Twilight Zone electrical gremlins - multiple switch errors, short?

[Durzel]

Hi all,

Sorry - this will be a bit of a ramble..

I fitted some BriteCap EVO LED pop bumper caps earlier today, they are plug and play replacements for existing bulbs. The installation went alright, except for the fact that the mini playfield got in the way of the screws and replacing the caps. I didn't disconnect anything electrical nor nick any wires (to my knowledge)

Everything worked properly then out of the blue when I powered on the pin the next time I got some sort of error saying "Ground Short" (I didn't get the full message unfortunately, maybe column 5?) and "Clock is not working". After that, every time I powered on the machine I got two different collection of switch errors (but no short error, or clock error).

The two groups of switch errors were:

• check switch 36 - right slingshot
• check switch 37 - left outlane
• check switch 38 - left inlane 1
• check switch 47 - clock millions
• check switch 56 - gumball exit

• check switch 57 - slot proximity
• check switch 65 - power payoff (2)
• check switch 66 - mid r 5 mil 1
• check switch 67 - mid r 5 mil 2
• check switch 77 - mid left 5 mil

Here's the weird part - I went through all the switch tests and nothing untoward came up at all. All of the switches mentioned above tested ok (toggled between open and closed), the Switch Edge tests were all fine, etc. I'm a bit of a novice with this so can't be 100% sure.

After I tested each switch it disappeared from the list of switches in error. The last one - Slot Proximity - I couldn't figure out where it was on the playfield, but I manually put a ball down the slot machine and that seemed to get rid of it.

At this point the pin would start without any errors showing but - bizarrely - when you go to start a game it didn't kick the ball into the shooter lane, it would just start playing the music and not do anything. After a few seconds the machine would fire all of the solenoids in order, I guess to work out where the ball is. I tested the kickout solenoid and it worked fine??

Then - all of a sudden, it started working properly. I've played 2 games and not noticed anything strange, but I'm worried about the whole "Short" message and the fact so many random switches appeared to not work properly, for some reason.

What can I really do? Just keep playing it until/if it goes wrong? Do pins have ghosts in the machine?

EDIT: Forgot to add that I was fitting these caps with the machine powered on, as they have potentiometers to adjust brightness and it would've been too annoying to have to constantly power on and off the pin to adjust it and recheck.

 

[Jay Walker]

Hi, Durzel,

If I remember Twilight Zone correctly, the Slot Proximity switch is the circuit board attached to the plastic subway, just below the junction of the channels from Piano and Camera/Gumball m/c.

A Ground Short message can be brought up if every switch on the line mentioned is closed simultaneously, but this isn't common. The assignment of switches at the development stage might take prevention of this into account, and of course there may be vacant places in the switch matrix.

I'd keep your fingers crossed that the game was temporarily confused, as I did after provoking a 'U6 Checksum Error' from a Bride of PinBot by touching a switch line to a live G.I circuit.

 

[Durzel]

Thanks.

The outhole kicker not loading a ball into the shooter lane was discovered to be operator error... After I put the glass & apron back on I somehow missed putting a ball back in, so there were only 5 in. I guess the machine therefore refused to play another ball as it thought there was a ball missing somewhere.

 

[Durzel]

Played a few games last night, for an extended period of time (at least an hour) without any apparent errors, so am going to chalk this up this up to a gremlin. Thanks for your help