No. Thermistor would be the opposite. Powers on, resets on double flipper, after a while it works.

And rottendog in TZ has always been a reset problem for me. Put that rottendog board into the IJ and the IJ board into the Tz. Other than that, go through the reset section on pinwiki. It's really an awesome step-by-step.

I love TZ, but this is the sort of thing that makes me avoid the title. Too many repairs. I was thinking that the new boards would eliminate fears, but after hearing this, yikes.

In general, rottendog in TZ and STTNG sucks. It may be problematic in IJ but that hasn't been proven yet. Seems good everywhere else.

That's the downside to more complex games, there are more things to go wrong. It can be frustrating but, you have to enjoy the occasional troubleshooting journey as well. Finding a problem with your game and fixing it yourself can be very rewarding. That's another reason I enjoy owning STTNG and TZ, their complexity.

Sounds to me like your low voltage watchdog is causing a reboot.
There is a quick work around but some call it a hack. Pm me if interested.

There is really no good reason to take this to pm. Either the hack is good and you should share it for all - including those that may search out this problem later. Or the hack is bad, and you know it, so you don't dare want to state it in public. If its the latter, you shouldn't be offering it to anyone via pm either.

Sounds like you're dropping below 4.9 volts on the cpu (at least that's what my problem was). Check your voltage on the cpu and see where you're at. If it's happening with a new driver board installed, I'd look at the "Z"connector that powers the auxiliary driver board. It's a known weak link on TZ, IJ and STTNG. I've had to get rid of it on each of those games. Check all your other connectors in the power chain while you're in there for cold joints/cracked pads on the board and/or burnt connectors. Re-pin/reflow as needed. There's other potential causes, but I'd look at these first if your working with a driver board you know to be good.

TZ is really no different then any other WPC era game. There's just more stuff in there. Once it's tuned properly, it's just about bulletproof in a home enviornment, as are all the B/W games from this time period (at least in my experience - your mileage may vary).

See: http://pinballhelp.com/fixing-ballywilliams-pinball-reset-issues/

It's most likely the BRs and Caps on the driver board, or flaky line voltage.

People here should not ignore the fact that this is a common issue with rottendog boards in Tz machines. Before you start debugging anything, swap it into something else.

Before anyone replaces bridges and caps, they should really get their meter out and follow the troubleshooting steps outlined here:

http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#Game_resets

You can do a fair amount of damage to a driver board just swapping caps and bridges out, without finding out if they are the true fault; then you can end up with many problems to chase as opposed to one

Lots of incorrect information here. RARELY does the watchdog have anything to do with a WPC resets. Same with bridge rectifiers and caps, they're RARELY actually the cause of resets.

The ONLY way to adequately approach a WPC reset issue is to follow the step-by-step guide on PinWiki. You're COMPLETELY guessing otherwise and probably doing more damage than good if you're just blindly replacing things.

Approach this right and you'll solve your reset issue.

People, please stop perpetuating incorrect information. Replacing bridge rectifiers and capacitors is NOT THE THING TO DO!

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

Listen to Rob and follow the guide. He knows what he's talking about......

With all due respect, you can not make that assumption.
Why perpetuate this mantra when it is clearly incorrect?
Please, if you have suggestions on how to improve the troubleshooting procedure in the PinWiki, offer them.

--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

With all due respect, based on my experience it's not incorrect.

As I mention in my article, the first thing to check is line voltage, then connections, but if problems persist, changing the caps and BRs is a viable option.

I've worked on dozens of WPC games with reset issues that replacing the BRs and Caps completely fixed the reset problems. (By the way, there are some errors in the PinWiki article on WPC resets) And yea, I'm sure some of you guys will say you've repaired a lot more games, but the point is, I've never run into a case where it wasn't either line voltage or the BRs and caps. I'm sure there are plenty of situations where other things could cause these problems, but the most common causes are pretty obvious and well known.

I don't know why you're suggesting that's not a likely culprit when, in my experience it is, and it's the most common recommendation everywhere. Yes, there are some steps you want to investigate prior, and this has been mentioned. Yes, there are some caveats.. you have to be careful when desoldering components to not break traces, but don't suggest that I'm giving bad advice. That's not true. Those caps and BRs have a limited lifespan, and any game over 8+ years will benefit from having them replaced.

I'm not going to contribute to PinWiki until it's made a true public domain resource. Right now the content therein can be appropriated and pulled off the net any time by whoever controls the domain. It's not any different than the Pinrepair guides in that respect.

Unlike Wikipedia, which is a true public resource that is sharable and not owned by any one entity, PinWiki is owned and controlled by private people, who have decided they don't want to have an obvious, visible policy regarding who owns and controls the content, which makes the site unstable. If it was really intended to be a true, long-term public resource, there would be Wiki-like policies regarding content contributed, and who owns and controls it.

Well, since I'm not going to be able to convince you that BR2/C5 is old school thinking, and you are never going to convince me of the absolute cause and effect, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I stand behind the PinWiki steps.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

To put it bluntly and concisely, you're wrong.

First, bridge rectifiers are a solid state device and don't "wear out" or have a limited life span. Capacitors are a different beast, but a great majority of the time they're just fine and have hundreds of hours of life left.

Second, by you simply removing the driver board, soldering the bridge and cap joints, and re-installing the driver board, you've done exactly the same thing as you would have done if you'd just put the old parts back in. Try it next time, go through the motions, do everything you would except actually putting in new parts, I guarantee you'll get the exact same results. I've done extensive testing on this over my thirty years repairing games. The replace the bridge and cap mantra is wrong, dead wrong.

I go behind experienced techs all the time who have replaced the BR and cap to cure a rest issue. I'm not there going over their work several days or weeks later because the bridge and cap replacement worked. It will remedy the problem TEMPORARILY, but bridge and cap replacement is rarely the actual solution. Not to say a bridge won't cause resets, they do go bad and do cause resets, but it's MUCH rarer than most think and just replacing them because everyone says to is just really bad advice.

And third, telling people who have very little/no experience with board work to pull out these components when not necessary, and in the process destroy the traces and through-holes, is not only bad advice, but is careless and damaging to those you're trying to help. Come sit at my bench for a few hours and see how much work I have to do on boards that people have destroyed by trying to fix something that wouldn't have fixed the issue even if done properly. It's VERY frustrating.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

When you say "Is that a common problem on new Rottendog boards", which problem are you asking about. RD replacement driver boards do not use bridge rectifiers in the 5V circuit.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

pwned

I've done just that. In fact, I've actually gone through and replaced each component individually and tested. Sometimes I've replace the caps and left the BRs; sometimes I replaced just the BRs (which I agree aren't usually the culprit - it's usually the caps); sometimes I just do the jumper mods; sometimes I replace C4; sometimes I don't. I've also done extensive testing to see if I can identify the most common culprits, and in my experience, it's usually C4 or C5.

This thing about, "you are wrong" is inappropriate. There is no "right" or "wrong" because every case is different, and you claiming that you are right and I'm wrong, when part of what you say might be wrong is exactly what I'm saying... it doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense to say it has nothing to do with the watchdog circuit. The myriad of issues which can cause a voltage drop trigger the resets!

By the way, I'm not talking about Rottendog boards. I'm talking about standard WPC driver boards.

I understand you charge people to do board work, so you have a vested interest in suggesting that such work is for "experts only", so perhaps there's a conflict of interest when you offer your advice?

I'll be the first to say, if someone isn't comfortable and experienced doing board-level repairs, by all means have someone else do it. If that's what this is all about, having them run through a checklist before you offer them your repair services, sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toes dude.

Yep. Chalk this up to another instance of "rottendog in Tz = reset nightmare". I predict it's solved. Everytime I've had a rottendog board in Tz or sttng, this was the result. Always swapped it with something else and both machines are fine after.

As for arguing about replacing the bridge and caps as first step, how can anyone even argue this is correct?? Sure it is often the solution. But resets can be caused by other things. Why wouldn't you work through an easy list of steps first especially when other things can solve it? Seriously, how can anyone even try to make a case for this?

Wow. There is no conflict here. Someone asking for reset help is clearly not an expert on board repair. So yes, his comment is spot on. You do not want a person that is asking these questions to start by soldering his board. And if this person is an expert on board repair, he won't be asking for help in the first place. And even if Rob charges for board repair, he is here offering free, no strings attached help. You make it sound like he comes here trying to make each task seem impossible to drum up business. That's ridiculous.

Both Chris and Rob are spot on here. I can't even believe you're arguing your points.

I never told the guy to solder his board. I just suggested what could be related to the problem.

By the way.. almost everyone here on this forum, including Chris and Rob, have been in this situation before. Everybody has to start somewhere. Part of the hobby involves learning how to DIY things yourself. There's nothing wrong with discussing the different things that could be causing this problem. I'm not into this "elite" thing where it's taboo to share certain bits of information with people. I think everyone should be encouraged to try as much repair work as they're comfortable with. I leave it to them to decide if it's something they want to tackle.

btw, notice how the PinWiki people go silent when the issue is brought up about who owns the content? I won't be surprised if at some point that site goes poof like pinrepair and they try to monetize it. Chris, if you're going to ask people to contribute to the site, publish a fair, open license clearly stating the content is freely-available.

You live in a strange world my friend. One filled with skepticism at the very least. I've stopped trying to convince you of anything.

No one here is acting elite.
No one here has gone silent. There simply isn't anything worth saying anymore.
I'm one of the principal contributors. I've been busy lately, as you can see from this screen...
http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges
PinWiki isn't going anywhere.

Time to move on.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

Your words "Planning on going through the pin repair guide when I have some time. Hoping somebody can give me a good step to go through. If not that's ok....I'm just lazy right now."

Being you felt lazy and didn't want to follow the guides I offered a quick fix. As learned on the RGP site some think a deviation from the original design is "a hack".

First off sorry I stepped in this thread. Secondly the work around on the watchdog was given to me by the late Leon (RIP). Thirdly Clive was consulted and assured me it was fine.
Lastly - good luck with your issue. From now on I'm sure the other guys can point you in the right direction when your asking for a quick fix.

To fill in the blanks, the "hack" that Robert (Hooked) is referencing can be found here...
http://www.flipper-pinball-fan.be/ under "Reset on WPC machines".

It adds a 15,000uf cap to the regulated 5V power on the MPU. Leon was passionate about the fix. Some were skeptical. It definitely works in some situations. Long term effect was the concern.

FYI.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

I assume you're referring to the added cap at the CPU power input. Yes it can work to remedy reset issues, but does NOTHING to actually address the actual problem. Not a good solution IMHO, and can introduce other issues.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
314-766-4587

Why do you insist on having such vague terms regarding who owns the content on the site? You continually dodge the question. You encourage people to contribute to the site, but it's nebulous as to what they're contributing to, who owns it and what will happen to the site and the content in the future. It's a valid question. And it's one reason why PinWiki is not the here-all and be-all of pinball tech references and probably won't be unless this important issue is no longer ignored.

Why did you quote this to me? Those weren't my words and this wasn't my thread. I wouldn't ask people to talk me through stuff because I was lazy to read it. That's just rude

That cap doesn't always work. It just depends on what is causing the reset.

Easy. Replace the... current guide you have with the one on pinwiki.

True markmon. Thanks for making that point. And, one of the nice things about PinSide, is that I get to correct my post!
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info