(Topic ID: 90716)

PinWiki helped me fix my Dr Who resetting problem!

By bklossner

9 years ago



Topic Stats

  • 3 posts
  • 2 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 9 years ago by bklossner
  • No one calls this topic a favorite

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#1 9 years ago

My Doctor Who machine had been plagued, for the past few months, with the awful WPC reset bug and I was terrified that I'd have to do some component desoldering on the driver board (I've lifted many a trace in my past).

Soooo, I went onto the PinWiki WPC page, found the MASSIVE listing regarding the infamous reset issues and started going down the checklist.

115VAC, check.
Good connections to the power supply, check.
Thermistor... hmm....

That's where it got me. The game would reset only within the first few minutes of turning it on. 30 minutes later it would be fine.

Thermistor... hmm...

"Jump the thermistor with a heavy gauge wire," it says. "If the resets stop than your thermistor has failed," it says....

Jump jump jump... turn on... play game....

No resets! Hot diggety damn!

These resources, and these message boards, shit, I don't know what I'd do without all of this. Probably not have pinball machines.

I'm really stoked right now.

-Bob

#2 9 years ago

Heh. The dreaded WPC reset problem.

The actual cause of this is because the 5V drops below a threshold that the watchdog circuit kicks in and/or the reset circuit drops out. The biggest cause is a weak 5V supply on the board; the bridge and caps aren't up to the job of keeping the 5V active when you put a massive drain on the system firing flippers or multiple coils at once. After that, then you start to check the connector pins on everything; making sure nothing is burned that's causing resistance.

The thermistor is generally only found on import games; I don't recall ever seeing it on a US machine. Likewise, when these machines were brought back to the US; the transformer plug wired for 120 again (or if they still had the jumper plug; used it). But no one ever opened up the power box to bypass the thermistor; which wasn't required on US games due to the lower inrush current from lower line voltage.

I never bypassed it because they failed; I simply took them out and bypassed them because they weren't required and caused problems on machines.

#3 9 years ago

Welp, it would make sense that the game came from Europe.

The coin door plate states it costs 500 Lire to play.

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