(Topic ID: 223671)

Meteor LED's flicker with Alltek board

By raysco

5 years ago


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Topic Stats

  • 17 posts
  • 10 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 5 years ago by hailrazer
  • Topic is favorited by 2 Pinsiders

You

Linked Games

  • Meteor Stern Electronics, 1979

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#9 5 years ago

I have noticed on the LDB I make Stern MPU200 games may need a lower ohm load resistor than bally games or a couple lamps may flicker. I am using 560R. I assume it is the faster clock speed in MPU200 effects the latching nature of the SCRs. Changing nothing but the MPU software from Bally game to Stern MPU200 sometimes makes a previous 100% LDB have one or two positions flicker. Adding a parallel resistor to drop resistance 100R or so fixes them.

Also to consider is the feature lamp voltage. The more lamps turned on the higher the load will be. Which will lower the voltage so there is less current through the resistor keeping the SCR loaded. Making the LED feature lamps more likely to flicker.

I posted about this a few weeks back if you want to check it out.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/classic-ballystern-led-adapter-kit-review/page/7#post-4498436

#11 5 years ago
Quoted from wayout440:

What resistor are you talking about? There's nothing else on the SCR anode out to the playfield on the Bally LDB, but I am not familiar with the Alltek version. Is the SCR circuit dramatically different on those? I always considered 470 ohms for the resistor on Bally LDB games based on this post:
"Once upon a time there was a led that flickered when it was installed
in an older Bally or Stern pinball machine. The LEDS flickered on any
machine that used a Bally As2518-14, AS2518-23, or Stern LDB-100. These
lamp driver modules were used from 1977 thru 1989. These boards use SCRs
to switch # 44 Lamps on and off in pinball machines. This has worked
well for many years, until someone tried to use a led instead of a #44
lamp. The LED flickered. I discovered that the reason the led flickered
was that the LED drew no current below it’s forward bias point that it
would not hold an scr latched. If a resistor is added in parallel with
the led, it would draw enough current to keep the scr latched and there
was no flicker. (Life is Good). Through testing I found that a 470 olhm
resistor was more than enough to keep any of the scrs that I tested
latched. The 470 olhm resistor can be added in the socket of the led,
soldered across the lamp socket, or soldered on the lamp driver module.
The electrons don’t know or care where the resistor lives, as long as it
will cause a 1ma load to the anode of the scr. All 3 ways have been done
and they all work well." - text by Ron Googe.

feature lamp bus is brought to the LDB and the load resistor is there instead of across the lamp socket.

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