Funhouse Flippers always enabled?

rschieve

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I'm working on a Funhouse where the flippers are enabled as soon as the game completes booting and no game is in play. If I turn on the power and watch the flipper relay it energizes as soon as the game finishes it's initialization. The W4 and W5 jumpers are off which I believe is correct. The flipper switches are seen with Switch Edges as they should be. Q99 that drives the relay is good. I even tried another Power Driver board and get the same symptoms. As far as I can tell the overall switch and lamp matrixes are working correctly and all the solenoids fire when they should so I don't think the data from the CPU board is bad.

This is an early WPC game before solid state flippers and I'm wondering if there is some jumper option or setting for the Power Driver board I'm not aware of? The serial number of the Power Driver board does not match the other boards in the game so it's not te original board. Suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks!
 
Isn't the voltages that are fed to the flippers passed through one of the relays in the bottom of the cab. The relay supposed to turn off at the end of the game and if it was stuck on, the flippers would be enabled always. At least that is what I seem to recall on a Gottlieb System 3 I was working on recently. One relay kills the power to certain things at the end of the game.
 
According to the schematic W4 and W5 being removed is correct. Since you can see the relay activate after the game fully boots I'd suspect that the CPU is telling it to turn on. And since you put another power driver board in the game it almost sets in cement that the CPU is the culprit. If it were something like cabinet wiring it would happen as soon as you turn the game on.

I wonder if theres an adjustment like "attract mode flippers" or something?

Do you have another CPU you can try?
 
According to the schematic W4 and W5 being removed is correct. Since you can see the relay activate after the game fully boots I'd suspect that the CPU is telling it to turn on. And since you put another power driver board in the game it almost sets in cement that the CPU is the culprit. If it were something like cabinet wiring it would happen as soon as you turn the game on.

I wonder if theres an adjustment like "attract mode flippers" or something?

Do you have another CPU you can try?

I will have another CPU board to try when I go back but it seems like the CPU board should be fine if all the lamps, switches and coils work correctly. Basically the one data bus between the CPU and Power/Driver controls all those other things too.

I appreciate these replies which seem to confirm I didn't miss something obvious.
 
Well some where within the software/hardware from the CPU is the single signal that tells the IC that drives the transistor that drives the relay that drives the flippers to turn on so if its not the cabinet wiring and its not the power driver board its got to be the CPU.

At least thats the way I look at it.
 
This is reminding me of another repair I did a LONG time ago. I seem to recall a connector being in the wrong place on the power driver board somewhere.
 
Ditto on what GameFixer said. I have bought 2 games where J132 and J128 were plugged in wrong. Caused all kinds of problems. On the bright side, I was able to buy the pins cheap.
 
Yeah, it seems to me that there is some output from the PDB thats enabled after boot up normally but its not used for anything as far as I remember. So if something is plugged in wrong some where something ends up being enabled thats not supposed to be.
 
This is reminding me of another repair I did a LONG time ago. I seem to recall a connector being in the wrong place on the power driver board somewhere.

This wouldn't surprise me as the machine was purchased "as is" so who knows what the last guy did to it. ALWAYS suspect previous work... When I go back I'll try another CPU board but I'll certainly be checking the wiring if another CPU does the same thing. I'll make sure to follow up with what the fix eventually is.
 
picture of my FH PDB (wired inside the game) Please forgive J115, as the hack was done by the previous owner

IMG_0419.jpg
 
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Just reading the thread. Wow Tom, what a hack. The previous owner actually just soldered directly to the driver board! How do these people get into pinball! Love FH, would love one but don't want to she'll out 3k.
 
Just reading the thread. Wow Tom, what a hack. The previous owner actually just soldered directly to the driver board! How do these people get into pinball! Love FH, would love one but don't want to she'll out 3k.

You guys are mistaking hacks for what some would call field repairs.

While these games are on route you either have to do what you can to get them to work or blow them off altogether. The fact that the previous owner (if he was a route operator) even tried to repair the GI should give you guys some sort of gratification. Most OPS wouldnt bother with the GI since it "doesnt effect game play" (I dont think that BTW).

now if this were a home owner I suppose the guy should have tried a bit harder.
 
Completely disagree with game fixer. No excuse, it's a hack job! Swap the board out if is an operator.
 
Look what I started with on J121, J126, & J101. At least I was able to change the female connector on those. While I hate the previous owners hack at J115 (he was an operator), it works. So, I am going to leave "working" alone for now.

100_2068.jpg
 
Completely disagree with game fixer. No excuse, it's a hack job! Swap the board out if is an operator.

Let me as you a question. Are you an operator or a tech thats worked for an operator? What if you dont have another PDB or if the machine is 500 miles from your home base?

You guys piss and moan about what operators DONT do to keep pins functional the least you can do is be slightly happy when one tries to do something to keep the play field lit up.

If one of my locations bitched any where near the way "home collectors" do I'd remove the pins from the location so I wouldnt have to listen to it. Fortunately for me I only have a small handful of locations that have pins that do well and those players are understanding of the nature of pins.

As I said before, if the job was done by a guy in his house (read: has the means, time and parts to do the job right) then I agree, its a hack job. If it was done by an OP you should honestly be happy that the guy made an attempt to keep the play field lit up, most OP's wouldnt even have bothered with that connection.
 
Look what I started with on J121, J126, & J101. At least I was able to change the female connector on those. While I hate the previous owners hack at J115 (he was an operator), it works. So, I am going to leave "working" alone for now.

100_2068.jpg

Not a fan of crimp caps, especially in a solenoid drive circuit (does that connector drive flashers?). I think solder and heat shrink would have been a better choice there.

EDIT: In your pic you can see that the guy installed a molex connector on the harness that powers the GI. I find it odd that he did that but didnt add in the correct connector on the board and the harness. Very strange way to fix that problem. Maybe he was just using the stuff he had in the shop? I dunno.
 
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