Arcade Collecting > Pinball
Solenoid Driver Board Problems
Karetaker:
Did you check your switches for adjustment. With the board that is firing coils when it shouldn't hooked up take your fist and bang on the playfield in game play. Not real hard but hard enough to get some vibration going. If any coils are firing when you do this you more than likely have a switch adjusted to close. Cleaning the switches might not be a bad idea either.
smartbomb2084:
Check out my old Gaja Project that I use for MAME.
gajaman:
smartbomb2084 - I've unsoldered and resoldered any joints on the connectors that looked iffy and this hasn't made any difference I'm afraid.
On the board that blows the fuse the flippers still work after the fuse has blown. I guess this means the flipper relay is ok?
Karetaker - I whacked the playfield as hard as I dare and nothing fired. I've cleaned and adjusted most of the switches and this also made no difference but was good housekeeping I'm sure.
smartbomb2084 - Nice controller! Defender is my all time favorite game. I've been away from the mame scene for quite a while (other than playing obviously) but recently dipped my feet back in with this:
I really wanted to try and build something small that did not look like a traditional arcade machine and this was a small as I could go with stuff I had laying around. I've got a plan to build a full sized Defender replica but chopping most of the back of the cabinet off using a flat screen so i can fit it in my house without my wife killing me!
Any further help with the SDB gratefully received. I guess I could buy a new replacement SDB but I feel like that would be admitting defeat.
Karetaker:
Wow, you really do have a problem...LOL! Is it only when you are playing a game that the coils fire when they are not supposed to? If you fire up a game and just let the ball sit in the shooter lane do they fire, or only when you are playing a game with the ball in play? I'm not sure if you are chasing one problem or a few problems here. Try CARFULLY pulling the game Rom and cleaning the pins. Coils not firing could be a connection to one of the boards, since they fire sometimes. Could be a solder joint as well. Also check the diodes on the flipper coils. Put a small screwdriver under them and twist a little to make sure the leads don't come out. That's a long shot as when that happens a pin will normall lock up or do other weird things. But, a bad diode on a flipper coil can make a pin do some strange things.
smartbomb2084:
Nice cabinet. It is all self-contained complete with monitor, mother board, and power supply? Is it running MAME? My old controller is just I PAC powered to play DEFENDER , also my favorite game, and STARGATE. I kept it old school though and used leaf switches and a reproduction UP/DOWN stick. I never use it anymore as I have a ROBOTRON cabinet with three boardsets in it to play ROBOTRON, DEFENDER, and STARGATE. I have a rebuilt ROBOTRON control panel and a rebuilt STARGATE control panel to play DEFENDER too as the two control panel dimensions are the same and they just bolt right up to the cabinet. I made custom wire harnesses out of old shuffle bowler molex connectors for each boardset (Male) and for the cabinet (Female) and seperate ones for each control panel. To play a game I just plug in the appropriate wire harness right through the coin door. It is nice to have the original hardware and boardsets to play on as it is quite a bit different than using MAME. Somthing to think about when you make you DEFENDER cabinet.
As for your SDB problems. I will have to look at the drawings some more and get back to you. I really wish you would have soldered ALL the connector pins even if they look good to the naked eye. Anytime you can eliminate some doubt it is a good idea to do so. J4 on the board that doesn't blow the fuse should definitely be resoldered regardless of how it looks as this is the BCD data that selects which solenoid gets activated. I still haven't ruled out the fliipper relay yet. One way to find out if the flipper relay is shorted is to see if the flippers work on the fuse blowing SDB in 'GAME OVER' mode. The relay keeps the flippers inoperative until a game is started and the relay is activated by the MPU supplying a ground path to the flippers.
Have any of the connector plugs on any of the wiring been replaced already? Does the game have plugs with crimped on wire ends or does it have the red AMP style IDC plugs? IDC= Insulation Displacement Connector
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