Golden Tee Fore Groundhog Day (PSU)

electrocoded

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Donor 2024
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Hello All,

I feel like I'm going a little crazy here so asking for a sanity check. I've been trying to fix a set of seven mostly-broken arcade machines that came to me unexpectedly. I've always enjoyed tinkering with gaming systems, mostly jailbreaking more modern ones, but worked in a CRT repair shop briefly as a high school gig and like electronics and challenges so it seemed meant-to-be. They came with a house I bought. But I'm a year in with very little success to show for a lot of toiling! This Golden Tee machine for example, I had a local repair guy run triage quickly on all my machines. We sent my GTF board off to be repaired and when it came back unrepairable he threw in the towel. I ordered a set of boards on this site and the second one worked. Among the 3x video cards I had, one of those worked too. And I bought GT Fore Complete on a new SD card reader to replace the old CD drive. But voltages were reading a little wonky and the machine restarted a LOT so I replaced the relatively new (~2019?) SuzoHapp PSU with a new one from Gatorcade. With the new PSU the cabinet booted and I navigated the menus and started a round and CELEBRATED! A little too soon. Because the machine persistently resets unexpectedly. Last night it reset 3x on my first swing of the first hole even when I rolled the trackball gently (so not a loose wire + machine vibration issue). I'm also stranding on a rubber mat so it's not a ball static issue. The ball looks great and I couldn't find any wiring issues with it. I noticed that when the game booted my PSU leads would measure +5, -5, +12, -12 (All quite close to those numbers ... it seemed to like +5.15V as primary voltage). But sometimes between plays the boot screen would give me the low voltage error and I'd measure and the taps would be +5, -7, +9, -17. Really weird, right? At first I thought I was making some kind of mistake with the multimeter but over the course of a couple hours of messing with the machine last night I observed the machine go from working with good voltages (but restarting on trackball action) to boot screen low voltage error with those weird secondary voltages, back to good voltages and booting, back to bad voltages and voltage error screen ... back and forth several timies. And when they're bad they'd always measure as those same oddball voltages.

This wonky voltage combined with the random restarts sounds 100% like I got a bad PSU, right? I just seems so unlikely that a 2019 SuzoHapp PSU and then a 2024 SuzoHapp PSU would be what prevents a 25yo cabinet from working! Would seem like terrible luck but hoping this is the issue since it's so easy to fix (I've contacted Gatorcade and waiting to hear back). Please let me know if I'm overlooking something else. Thanks!
 
Post a picture of your board and JAMMA connector (and the other games you acquired!) You might have missed the service bulletin! :LOL:
Basically, you want to inject the 5V and 12V into the 4-pin Molexes that the HDD gets powered off of. HDD can also get its own wires right off of the power supply, not much reason to run more current through the JAMMA than necessary...
Edit: I see you said you have SD card as HDD replacement... SD card adapter doesn't always work as expected; CompactFlash is more like an IDE drive but I think you're good as it seems to have booted at least once... You can easily make the power bypass cable with some wiring salvaged from an old PC power supply.
 

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@fr4nk I appreciate it! I do have the bypass cable and those bulletins explain why my JAMMA plug has an unused 9-pin molex connector - I was wondering about that. It confirms my PSU and game board have been connected properly. I misspoke when I said SD card ... I meant Compact Flash. I bought an electrical connection cleaner/conductor spray that was recommended here and used on the JAMMA and about half my other connections - will try to get the rest without breaking anything.

Here are photos of a set of good voltage readings and a set of bad readings. They're measured across the pins in the second (spare, not used) 9-pin molex coming directly off the PSU. Also, it happened today where I booted up, got the attached "low voltage" boot error and then measured bad voltages at the PSU molex and a few minutes later the left-ON machine beeped and the boot message changed to the attached voltage OK (without me touching the voltage adjustment knob) and then I measured good voltages at the PSU molex! Boots are rarely successful and when they are, the machine resets on my first gentle swing (trackball action) of the first hole.

Gatorcade agreed to swap the power supply so I've mailed him back what appears to be the second PSU replacement for this cabinet in the last ~5yrs. We'll see if the third time is the charm. It seems unlikely that two recent high-quality power supplies would be the thing holding this cabinet back but I don't know how else to explain measuring these bad voltages on the spare taps directly off the supply.

Good voltages:
f75jc8.jpg

Bad voltages:
4320i0.jpg

Bad boot with bad voltages:
8h60rm.jpg

... spontaneously changed to good boot with good voltages
m1llhv.jpg
 
It sure seems like the power supply. The thing is, that 2019 one was probably bad (you didn't post the voltages, I bet they were doing a whole other thing), and you just happened to get a bum one from Happ. So they seem related but you're only two power supplies deep :)

BTW the one went from -12 to +17, did you just put the leads in backwards that time or maybe the - symbol is flashing? As you know -12 isn't used on it but it is useful to test just to see if it's moving around I guess. If it's swinging that much something's going on inside.

the idea that the 2019 one was already bad, that's pretty standard anymore on the Happ power supplies if they've been used a lot. The fan will fail too. To be fair though back in the day power supplies would wear out in a few years (sometimes) too, that's why they sold so many of them :) Other things like maybe it was in a bar or got moisture will make it fail quicker as well.
 
Odd that it successfully boots but only goes out when the trackball is moved... Make sure the trackball ground has continuity all the way back to the AC ground lug (with the machine unplugged). If you have fluorescents, unplug those temporarily; I've seen functional lights cause issues because of some kind of AC feedback. Original model Ice Balls are notorious here for sudden reset just because the fluorescent bulbs are old (but still light up!)
 
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