you suggested.

I guess I'm back to checking the CPU Rom as LOTR_breath suggested. I appreciate all the help here guys, I will let you know if the CPU chip is the answer to my issues.

So I got a whole new set of ROM chips from Matt's basement arcade and installed them this morning, I did the one at a time seeing if I could identify which chip was causing the issue but alas it was to no avail. The strange start up issues are still there even with a full new set of chips. At this point I am totally at a loss over what could be causing this. Anyone else have any ideas? I'm open to anything at this time, thanks

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Confirmed, this is before I changed it.

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Guys, Update, I saw @pinballmaniac40 post about hitting the flipper buttons and pressing quit, so I thought hey I never tried that I'll give it a shot. The machine has been on all afternoon btw, so I power cycled the machine and was going to try exactly what he said and it booted up normally with zero of the strange audit not defined messages. I'm now totally bewildered as to why it's suddenly decided to boot up normally for the first time since I've had it. So I thought maybe this is just a glitch and left it on for another hour and power cycled it again and lo and behold it started normal again! I think it's too early to start ccelebrating, maybe 30 seconds between a reboot isn't long enough, I will leave it off for a while then try and start it up again and see what happens. I really think you may be on to something with the NVRAM, it makes sense to me, I work in IT and if what I'm suspecting is true then leaving it off for a while would maybe confirm that the NVRAM chip is for want of a better word "leaking" information over a time period. The longer the machine is off the more the chip is "forgetting" information. I have ordered another chip just in case this is what it turns out to be. I have noticed that yesterday when I turned it on for the first time in about 4-5 days the errors were multiple, like about 4 audit not defined errors (different numbers), a high score error and free balls played error plus during the first game (and this has never happened before) the DMD score was blank but all other things played on the DMD like "Orthanic Skill Shot" etc, after a couple of minutes the score came back on the DMD.

I just wanted to give you guys an update on what's going on. I will post again after the machine has been off for a while and let you know the outcome. I really appreciate all of your help in this, you guys are amazing! Thanks and I'l keep y'all updated!

Maniac, Yes that has also gone, I did get a chance to talk to the previous owner and got a little more info, he had the machine in Colorado and moved here to Texas, he never had any issues with it before he moved, he said there wasn't one thing he could put his finger on to when it started he just remembered it started one day but didn't pay much attention to it because the game played without any problems once it was booted up. I know we do get a lot of thunderstorms out here and he did say that he has had a lot of near lightning strikes by his place so maybe a power surge from a lightning strike could have caused this but I'm just speculating here.

So machine has been off for an hour and when starting I got Audit Not Defined 1, 11 and 243. But they flashed by pretty quickly so I didn't get a chance to hold the flipper button to try your suggestion. I'm really thinking it's the NVRAM chip that is corrupted and not holding the information over time.

Could I put in the batteries again and pull the NVRAM chip to test out the theory, until the new chip arrives?

Maniac, No I don't have one. I'll wait until the new chip arrives and install it. I thought the game would work without that chip, sorry total noob here LOL.
So that means when I put the new chip in all the settings and scores will be reset back to factory default? If that is the case I may have to wait until the end of the week, I have my coindoor at Robert's for powder coating and won't be able to make any adjustments in the menu

Thanks Maniac, I will update the post with any new developments, I'm really thinking this is the issue "fingers crossed"

Thank you so much for reminding me of that!
In my haste and OCD kicking in to try and fix this I may have just gone ahead and changed the chip when it came in and then it would have been a total "DOH" moment when trying to start a game

UPDATE:
I installed the new NVRAM chip today and went through resetting all my settings, turned machine off for an hour then started it back up and........ NO CHANGE!! Still the same strange unknown audit errors on start up again. I have now changed all the chips in this machine and the answer to what is causing this still eludes me. I'm now beginning to think that there may be some kind of board error going on here but if that was the case then why does it only affect boot up and not game play? Once it's running there is no problems what so ever, game plays normally, if I shut it off then turn it back on within 30 seconds it boots fine but leave it off for 30 minutes then the errors come back, Specifically Audit 227,243, if I leave it longer I get a coil malfunction alert and sometimes the score on the DMD will be blank but all the other clips will show fine, the blank score will continue until ball 2. I'm at a total loss now guys. Does anybody out there have any clue to what I can try next?
Thanks for reading this.

Maniac, Not quite sure where you're going with the driver board but there a lot of other guys with a functioning shaker motor in their LOTR that aren't having these issues. But yes, very perplexing and annoying

Maniac,
As far as I know they have the original Whitestar board, Thanks

Thanks YeOldPinPlayer for bringing this back up!
I have just changed the ribbon cables and there is no difference. I'm thinking that it must be the Display power driver board. As you cannot use the flippers to navigate through the error messages, so the machine must think there are no errors. I can't see any corrosion on the driver board in any of the capacitors so maybe like I was thinking it may be a weak/cold solder joint somewhere on the board. It takes 5 to 10 mins for the errors to stop showing up on the display but you can play a game without any issues after about 20 to 30 secs it's just that the errors keep popping up on the display as you're playing but all the mechs and sounds are normal. If you restart the game immediately it starts normal without the errors but if you leave it for 10-15 minutes they are back again. The longer the machine is powered off the longer it takes for them to go away. Still puzzled