Pardon the length, but here goes...
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RCT Problem Timeline
November 2013 - Initial incident – Glass off, coin door open and my friend (who I bought the pin from) was trying to adjust the upper flipper shot and dropped a nut and at same time while using pliers, he either touched blue or yellow 'coaster' rail while adjusting the silver rail behind the right-most dummy drop target. He hear a “pop” followed by the current type of error where the system is non-functioning and unable to even boot up.
He spoke with with his pinball repair mentor who had my friend bring him the Power IO Driver board. The mentor checked the power board and said it was OK. He then had my friend bring him the CPU board. The mentor found that the U213 chip was fried and replaced it.
My Friend brought the board back and reinstalled it in the game, played 6 games on it fine. Then packed it up and brought it to me in Illinois.
We played about half of a 3-player game before the home breaker tripped. (We were having problems with a bad breaker and my daughter was running her hairdryer. The breaker has since been replaced in the intervening weeks.) We reset the breaker and were playing a 2-player game and the breaker tripped again. (Hairdryer was still running.)
We moved the game power to a different outlet on a different circuit in the basement and were able to play a full 2-player game successfully. We then opened the coin door and were going through the game adjustments when the same pop sound that my friend heard initially in November followed by the same symptoms.
My friend brought the CPU board back to Michigan with him and had his mentor look at it. He again replaced the U213 chip and everything else appeared to be fine. My friend brought it back here and we installed it back in the game. He was told by the mentor to check the voltage to the CPU board at start up. When initially powering it up, my friend tested the voltage going into the CPU board using a voltage meter and the voltage was 4.96v. We started a 2-player game and during the game, there was the “popping sound” again.
We immediately powered the game off and my friend removed the translite turned it back on and tested the voltage going into the CPU board. The multi-meter showed 7.5v and immediately turned the power off again.
My friend called the mentor and discussed the issue and he told us to pull the high voltage fuses F6, F7, F21, and F22 and test the voltage on the CPU board as we replaced the fuses one at a time shutting down between each try. The phone call lasted approximately 10 minutes. When we did the testing the voltage was at 4.96 every time again.
At this point we decided to have someone come and service the pinball all together, rather than to keep diagnosing only parts of it at a time.
I called in a local pinball repairman, (Rick's Pinball) to take a look at it and, unfortunately he could not find the issue. He brought a pair of his Sega/Stern boards (Processor was from a Viper and was a Whitestar Rev D board to my RCT's rev E board).
He put my chips on his processor board and the game functioned normally (other than the sound being garbled due to the boards not being fully compatible on the sound side).
He ended up returning my boards and chips into the game and left. I played for about 15-20 minutes right afterwards but had to cut it short due to other commitments. I played that evening for approximately 25-30 minutes before the game went out again.
I turned off the game immediately and left it off until the next day when I had visitors over who asked to see the game/see what was happening. I turned it on and, lo and behold, IT WORKED. We played for another 30 minutes or so before the issue reoccurred. I shut it down immediately again.
I left the game off until the following evening and turned it on and the game functioned normally for 27 minutes (I timed it this time) before the recurring error. On Tuesday and Wednesday I started the game up successfully and played for over 35 minutes both nights before having to shut down due to lack of time--not a glitch.
On Friday, I played the game for only 25 minutes before the glitch occurred. Unfortunately, the game is now unusable as when I turn it on, nothing comes up on the DMD (no boot messages) and the playfield lights blink on and off every second or so.
HELP!!!
MI
