Hey all.

Apologies for a long post from a total noob, but I’m at my wits’ end and desperate to get back to kicking butt.

I got Rollergames back in April as a first machine and love it. It ran pretty well for the first few months. Had some issues with the ball getting stuck in the pit, but my wife adjusted the wireform a bit and it was better. Upper right flipper would fail to fire on occasion, but wasn't a huge deal.

About a month ago, however, the WAR targets failed to pop back up. Then I noticed the ball popper had stopped working. I took a look at the Aux Driver board and, sure enough, fuse F4 had blown. The guy we bought it from had stuck a 7A fuse in there, which I guess is a reasonable thing to do, given the manual lists it that way in a couple places, though the schematic shows it as a 2.5A. I noticed later that F7 had also blown.

I replaced the fuses and a bunch of others on the board that looked fine but weren’t buzzing when I applied my DMM, but F4 still blows instantly whenever I turn the game on. Since it had worked for a few months with a 7A in there, I decided to try a 5A to see what happened. That blew instantly, and took F7 with it. I’ve since blown a bunch of F4s, but as long as I don’t go above a 2.5A, F7 doesn’t blow.

At this point, I’ve checked the resistance across all the solenoids on the VIO/YEL and YEL/VIO lines multiple times and they seem fine (Sols 04A, 06A, 07A, 13, 14, 18, 20 and 22). I pulled the Aux Power Driver and checked all of its transistors, which were fine. I pulled the CPU board and checked all the driver and pre-driver transistors for the solenoids. Some of the values I was reading on the drivers seemed a little high (like .8 or .9), but that didn’t seem too too crazy (though I’m super new at this, so correct me if that’s high enough to indicate bad transistors). I pulled 5P12 off and turned things on, and the F4 didn’t blow, which some threads I’ve come across indicate this probably means it’s not a board issue anyway (though I’ve also read that this is an unreliable test).

I’ve traced the VIO-YEL and YEL-VIO wires all around underneath the playfield, and haven’t found anything that looks odd. I thought I’d hit upon something when I saw that the VIO-YEL wire was missing from 2J8-3, but reading here I gather that’s just an idiosyncrasy with how the high voltage is run in Rollergames.

The under-playfield fuse has never blown. I tried pulling it once and turning the machine on, thinking this would open the loop and stop the current flowing to F4, but F4 blew immediately anyway (for whatever that’s worth).

So I’m unsure where to look next. My thought was to unsolder all the coils involved and start re-adding them one at a time until the fuse blows, but with my prediction about the effect of removing the under-playfield fuse being wrong, I’m not feeling particularly confident about my understanding of the playfield wiring.

Any help is appreciated. And if someone wants to explain why 2J8-3 is empty, I’m super curious.

Thanks,
Rob

Thanks for the reply.

I went back and double checked all the coils in the path and got good resistance readings from all. Even double checked the magnet coil, though if I understand properly, I'd ruled that out by pulling it connector under the playfield where it grabs some juice from the VIO-YEL line and still had the fuse blow.

Diodes I'd failed to properly check before. I found 3 coil diodes giving me positive readings on the DMM when they shouldn't have, though I wasn't snipping an end from the board so they may be false positives. They were for Sols 1A, 2A and 8A, none of which seem related to the fuse that keeps blowing. I tried testing some of the smaller diodes, though, and found quite a few giving similar bad readings. Quite possibly a number of false positives in there as well, but a bunch were leading back from some of the special solenoids that are misbehaving. Either way, looks like I'm about to get a bit of practice replacing diodes on the Aux board.

I've got a bunch of smaller diodes lying around from other electronics projects, but none of the 1N4004s, so it's time to go shopping.

Oops....just looked at the manual....I meant MR501s, not 1N4004s

tldr; Table is working again except for the magnet. However, I messed up big time and now have a truly terrifyingly hacked aux driver board. If there is a "Wall Of Shame" thread somewhere, I really need to post a few pictures.

Diodes arrived Saturday, so I pulled the Aux Driver board and re-checked all the diodes. No surprise, I got much more reasonable readings once the board was out of the machine. D12 and D23 both looked bad, which made me suspect a faulty relay. I changed both diodes and the relay. I didn't have the right tools for desoldering a relay, but decided to press forward anyway. This was a horrible decision and I managed to destroy three of the traces leading away from the relay. Not really understanding that at the time, I put the aux board back in to find that all the C-side solenoids that had been working no longer did.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I followed the traces and soldered 3 wires into the back of the board, circumventing the damage. This fixed the C-side solenoids, so I was basically back where I started, only with an Aux Driver board that I should probably replace at some point.

I've spent the past few days poking around with a DMM, checking molex connectors, tracing and retracing the VIO-YEL wire, finding nothing obviously wrong. Finally, it occurred to me to take out the under-playfield fuse and check the resistance to ground on both sides. The side towards all the solenoids suddenly showed huge resistance, while the side towards the backbox was still down around 2 ohms. First thing up that path was the little board with a transistor that is shared with the wires leading to the magnet. I pulled the connector holding the VIO-YEL line from this board. Wouldn't you know it, I suddenly had huge resistance on that side of the fuse.

So I left that connector unplugged, replaced the under-playfield fuse, turned the table on, ran a solenoid test and everything is working beautifully (aside from the disconnected magnet).

Overall, I'm embarrassed but thrilled. I've learned more about System 11 machines in the past 6 weeks than I can say and am riding a rush of post-fix adrenaline that I'm sure many of you are familiar with.

Now on to adjusting the flipper I replaced a couple months ago and figuring out why my upper right flipper is acting janky. Oh, and replacing an under-playfield transistor, of course.

So I pulled the High Current Driver assembly and applied the DMM. I expected a shorted diode or bad transistor, but I'm getting 0.0 readings on every single component. Even the resistor is reading at ~0.0 ohms. So I'll be rebuilding the thing (though not until my desoldering gun arrives...lesson learned).

For some reason, the schematic in the manual shows no values. From the banding, I think the resistor is 220 ohms, but I'm hoping someone can confirm this. I don't exactly trust this assembly right now.