Making steady progress on my Fire!. Rebuilt both flippers, replaced the slam tilt and a bunch of other stuff.

Right now I'm working on a small cluster of GI lighting in the top right of the PF. I know it's getting power because the lights will occasionally give off a very weak glow. I have replaced the bulbs and the fuses. I've checked the soldering and everything looks clean. I've also checked the connectors and everything seems fine. There is no burning or charring. I've got a DMM but am new to using it and don't know what I should do. I've checked the wiki and a tutorial video but I'm stuck.

Should I move on to "Lamp Matrix Row and Column Testing"? I've never done it before but it doesn't seem incredibly complex. I' just curious if I'm heading the the right direction with my repairs.

In addition to the lighting, I have attached two extra pictures. One is of a gray wire with yellow stripes. It ends in a connector, but I can't find anywhere to connect it! I looked through the manual and can't seem to pinpoint it's function. Anyone know what it is?

And lastly, I've included another picture showing an male connection with no wires attached. According to the manual it is the 3j7 relay control but that's all I can figure out. Should I have something connected here? Because I can't find the appropriate wire anywhere in the machine.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

SS.jpg Map.jpg wire.jpg missing.jpg

No, the knocker works just fine. I can't figure it out!

Thanks for trying though!

Progress report:

The mystery wire / connector is still a mystery. It is a grey and yellow wire sharing a connector with a black wire that has a very thin yellow stripe spiraling it. I looked on the schematics and it seems like black/yellow wires are for speakers, but the speaker wires have a different black/yellow pattern, they are black with a chunky yellow line. This mystery connector is black with a very thin line.

I dug around inside the machine some more just to be sure and I still can't find any possible connection. The wire is short, and it doesn't seem like it would be able to reach the underside of the PF. I checked the connections at the left ramp and window and fire flashers, everything seems ok. I wasn't sure if by "window" it meant the bank of windows near the middle pf, or the large building in the top center which is the "break the window!" area. I checked both and both seem ok.

**!UPDATE!**
I went back and checked again, traced the wire back to it's source. It connects to the power supply board at 3J6! It is labelled "-12V UNREG." I looked it up on the wiki but had no luck so it still hangs there forlorn.

The offending lights look to be a White wire w/ purple stripes and a solid purple wire. They are connected to the power supply board at 3J8. I did take a few pictures and when taken with a flash, the solid purple wire looks more to be blue, but that could just be the lighting. Another thing to note, is that the "dimness" seems to begin earlier in the chain than I thought.

On the middle-right side of the playfield is a small kickout for when "Tony is trapped!". The lights around that kickout are dim compared to other lights in similar areas on the board and then the next lights, being the ones located behind the upper right 3-bank are typically completely dead unless the game in in attract mode. During attract mode they are ever so slightly glowing.

I dug around some more and didn't see any missing, cracked or damaged looking solder. The wires themselves looked ok too.

I am also just now getting a message when I fireup the game or put it into diagnostics about switch 28, right horseshoe. I'm thinking that maybe I knocked something loose when lifting and lowering the PF. I'm going to inspect that now.

I have included images to illustrate what I mean. Thanks for the help guys!

Mystery.jpg Lights.jpg

I'd say progress report, but I should probably say regress report...

I've lost all GI lighting.

I went through the machine, starting at the backbox, following the white/violet wires. I checked every connection along the way and they all looked good. The soldering was good (as far as I know, I'm new to soldering) and I unplugged each connector, checked them for cracks and damage and then plugged them back together one at a time. There were no cracks or burns.

The only issue I noticed was a bit puzzling. There were two ends of the white/violet wire soldered to the left flipper, at the same spot as the diode on the EOS. I was curious because I was under the impression that these wires were used exclusively for lighting. The wires soldered to the flipper were barely attached so I re-soldered them in place.

After finishing my checkup, I folded down the PF and fired it up only to discover that the GI lighting was not operating at all! When activating the GI through diagnostics mode, i heard the normal "click click" sound it makes when it turns the GI on and off, but the lights didn't function. I have now gone through the connections twice to make sure I didn't miss anything and I can;t for the life of me find any disconnects or loose connectors.

Okay, I took some pics to get things rolling.

I also installed a new display and it is great! Although now that my P1 is fixed, I can see that credit dot staring me in the face, haha.

Anyway, what I did was take a series of pics following the trail of the violet and white/violet wires. I'll try to do this in order.

Pic1: My new display!

Pic2: White/violet wire comes from power board and passes through the far left fuse in the cluster of 4 fuses. From there it travels down and over toward the MPU

Pic3: Closeup of power board and fuses

Pic4: Another closeup of fuses

Pic5: wire connects to mpu (third connector from left) then travels down into the cabinet

Pic6: Wire connection inside the cabinet (pf turned up).

(continued in next post)

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Pic7: Wires pass behind PF and attach to playfield.

**Here is where the paths diverge, I will be following the right-hand pf path first.**

Pic8: This is the top-right portion of the PF. The three lights there are located just to the left of the skill-shot target.

Pic9:These are part of the offending lights. It is located near the top of the PF, to the right of the small horseshoe and behind the 3 bank right-side targets.

Pic10: I believe these are the two lights located under the "rescue victim" ramp.

Pic11: I believe that single light there is located just above the right-side kickout hole. Some purple wiring is also connected at that board.

Pic12: The end of the line for the right-side PF, these wires connect near the lower right 3-bank.

That's it for now. I'm going to go take pictures of the left side now. Let me know if any of this helps or if theres something specific I should take a picture of. I've been re-checking connections (4th time now!) as I go through and take photos.

Thanks!

7.jpg 8.jpg 9.jpg 10.jpg 11.jpg 12.jpg

Gentlemen we have lights again!

So i was poking around, wiggling the connector like you suggested when I realized something!

Prior to the lighting issue, I had replaced all the fuses in the machine. I took great care to replace them with the correct fuses, following the schematics and the paper notices inside the machine.

To the left of the power supply are two fuses in a small black holder. The fuses that were in there looked to be about 4 amp but the paperwork says they require .25amp.

So of course I just replaced them with .25a fuses!

On a whim I pulled the .25a fuses and replaced them with the old ones. BOOM, the lights fired right up!

The upper right-side lighting is still not functioning though. (pictures 8-11)

Also, if anyone needs a system11 display with a blown P1 glass let me know!

More troubles!

I've been digging around more, trying to figure out this lighting issue with no success. The wires are sound, the connections arent burnt and the soldering looks good. I'm completely lost.

To add to the despair, I had a U10 PIA error pop up twice over the past 6 or 7 power-ups. I have looked this up and it appears to be a pretty frightening fix!

Ack! I just gave it to someone else! Sorry!

Another realization...

Since the gi lighting issue was fixed with a fuse, is there a possibility a fuse is also the culprit for my current issues?

I went back and checked all the fuses (AGAIN!) and realized that I replaced fuses f3 and f4 with 8 and 4 volt slo-blo fuses, but it does not indicate that they should be slo-blo's. could this be causing my problems? Have I done something terribly dangerous?