Hi

I have a STTNG that I picked up us a project and have it almost all working. If I go into test modes everything seems to work fine, the game seems to play fine, but I have two oddities.

1. Sometimes in a multiball mode the ball can end even if there is a ball (or more then one) on the playfield still. I'm guessing this is an erratic opto in the trough so am trying to track that down. May be related to problem 2, but not sure.

2. This is the one that stumps me. If you choose Lock from your skill shot selection and launch the ball the following happens:

-Single Target Drops, Ball 1 goes in and says Ball 1 is locked
-Ball 2 loads, Single Target goes up. When you launch ball 2, Single Target drops (not falls, but is forced down) and Ball 2 locks
- Ball 3 acts just like ball 2
- Multiball starts immediately.

I don't have a lot of experience playing a STTNG, but I am guessing this is not normal operation. In the test modes I can put the single target up and down without problems, and it seems to be ok the rest of your game, but will drop whenever you launch a ball.

I'm suspecting it may be a diode on one of those switches, but really not sure.

Any ideas of what to check or if anyone has seen this before I'd appreciate the advice!

Thanks,

Greg

Thanks Zaza. I have tested them rolling a ball through, but will test them more thoroughly one at a time by blocking them.

I may just replace them if need be to see if that fixes it. I just wasn't sure if there was something else I should be looking at too.

Greg

Phatchit, any idea who has the updated boards right now? I checked a few places and they are out of stock.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll reflow the opto boards tonight or tomorrow and also go through the switch test again and check the switches and optos out some more.

Funny thing is my wife says it's working perfectly and doesn't want me to change it

Hi Snux,

It's not just the skill shot option is there. It's that after you choose to get a lock from the skill shot the machine keeps locking balls until multiball starts.

Problems solved.

OK, so it was two problems. The game ending on multiball and some of the odd behavior was a problem with the trough optos. One was apparently partially broken on the inside so vibration would make it intermittent. Replaced it, soldered all the others and resistors, and repined the connector and that's all good.

The problem with the multiball starting up after you locked the first ball (kept firing balls into the lock) turned out to be the length of the switch arm. I guess someone (maybe me?) had replaced the switch at one time and it was cut 1/16" to long. During the test modes where you are just going up and down, etc it worked fine and everything tested fine. During the game (finally caught it and figured it out), when the reset-plate went up to lock the drop up, it could fall and catch the switch arm slightly which would cause it to make contact and then bounce up essentially indicating a drop target, but then it'd lose contact. Apparently the code would drop the drop target and start the next lock. Honestly I think it's a bug in the code because there is no reason to force the drop down if the switch indicated a drop, but whatever.

Anyway, it's fixed and thanks to all the suggestions to check out that switch even closer. I kept coming back to it and finally figured it out so it's all working 100%. Time to add it to the list to be torn apart and cleaned

Greg