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Thanks Gnatty, Ill check that out, my pops all of a sudden went out so I will be looking closely at them. -Nate

I'm going in for GI connector surgery on my space station. Pretty sure trouble is at the molex... a 4 pin connector behind the playfield connecting to the back box. I in process of redoing the power board molex and fuse block connectors...all very crispy. Tough to get one hand on nevermind two....these connectors wayyy in back of the cabinet.

Before I get into a potential messy situation and fight with wifey can the club please recommend some sanity saving tips on how to pull out the entire playfield? I found a brief video on actually removing the pf but how do you actually unhook the many connectors behind the playfield? There is at least 6 I think... I have never pulled a SS playfield! It is time to get arms deep! Thanks!

Just removed my taxi not long ago.

Just disconnect the appx 6-8 board connectors that run from pf to backbox. Take a few pics or label.

Then have a buddy help you pull it straight out.

It was my first and like you I was apprehensive. It was a piece of cake.

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That looks great but you need a couple of double spot lights to light up those dark spots.

Looks great.

Picking up a police force tomorrow.

Anyone know what the topper does? (Beside light up). Is that it? Does it at least blink?!

Thanks Blackbeard. Just gonna have to give'r eh? I got a few connectors off one handed then chickened out cause we want to play it tomorrow! So some emerg connection replacements in the back box and fuse blocks and now we are back to the left hand side GI fully working and nothing on the playfield right. No coin door lights, and now no pop bumper lights also? Geeezz....Looks much brighter though the bulbs that are lit! I think i'll start a new thread.

For those in the know: Is there one wire or two wire main power "feed" from the backbox to the playfield GI? One wire for right side (white w yellow dash) one wire for left (white w violet dash). ....??? 2 wires is my theory judging from following them all the way from the power board 3j10 pins 9 and 8. I still suspect the 4pin molex connector I mentioned in my above post but I wiggled it a lot and did not get any flicker of bulbs ...on either side of playfield.
?? This is on my Space Station. Cheers, john

I figured out that the white w green dash powers the translite backlighting. The white w purple dash powers left playfield GI, I thought white w yellow powers the right side GI but I need to get into the molex connection with my dmm and it is very hard to get in there...tomorrow's job.

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Don't worry it looks nothing like the TNT video #491.

Flashes on startup and when you lock a ball in the police car. Playfield blacks out and everything flashes when you start multiball

Just getting started, what a fun game, better than I remembered.

There's also a relay if memory serves, I think it's connected under the playfield, I had to clean my pins on it really well and replace the connector on it I believe... It's been a few years though

Looking for some troubleshooting advice on Diner. As I step through the single lamp test, whenever I light any lamp on any row, the lamp from that row, column 5 will light along with it.
Example:
If I light anything from Row 2, Babs will also light (Babs is row 2, column 5)
If I light anything from Row 3, Boris will also light with it (Boris is row 3, column 5).

At first I thought maybe I had an unintentional wiring connection, but it seems so consistent.
Any suggestions on where to look?

"Before I get into a potential messy situation and fight with wifey can the club please recommend some sanity saving tips on how to pull out the entire playfield?"

BCPinhead. You can actually remove the pf with all of the wiring attached. There should be enough wiring to allow you to remove the pf and set it down directly next to the cabinet. I restored a Taxi, and found that this was easy to do.

-Nate

Like this: It's generally a two person job, but I can manage it all alone. There is plenty of slack from the wiring harness.

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Sign me up! if this is still going
New to the game, but loving my F-14 lots

Such a cool iconic brutally hard game. I have never had a game on one that lasted more than 3 min

That's why I sold mine, no body liked it except me

Nate and Blackbeard, thanks so much for that confidence booster and picture. I think I can handle that. Exciting to think I may be able to get deeper into this frustrating GI problem.

Re: f14 yeah, nobody likes getting laughed at here and consequently low plays from the kids and my wife, but I had a game on it recently and scored an amazing (for me) 2.5 million...before that I had barely cracked a million, but once you get the beacons going it really is such an exciting game. Still not enough score to make it into the high scores tho

Sure no problem.

"Still not enough score to make it into the high scores tho ....."

Just go into the menu and reset the scores!

Good luck on your lamp problem, you probably have something on the board to replace, I just had an issue with Taxi and (although ultimately, I just sent it out for repairs) found this site very helpful. I was able to run some tests and zero in on the problem.

http://techniek.flipperwinkel.nl/wms11/index2.htm#lamp

Happy Holidays everyone -

Nate

F14 is such a love/hate for me. The games are quick no matter what. My best score so far is 4.5 million. Its really about getting the bonus multiplier to 8x and maxing out the bonus. Being able to hit the fighter bonus helps too, but I find it near impossible, it seems like I always end up hitting another ball and it bouncing out of the way. So then I try to save the balls on the right flipper and play only 1 ball. That usually ends up with me losing all the balls with little score.

Even with all of that, there is something so satisfying about having the ball kicked out hard at the flippers.

My pops died suddenly on Taxi, everything wired correctly, I re-built these. What should I look for? I was getting a switch error on Jet Bumper in diagnostics but I can't see anything wrong?!?!?!

Arrrrgh! Got my board fixed, now this!!!

I'm not familiar with the schematics of taxi considering I've not had one but I had the upper set die on whirlwind. Find out what transistors controls them. One of them has probably shorted. If so it has probably blow the fuse causing none of them to work. I keep TIP122 on hand. It is a very common transistor.

thanks jmountjoy111, I am checking this out sometime soon, I just had the board worked on and tested so I'm hoping it is now just a fuse, forgot to check them (doh!).

-Nate

My left pop on pinbot will die after about 5 games, stay dead for a bit, then come back on, then go out again. It's really strange

Did you check the wires connected to the selonid that drive the pop? Sounds like a loose wire somewhere.

Can also be bad soldering somewhere, resolder everything.

I'll have to recheck the wiring

Sounds like a bad solder joint. Seems to start after the game is on and heated up.

I resoldered everything and so far so good!! Thank you! I'm glad it wasn't in the boards

Hey Dudes,

Looking for some custom cards for the following Sys 11 machines.

Riverboat Gambler
Police Force
Radical
Bad Cats

Anyone have some they have done.

I'd love riverboat and police force too!

Might have to pimp someone to handle theSe.

Radical is out there, I'll look around again

Ahhh... Found it

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/any-radical-custom-pricingrules-cards

Thanks. Printed.

I don't know about these titles but several others can be found here
http://www.pinballcards.com

He has a Tomcat F14 and Whirlwind He may do others for a donation, He has at least one more request for Bad Cats

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinballcardscom-custom-instruction-cards

Okay need some tech help and figured here would be best to ask. Having substantial power issues with my space station lately, not sure why, yet.

Background:

I fixed a leg on my plasma screen that was semi broken off. I turned the machine back on and the 0.25 (1/4) amp fuse would blow. I have tried other power supplies and all seem to blow my 0.25 amp fuses (dang i need more!). I can take my 11a power supply and put it in my millionaire (F-14 is non-operational) and it fires up fine and powers the display (I will confirm this again tonight to be 100% sure).

Last night however I decided to take my LED screen and pop it in. Well good news, no 0.25 fuse blown BUT my flippers don't work. so for some reason high power isn't getting out. All other solenoids fire, game starts fine and lights are all on including the low power LED screen. The plasma screen worked fine before except I had one segment out on 2 of the screens due to a busted leg I soldered back into place, I was just powering it up to make sure it worked.

Testing the screen on another game is not an option right now either. F-14 is dead and millionaire won't display anything with it since it's not the same screen as millionaire needs.

I have a few questions:

1) When the 0.25 amp fuse blows does it damage any other parts such the transistors?
2) Why would the fuse blow when a plasma screen is connected? Is it simply the higher power draw?
3) Is this likely interconnect related? I checked a bunch of the fuses on there... all fine.
4) What else should I troubleshoot that won't cost me more 0.25 amp fuses. I need to buy more first

I will continue investigating but figured you guys might have ideas that save me A LOT of time. Thanks for any and all input.

It should not, thats why its there.

Yes, could have a bad display or when you fixed the leg its shorted to another.

No.

You can work on your flippers. Start by checking for DC power on the flipper coils.

Yeah I have donated for some of his other titles. So at some point I will make a request and donated for the couple I still need.

thanks

Thanks grumpy. I checked and the flippers for sure do have power.

I actually swapped the board for a rottendog one i had sitting around and it fires up fine.

I am just looking into what could be wrong on the board but a visual shows me no sign of problems. What else would cause a whole bunch of coils to stop being able to fire? Both flippers, the bumps i believe don't work and some other ones. I doubt every transistor was fried (although it is possible)...

Which board did you swap?

Which coils don't fire, now they do fire with the new board?

Highly unlikely, maybe header pins.

I swapped the CPU board, sorry should have specified.

I'll go out and check. The ones that didn't fire that I know for sure were

Bumpers
Flippers
Kickers

I believe that was it, it goes through test pretty fast so I didn't have time to see them all lol

Could the coils that didn't work be special solenoids 5 and 6. Lock the middle button down to repeat test. Use left button to advance one solenoid at a time when the middle button is locked down.

No Idea. The manual says the bumpers are special solenoids for sure.

I am just not sure what to do. I'm super confused. Obviously it's a CPU board issue but that's all I seem to know hah.

Page 28 of the manual shows you the name and number of each coil. Its important to know exactly which coils don't work. If it's all six special solenoids and the flippers then you should check U-56. If it's just special solenoids 5 and 6 and the flippers then check U-50.

dead solenoids are ,17,18,19,20,21,22 and flippers. 100% sure of this. I pulled a U-56 from another board and swapped it with no change. I am not certain if the chip i pulled from the other board is good or not as it was from an acid damage board (chip was clean though) and who the heck knows what someone did there. However I will find another board tonight, pull another U-56 and give it a shot. I don't think my rottendog boards have any comparables I could pull and use. The board I am working on has U-54 and U-56 socketed though, seems like they had previous issues with this board at one point in time.

I kind of know what you're looking at so I will give the manual a look over again and see what else I should look at. If you have any other tips if my U-56 somehow IS good, feel free to fire them. Otherwise thanks for your help this has been a fun learning experience and most appreciated.

So i pulled a bunch of chips off another board. I replaced U49, U50 and U56. I now get power to everything. Problem is fuses 3 and 4 on the interconnect board fry as soon as I power on because the kickers are locked on so there is still a problem there. I see according to pinwiki that U45 powers those coils so I will give that a look.

Flippers now work fine with no issues however. I could play a game right now, it might be a little easy though haha.

Ideas otherwise?

If the flippers are fine now, then U-56 was bad. I don't think you should have changed U-49 and U-50 with out testing them.

There still is a problem, but you may have caused it by installing a bad U-50 chip. Do you have a logic probe?

Nope but I will look into getting a logic probe.

I replaced U56 first like you had asked and there was no change at all. So I kept going backwards through the circuit until I got stuff working. According to Pinwiki U56 doesn't power any special solonoids, U49 does the flippers (which now work). U45 does the remaining special solenoids. Are they perhaps mistaken? They have a "special solenoid logic flow" workflow.

Regardless all of this on the board in question is socketed so someone had issues at some point.

If you plan on repairing your own boards this a great tool and cheap to buy.

I asked you to test it, not replace it. They way you described your problem I would have checked U-56 pins 5 and 6. If that checked good I would have checked U-50 pins 8-13. One of these was your problem.

I don't know I have never read it, I'm just going by the factory schematics in front of me. There are 4 pages just for the CPU and if you look on page 1 lower right corner you will see U-56 sending a signal to both the flippers and the special solenoids.

U-50 is a nor chip that has four logic gates in it and the board uses all four. When using an unknown old chip you don't know if it 100% without testing it. Lets say the original U-50 had a bad output on pin 13 causing all of the special solenoids and the flippers to not work. Then you replaced it with a used chip with pins 1 and 4 bad, now your flippers work and special solenoids 1-4 work but 5-6 are locked on blowing fuses.
Since they are socketed you need to inspect the previous work done on U-50 and may as well just replace the chips with new as these are inexpensive.