i have two gottlieb machines genesis and robo war, now the robo war was working great, ground mod completed, everything was going great, now i was working on genesis(hasnt been working for 15 yrs or so) trying to get it to boot up but nothing so in between i a would play a few games of robo war. then all of a sudden but slowly you understand took about 1/2 hr of turning the game off and on till it finally quit, lights up sound boots up, lights seem to all work, can credit games and load but thats as far as it goes. to start with the top rollovers quit registering, then the bumpers quit bumping, then all the rollovers dont work and now the balls dont come out, it was like the game was on a watch spring kinda just winding down. i have checked all the fuses, power at 4.98 volts at the cap on the mpu, have checked the real obvious fuses and such, minor things. but before I jump into this, i dont mind getting my hands dirty as per say but my electronic savy is limited, any help would be appreciated. the genesis machine is just plain dead got some lights and thats it, suspect most likely mpu but thats another day one problem at a time.

no have made that modification, like I had stated the game was working great not problems for the last 20 yrs but just this afternoon it kind of wound down like a watch spring, starting with the rollovers then the bumpers and now its just a great big lamp.

hey have a bit of an update regarding my dead robo war pin now it is totally dead but if you put in some credits boot up the machine it goes through the whole thing plays music, even seems to totally boot up except for no ball load, and for some reason the ramp opens without a ball in the out hole, now if you leave the machine alone for awhile not really sure on the time it takes but then all of a sudden the ball loads and the game will play sort of then die again kind of like a battery charging and discharging. does anyone have any ideas on what to do to correct this or at least a direction.

ok thanks I will give it a try, I did have a thought regarding that set of pins and actually the whole harness, I just redid the one for my genesis machine thinking that would help it no luck there I afraid the mpu board is toast for the genesis, again that's another day. but ya I will actually check all of them while I am at it cant hurt right.

ok for those that are still playing along here's the latest update, cleaned the fingers on the board and checked the plugs and aligned those as best as I could, used my rebuilt A1 J4 connecter from genesis machine and used it. turned the machine on and it was much better in fact almost back to normal with a few quirks. first when you power down, everything resets no more high scores, nothing, next the credits load and I can play 4 players and the game runs ok except for well here we go! none of the pop bumpers work they light up and the lights move around with different actions on the playfield but the bumpers do not activate when the skirts are triggered nothing, now I had purchasednew pop bumper cards and all three have a trigger button on them and a led light so when I push the button the led does turn on seems quite dim though, power at the board is 4.89 volts which is by the way what it is at the power supply which is new also, I still have the old one which since I got rid of the resistor pot and put in a resistor puts out 5.12 volts. so what's next, what voltage do I need to manually trigger the solenoids at the pop bumper so I can test them. So with that being said when I finish the game I got a match and a replay but nothing matched the numbers were not even close to a match on either of the games, and there were a few other oddities. So being right or wrong I thought I would give this a try, originally the mpu was not plugged into the reset board ever in fact the 40 pin plug or what ever it is, with the the wires soldered on it wasn't never on the board either so I had one from the one of the mpu boards for genesis and one for raven so I looked at the wiring config and they both appear to be the same, so I plugged it into the robo war board and then into the reset board and powered up. ok for the good news nothing blew up and not magic blue smoke came out of the board or anywhere else for that matter, but what did happen is I played a few games ran it thru the paces using the flippers and such then by hand and all seemed to be ok sound everything except yup you guessed it the 3 bumpers still don't work lights are on but nothing happens. tried a brand new board right out of the package still no bumper, so I do you have any other ideas we can try, oh and yes the fuses are ok, all of them. Looking forward to hearing from you with hopefully a simple answer. I will try the old power supply but I cant see the slightly lower voltage only effecting just the bumpers. There is one other thing the board appears to have been modified for the door slam switch but the wire was not cut at the plug like I have seen before, also the grounding wires have not been put on the driver board either but the original A1 J4 connector has been modified with the extra ground and power wire. if you got more questions don't hesitate to ask them all I will try to answer as best as I can thanks

gary

The pin is up and running, bumpers lights, voice, music, we are all good to go, going to run it thru the paces right away and hope there are no surprises. I want to thank you all for your input it sure helped got me thinking in the right direction.

you want to tackle my genesis machine now theres a challenge

thanks again

Gary

well it was all good, I don't know what happened or the cause, the Robo war pin started acting quite strange after about 20 straight games. I stopped playing shut down the machine came back in an hour and turned the machine on, it booted up excepted the credits hit the credit button and that was it the start gate door opened and that's the way it stayed. tried some on and offs just different things happened once the game ran but it wasn't right. anyway I redid all the pins cleaned all the fingers on the boards. which helped a lot but still has some oddities the #3 drop targets go down but don't come up right away if you leave the game alone just leave it on like that in about an hour or sometimes less the targets pop up and that's not the only thing its kind of like anything with a solenoid has this issue and they take turns. any ideas on what to do or look for. any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks Chris for the help it wasn't what the problem was but it was a maintenance issue that needed to be done, got some drop target aligned that sort of thing and all the switches cleaned. BUT a buddy dropped by while I was trying to trouble shoot so he played the game hard while I checked top wiring and guess what I found and issue with the J6 connection, now the moulex looked impossible to repin with what I have to work with, so I pulled the mpu and check the fingers and they seemed worn would be a good term possibly some arcing so I retinned all of them on the mpu and the driver board.. powered the machine it booted up really great, loaded some credits and played about 20 games with out any issues, in fact where I had warm spots on the mpu seemed cooler now, so thanks for your help its all about elimination of potential problems right, and you got me going the right direction of thought.

Now the real fun I have a totally dead genesis machine.. to play with, fun is where to start, mpu is totalled and I don't have the tech smarts or the equipment to trouble shoot the entire board, do you know if there are a regular group of components that seem to blow that I could start with replacing and see. anyway

THANKS

Gary

hi well to start off with on a bright note, I got Robo War up and running 100% no issues all seems ok,(knock on wood) except for I don't have a high score replay number anymore it use to be 1,800,000 for free play but now nothing got as high as 4,000,000 no replay did I do something and what can I do to fix it, its not that important but I kind of like hearing that thunk.

Now to the real reason I am here, My Genesis machine is finally up and running, and since I haven't played it for about 15 yrs I think its working properly as far as scoring and all that stuff, but the sound doesn't stay the so called music part lasts about a minute or until I loose a ball then it just has game and scoring noises which makes it even more blah, sorry use to robo war. now the power supply is at 4.89 volts, all other boards are working except for one aux lamp driver board. So what can I do to get the full sound advantage of the game, is there a problem with the sound card, now the led lights at boot up then goes out never to light again, no blinking no nothing until you start another game, so any ideas. please don't get too technical you might have to draw a picture.

ok now I have 5 volts, I have retinned the fingers on sound board and aux power board, nothing really changed except maybe a little louder and clearer but that's about it, if it helps at all the one button beeps when pushed and the other does absolutely nothing, no beeps, and no blinking led light, so now what change the sound proms or is there an ic chip that causes this that I need to find, I am not that tech savy but I do have talent so if you give me a direction I will go there. any help will be greatly appreciated. I have one question does anyone think that maybe reconnecting the reset board may be the answer, unfortunately I bought a swemmer mpu so I don't believe the reset board is an option

I thought I would just drop in and say hi and say YAHOO I got both machines up and running Genesis and Robo War, Robo War is 100% unfortunately Genesis is still having sound issues and lighting issues. But at least it plays that's the main thing.
I am thinking that the its the sound card and I cant find eproms nor any issues on the board as of yet might have to pull each chip and check out of service. The lighting issue is I cant find an aux light driver board, and I am waiting on components so I can fix it so the light isn't a big issue.

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found out one thing, that my genesis machine was wired incorrectly at the plug, someone changed a plug but wired the polarity wrong this did seem to cause some issues, hopefully not so permanent really don't know how long its been that way. didn't find out till I changed the florescent to led and its polarity sensitive. I also wired it in at 120v which is a full wiring change. but any way just as a fur intstance I checked the polarity on my robo war and its ass backwards too. so I checked my house wiring and its up to code. so just as a thought it might be worth while to check other machines for polarity issues. now granted the transformer should be immune to this but it should still be wired correctly.