I was searching for a broken machine as a project donor and came across this Alien Poker about 3 hours away. I went and looked at it and picked it up. It was/is in rough shape. Cosmetically the cabinet is not too bad, but the playfield is pretty well worn. When plugged in, some of the backbox GI came on and the Player 1 and Match/Credit displays went into the Audit Cleared mode. Nothing else worked.

I fiddled with it a while tonight. Imagine my amazement when I discovered that the GI issue was simply that every single playfield and coin door bulb was burned out! It was obvious that this machine hadn't seen maintenance in many years but that took the prize. Of course, the rubbers are shot and the playfield is filthy. Many of the plastics are also broken or cracked, and the backglass is quite scratched up and flaking.

I have determined that there appear to be 2 big issues. The MPU needs some attention to remove the battery holder and wire in an off-board replacement. The existing one is corroded on one of the battery pads. Fortunately, the MPU itself seems free of corrosion, at least on the front side. I jumpered the broken battery pad and was able to get the MPU to boot and enter attract mode using the rapid power-off, power-on trick, as well as start a game once I coined it up, so I believe it is mostly OK. I'll know more tomorrow. There could still be a 5101 issue there.

The second issue is that no solenoids are firing except the flippers. I was initially thinking blanking signal, but then realized that the lamps and displays are all working, which rules that out. I ran out of time tonight but I am thinking solenoid power now. I did meter the fuses earlier and they were OK, but tomorrow I will need to check the bridge rectifier, varistor and caps in that circuit as well as the input power from the transformer.

Anyway, here are a few pics after tonight's lighting work. Sure looks a lot better than it did when I started!

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Well, I am counting my blessings. Almost all of the issues this machine had were due to owner/operator disinterest or lack of knowledge.

The MPU issue is indeed the battery holder corrosion. After cleaning the remains of the battery clip and jumping it, it is now holding settings and turning on into attract mode reliably. Off to Radio Shack for a battery holder tonight to fix that permanently.

The solenoid issue was also simple. The unit has a burned out coil on the upper Ace kick out hole. The bad coil had been cut out. It occurred to me, after checking power and finding it all good, that the wires in use were Red. I remembered two red wires being attached to the old coil and made a guess that they were a serial connection. I twisted the two cut red wires together and Bingo!, all solenoids firing except the burnt one. I'll be ordering a replacement from PBR tonight. The question remains, why was it burnt? There may be an issue on the original driver board. I have my known-good Black Knight spare in there now so I'll have to test the original board later.

Finally, I had no sound in game at all. The sound board diagnostics played speech, but no sound effects. I checked the remote volume and it looked good. I knew from BK that there was a balance control on the speech board - sure enough it was hard over counterclockwise. As soon as I moved that to center, sound effects came on! I started a game, but uh-oh, no speech. I did a little googling and found the required settings for the sound board dip switches. As you might guess by now, they were set for speech off, for some reason. Toggled that switch and now the aliens were gabbing!

At this point, the game is about 98% functional. The drop target bank needs a little fine tuning and the slingshot switches need some attention. Flippers are strong but way out of alignment and the one coil needs replacing. All the rules and scoring are working fine. I'm a happy camper!

Now, however, comes the decision. I bought this game because it "appeared" to be so broken. My intention was (is?) to gut the electronics and install a P-ROC system, which would then allow me to either recode Alien Poker with a few tweaks, like a multi-ball mode, or even re-theme it into a custom machine. It was so easy to fix that I am second-guessing that idea though. I could always look for another donor

One problem remains - the knocker never goes off. I checked for voltage at the coil and it's fine at around 36V. I tried jumping the ground tab on the coil to another solenoid and then fired off the other solenoid - the knocker also fired so I know it's good. I traced the wire back to the driver board and had no continuity between the driver board connector and the coil tab. I cut that connector off and re-pinned it with new crimped trifurcons. Connectivity is now good but the coil still will not fire. What I'd like to do next is ground the driver transistor to check that path all the way out to the knocker but I have no schematic.

If anyone has an Alien Poker schematic, could you look up the driver for the knocker and let me know its component ID? Thanks!

YFZ - yep, LEDs for the inserts are next on my list. The incandescents just don't cut it!

Dave

Excellent - thanks man! Could I impose and ask you to check one more? The game had a burnt kicker coil on the Ace of Clubs saucer. Could you let me know it's driver components too? I have a new one on the way and it would be good to check the original driver board before I put it in.

How about a game of "spot the problem"?

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This is the original driver board from the AP. I am going to venture a guess that when lovef2k replies later with the Ace of Clubs kicker driver, that will be it. Now, if only I had a spare I hate mail order...

Anyhow, I did try grounding the tab on the driver for the knocker on my spare BK driver board and the knocker fired, so all the wiring is good. Must have a bad component on the BK board too, although it doesn't show when installed in the BK.

Thanks guys. With the BK driver board in, the knocker would not fire in diagnostics nor in game mode when coining up. It was not in Free Play as I hadn't fixed the bad battery holder yet and was doing the quick power-flip trick to get it to attract mode. I fixed that tonight and the MPU is working beautifully.

Grounding the transistor tab on the BK driver would fire the knocker so that almost certainly makes it a driver board problem. I've ordered parts from GPE so I will replace the knocker driver on the BK board while I am replacing the kicker driver on the original board. I did also order new pre-drivers too. Learned that lesson fixing up BK.

After de-soldering that blown transistor, I swapped the original driver back in and the knocker now works! Hopefully, installing that new kicker coil and driver will clean up the last of the problems. Good thought on checking the wiring for the kicker too Rich - I will do that before I turn it back on after the part replacements. This machine is somewhat surprising - it has a fair amount of playfield wear but otherwise it looks fabulous. The board set is amazingly clean, very little resistor burn on the driver board, no burnt Molex connectors anywhere including the GI supply and all boards and displays are the originally serial-numbered boards. I suppose they could have been relabeled but it doesn't look like it. For as poorly maintained as it was, I don't see the previous owner trying to fake anybody out that way and it's not a collector machine in any event.