Quoted from tait316:
Well I had the game on the other day and like I was saying I got about about 30 minutes of play in...the machine had been on for a good hour. I had finished a game and left the machine on to do something else.....and then pop! The first time it blew though was at a party where I had multiple people playing and then it happened when I was outside the room. Tonight with the solenoid grounds plugged into the driver board I'm going to plug connectors in one at a time and let it sit until I can find which one is causing the problem. With the diode on your alien poker, did the coil resistance test alright? I did go through and check resistances but didn't think to check diodes.
Yes the coils were all fine. The problem was caused by the drop target bank resetting in between balls. Basically the bad diode made the game think that the targets weren't reset when they actually were, causing it to fire the drop target reset coils over and over until the fuse blew or I turned off the game.
I think it is telling that your fuse is blowing in attract mode when presumably none of your solenoid coils should be activating. To me this indicates a probable board problem. During attract mode the only solenoid related thing happening is the sound select inputs being used. I would check the solenoid/sound select PIA on the driver board, perhaps there is a short or an issue with that PIA.
You can start testing this PIA by going into the solenoid test.
If it's not a board problem I would be checking pop bumper leaf switches to make sure they're not stuck closed.
Try to isolate what is happening when the fuse blows and that will lead you to where the problem is.