My Fish Tales has developed an intermittent electrical fault which appears to be on the CPU board. We have already had one CPU board issue that looked similar, but that was fixed in April (Thread) and we had over a month of trouble-free operation after that fix.
The fault develops during play (often, but not always, during multiball), with the machine ”going mad” mid-ball - flippers flipping repeatedly in a way which is unresponsive to the buttons, plunger firing repeatedly (based on noise), not registering a drain. If I switch off and on again, the power-on test produces the error message “Ground Short Row 1 is stuck closed“ which is the same error I got when a chip had blown last time. I have checked the switches on row 1 and found no issues, and I have completely disconnected the switch matrix from the CPU board by pulling J207 and J209, and still get the error message - I assume that this means the problem is on the CPU board. I have removed, cleaned, and replaced the CPU board in case the problem was poor connections or some kind of fluff but this made no difference.
And then, after a few minutes of power-off, it sometimes starts working again for no obvious reason. You normally get 1-2 games in before it stops working again.
Can anyone advise on what might be going on here? It can’t be a blown chip because the fault is intermittent - is it plausible that something is overheating?
The fault develops during play (often, but not always, during multiball), with the machine ”going mad” mid-ball - flippers flipping repeatedly in a way which is unresponsive to the buttons, plunger firing repeatedly (based on noise), not registering a drain. If I switch off and on again, the power-on test produces the error message “Ground Short Row 1 is stuck closed“ which is the same error I got when a chip had blown last time. I have checked the switches on row 1 and found no issues, and I have completely disconnected the switch matrix from the CPU board by pulling J207 and J209, and still get the error message - I assume that this means the problem is on the CPU board. I have removed, cleaned, and replaced the CPU board in case the problem was poor connections or some kind of fluff but this made no difference.
And then, after a few minutes of power-off, it sometimes starts working again for no obvious reason. You normally get 1-2 games in before it stops working again.
Can anyone advise on what might be going on here? It can’t be a blown chip because the fault is intermittent - is it plausible that something is overheating?
