I just recently joined this club and have been playing the heck out of it lately, but there has been one thing that I have been having trouble with. I don't know if anyone else has run into this problem, but I have been having trouble aiming the ball lock kick out to hit the shrunken head. I have been able to aim it high enough to just about hit the super jackpot ramp but if I go any higher the ball hits the rubber at the end of the ball guide and goes over to the bozo hole. I checked that rubber and it is a standard 3/4" white rubber that is specified in the manual, so does anyone use a smaller rubber or know of a thinner one to put in that spot? Any suggestions would be helpful.

The plunger lane is aligned nicely and will go around the penguin loop on a full plunge. It really is the ball lock kick out that I am having problems with. I have tried to adjust it with the nut under the playfield but the ball will hit the rubber ring above the lane guide before aiming high enough to hit the head.

Just as a heads up, the color DMD firmware has been updated to 3.2.

I have been having an issue with the number of hits to the idol required to light extra ball randomly dropping down from 12 to 4. When I go back into the feature adjustments it still says it is set at 12 even though it lights at 4. In order to get it back to 12 I have to change the value to something else and save and then set it back. If anyone has any insight into this minor annoyance it would be appreciated.

This is what I was originally thinking, but I have never seen it auto adjust up. I left it for quite a while and after lighting EB every game and collecting it almost every game it stayed put at 4 hits. I was just hoping that there was an software adjustment that I was just missing to turn off the auto adjustment.

Check to make sure the post is flush with the playfield. It shouldn't have any affect when down.

In the standard adjustments menu just set the default high scores to 0 and then reset the high scores in the reset menu.

I'm fairly sure this one resides in the realm of buggy software, I still have to do this from time to time though not as much since I replaced the flaky opto's.
While a lot of us would love to see this game and others get updated, I just wouldn't hold your breath for Stern to fix software in a 15 year old game...

Does anyone have a long term hack for the shooter lane switch in this game. Every few months I end up having to spend a ridiculous amount of time to tweak the shooter lane switch to fix the "hyperactive switch" issue and all the problems that go along with that.

I love this game to death, but this issue just makes me want to throw this game out the window (after bringing over a few friends to get it out of the basement first)....

This has been a constant on off issue since I had the game. I originally replaced the switch when I first had the issue and that had no effect, so it is a newish switch. The biggest rage inducing problem I have with this is there is nothing objectively wrong with the game; in the switch test the shooter lane switch is working perfectly as well as the trough optos. The only time this has an effect is during multi ball when a new ball is added to the shooter lane and the game just sits there for 6-8 seconds before it decides to launch the ball; during the ball saver if another ball is drained during that time a second ball will be put into the shooter lane. Also if at any time a ball falls back into the shooter lane it will never be kicked back out.

I have adjusted the switch to both maximize and minimize the possible contact time with the switch as well as in-between, but I have never found anything to work long term. It just decides to to start working sometimes and I have not found any pattern to what works or not. I am surprised that a few of you have never had this problem because I figured that this was just one of the many bugs in this game and were hoping someone found a work around.

I just hooked up my oscilloscope to the trough opto receiver board and when blocked it is outputting a nice drive pulse, so that is working as it should. While I have never replaced them I am fairly certain that they have been replaced in the past because they do not look like originals.

Messed with the switch adjustment some more but I cant seem to get the thing to behave. This is just so incredibly frustrating because everything I can think of to test for this is working fine. I just wish that I could plug into the main board like a PLC and see what the software is truly looking for and what is causing it to hang up.

Just as an update, a day or two after writing this the hyperactive switch issue just disappeared; didn't do anything, it just started working never could find anything wrong with it.

Now the Idol opto is going crazy and registering phantom hits constantly. The optos are brand new, the opto board is brand new, the wiring is fine and for shits and giggles I replaced the resistors and transistor for that section of the switch matrix. Not surprisingly everything works perfectly fine is test mode.

This game is buggy as fu*k and I am about ready to call it quits and put it up for sale.

That was probably the first thing I did, cleaned both the top and the underside of the play field right there.

At this point I am looking into what components I need to swap out on the board to reduce the sensitivity, or how powerful of a led I can stick on a transmitter board without cooking any of the wiring.

Still having issues with this game, I originally posted this in a different thread a week ago and never got any responses so I thought I would try here.

Having walked away from this game for about a month I started looking at it again the problem is as follows.

-Ball 1 and 2 Idol will be lit at the beginning of play, it will not trigger until opto is broken and will score 1 idol hit as it should.
-Ball 3 idol will light for less than a second after ball served into shooter lane you will hear the idol audio and the opto will turn off, this is not counted as an idol hit.
-During the entire game a shot into the lower bumpers or the scoop will only light the idol for 1-2 seconds before you hear the Idol audio and the opto truns off, this also will not score an idol hit.
-During muliball the idol will be on an score hits correctly.
-The only time when I am getting extra idol hits scored is during the bonus countdown; it will add a idol hit and then score one more than the number of hits. (ie. upon draining you have 5 idol hits, when the bonus countdown starts it will always add one extra and you will hear the idol noise, the display will then tell you that you had 7 idol hits even though it only added one, beginning of the next ball it will display that you have had 6 idol hits.)

This is 100% repeatable, I have never seen the game award a extra idol hit when the transmit opto is on and waiting for a ball to break the beam (ie. beginning of ball 1 and 2, as well as during muliball). The only time I get random "hits" is when the transmit opto is off and should not even be expecting hits.

Hopefully someone maybe has some insights, because at this point I am thoroughly confused especially the bizarre behaviour during the bonus countdown.

Yeah, everything is new and clean, for now I have just unplugged the receiver opto and the game plays normaly in the "opto not working" mode. I am really hoping that there is something wrong with the ROM because I have no clue what else it could be. The only time i get extra idol hits is when the transmit led is off and should not even be looking for them and during the bonus countdown.

I no longer have access to a ROM chip writer any more, so for now I am just going to play it the way it is.

I figure next time I have to order something from Marco I'll order a chip to see if that fixes this. I have a hard time spending as much or more on shipping than what I am actually getting...

Yeah, you defenetely should check the welds on the scoop seems to be a very common issue. Another thing to check is with the scoop is see if it is centered in the hole. On mine they mounted the scoop assembly so far to the left that sometimes the ejected ball would hit the left side of the hole an then get deflected sdtm. I had to elongate the holes in the scoop assembly to shift it over to the right to center it, I have never had a sdtm from the scoop since.

That is correct, I wouldn't want to have two screw holes so close together for fear of it tearing out. At the time, where I worked I had free access to a machine shop so i just milled out slots so I could properly centrer the assembly, you could accomplish the same thing at home with a Dremel or a small rat tail file if need be.

Another thing to possibly look at is the shrunken head magnet core, mine was horribly mushroomed when I got the machine. If you don't have a grinding wheel I think you can just buy a new one for less than $10us, save you some possible playfield damage.

It is a fantastic game that would be worth a lot more if it weren't for the theme, I hope you enjoy it for years to come.

That board is for the TOPS tournament system and the game will function perfectly fine without it.

https://www.ipdb.org/files/4917/Stern_2004_Ripley_s_Believe_It_or_Not_English_Manual.pdf
Pin out is on page 154 (171 of the document).

I'm glad that I could help. I just wish I could help myself with my game...

I believe the post is PN 530-5007-00. You can find the part numbers on pages 69-70 of the manual.
I am not sure if mine if put together per the manual but hopefully this will help.

IMG_20201110_181546836 (resized).jpg

Just as a fun update, new ROM and using a different CPU/Sound board there is absolutely no change. Everything from the optos on up are new, except for the wire and even then I replaced the connectors. The idol hits +1 during the bonus countdown is what puzzles me the most.

I think I am going to have to find a good local tech to come out and look at this because I am completely out of ideas at this point.

Well according to the manual the flasher circuit is all 20v dc, it also specifies 12v bulbs for the flashers... Go figure, it wouldn't be the first error in the manual.

In my game I replaced the all my flasher bulbs with 12v ones from Comet and have not had any issues.

If you have a multi meter check to see what voltage is actually on that circuit and check the q28 mosfet for that flasher to to see if it has craped out on you.

I just figured out a cool little trick you can do if you have a LED OCD board. I just replaced the scoop arrow light with a color changing led. Normally because this light blinks the color sequence will reset, but if you set the "delay" in the LED OCD settings for this bulb to about 6 the light will not fully turn off between the flashes and will pulse while cycling though the colors.
I normally don't like using color leds for anything but inserts, but this looks really good in this spot.
Other people have probably figured this out before but I didn't see any posts about it so I figure I would share.