Alright you brainiacs:

I'm completely psyched to play RBG, but there's one main snafu holding me back. I just bought an amazing-condition Riverboat Gambler with Diamondplate at a great price that had a few simple issues that were easy to fix, but as a newbie to the hobby, the non-functional "red, green, black, pass" membrane-switch under the lockdown-bar for the roulette game has me stumped at the moment. I finally have an operations manual, so I'm ready to get the trouble-shooting process started!

1) None of the color or pass buttons seem to work. I took off the lockdown-bar and established that the membrane-switch is in there. It seems physically ok.

2) I tried pressing the membrane buttons down directly, without the bar in place, with no effect. I checked that the membrane-switch ribbon-cable was connected to the pins next to the coin door. I re-seated that cable connection multiple times in case it was a contact-issue there. Didn't help.

3) Does the membrane-switch work as a switch all on it's own, or does it need to make contact with something under itself? I don't want to pull it out/off without having a little bit of a clue.

4) I noticed that the color/pass buttons share a column on the "switch matrix" with the flippers, which work great, so can I assume that there is no general wiring issue for that column? Can I also assume no board-issue because the rest of the matrix-column works?

5) The only other thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a couple of disconnected (cut) braided ground-cables that may have run somewhere into the general area of the coin-door, lockdown-bar, buttons area. I can really see exactly where they may have been going, but could a disconnected ground cause the membrane-switch not to work?

6) Another question. The membrane-switch is referred to as "5 position." There are 4 buttons. Is the 5th position "off?"

7) I am tempted to just buy the membrane switch for $50 and plug it in to see if that solves the problem, but I'm not certain that I've narrowed the problem down to commit to the purchase. I would LOVE some help if anyone could point me in a direction to investigate!

Thanks, everyone, for helping me ride that lucky Riverboat!

#riverboat-gambler

Thanks for the replies!

I tried flipping over the ribbon cable, but alas, it didn't seem to help. I bit the bullet and ordered a new membrane switch, so I hope that is the problem! When it arrives, I will try it out and update this post.

Billc479, you mentioned that I should be able to "see when the switch is closed by pushing on it." Do you mean, hook a multimeter up to the ribbon connector and push the switch to see if circuits are being made? Sorry, not sure what you meant.

Just to follow up on this, I found the membrane switch for sale on Marco: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/5641-12673-00 for about $50 and that did the trick! The only weird thing now is that black, red and green all work as expected, but the white "pass" button doesn't seem to do anything except for let the roulette countdown time out and it just returns your ball. I guess thats fine and it works as a pass, but I would've expected it to immediately "pass" as opposed to simply feeling like a disengaged button? I would like to see how another machine plays just out of curiosity.

Anyway, mystery solved! Thanks to everyone for your responses!