When the reactor goes critical on my TNA, the shaker motor starts running and stays running until the reactor is destroyed. Is this how it should be behaving? Even though I have the shaker set to low intensity, it still rattles the back glass continuously until the reactor is destroyed. Is there a config setting to prevent the shaker from running due to a critical reactor without disabling the shaker altogether? I didn't see one...

I noticed that if I drain the ball while the reactor is critical, the shaker will not be running for the next ball even though the reactor is still critical.

The software version is 1.2.1 from 5/22/18.

thanks.

For anyone trying to estimate when their TNA will be ready, #308 was ready to ship on September 5, 2018.

My TNA's right flipper is misbehaving. When the flipper is held in the up position, it can be knocked back down by a ball hitting the flipper, even when the ball doesn't hit it very hard.

For example, if I short plunge so that the ball nearly makes the upper lanes, so that the falls back down the right orbit - Then, the ball will be moving fast enough that it knocks down the right flipper when I am holding it up. If the ball is moving slower (e.g. due to a shorter plunge), then the flipper stays up when the ball hits it. This flipper collapse problem just started happening in the past day or two. The left flipper seems fine.

This TNA has only 119 games played and 364 balls played. It has version 1.2.1 of the software installed.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this or how to diagnose it?

Here is a link to an 11 second video showing the problem happening. I did not release the flipper button, but the flipper goes down when the ball hits it.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/q3cko1KvcD2EQrgz7

Thanks,
John Garnett

The flipper hold boost setting was on 2. I just now tried changing it to 3. That did improve it slightly, but the problem still occurs when the ball hits it hard. For example, the scoop ball eject will knock the right flipper down every time even with boost level at 3. Also, if I shoot the ball up the left orbit so that the ball comes all the way around and hits the raised right flipper, it will knock it down every time (even with boost = 3).

However, boost level 3 did keep the flipper from being knocked down due to a short-plunged ball (like was demo'd in the video I linked in my original post). Even in this case of a fairly slow ball, the flipper still gave a fraction of an inch before recovering to a fully raised position.

Ideas?

Thanks for the help,

John

From what I've read, the TNA flipper design doesn't use an EOS switch. Apparently, this is done via software. Here's a post mentioning this feature.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/total-nuclear-annihilation-cluball-welcome/page/15#post-4127094

-John

For anyone who has the same problem, the cause was a power wire that was detached from the flipper mechanism. The solder must have been weak. Strangely, the flipper still worked pretty well with that wire completely disconnected. The only symptom was weakness when a fast ball hit it.

After reconnecting that wire, the problem of the flipper collapsing stopped happening. Thanks to KingPinGames of Spooky support for spotting the problem from the a photo (attached here for anyone following along).

-John

tnaflippermech (resized).jpg

Where in the menus do I find the display's contrast, brightness, and gamma settings? Is that accomplished via the keypad board (with buttons) attached to the graphics board or is it somewhere in the operator menus?

Thanks.

Occasionally, during a game, my TNA erroneously adds a new ball to the shooter lane and then auto plunges it. This happens when I am not in the middle of a multiball and when ball saver is not active. Sometimes, it happens multiple times consecutively, leading to as many as four balls being in play at once. Note, I do not hear or see anything special (such as "Ball Saved") when a ball is added in this way.

Twice, I've even seen this happen after the game is over. That is, sometimes a ball will be fed to the shooter lane and auto plunged even when a game is not running (the game is waiting for the Start button to be pressed).

Does anyone have suggestions on what could be causing this problem? How should I go about diagnosing and repairing this?

Thanks,
John

Thanks for the detailed response. I tried this, but the switch test did not register anything other than the start button used to enter the test. I jiggled the wires near where they entered the IDCs on each end, but switch test stayed silent. I also made sure that the IDCs were seated firmly on both ends. I touched a few targets to make sure the test was working and it did register the targets.

When I start a game in debug mode and the ball drains, I do usually see the troughJam event appear. Is this expected?

For example:

Last Switch 1: shooter
Last Switch 2: trough3
Last Switch 3: trough2
Last Switch 4: trough1
Last Switch 5: trough4
Last Switch 6: troughJam

After the switch tests, I did see this problem occur again while playing a game with the debug screen up, but I couldn't look in time to see the events before new events occurred scrolling everything off the display.

Is it possible that the PCB opto is faulty?

Thanks,
John

Here's another issue with my TNA that just started happening.

When I'm in single-ball play and the locks are empty and ready for balls to lock, fast-moving balls will hit the back drop target and bounce completely out of the lock lane and back into play before the 2nd drop target rises to trap the ball. These same fast-moving balls were being trapped just fine earlier today.

If I roll the ball slowly into the locks by hand, the 2nd drop target raises in time to trap the ball.

I tried this with debug events showing on the display. Both opto 1 and opto 2 are registering even in the case where the ball bounces off drop target 3 and escapes back into play.

The problem seems to be intermittent, but if it happens, it'll happen repeatedly from then on. If I power off and leave it a while, I may not see the problem the next time that I power on.

Any suggestions for this one?

EDIT:

Mystery solved on this one. The problem goes away when DEBUG mode is disabled. Apparently, displaying the DEBUG event messages slows things down enough that the drop target can't be raised in time for fast-moving balls. Sorry for the false alarm.

Thanks,
John