Bally Lamp out

sparky5693

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I've got a ton of lamps out on my silverball mania. I've had the driver board gone through by someone that knows what they're doing, and my situation is better, but still not great.

I've got the game in lamp test mode, and I was testing the lamps on the backbox that spell "silverball". Most of these were working. I fiddled with a couple of the sockets here (tried lightly wiggling them). Since my wiggling all these lamps are now consistently out but the last L. Somehow during all this I blew the 10A fuse on the rectifier. I've replaced it, but it didn't help me any.
Aside from this, i've got a ton of playfield lamps out (the GI seems solid though) if it matters, I just started up top.
 
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I have something simular with a bally black jack. The advice i got is to replace all connectors first before looking somewhere else.
 
I dunno, me blowing the fuse makes me think I may have done something to the board. While testing one of the other lights that were out, I get voltage from the connector, but lose it at the socket. On that one, i'm tempted to just run a new wire. For the backbox lights, I haven't been able to make enough sense out of the charts I read to tell what wire originates where... There's just so many of the same letter on the playfield/backboard that it's been hard to follow.
 
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You may have a bunch of crappy sockets - wire jumpers are your friend...(length of wire with alligator clips on both ends)

For feature lamps (those flashing on/off), you can connect a jumper from one working socket to another to quickly verify whether the issue is with the socket, vs. the driver (assuming you have a known-good bulb in the socket).

Take care to jumper between the correct wires on the socket! IE - driver wire to driver wire. If this doesn't make sense to you, then don't do it.

If it's not working when jumpered, with a known-good bulb, then your socket is probably shot.
 
Well, I believe i'm just baffled.

I track back one of bad lights to it's lamp driver molex. There's power in the wire after the molex, so I know the problem isn't there. I continue tracing the wire under my playfield checking with my multimeter. I'm using a needle probe, so I can just slide it into the insulation. I trace the wire about 3/4 of the way back to the lamp, and I noticed lots of bulbs on the same braided ground are out. I figured it might have a break, so I tied one braided ground into another nearby that was working and I blew the 10amp fuse again.

I'm totally lost.
 
In the "dead" area - check to see if you have a short between power and ground; you may have a shorted bulb/socket in the mix.

You'll likely need to check every single socket/bulb on that strand to be safe.
 
Can you recommend a safe way to do this? If you're right, I'd expect something to already be fried on the driver board...
 
Well, that's where the fuse comes in - it blows before any real damage can occur (hopefully).

All the "Silverball" lights in the head go to J2 on the lamp/driver board. All the feature lamps in the head period, are on J2 (game over, high score, etc.).

If you disconnect J2, does the fuse still blow? Assuming not, do your other feature lamps (IE, lamps under the inserts on the playfield) work without issue? I know you said a lot of them were out - depending on where this game has lived, you may well have a bunch of crappy sockets, or you may have a connection issue up in the head. If you definitely have voltage coming off the driver board on a given pin, for a given lamp, but you don't have it at the socket itself, check the harness connector for the head - it may not be seated properly, or may be damaged.

See "table A" in the "plug connectors" section of the Silverball manual for details on what wire goes where.

Key here - you had *some* lamps working in the head until you wiggled around several sockets - that's when things went downhill, the fuse blew, etc. - check all those sockets you wiggled for shorts as mentioned. Pull all the bulbs, and look at each socket to make sure the wire coming in from the driver board, and the tab it's soldered to isn't shorting against the side of the socket. With the bulbs pulled, you can use your multimeter to check for continuity between the incoming wire from the lamp driver, and the common wire on the socket.

By disconnecting J2, you'll know whether the fuse blowing is because of the lamps in the head, which at least lets you isolate that issue to something you did while messing with the sockets - then it's just a matter of tracking down specifically what got mucked up.

Good luck!

Brent
 
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