Had exactly same thing on my LOTR - took a long while to fix!

Check batteries for any acid damage and change.

From memory the way mine was fixed ( not by me as various people tried and failed ) was to buy new ribbon cables - so that would be my first port of call.

Really strange yours is doing the same thing - another idea is to switch boards with your TSPP or Monopoly and see if that isolates it to one board. From memory that was done on mine. Let me know how it goes - really curious to see how you get on - hopefully well

It is a really weird fault - spoke to Stern etc and no one was sure what it was.

I doubt they would be allowed to admit if they had seen it before. That would point some blame back to them.

My SM does this every once in a while. This is common with the new system. Can't remember if my LOTR does it. I just turn it off, wait 10 seconds and it starts up fine.

Have a South Park that did the same thing. Turns out it was a bad socket under the batteries that had gotten a little corrosion or something in it. There was no continuity from one of the chips legs to the back of the board. Bought a new better socket soldered it on and the game was back up and running. I know someone with a Godzilla that has been trying to track down the same problem. If you have a DMM, I would get it out and pull the board and start buzzing the whole thing out looking for any problems near the batteries or CPU game eprom. Wish I had a silver bullet for you, but this problem seems to have different things that cause it. Good luck. I bet the relay is making a loud annoying clicking noise to go with the GI light blinking too!

I have had this happen on my IM and Avatar LE. Doesn't happen with my LOTR LE though. Usually I fix it by simply turning them off and on again. I just hope it isn't a sign of future problems where off/on won't work any more.

Anyone can help me , i have a very similar problem with TSPP , when i power it the lights are blinking with relay making some noise , i cant start any game , i dont really know where to start , is it a boot problem itself or a reset problem , cable problem or board problem ...
I m still new and learning fast but i need help.
Thx
Mike

The original poster was only having the problem intermittently. When you say you can't start a game, does that mean you can't start a game at all? Even if you cycle power more than once?

If that's the case, checking the fuses would be a good place to start. Do you have a DMM?

I've seen this before, and I'm fairly sure this behavior is due to the inability to read the ROM properly.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

Do you have the latest software for TSPP? Stern released an update for Avatar and IM which fixed the problem on those pins for me. Maybe TSPP had something similar?

Do you get anything on the DMD? Is your 5v LED on the CPU board lit? Does the machine ever boot? If you have 5v pull the batteries (check for corrosion) and open the coin door and see what happens. As stated, you may need a ROM upgrade.

viperrwk

Had this happen to me as well. Take the board off and check for acid damage. Has the board ever had repairs done to it? As Chris mentioned you should reseat the roms if you're comfortable doing that sort of thing. Helps if you have a puller. Don't use a screw driver. My problem turned out to be repairs gone bad due to past acid damage on the board. (That I wasn't aware of) Very expensive to buy that particular CPU board as I found out. Get the batteries off the board asap.

I am in the fun club - sounds like my problem to a t... Its frustrating for sure.

I am now in this club too with Nascar. All traditional diagnostic methods have failed. The PAL chip and watchdog have been replaced. What can fix this problem?

Wow, and myself tonight with LOTR I just bought! The game keeps resetting, it was made in jan 2006 and still had original batteries in it 7yrs later!

Can anyone tell me if you leave the batteries out of the holder will it effect the game? It doesn't on any Williams/Bally games so didn't think it would on a stern

Nascar bump

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/nascar-boot-problem

Because the memory will not have any settings, assuming the machine will boot, you will get the message "Open the coin door" when you turn the machine on. When you do it will initialize the memory and the game can be played. Only problem is without batteries it will do this every time you turn the machine on unless you put in batteries or some type of NVRAM.

viperrwk

I only wish the problem on Nascar was that simple.

Turns out Nascar had a bad RAM chip on the CPU/ Sound board.