Where were we. Oh yes, I decided to clean all the ramps and scopes underneath as this was not properly cleaned before. Getting off the clear underneath ramp was hard as I didn't have a tool initially that would reach some of the bolts.
Dirty
Clean
The THING kickout solenoid plate was held together with cable ties because it has broken off at some point
I plan to borrow a welder and see what I can do with all of my weldments but for now I cleaned it and cable tied it back.
Stripped out to the wood:
Clean stuff back on:
That should keep the balls clean and stop them messing up the clean playfield and rubbers.
The next part was posted in another thread, as I was putting it all back together again I hit a bit of an issue. The THING kickout switch was faulty as it didn't have the metal plate that activates the switch. As I was putting it all back together I also lost the screws to hold it in place to cabled tied it out of the way. It wasn't enough out of the way and when tinkering with the THING cover I must have knocked it, it then made contact with the kickout solenoid and blew the switch matrix.
Multiple ground shorts rows were tracked back to the chip at U20, a ULN2803 chip on the main board by use of a logic probe. It hadn't been socketed so the only way to deal with it was to cut it off and put in a new one and I was way out of my depth. Johnnyo offered to give me a hand so I took the board to his place and he showed me what to do. Showed me again the knowledge and generosity of the community.
Back home and plugged up, the ground short problem was solved but there was still weird goings on with the optics from the bookcase and THING as the Opto board has a problem with the two LM339. If that was disconnected I could have a game. Johnnyo had give me an old fruit machine circuit board to practice on and it was a massive help with my confidence. He had showed me how to do it so I need to practice and my first attempt was pretty perfect so I decided to do the opto board.
Here it is in situ:
This is a shot of the board and offending chips:
Chip cut off using a dremel, leaving the legs and not destroying the board:
One chip location socketed and the other with the legs and solder removed waiting to be socketed:
I did one at a time because it meant I could check and double check the way round the socket goes though the board clearly has a triangle to show you were the indentation is. The socket probably doesn't care about which way but the chip will.
Once they were both socketed, sliding the new LM339 chips in is simple and they can be removed later. I bought mine from RS supplies because I already have an account, they really are cheap as chips with £10 buying be five LM339's and ULN2803AN with next day delivery. Johnnyo gave me some sockets for the LM339's and I have since bought some from ebay for a very cheap price.
I hope one day to be able to pass on and help someone like Johnnyo helped me.
Fitted back up and everything worked perfectly. New screws and a few switches from CoolDan solved the original switch issue and the machine has no errors during testing for the first time since I got her home. It only took a few days for me to want to get my new soldering temperature controlled iron hot again and some raw LED's had arrived so it was time to add some extra light. There are also some new pillar posts to clean some areas up.
One areas that was too dark that bothered me, the plunger gauge. I can't get a good picture but this now has three little LED's giving some gentle illumination.
The bookcase has a blue accent, as does the vault. I am fighting to route an LED at the top of the graveyard back through the left loop but I have a plan on doing something when the ramp next comes off.