Look out!

Hey guys, just picked up my first Taxi last weekend. I'm in the club!!

Set a personal High Score the other day on Factory Settings - 7.2 million!!

I do have a question for some of you more experienced Taxi owners... I've got an issue with it not saving High Scores, and occasionally it will show "Factory Reset" on boot. About every third time, I just get lights and blank display. Power it off and on again, and it's fine except for the noted "Factory Reset" message about once a week. The machine was recently shopped, and looks to have a new power control board installed. Everything works great, and I'm no stranger to working on my own machines, so any tips would be great!

Hey thanks singlebanana!

It just came back from the shop, with a new battery holder and power supply. At some point, I will move it off the board, but this was all just done within the last couple months - everything looks and tests out clean at this point. I've got a perfectly functioning 11b right next to it (Police Force) and I'm double checking every reading on that machine as a benchmark.

It boots up correctly 9/10 times, then it will randomly drop everything and reset. I've tested the batteries, the holder, the connection at the board - it seems like more of a ROM glitch than anything else, but I'm still testing and working thru stuff. It goes thru the CPU and Sound tests every time without a hitch, though...

I think I've figured it out!!

I just *knew* this wasn't a battery/board corrosion thing!! Well sure enough, I traced the grn/brn line, which is the interrupted ground trigger for the score reset, and well... looky here!

2014-04-25 16.37.36.jpg

Yep, that's the reset wire in question, hanging off the reset switch. Now the random nature of the resets make perfect sense... whenever the cab got nudged or bumped during a game, the wire would ground out on the coin door, thereby completing the circuit to reset the HS. Next game - all the scores are gone and replaced with factory defaults.

I just ran two games that got me on the leaderboard, so I'll make sure they "stick" and that this was, in fact, the issue. I can't imagine it wasn't, since everything else was testing out fine, including the CPU and Sound ROMS.

Pshew! I wish they were all this easy.

Yes sir! You've got one heck of a collection yourself there singlebanana!! We should get together one of these days, I've got a couple pinhead friends of mine that get together regularly and smack some silver balls around. I'm so stoked to have Taxi in my collection, it's one of my all time faves and a real "period" game for me, since it was new and all over the place my freshman and sophomore years of high school. Pin*Bot, SS, Whirlwind - all time favorites of mine!!

Thanks! Pretty much anything Williams from 84-91 is good with me!!

Looks like that was the problem. I dropped two high scores before dinner, turned it off, and just went to check it and they are still there. Life is good. Now, I just gotta get or beat 7.2 mils again so it'll stick on the board!!!

I set the special to give an extra ball. Since it's free play, credits mean nothing and Taxi can be kinda stingy on the EB's!

Hey question for the Taxi owners out there -

Anyone else ever have an issue with the ball getting stuck just to the left of the "C" rollover lane? Sometimes after it pops out of the spinout, it gets hung up between the Gorby Gate and that top star post rubber on the top of the "C" rollover. It's a PITA - and it's happening about 1/5 balls launched. It'll get stuck good enough I end up tilting it about 75% of the time trying to knock it back into play.

Any thoughts? If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. I'm going to pull the glass and go in there and see if there anything I can do to tweak it.

Next time it sticks, I'll grab a shot with my camera. I spent some time playing with it last night, turns out when I moved Taxi over into that corner of my living room, it hit a high spot on the right hand side of the floor. It was several degrees off level, so I tweaked the legs and got it back in line. I'll play some more today and see if it is still a problem. It just wasn't rolling back down off that little wire guide before the Gorby/Santa gate and the "C" rollover. If you look up there, you can see there's a wireform to prevent it from sticking there. On a weak kickout from the spinout kicker, it would go back towards the gate, slowly start to roll towards the "C" rollover and then hang right there on the left upper corner.

Yeah if it does it again, I'll grab one. I just re-leveled and played 3-4 games it rolled right back down that wire guide like it's supposed to. I did just recently clean/wax/plexus the whole playfield last week. As it happens, the left side ramp switch (ball release) wire pulled off while I was replacing the plastics yesterday, so I'm going to have to pull that ramp and re-solder the leads to the switch box later on. I'll go back there and super-wax that lane again while I'm at it!

Thanks mof!

Heck I just picked mine up last month - fully shopped, new rubbers, rebuilt coils, new battery holder and some minor corrosion repair, with a missing Lola plastic and a cracked departure ramp - for $1000. Original playfield with some minor wear, but I kinda like that on an old original Sys11 table. I've put about $300 into new ramps, replacement plastics, and some small upgrades, and I've got a killer, 100% functional Taxi for under $1500. Cab is one of the best original jobs I've ever seen, hardly any fade or scratches, it looks incredible.

Unless you are having a *real* hard time finding a Taxi, I'd pass or negotiate that deal down significantly.

Yeah, that's just a standard wood screw in there with a washer under it. Nothing too crazy. I had to replace mine with a slightly thicker thread, due to a previous owner over-tightening it and stripping out the threads in the wood. Re-tapped with a larger diameter wood screw, and she's good as new.

You *are* going with the blue spinout ramp, blue flipper rubbers and pop bumper caps, right? :p

Yo, Blue Taxi!!

I've put several LEDs in my Taxi... Mostly just inserts. The GI just doesn't look right to me with LEDs - I had to pull them out. I did put some warm frosted LEDs underneath the ramps, because going in there is a total PITA and not something I care to do to replace a single incandy bulb every few months.

However, putting a green LED under Santa, red under Gorby, orange for Drac, cool white (looks blue) on Lola and warm white (looks yellow) under Pin*Bot - I think it really makes the character inserts pop and match their "color" on the PF. I also put warm frosted LEDs in the flashers under the ramps, really makes the Special, Jackpot and EB events look cool. One of my favorite changes, was adding Red/Yellow/Green LEDs under the C-A-B rollovers to match the stoplight art!

I can't stand LEDs in the backbox on this game. Way too directional and "spotty" for my taste. They leave very focused light blooms instead of warm, ambient lighting IMO.

The only thing left I really want to do, is get one of those bendy LED spots that you can position, and put it under the left side ramp, facing into the Drac catapult (thru that little window there). That's the one area of the PF where it's really dark and I don't quite get why that section doesn't have a stock light over there...

Mine does it ALL the time. Off the right corner, near the Gorby shot. Sometimes, it'll flip up in the air and land on the ramp, then roll down to the inlane! Great free shot at the Joyride

That's how it works. Mine was cracked in the corner when I got it, but the new replacement ramps are twice as thick and I am not worried about the replacement cracking.

As for the "inlane walkup" issue, the ends of the wireform are where you will find the solution. Mine did this terribly when I first replaced the ramp, like 3/5 catapults would walk right up the inlane and roll over to the outlane. You need to open up the wires closest to the flippers by bending them a bit. It allows the ball to exit cleanly and not develop that wicked backspin. Once you get it right, you'll know! Changes the flow of the game considerably.

I'd REALLY like to see some better closeups of that playfield, if at all possible.

Ha! I never even knew there was supposed to be a sticker there...

See that? Hang out on Pinside, learn something new every day...

That's the pin*bot Carry Passengers plastic.

I'm about 99% sure he's looking for the Marilyn/Lola one, which is red, breaks all the time because of the way the ball slams into the corner by Gorby, and is made of almost pure unobtanium.

I somehow managed to find a spare on eBay, but that was pure luck. Many Taxi owners end up buying the entire plastic set, and parting out the rest, just to get that one piece.

Good Luck!!