RFM: "Hillary, come here! You gotta see this!"

Just got my RFM and SW1 in this week. So far have been going through RFM and getting things right. Previous owner had installed 1 LED bulbs and mostly color matched except for the GI which they did in domed, frosted, cool white. I replaced a few of the burnt out bulbs with 1 SMD domed, frosted, sunlight (a little more yellow than cool but not natural white) whites and it's brightened up the field - almost too much as it's now a little harder to see the screen.

So now my ? - what are you guys using to brighten up the field without taking away from the monitor? I was thinking of going with 1 SMD frosted red or maybe some purple's to brighten it up without overpowering it. Thoughts?

What is everyone's success with cointaker or pinballlife kits?

Thoughts on going back to incandescent? I've seen a lot of posts (mostly older) about keeping in incandescent for the dimming effects.

So I ended up moving all of the GI back to incandescent. Really made things a lot better IMO and helps soften the field plus I get the dimming back. I left the under playfield lights as is - they are 1 LED color matched with the domes removed so I didn't really see any point in changing them as it wouldn't drastically change anything.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Does use of LED OCD boards allow for LEDs to be used but still get the same effect of the incandescents?
Lots of my back LEDs were blown and almost looked melted and/or had some sort of brownish fluid oozing from under the cap. I'm assuming the dimming effects wore them out very quickly.

Apparently it does! I never even realized these had red/white in them. Thanks for the tip. I'll try it out and post results.

No mine doesn't have an OCD board or at least that I've discovered. I just making sure I understood how they worked. I didn't see anything pin2k specific but that was my next question.

I'll get some pics of the bulbs once I get back to the house.

Few other questions.
Read some previous comments ( I think it was way back on like page 6) and saw about replacing the power supply with AT or ATX. Just a question about the supply that was linked. Why is the AT 230w and the ATX is 480 watt. Am I missing something obvious? What wattage should we be using for RFM and SW1?
StarTech.com 230 Watt PS2 Replacement Computer PC Power Supply - PS2POWER230 amazon.com link »
Logisys Corp. 480W 240-Pin Black Beauty ATX 20+4 Power Supply PS480D-BK amazon.com link »

What's everyone using for a power supply replacement?
What about for fan replacements?
Any other preventative maintenance things I should be replacing?

So upon further inspections I think that what I was seeing is just a weird discoloration that was coming through on the red and white LEDs around the plastic dome and the color band. That combined with years of dirt and dust made it look more oozey. I noticed that any bulbs that had the caps removed didn't show these same discoloration.

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Does anyone have any experience with their RFM cutting off mid game - like a full power loss? I've had a few issues over the last few days

1. I had just moved the game about 2 ft. by nudging it along. Started playing. Got a few games in and everything went black.
2. Couldn't find an obvious solution so started playing again. 30 minute later - game cuts out. Can't find anything wrong. No smoke. No smells. No black surge marks anywhere I can find under PF. Resets fine. Play 5 more games no issues. Turn off power and go to bed.
3. Next day, sliding PF out with game on (I know, it should be off please no lectures). "Jiggle" PF to get into lock slots on rails and everything goes black.
4. Start checking molex connectors and find a few that are inserted but not "clipped" like the almost 20 year old plastic has lost its "spring"
5. Think that maybe I found the problem. Had the game on for 4-5 hours while playing throughout the night (20 ish games) no issues. Ball gets stuck on a switch and I start rocking the machine. DARKNESS!

Any thoughts? All the fuses are fine. It's a hard cutoff as if I pulled the power cord. Fan is working on board and power supply and I pulled the CPU cover off of the CPU box so I don't think it's overheating related. Power distribution box is showing 123V in and out.

Is there someplace else I should be looking? Only thing I can think to do is go through molex by molex and check connections - probably already touched >50%.

Bad CPU power supply?

Any random places to check are greatly appreciated.

I should play the lottery...

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Caps looks good. nice and black. No bulges

I'll give this one a try next

Thanks for the help

Just to close this one out - I pulled the playfield and went through each connector and re-attached it. This seems (fingers crossed!) to have resolved the issue as I've put ~12 games in and no hard shut offs.

In summary, my game was going pitch black or a full loss of power - caps were good, but found ~30% of the connectors to be loose or not fully "clipped" in.

Thanks everyone for the help!

Finally "Attacked Mars" last night... didn't get past stage 3...

Top line of feature adjustments.

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So I ordered the bulb mentioned here. Before installing this 12-24V bulb, I checked the circuitry and my lighting is operating on 120V. So the bulb mentioned above does NOT work. I believe others have mentioned issues in previous posts but I'm bringing it back up in hopes someone doesn't make my mistake.

So I returned the previous one and went with this instead

amazon.com link »

Very simple to install: removed the starter (2" white capacitor looking thing on the back of the light bracket), disconnect the ballast wires (4" square metal box located in the top left hand corner of the back it has 2 black wires running to/from it), with the ballast removed I had to complete the circuit so I jumpered the wires together. Did this install so if down the road someone wanted to put a fluorescent back in, it could easily be done.

A few lingering errors I'm trying to address:

Error message "Lock diverter stuck open" - Wiring looks good. Mechanisms looks good. Can easily actuate by hand under and on top of PF so I don't think anything is binding. Looking at the exploded diagram the only thing that is sticking out to me is a bad coil? Thoughts? Wanted to check before I dropped $25+ on a coil

next one

Error messages: "Drop target switch or up coil bad" also have "Drop target switch or down coil bad" error. Previously had these 2 error messages + "check switch 15 drop target down" - Fixed the switch 15 error by reattaching a loose wire. The drop target still goes up and down. So I'm leaning towards this one being a switch issue? But curious as to why the switch 15 error is now cleared if that's the case.

Only other errors I have (more in case they impact the other 2 issues I'm having) - check switch 18 - shooter lane - pretty sure this one is my fault was readjusting the wireform to lower it and think I damaged the switch itself
switch 63 - left jet - haven't determine this ones exact issue yet but haven't really looked at it

Any help or pointers is appreciated.

Ahh yes forget to actually let the machine tell me something. So I just went down and tried it out. Coil drive 37 is working and the gate swings closed. Drive 38 which is the "hold" function causes no movement. So it's getting voltage.

While cycling through the test I noticed that the right flipper "hold" doesn't work either (coil drive 34) - but I've never had issues with this in a game? The only reason I point this out is based on the diagrams it appears they're on the same board driver board and connector - J112

So I think the switch knew I was talking about it... wrote these problems down a few days ago after I replaced the switch wire. Didn't even read the test report this time just went right into switch diagnostics. Everything was looking fine. Backed out and looked at the report and now all of the 'drop target switch..." messages are gone. Wondering if maybe it took a few game cycles for this error to clear since this message isn't tied to a direct coil or switch. Maybe after so many faults the machine flags things as an issue. Then it has to see so many instances of the function working before it clears? Could be overdrinking, I mean thinking, this...

Thanks zitt for the quick help!

Finished product pic

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Any thoughts from the group before I start a new topic?

Can you post a link to the decals? I'm struggling to find these.

I was overthinking this. Switch 74 was bad and showing up in the test report. I fixed that and it cleared this issue with the diverter gate. Makes sense that the system doesn't see the gate closed if the switch never activates.

2 months later and all 9 errors fixed on a "used working and clean" game purchased off of pinside. No one to blame but myself for the mistake. Didn't start a thread whining about it or bashing the seller. Manned up. Learned how to fix shit and got it done.

does anyone know if there is a way to trick the game into seeing LEDs? Say via adding a resistor to each one? Or something similar to a LED OCD board or something. I'm not interested in it as I agree the incandescents looks great. Just looking to learn more from a theoretical standpoint.

I believe you can't find them because you're looking for the wrong flipper color. I believe the original color is white.

Yes I did a quick little blurb about current options as some of the older options posted didn't work in my machine. You should be able to find it a few pages back. Sorry on my phone or I'd post the link.

Not sure. You can go back to some of the first pages of the group for his original post that's where I found it or search this thread for LED or his name and it should come up.
I'm assuming he grabbed 12 volts from somewhere. Or the item listed on amazon changed its spec?

RFM was a casualty of wanting to sell SWE1. So, sadly I'm leaving the club. I'll be on the lookout for another RFM probably sooner rather than later.

Thanks everyone for all of the help along the way.

I miss my RFM. if someone within a couple hours of ATL is interested in selling, please let me know. I currently have a CO1812 I could put towards a trade + cash.

Those extras are nice but I’m not seeing anything that is truly unobtainium- maybe the flaps? So not much value there IMO.

I “think” these PFs were fairly robust as I don’t see many pop up with obvious wear. Maybe 1 in the last year of the pinside adds. So it’s lived a hard life IMO. mid-high 2s? No way I go over 3 with the PF wear and even then it’s a hard sell. If it’s been well maintained and going into a home environment that box of parts is just an expensive insurance policy for some day that may never come. Could maybe flip the plastics and translite? Or just let him keep the parts and buy the game as is?