NBA Jam help

absolut0314

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My NBA Jam machine has been acting crazy lately, it seems like theres a short somewhere the marquee light "flutters" and the sounds go crazy saying random players names that have nothing to do with the gameplay? anybody else experience this, any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Sounds like two different issues.

The marquee light is probably either the bulb or the starter. I'd try the starter first.

The sounds are probably the sound board. Does your game do the rom check when it first starts up?
 
yes, the game goes through the rom check and no problems are detected. the only reason i mentioned the light issue is because they are in sync. once the light starts to flicker the sounds start to go crazy, almost like theres a short or something. the machine will run fine for about 10-15 minutes before any malfunctioning.
 
The light is most likely causing EM interference. This happens a lot in vending machines. Although, I think I've only seen it once before in an arcade game. Fix the bulb, and I bet your problem goes away.
 
That sounds about right.

I've seen flickering bulbs screw up monitors, I suppose it could do the same thing with sound boards. Let us know what you find out!

BTW you could probably test the theory by just unplugging the light.
 
It's funny you'd say this...

I have a combination NBA Jam / Gauntlet Legends machine and was having intermittent problems, usually right at start up where something would screw up the games -- both of them, no matter which was plugged in.

I'd also noticed in the past occasional weird behavior with the marquee light blinking out but never really put the two things together. (To my knowledge they never happened at the same time).

So I have a new power supply in my game and two totally different game boards so it has to be power related somehow. Someone suggested that sometimes the ballasts go bad and cause game issues and I promptly unplugged my marquee light (from the power supply AC socket) and knock on wood -- everything has been okay since I did that.

If I go a few more months w/o issues then I'll consider it fixed and replace the ballast.

Your mileage may vary...
 
solved!

thanks everyone for the input, i unplugged the marquee light and the interference is absolutly gone, i'm guessing the fixture needs a new starter which is no big deal. thanks again everyone. cb3 out
 
> the machine will run fine for about 10-15 minutes before any malfunctioning.

Does that make it a ballast or a starter problem then?
 
if it constantly flickers on and off, you're more than likely looking at a bad light bulb, but if you're going to replace that, do the starter too.

obviously if the problem persists then you're looking at a ballast.
 
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