Was playing my TSPP tonight. Had a ball go into the Itchy & Scratchy saucer and not get ejected. Could hear a noise like it was trying to eject a few times, but the DMD then displayed a message indicating an error with the I&S eject coil. I then almost immediately began to smell a burnt electrical smell.
Shut things down and opened it up, but couldn't find any obvious smoking crater, so I powered it back on and ran through some of the diagnostics.
The simple Diag->Tech showed no errors despite previously noting that the I&S ecject coil wasn't working.
I went into the coil test section and found that none of coils #1-#11 would fire other than the one controlling Homer's head.
List of them here.
http://mirror2.ipdb.org/files/4674/Stern_2003_The_Simpsons_Pinball_Party_Manual.pdf#page=8
Basically, any coil with the power line color of yel-vio.
I then went through the Dr. Pinball questions for a few of the coils in question.
The first few questions are the same regardless of which one I check.
1 - Does the coil fire when you tell it to. (No.)
2 - Is the coin door open and the power interlock switch pulled out? (Yes)
3 - Is the 20v or 50v led lit. (Yes.)
note - when I was answering the questions for the I&S ejector, it asked me to check the 20v led. For the others I checked, it was always 50v. If I'm reading the manual right though, it indicates that all of the coils should be 50v. No idea if this means a thing or not. Would have to double check to see if any others are tied to the 20v led if that could be important.
4 - At this point, it tell me to "Attach jumper wire from ground to metal tab of driver Q#" With the # after Q changing depending on which coil I'm testing.
I feel dumb, but I'm not sure what it's telling me to do here. I mean, basically, I need to run a wire from the transistor to the ground. But what ground? The braided stuff that runs through the cabinet? There's some in the head that would be easy enough to access. Or is there another standard grounding wire that I'm missing.
Also, what should I use for the jumper? Would any old piece of wire do? Or should I get a few alligator clips and make my own?
Any advice/help with this would be really appreciated.
Also, any top of the head ideas on what I'm facing here? If one coil went dead - could it effect a bunch of them at once like this? I'm really hoping it's something as simple as replacing a coil and not the entire I/O board, but I have no idea about these things. The burnt smell makes me assume the worst, though it does seem to have emanated from the body of the machine and not the head.
If any pics or additional information would help please ask. I'll respond as quick as I can.