if you toss a ball into the saucer is the switch registering?
switch test vs edge test with no ball in the game are switches registering that shouldnt? what about when you click a saucer do extra switches fire indicating a matrix issue?

when you manually fire the coils shorting out the transistor tab . OR you are in coil test and a ball is in the saucer, will it kick the ball out of the saucer if you put it there prior to the test?

are you running proto roms? or release roms?

With all balls out of the machine.. What switches register?
With all balls in the machine what switches register.

It could be argued that rev 1 ROMs are the same as proto ROMs. Considering the last ROM rev for SS was L7 it *could* be a SW bug (though I am skeptical.) You can upgrade - it won't hurt to do so and might help. Probably not a lot of people with L1 ROMs in their SSs posting here that can confirm this behavior.

viperrwk

yea Im stumped - by bruit force I would just flash the roms to eliminate anything .. I swear that I had P roms in my SS when i got it but .. (my sys9 was dead cold when I got it) so before I ever booted it the first time I had allready burned "known good L7 roms"

it sounds like its all there and working. after a eeprom flash my only next logical step would be a leon and start probing all PIA's hunting for the ghost.

did you measure voltages on the coil +? and ohm out the resistor tab to ground?

Also, play a game and get a ball locked then immediately go into test mode and see if the switch is registering.

viperrwk

this is fun.. wish i was closer to poke at it..
measure voltages on the coil +? and ohm out the resistor tab to ground?

Well I just ran a quick test of the L-3 ROMs and they don't have a problem loading the next ball after locking each of the first two, so it certainly is not a ROM issue for this version or later. That's not to say it isn't a bug in the earlier version. If I had the L-1 version I would test it but L-3 is as far back as I've found.

Is it possible the ball is sitting wrong in the saucer sometimes not registering a switch closure? I don't think this is the answer myself since the machine saw the ball sitting in the switch right after you locked it, but figure it is worth a mention.

viperrwk

The eject hole transistors and eject/saucer hole coils.

This may or may not help you.

I recently replaced a lock switch in FP (it's a different switch than SS.)

After installing, the switch would register fine with my finger and *almost* all the time rolling a ball in it by hand but in game it was only working about 50% of the time.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the switch - which I got from Marco - has shorter leaves than the switch I replaced. What it meant was that the nylon nub which sticks out of the lock saucer was not in the center, or sticking up as far as it needed. I needed to tweak the mounting of the switch as well as adjust the leaves and even then, sometimes the ball will go in the lock and not get kicked out unless the machine is nudged to trip the switch.

If the switches have been replaced you may want to inspect where the trigger tab is in relation to the center of the saucer.

Unfortunately, Marco was the only one that had this switch.

viperrwk

SSCN5879.JPG

I just tried this on my Shuttle. Mine does kick a ball as expected, but if i put it back in the trough I get these results:

24 - Right eject hole (lock)
12- Lower ball trough (ramp in the manual)
11 - Middle ball trough

12 is the switch closest to the shooter lane. If I push the two remaining balls back up the ramp so they close 11 and 10, then lock a ball, I see the exact same issue you are seeing. No coil fires in an attempt to kick another ball into the shooter lane, and the game just sits there.

My guess is an issue with switch 12, or maybe the tip of the ball eject cam is blocking the other two balls from coming down the ramp and closing 12. FWIW, I had the same cam issue on a T2 where it wouldn't eject extra balls at the beginning of multiball, but otherwise worked fine. The slot in the cam had worn so the tip protruded into the trough just enough for the balls to get hung up.

Congrats!
That's a tough one to find/fix. Glad you got it sorted.

viperrwk

Great job!

Sheesh, previous owners sure do some weird things. When I got my Space Shuttle, the previous owner had shorted two row lines (or column -- don't remember which) together -- the one with the coin sensor, and the one with the start button -- I assume so that the game would coin up when pressing the start button -- some sort of hacked free play setting. Apparently he did not know how to turn on free play in the game adjustments, so hacked the game wiring instead.

So there were lots of 'additional' switch closures anytime a switch registered on that row. It took me a few days to find that one.

Nice work my friend, looking forward to coming over to play it today. Post them some pics of this fully restored game. Looks amazing!

Was this the one at Allentown? I saw that problem there- it was a head scratcher. Still a pretty sweet deal even with the spare parts you had to order, with its brand new playfield and all. Have fun!

Thought I'd posted last night... Anyhow, congratulations! Shuttle is an awesome game. I just got mine working too.

Posting another resolution to this, in case anyone else has this problem. We were having the same issue, except that it seemed to be intermittent--sometimes it worked fine, other times it didn't.

For us, it turned out that the ball feed for the shooter lane was getting jammed, so it wasn't feeding the ball correctly. So the game didn't have a new ball to put into play and just sat there. The coil assembly for the ball feed was loose under the playfield--just needed to tighten the screws, and all was good.

Moral of the story for us: check the mechanicals before jumping to electrical as the problem!