I'm currently trying to fix a Whitewater at a local arcade. Since I have one at home I kind of took on the role of this game's caretaker. Unfortunately it seems this game has broken beyond my repair skill level.
Here's the scoop. Last time I was working on it I was just trying to adjust the No Way Out VUK. I finally got it just right and started a test game. New issue, the upper right flipper is chattering, albeit inconsistently. So I start trying to reheat the solder joints on the coil. I'm having a hard time since I didn't bring my good soldering iron and had to use what was on hand. I noticed sparking on the blue-yellow wire at the lug, so I thought maybe there was a poor connection with the coil winding, so I try globbing the whole thing up with solder. I turn the game on again and this time I notice both VUK coils firing. Crap.
The game thinks all the switches are closed. The display shows the error "GND. SHORT ROW 1 IS STUCK CLOSED", but no switches work, not even the diagnostic buttons.
I've tried looking to see if some solder might have fallen somewhere, shorting something, but I don't see anything and there's nothing directly below those lugs with the playfield lifted.
I came back to do some further diagnosis today and hoo boy, there's a lot going on.
First off, there are some ugly board repairs. Yay. I'll post pictures of all the boards and closeups of all the hacks I've found.
The error persists even with all switch matrix plugs removed from the CPU board.
When the game boots, and the VUKs fire, the translite flashers flash every time each time a coil is fired. They are all LEDs. Not sure if this was happening before or not.
Fuse 502 on the sound board was blown. I replaced it and tried turning the game on and it immediately sparked and blew up again. Speakers made an awful popping noise. The display had garbage. I quickly turned the game off. Now, with the fuse removed, turning the game on is the same as before so no further damage seems to have occurred from replacing the fuse.
All other fuses seem fine and I corrected a handful of incorrect fuses
So yeah, the game went from very playable with a handful of small issues to completely non-functional... And I'm not really sure where to start or if the boards should just all be sent away for repairs and refurbs. This all just seems like a bunch of unrelated issues (Like, why is the sound board involved?!?!)
Anyways, any help is greatly appreciated.
PXL_20230516_214114213 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214249062 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214311645 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214342290 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214424797 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214507805 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214511827 (resized).jpgPXL_20230516_214529410 (resized).jpg
Mapleton, UT
