I'm officially in the ranks as an X-men (Pro) owner! Still a ton for me to figure out on this game, but I am absolutely loving it so far. I installed Sparky's micro display, which is a super cool add-on. Last night I placed an order for a scoop cliffy and the Wolverine bracket through mezelmods. I've given the game my all, but still no Danger Room/Dark Phoenix for me.

Has anybody had any issues with their trough up-kicker for X-men? I was playing today and all of a sudden ball three wouldn't kick. Played around a bit in diagnostics and found that the coil isn't firing. I was able to unplug and plug everything back in, and it worked for a kick or two, then back to nothing. All fuses appear to be fine. Any ideas??

Thanks for the info schonb. I'm trying to figure out if it's the coil or the opto board. Every now and again I'm getting it to work by disconnecting/reconnecting the opto board, just not sure which is the actual culprit at this point.

That's a good idea; I'll grab the multimeter first thing in the morning.
I took another look at it, and I don't recall there being a red glow in the trough. It looks like one of the boards is shining a red LED. I'm trying to research if that's normal, but haven't found anything either way yet.

Alright, one step forward two steps back!

I took the assembly out and did see that there was a cold solder spot on the coil connection itself. Tidied up the connection, and now I can go into test and get a response from the trough up-kicker every time. I've flubbed something up though, because now when I go to start a game it keeps saying "locating pinballs". Once this happened I cleaned the optos hoping I just smudged them up, but that didn't take care of it.

So, one problem solved and still without the ability to play my X-men!

This reminds me--which day is the Pinside wide Thank-a-Kiwi-Day?

Well, I ran through and confirmed that there is no magnetization going on with the balls. I use the pinball life ohhh shiny's, which are supposed to be good with this issue--but still, I gave it a check to confirm 100%. In the switch test, balls 1-4 each reads when being put back in the trough. The trough jam also shows as in service, but I'm not sure if that one is a good or a bad thing. Any more ideas? I feel like if I can get this fixed in the next day or two I'll be putting some serious damage on the sentinels.

Okay, I have to come out and admit my frequent idiocy in the hopes that it helps some other fool in the future. I was playing with the optos in test and noticed that actually there were two optos showing active. Turns out, last night when I was tired and soldering the coil nice and tight I actually hooked up the molex connectors to each opto backwards. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to have done any damage...just gave me a firm lesson in taking pictures before I take anything apart!

Now I'm left to enjoy the X-men and contemplate this Color DMD addon...