Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Rollergames progress

The upper flipper is where all of the points are, so if that's out of whack, the game is wack.
I saw "magnet grab" pushed the ball down in to the flipper, demonstrating that it was too far out.  I adjusted the flipper position, and it made the shot SO MUCH better.
But then when the ball came from the popper, it was having trouble getting stopped by the magnet.  I had overcompensated:  Now there was no friction of the flipper and the ball sailed past.  After a second adjustment, both the grabs and shots seem to be on point.

too much!

too little!



The big thing to work on was the wonky display issue.  Thanks to this pinside thread, we got the problem solved.



Tracing back in the schematics, we can see that those characters come from the main CPU board, specifically SRC2.
I took a moment to inspect the component on the board, didn't see much.  But then I bent it upwards and WOAH there was our obvious issue:  the bolt on the battery holder must have rubbed that component when it was installed.

UHHHHHHHHH NOPE



But that's just one part of a larger issue:  there had obviously been a battery issue in the past as there was corrosion on the board in the general area.  I am told any contacts that are tarnished do not shine are most likely corrosion.
Someone dealt with a bad battery and battery holder, and did a bit of a hack fix with the bolt on the battery holder, leaving corrosion on the board, and damaging SRC2 in the process.

segment g and comma are always on

here we see g and 'com' are next to each other, pins 25 and 26 of the data cable, which I inspect for damage but find none.  (CLICK TO EMBIGGEN)


trace back to MPU board we see that 'g' and 'com' are pins 8 and 9 of that same SRC2




So here's the thing with these "SIP Packs" as they are referred to:  they are banks of resistors, with a small capacitor to assist in filtering.  They are also unobtainium.
Someone has made exact replacements, but they are ridiculously pricey.  (search for R/C Module)
You can get by with just using a 40 cent SIP pack that is just resistors, which is what we did.  A pinsider kindly sent some my way, we clipped the 10th leg on it (only 9 holes, and this is fine as long as you align the dots,) and now the display is working just fine!

But if you read the bottom of the pinside post, this board might be unseavable in the long run.

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