(Topic ID: 147616)

Star Trek pro auto launch

By Barry1

8 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 14 posts
  • 9 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 8 years ago by Pin_Guy
  • Topic is favorited by 1 Pinsider

You

Linked Games

#1 8 years ago

Hi, I'm new to the forum and to pinball ownership generally. I bought a new Star Trek pro recently - yesterday the game started launching balls on its own. The punch button seems to be working normally during play, but at the start of a new ball it seems as if the button is pressed and you never get to use the plunger. Does anyone have any idea what might be happening?

#2 8 years ago

How many balls are installed in the game?

#3 8 years ago

I followed the set-up instructions to the letter and installed 4

#4 8 years ago

Switch test - roll a ball down the shooter lane to the launcher. Does the shooter lane switch close and stay closed. Not sticking or anything ?

LTG : )™

#5 8 years ago

Does the Vengeance register a hit at the same time?

#6 8 years ago

There is a setting #49 to auto launch ball. Check that too if is OFF or no.

#7 8 years ago

Thanks guys, I tried as you suggest and found no problems. Strangely, the problem went away today without my intervention, which leaves me wondering what to do about an intermittent fault like this. I will sit back and see if it reappears and might have to call the local service guy and see if he has a magic fix. After shipping from Chicago to Australia and then a 2,500 Km road trip in a truck it's probably worth having someone give it a once-over.

Super exclusive ad from the Pinside Marketplace!
#8 8 years ago

Check the molex connectors on the 2 ball trough connectors. (One one each side) for the optos.
On ST. They come loose and cause all sorts of wierd problems with the launcher and other opto switches that register the balls.

Make sure they are plugged in tight.
They really seem to get issues coming loose if you have a shaker installed.

I put a dab of hot glue on mine. No issues since.

#9 8 years ago
Quoted from Barry1:

Thanks guys, I tried as you suggest and found no problems. Strangely, the problem went away today without my intervention, which leaves me wondering what to do about an intermittent fault like this. I will sit back and see if it reappears and might have to call the local service guy and see if he has a magic fix. After shipping from Chicago to Australia and then a 2,500 Km road trip in a truck it's probably worth having someone give it a once-over.

This is a switch, connector, or opto problem.
Reseat EVERY IDC.
No problem just "goes away".
Either something is loose, misaligned, or malfunctioning in the ball trough.

Give a little time the problem will "magically return" if you do not find it due to game play vibration.

1 month later
#10 8 years ago

Wow, thanks for all the advice. Since my last post I have been away from home for a few weeks. Now the machine is really doing strange things intermittently, with random lights not working and ramps not registering balls. I tried to download the game code thinking it might be at fault, but that's another problem altogether - nothing I can do will uncompress the file and I'm wondering if the code on the Stern website is buggy. If anyone has advice on this it would also be very helpful, but I should try to deal with one problem at a time - I just haven't worked out what the problem actually is just yet! Thanks for your help guys.

#11 8 years ago
Quoted from Barry1:

Wow, thanks for all the advice. Since my last post I have been away from home for a few weeks. Now the machine is really doing strange things intermittently, with random lights not working and ramps not registering balls. I tried to download the game code thinking it might be at fault, but that's another problem altogether - nothing I can do will uncompress the file and I'm wondering if the code on the Stern website is buggy. If anyone has advice on this it would also be very helpful, but I should try to deal with one problem at a time - I just haven't worked out what the problem actually is just yet! Thanks for your help guys.

The problems have "magically returned".

Stern's website code is not buggy, unless you count the fact that do not spend the time they should updating games. That I would agree with completely.
It is not the the game code, unless you have some type of corruption from a downloaded game file.
Are you familiar with how to update your game?
Based on your statements, this does not look favorable.
Did you already attempt to do it or have already done it once?

If you have not already reseated ALL the connectors on the MPU, do it, one at at time.
Make sure you are GROUNDED.
Turn the game OFF first before doing this step, please.
Physically REMOVE the connector and reconnect, not just "push it in".

Something from the wire harness is loose, because you have multiple problems reported from different areas such as feature playfield insert lights and the switch matrix which are are not normally related, unless driven from a mode.
Even if it is not the problem, this is part of the first steps to check if there are problems.

It is hard to diagnose with minimal information and a lot of chaos.
You need to start doing operator tests on the switch matrix and playfield features next.

#12 8 years ago

I don't think you unzip the game code file you download from Stern. It should be a BIN file that you put straight onto a usb driver. There are other threads and youtube vids on how to update code. I only did it once and it was pretty straightforward. It just takes a really, really long time to update the game for some reason.

#13 8 years ago

Jawjaw is correct - I didn't have to unzip the code at all. I downloaded it and did the reinstall without any problem - apart from the fact that the auto launch problem persists, albeit intermittently. Today the machine didn't play properly even once, while yesterday it was fine about 20% of the time. I think it's time to start looking at connectors. The guy who sold me the machine (Australian Stern agent/importer) suggested it might be the leaf Spring under the punch button but I have ruled it our quite easily by turning this setting to "disable" in the machine adjustments and trying the game with the lockdown bar removed. I also bent the leaf Spring apart slightly to ensure it wasn't closed during the test. This is so horribly annoying. I bought this as my first machine so that I would not inherit someone else's problems , but it turns out I bought brand new ones of my own.

#14 8 years ago
Quoted from Barry1:

The punch button seems to be working normally during play, but at the start of a new ball it seems as if the button is pressed and you never get to use the plunger.

This can happen if any playfield switch closes from the vibrations of the ball ejecting to the playfield, the game basically sees a playfield hit which means there is a ball in play and sees a ball in the launcher so it kicks it back into play. I had a similar problem on my LE which was also intermittent. On my machine the problem was the Vengeance drop target falling without being hit.

Promoted items from the Pinside Marketplace
$ 27.00
Cabinet - Other
Pin Monk
Other

Reply

Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.

Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!

Donate to Pinside

Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!


This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/star-trek-pro-auto-launch and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.

Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.