Hey guys I have a Model S Skee Ball that keeps popping the F-1 fuse. I was trying to wire up a credit switch when the green and red wires on the old coin mech wire harness touched each other when the game was on. Checked the fuse and replaced it, however when you plug it in, the fuse pops. The display doesn't light up but the three flashers at the top stay steadily lit. Obviously when the wires touched it shorted something out on the board but any ideas where to start? I did check the the other two fuses on the board and they are ok, the 1 and 2 amp ones. Its the 10 amp fuse that is blowing.

I actually isolated just the board and the display and the resistor next to the big capacitor gets very hot

It says 5 ohms on it and memcore on the bottom.. I tried looking up a replacement but can't find anything that is 5 ohms. See picture for the resistor in question.

Yup (resized).jpg

can anyone take a picture of how their rocker style linkage is hooked up. Mainly the rod that runs from the actuator to the linkage?

Also looking for pictures how they wired up their credit button, especially the wiring

Thank you so much!!! This is a huge help. Looks like I am missing the solenoid control rod and end connector only. Shouldn't be hard to fabricate something to work.

As for the board issue, I have actually gotten it back to booting up. The resistor I mentioned tested ok, however it was a 5 ohm resistor when in fact there should be a 10 ohm in place, however that wasn't the issue. There was a bad diode near the 5 volt regulator that needed replaced. Once I replaced that, the game went back to booting right up. However something is still wrong. Only one LED on the board lights up, the other two don't light up. If I manually coin up the board with all the wiring disconnected to elimate any wiring causing the issue, the board resets. I am in email correspondence with a person that repairs these boards and worked for skee ball repairing the boards. I have tested the two triacs on the board with strange results, one triac shows ol between two legs but gives a reading when I reverse the test leads. The other triac gives reading between the two same legs regardless of which test lead is where so there may be an issue with one of the triac circuits or both. I have to go home later tonight and test 12 blocking diodes on the right side of the board.

When I test the 12 volt test spot on the board, it shows nothing. Not sure if this is normal or not. Maybe the 12 volts isn't supposed to get to that section on the board unless the game is coined up or started. All this electronic stuff is new and very confusing to me but I have been trying to learn what I can. Either way, I am one step closer to hopefully getting this resolved. Thanks again for the input, it will be very valuable to me in getting this thing working for the wife

LateCenturyMods

Giving you an update.... I have been talking via email with someone who knows the model S boards well and suggested I look at a section of diodes on the board. I found one bad diode in this section of the board and replaced it. Game still does not coin up with the coin switch or free play button. If I remove the switch connector J-9 from the board and manually jump pins (from left to right) 2 & 5, it credits the game up, I hear the ball solenoid energize and it plays the start up tune and all 0's on the board stop rotating and stay constantly lit.

If I jump pins 3 & 4 with the J-9 connector removed, the score adds up 10 points each time the pins are jumped. I plugged J-9 back into the board while I was in the middle of a game to test the scoring switches. All switches register something however they appear to be giving strange values. For instance the bottom 10 point hole is registering 30 points, the 20 point hole is registering 40 points. I don't know the exact values the other ones are registering but I can check when I get home. The game appears to end after 9 balls are tossed up as the score stays lit solid and won't increase any if anymore balls are thrown. I did forget to mention I removed the ball rocker and linkage so basically the balls just rolls back down to the player all the time. I even tried thinking the game might not start without it seeing a ball activating the ball count switch but activating that switch and coining it up also did nothing.

So my issues now are, the game won't start with either the coin switch or the free play button. The only way to start a game is to jump those pins on the pcb like I said. Also the scoring switches appear to be giving out wrong values.

Any suggestions on what to do next?

Thanks for the suggestion, I actually got it up and running 100% last night. I had to trace the coin switch wiring to the board and found out that my game doesn't match what is shown in the model s wiring diagrams. Not sure wire but anyone, once I found what wires went to the coin switch at the board and traced them back to where they went, the game now starts with the free play button.

As for the scoring issue you also were correct. I noticed if i triggered the switches manually by hand that they would add up in increments of 10 but if the ball rolled through them it would give incorrect scoring. The problem was the switches that I replaced had longer contacts then the ones that were on there. When the ball rolled past, it would bend the metal arm back so far it would kinda catapult back and forth a few times registering points each time. Trimming the switch arm length and bending them to adjust them a little fixed this issue as well. They now all score 10 points like they should.