Thanks to Pinsider ZaZa, I've finally been able to solve one of the last two problems with the Party Zone pinball I'm going through. Backbox flash lamps were firing the Capt. B Zarr eject hole whenever activated, and eventually blowing. This was due to a connector on the wrong Driver board header.

That leaves the one problem that I've yet to solve, the Captain B. Zarr head just doesn't function as it should.

The two features of the head are the rotational movement from left to right and vice versa, as well as the solenoid actuated "jaw" to simulate his talking. The jaw movement is fine. Bad driver transistor and a burnt coil were to blame and new parts solved this issue.

The opto board that "talks" to the CPU to locate the position of the head had at least 2 bad optos, and as such, I replaced all three with new parts. The switch edge test shows these to be working.. at least most of the time. For the first time today when I was checking the function again, opto 3 was flickering, and physically pushing on the case of said opto would change the display from closed, to open, but not in any predictable manner. However, after running the test for the head function, (which said it passed, but did NOT work properly) the opto in switch test is solid as a rock, and no amount of physical force on it changes it's state. Seems to work fine now.

When testing the head in test mode, the rotation clockwise always seems fine, but the rotation counter clockwise, will be hit or miss. Sometimes it will turn from one position to the next without hesitation, and more often than not, it will only pulse quickly, and then stop, yet the test says it's not failed to hit the correct position, when in fact the optos clearly show it has NOT changed position at all.

So the test says there are no failures, yet there are obvious failures throughout the test, and almost without fail, it's due to a lack of counter clockwise movement.

I have also play tested the game after a "passed test" and the head seems to behave well enough, UNTIL the switch for the rear VUK is closed. At which point the head rotates clockwise until the wiring itself binds up the mechanism and the game goes into failure. It actually scrambles the display and stops the game, before shutting down the power.

So the problem is two fold.. what seems to be an intermittent flaky opto, even though it's brand new, erratic behavior and a lack of counter clockwise rotation in test mode, plus the crazy behavior when the single rear VUK switch is closed. (I have verified it's the switch and not the solenoid firing, that I'm certain of) Switch test, shows that no other switches are activated when this switch is closed as well.

A logic probe on the transistors that turn the head on/off as well as change direction seem to show they're working fine. Just the pulse to the motor for CCW isn't working properly.

Anyone have any thoughts on what to look for next?