Did you replace F7 fuse? It's been known to blow with the aux board. As for how many are effected by the board; my guess is 65%.

Let's count off, you're 1; I'm 2. Next....

Currently waiting on my 3rd aux board to arrive.

At this point, this is the truth.

moving to Stern

65% of 550 LE machines? That equates to 357 faulty machines. I'd doubt that.

Nobody I know who has one has had any problems with aux boards nor spinning discs. Only issue is the "move wolverine to the right" mod.

Now I've said that my aux board will blow tomorrow haha

Dave.

on my second board now .

Received my second board Monday, night crawlers blow fuses under playfield every time after only three games and are staying in the up position after game start. Would it be difficult for stern to maybe use two aux boards...one for NC, one for Wolvie magnet? Mod the game this late after production...just hoping for a resolution.

Lol @ 65%. I'd guess 8-10% which is like 40-50 people. Quite a lot. It also seems likely for the board to die multiple times for the folks that have issues.

I am on my second board AUX board now. So anyone have any insight on what the issues are? is it the PCB or Code?

The issue is, in my opinion, a bit of both. The way Stern drives their mosfets lends itself to self-destruction if_ the code isn't carefully done.

However, the circuit on the aux board is pretty much identical to what they use on the main board, so I would think that bad code would also be responsible for destroying main driver boards too, but I haven't heard anyone really talk about that.

Maybe it's because they are doing all their code monkeying on the aux board lines only. Don't know. Stern could probably modify the code, but that may defeat some of the effects they were trying to achieve. So in my mind, they need to fix the hardware.

My offer is still on the table if anyone wants to send me their blown up (or working) board for me to remake. I am pretty confident that I can fix what I see as the hardware problem, that way Stern can keep rolling out bad code to their heart's content.

Send me a PM or email if interested.

Tony

Tony,
Stern should keep replacing them at their cost until they fix the issue. Why should people have to buy a better replacement board from you on a new $6K+ pin?
I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't do it. I'm just suggesting Stern should make it right, not you.

Surely the transistors can be upgraded to a heavier duty one?

I know when my board guy replaces Tip36s off BW driver boards we replace them with a heavier duty version. Never had an issue with them.

Dave.

Jackal2001:

I completely agree with you.

Rotordave:

It's not about the rating of the transistors, they should be plenty beefy enough. Should be blowing fuses before the transistors fail.

Putting beefier mosfets in there might potentially help but that still may not be enough.

Tony

sounds like a code issue to me. Lets hope that we can get a real answer soon and some code updates from Stern. My machine was down for almost 2 weeks because of the blown aux board.

In the long run though I think this would be a good board to have built as I do not know where to buy them besides stern direct for a replacement.

Well my nightcrawlers and wolverine magnet do not work, so I'm assuming my aux board is dead too? Are these the symptoms? I have no blown fuses from what I can see, can someone take a pic of where the ones under the playfield are that are blowing? I've searched all fuses and have found none blown, just those 2 things don't work at all. I go to test, and nc's do nothing at all, nor does the latch work. I hope I get this fixed for free even when I'm out of warranty, this is bullsquat. First NIB experience sucked, looks like I'll need to try again!

BTW, everything worked perfect until I upgraded to 1.2, then that's when NC's and wolverine magnet stopped worked. I wonder if 1.2 blew my aux board up?

yes, sounds like your Aux board is blown. Welcome to the club, call stern 1800-kickers and they will send out a new one. the Aux board controls all coils from I think 41 down. Stern's costumer service is really good and I am sure they will have a new board to you soon.

If it's code, how come my game is still working? My 2nd board blew right away, my 3rd has been solid for quite some time now.

Which fuses could/would be blown? I've checked and all look fine.

Did you check the ones under the playfield? When the PF is lifted, there are two in the lower right corner. One of those is prone to blow with Aux probs.

I am just making an assumption, I do not know code or not. Only reason I would lean towards code is each time I have seen it happen multiply things are occurring @ once magnet and NC, but I don't know. I have put about 50 games on my second board with no issues yet.

Only thing that happened with my second board was my F7 fuse blew for some reason and all coils went out.

No that sounds more like a blown fuse. The dead aux boards seem to show up as shorts (stuck on) rather than "do not work". You may have shorts that blew fuses. I think there are also under playfield fuses. Did you meter those?

Maybe if someone who's got a current dead board can take some hi-res pictures of it and then take pictures of the replacement board Stern sends out. Maybe if we compare a blown board against a replacement that works, then we may know if the problem was just bad parts or if Stern updated the hardware.

If there is a hardware change, maybe look for a change in the board revision number printed on it.

Just some suggestions.

Tony

I don't think stern is updating the boards. Even if they did, pdxmonkey had two boards die. The third one he put into acdc and the acdc into xmen. So far no issues in either machine. And we are sure the acdc boards are not newer.

How many people's board have blown in the 1.21 software?

My assumption IF it is a software related issue is that it is caused from the NC jiggling. I don't think there's one reported blown board on the original code. The NC jiggling was introduced in 1.2.

In either case, I think the jiggling is lame and I wish NC acted more like Xavier's nc mode where they're fast and furious. It would also resolve stuck ball issues.

markmon:

Interesting. If that's the case, then it could just all be due to a bad batch of parts. Scary!

Tony

Correction, mine started happening with v1.21, v1.2 was fine. I looked at those fuses in the lower corner of the playfield and they appeared fine. I will test them tomorrow.

I was playing a game, nightcrawler mode started, the left nightcrawler went up halfway, jiggled a bunch, never made it completely out, and then they just died. That was what happened right before everything stopped working, it was quite weird.

Could the NC's be causing a short circuit where they are mounted when they jiggle?

Of the ones that died, I saw the wolverine magnet transistor was a full short and the two night crawler transistors were partially shorted (low impedance). I should go repair tat board and see how it does.

Got my 3rd board, installed, played 1 game and now half of the coils that it controls don't work.

Mummite's 2nd board died, so now he's waiting for 3 and I'm waiting for 4.

yep, mine blew tonight again.

I turned on the game and Nightcrawlers are up, press start and the right one went down, but the left stayed up. Lifted the playfield and the 250 3A fuse was blown for the left NC. replaced the fuse and bam! it blew again upon turning the game on. All other items on the board from 41 down work except for left nightcrawler.

Talked to Chas on Tuesady (Pat Powers asked me to call via email) Pat was out Tuesday. Chas said it sounded like my AUX Board would talk to Pat and contact me via phone Wednesday or Thursday, I left my email as well. Havent heard anything since.

Wow...not good

I think those guys are just swamped with all the issues. Before XMEN shipped I was having issues with my Tron and Patrick was always prompt at getting back to me and it was basically the next day. Once XMEN was released his response time started getting longer and longer and I imagine it's from having to help out everyone with their XMEN issues. Patrick is a good guy and he will make things right. I just think they are very busy at the moment but he will eventually get back because he always has to me.

Man that sucks

I know next to nothing about electronics, but I can see having one bad aux board in a machine, stretching it maybe to getting two bad boards in a row, but the odds of having three to four bad aux boards in a row seem pretty slim to me. You'd think Stern would stop just sending out board replacements after the first one and assume it is something else. Maybe some sort of problem with the left NC? A wire touching somewhere it shouldn't, bad diode on the coil, maybe the CPU board is bad, etc?

it's not. It's the board. Friend had to get two replacements but the third has been going strong.

You'd think then that Stern would just return that entire run/batch of boards to the manufacturer if that many are failing. Must be as frustrating for them as it is for the owners.

What happens when a year+ goes by and were still blowing boards? Will stern still do free replacements?

Also, for those that have blown a board. Keep your old and/or ship it back to stern. They will try and charge your distributor; which is why tech support is having customers go thru their distributors for these issues.

I'm not too worried. The components on those boards are cheap and anyone that owns pinballs should know how to swap simple transistors by now. Good chance a flipper transistor will die on you over a period of a year. Those are also pretty simple to fix.

I just received my first replacement board. Installed it and found the right NC release coil had fried when the board went out. No fuses were out. Machine has worked for 5 days out of 4 weeks. Spent the rest of the time waiting on parts.

Whoa, that would be very frustrating

I have owned a NIB LOTR LE for about 13 months and a NIB SM for about 8 months and have not had a single warranty issue or after warranty part failure. Hopefully this issue with the Aux boards on XMEN LE's is just some sort of anomaly such as a bad batch of circuit components or the like.
That does not solve anybody's problems with these particular machines and Stern in the end needs to make sure that everybody has a fully working and reasonably reliable game. My advice is to keep contacting Stern and make your concerns very known which I am sure many of you are already doing.

I played a magneto in Tampa with Nc that were stuck up. Magnets would not turn off. Coils started over heating. I told him to check this thread.

What's causing the short and why aren't the fuses blowing before the coil is fried?

This is not the right answer. Whether you see it or not, this is becoming a serious problem. The answer IS NOT fix it yourself.

Nighcrawlers use a mechanical latch to stay in the up position. Another coil is energized when it is time to release this latch and lower the nightcrawler.

So one coil gets energized for Nc up. Another gets energized for Nc down.

Mine were stuck up when my aux board blew. You can move the latch to lower them.

You can also unplug the aux board or remove the fuses and play the game while waiting for the replacement board.

Tom

Yea. Who would want to spend 50 cents and 10 minutes to fix it yourself? That would deprive you from being able to bitch that you owned the game for 4 weeks and only been able to play it for 5 days. What fun is that? Good point...

If you're feeling adventurous then fix it yourself. It doesn't change the fact that this shouldn't be happening in the first place. They need to stop sourcing their crap from Taiwan and get with the program before people start moving to other pinball manufacturers.

And those other pinball manufacturers are?....