The Simpsons Pinball Party
Stern, 2003Quoted from Lermods:I was thinking about getting the color dmd for my tspp, but not sure now. Maybe dmod will come on and explain what's happened and how to avoid it.
Agreed. So Dmod said to not let the high voltage cable come into contact with any board. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen if high voltage can jump through insulation and blast a hole in a chip. Is that what happened here? The instructions do say to remove the cable but nobody ever does.
Quoted from Jgaltr56:Agreed. So Dmod said to not let the high voltage cable come into contact with any board. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen if high voltage can jump through insulation and blast a hole in a chip. Is that what happened here? The instructions do say to remove the cable but nobody ever does.
This sounds like exactly what happened.
The instructions say remove cord from DMD and put it aside. It doesn't say to disconnect from the power board (which I think it should say)
This sounds like I'm at least the second person with this problem, Color DMD guy has been helping out *a lot*, but maybe they need to include a warning slip to disconnect the power cable or remove the fuse before this happens again.
Quoted from Jgaltr56:Agreed. So Dmod said to not let the high voltage cable come into contact with any board. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen if high voltage can jump through insulation and blast a hole in a chip. Is that what happened here? The instructions do say to remove the cable but nobody ever does.
High voltage won't jump through the insulation. The IDC connectors used for DMD power cables have exposed metal contacts. A problem can result if the connector comes in contact or very close proximity to the circuit board. An accidental short or excessive voltage on the board can cause a chip to fail and become very hot, resulting in a burn in the package.
On WPC games, we recommend completely removing the high voltage wire harness from the game. You can alternately pull fuses and/or disconnect the harness from the DMD controller board, but this doesn't fully protect against a connector coming in contact with a board and shorting against something.
On Whitestar games, you can't remove the high voltage harness because 5V and Ground for the Whitestar board come through the same harness. You can remove the fuse from the DMD power supply board to reduce the chance of a problem, but still need to make sure the connector is tied back away from the boards to prevent an accidental short.
I don't want to disusuade anyone from buying Color DMD products. I believe this is a freak accident. My speaker panel is kind of difficult to get settled, wish there was an easier way but every game seems a to have some issues with speaker or translight they seem to be varriable if they go in easy or not.
So getting my speaker display panel back in, I had to push and pull and likely jostled the power cord. I was not aware of the risk, but I was following the video instructions, not officially sanctioned by Color DMD. I just find video instructions better than the official instructions given, because I'm not any good at installations but in general I think Color DMD is easy to install (this case being an exception!) which is causing me some stress since I'm having a big pin gathering in 2 weeks ?
Quoted from ChadH:Can someone give clarification on exactly which fuse to remove? Maybe provide a picture? I'd like to do the same on my TSPP.
The fuse QuarterGrabber is referring to is the one on the DISPLAY POWER SUPPLY board shown in post #11.
WARNING!! This is a high-voltage board so make sure the power to the game is off before touching/removing any fuses.
Quoted from Dmod:The fuse QuarterGrabber is referring to is the one on the DISPLAY POWER SUPPLY board shown in post #11.
WARNING!! This is a high-voltage board so make sure the power to the game is off before touching/removing any fuses.
You say not to disconnect the unused power cable?
Also do you recommend removing the fuse, is it used for anything else?
I wrapped some plastic around the live cable just to be safe but would it be better to pull the fuse as well?
Quoted from Dmod:High voltage won't jump through the insulation. The IDC connectors used for DMD power cables have exposed metal contacts. A problem can result if the connector comes in contact or very close proximity to the circuit board. An accidental short or excessive voltage on the board can cause a chip to fail and become very hot, resulting in a burn in the package.
On WPC games, we recommend completely removing the high voltage wire harness from the game. You can alternately pull fuses and/or disconnect the harness from the DMD controller board, but this doesn't fully protect against a connector coming in contact with a board and shorting against something.
On Whitestar games, you can't remove the high voltage harness because 5V and Ground for the Whitestar board come through the same harness. You can remove the fuse from the DMD power supply board to reduce the chance of a problem, but still need to make sure the connector is tied back away from the boards to prevent an accidental short.
Ok that makes sense. Thank you for the explanation.
Hopefully, I'll be getting a new board from Stern. $190 so this will be a very expensive DMD for me.
Quoted from rai:Hopefully, I'll be getting a new board from Stern. $190 so this will be a very expensive DMD for me.
That's actually a pretty cheap price. But why not just get Rob to fix it for $100 less?
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