Firepower - this will teach me to fix something...

Bullwinkle

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Well, I'd been playing my Firepower for quite some time now. Has been working great, but the battery power seem to never hold the settings. So I had to set it up every time I turned it on. After 6 months of doing this, I finally broke down and pulled the board and immediately found the D17 diode was hosed (not getting any voltage out the backside but had 4.8vdc goin into it). didn't have a new one, but had a few other boards lying around, so I grabbed one from a donor, installed and checked: 4.8vdc in / 4.4vdc out ...looks good. Fire it up... go into programming mode and program in the settings... play a few quick test games..get multiball...seems to work great. shut it down..waited an hour..went back to play... settings still in there.. GREAT! .... or not so great...

Go back later and start playing a game. I have it setup to give extra balls instead of games at the replay scores..so i get there...and it gives me the extra ball. As soon as I start playing..it now says I'm on ball 75..each one that drains after that..gives me the next number (ball 76, 77, 78, 79, 7(blank)) ...the game never ends! powered down, powered back up..game plays ok, but I'm unable to get one of the settings to work as I like it... but as soon as I get extra ball lit, the funky never ending game starts up again. So I figure..maybe I got some crap in the memory...pulled the external battery pack... now I cant get out of audit mode! ...not even with the batteries out and the quick power flick to bypass audit. (oh I really should have left well enough alone)

Is this most likely a need to replace the 5101? I'm going to get a new diode for D17, but that actually does seem to be working as Pin 1 of IC 1 has no power when machine is off and pin 22 of the 5101 has 4.4vdc.

Just wondering if there is anything else I should be checking (I am following the guide from pinrepair for system 3-7...yes..I printed it when I got the game..thankfully)

Thanks,


Tom
 
Just an update (mainly cause I hate leaving threads unfinished), I replaced the 5101 as well as the donor d17 diode and it's running great again. Not sure which ended up being the problem. Everything tested correctly (voltage readings and diode check) after installing the diode, but the game started out unable to correctly program one settings and eventually couldn't get out of audit mode.

Wondering if there was a problem with the 5101 that wasn't uncovered until I replaced the D17 diode. In any case... all is well now.

Thanks,

Tom
 
Cool. Thanks for the conclusion!

I hate it when I look up a problem, I find someone who posted about having the exact same problem, but there's no clue as to if anything worked or didn't work or they just gave up.
 
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