defender keeps playing over

[g.robert]

My defender has started playing over and over on its own. This has never happened before allthough I have had many other problems with it over the years. 95% of those problems were at the molex connections. Here is whats happening. The game starts two player on its own. The ship sits there until it is hit from one of the aliens. While it shifts to the next player, it does not register a loss of a man. This causes it to play switching player to player over and over.

My gut tells me to pull the game out and start pressing on the connections but this problem is so different from the others and I am also being lazy as it is a hassle to get it out to an area you can work on it. It will not reset with a cycle of power or enter the "set up" menus with the coin door interior buttons. Any ideas.

[Level42]

You should start checking if the 2 Player start button is stuck.

[g.robert]

 

I powered it off for the night and today it is OK. The start up diagnostic shows all OK but it showed this during the problem as well.

I have had this game for ten years and fixed many of the common Defender problems. This problem is unlike any of the others. No buttons are stuck. Even if it was, it was not loosing a man once shot like a normal play would. This indicates to me not a wiring or input issue but something else. Why would it play different?

I am hoping someone has experienced this exact problem and can identify the likely cause.

[vintagegamer]

What is it about this game that it is chock full of bugs?  I know noone ever expected the games to live this long to begin with, but Defender seems to have alot more probs than alot of the other cabs out there.  Is this common across all Williams cabs?

VG

[g.robert]

The three most common problems are:

1. power supply
2. connection at molex connector
3. Ram / Rom chip bad or poor connection between chip and base

Othen than those, the games run fine for many years. I wish I had an idea about my new problem. For now all is well.

[RayB]

What is it about this game that it is chock full of bugs?  I know noone ever expected the games to live this long to begin with, but Defender seems to have alot more probs than alot of the other cabs out there.  Is this common across all Williams cabs?

VG

Probably. Power problems tend to fry chips.