Game re-sets when coin is inserted?

jasond011

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There is a store by my house that has a Super Mario Bros. in a converted Nintendo Blue DK cab, and it has a sign on it that says something to the effect of "make sure you don't have any static electricity on you when you insert coin...If your the quarter has any static electricity on it when inserted into the game, the game will reset".

Has anyone ever heard of a problem like this?? Could it be a grounding issue? I want to help the guy fix this, but I've never heard of a coin carrying/conducting static electricity (or at least enough to reset a game).
 
coin mech?

Sounds like the coin mech is wired wrong to me and when the coin switch activates the machine shorts out. Check the wiring.
 
Ha ha, funny stuff.
Even if it was possible for a quarter to maintain a static charge going from your hand and into the the metal mech and through it internally it still wouldn't affect the pcb in any way because it's isolated from anything electrical.
Since the coin circuit is ground activated you could possibly have a short to +5 somewhere
in that circuit but I'd bet that your power supply is going out and the counter (+24V) is pulling it down enough to drop the +5 below required levels. Just a hunch though. I'd disconnect the counter first and see if it does it still.
 
That makes a ton of sense and I'll offer to check both the counter and the and the coin mech wiring for them. I didn't think that any static electricity would be enough to affect or even be connected at all to any of the electronics needed to run the game. Thanks for the advice folks!
 
Actually, it can happen. It was notorious on Midway coin doors in particular because of the metal coin insert and poor grounding. IIRC that's why they switched to plastic inserts.

Used to have a Ms Pac on location that would do exactly that - reset if you touched the metal inserts and "shocked" the game.
 
There was a Carnival game at my local arcade eons ago which supposedly if you rubbed your feet on the carpet and built up a charge, then touched it in the right place on the coin door, it would register a buttload of credits. Never had a chance to try it myself, but that was the rumor.
 
Yes, static can mess with some games. Travel through ground via power supply or can cause a problem through RF and cause boards to reset. Although I have mostly seen it happen on skill games with Toy Taxi / Hot stuff cranes being the worst.

But as greagatron pointed out the coin meter could be your problem. Some Daytonas we had a somewhat similar issue but the games froze after coin up and Sega had us install diodes.
 
I had a Donkey Kong that did the exact same thing. I had it in a carpeted room and if the humidity was very low, it was easy to build up static from walking across the room and zap the game when I put a quarter in.

I went so far as to reground everything inside the cab and it didn't help. Then I completely disconnected the coin door and mechs from everything and it still reset the machine when I touched the coin slot. I never could figure it out, I ended up putting a freeplay kit in it to avoid having to coin it up.
 
I had a Donkey Kong that did the exact same thing. I had it in a carpeted room and if the humidity was very low, it was easy to build up static from walking across the room and zap the game when I put a quarter in.

I went so far as to reground everything inside the cab and it didn't help. Then I completely disconnected the coin door and mechs from everything and it still reset the machine when I touched the coin slot. I never could figure it out, I ended up putting a freeplay kit in it to avoid having to coin it up.

Well that sounds like exactly what is happening with this DK machine, and the guy did in fact set it on free play to avoid the issue. I will go ahead and check out the other routes, including the coin counter and go from there. So you don't think plastic coin mechs would make a difference?
 
Zapping a game by touching the coin door sounds like a wiring problem. The coin door (and any other exposed metal components) should be grounded by a separate ground strap from the electronics. In Williams games this was the braided steel flat cable that ran everywhere through the interior of the cabinet. On Midway games there was a flat strap in a yellow jacket that did the same thing. Because coin doors moved it was quite common for the ground straps to become loose which would allow the ground path to be any connection to ground, usually the coin counter that the operator hacked to ground by connecting it to the coin door. This formed a path to ground through the circuit board. I would unplug the board and then see if you have continuity to ground on the coin door as well as tracing the coin counter wiring.

ken
 
I've also seen this problem when poor wiring - or wiring that got pinched in the hinge at some point - causde a short to the slam tilt switch. Whenever a coin was dropped in, the coin switch acted like the slam tilt and reset the game...
 
Sometimes my TRON will make a "pop" noise if you have static on you when you drop a coin in, or even touch the CP. But it's never affected the credits etc.
 
i would also make sure that the cord actually still has the ground prong attached, and that the plug itself is actually grounded. Either of those being bad will cause the game to not actually be grounded, regardless of whether or not the internal grounds are connected or not.
 
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