Hey y'all,

At the tail-end of bringing a Williams FLASH back from the dead, and after a ton of cleaning and solenoid replacing, plus a new Rottendog board and Pinscore display, it's tantalizingly close to playable...

But now I've discovered the source of the blown fuse that was driving me crazy...or close to discovered it. To sum up, the 2.5A fuse for the solenoids kept blowing when I first was poking around on this machine, I couldn't figure out why, so I went through and cleaned everywhere I could, replacing most of the solenoids (many had melted sleeves and were just plain grungy), just tried to get everything looking/feeling right. And when I finally turned it back on, everything was great!

Only the right sling didn't work. Upon further inspection, I had missed re-connecting it. Oops, my bad, all good, turn on the soldering iron, connect the two red wires to the banded side of the diode, the (I think blue/yellow? it's in the basement...) wire to the right side, turn on the game...

...and poof, blowing that 2.5A solenoid fuse again. Because that right sling's sol is locking on, as soon as I turn on the game.

Can anyone help me figure out where to find the short? I feel like I'm just so close to actually understanding how these sorts of things work, but I'm still relatively new to electronics/pinball machine restoration, and something like this FEELS so simple, which makes it all the more frustrating that I have no idea how to fix it.

Thanks in advance!

...if I had taken that bet, @viriiguy, you'd be $10 richer. You & zacaj helped me to realize that, as I should have known (and hopefully will learn from this...), it was the transistor on the board.

I guess I didn't want to think it was that, because it's a brand new board, but of course I probably shorted it back when I first installed it, turned on the game, and things weren't moving because they were gummed up/broken...

Thanks, y'all. It's definitely a short at Q8. I'll fix later today (I hope, kinda hard to sneak to the basement), and report back.

Amen. Hopefully! I don’t have the proper transistor at the moment, but putting in an order with GPE now.

Ha, yeah, I have a few TIP102's around, but haven't had to work on anything other than Williams System 9 or 11 boards before now. Someday I hope to be like you folks who can help answer all the questions on these forums, but as for now, I'm still a n00b building up a supply chest...

Thanks, everyone! I'll post again when it's fixed...

IT'S ALIVE!

Still a couple things to work out (I posted in the Flash owner's club about it, but the blue Flash crescent lights don't ever go off, and the "rising tone" never happens)—but it's working!

Thanks for your help, everyone!

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