Picked up a Firepower, but have a general fuse question

Bullwinkle said:
Wow... very cool. was able to play a game without the right slingshot and without speech..or at least speech with any volume. If I turn the pot all the way counter clockwise, I get no game sound and I get very faint speech, I can turn the dial clockwise and the game volume can get extremely loud, but at that point I can't hear any speech at all. So speech is working...I just cant get any volume on it..as for starting the game...only had one ball in it... added the other two and it started right up :)

I now remember why I love this game though...cant wait to figure out the speech volume issue.

Thanks again Hans, greatly appreciated!

-tom
Click to expand...

Just wait until you clean/wax the playfield, rebuild the flippers, and get some super shiny new balls in there. It's a fast as hell game.

With the speech, spin that pot all the way about a dozen times to scrape the carbon off, see if that helps. Also, re-seat the ribbon cables too. Otherwise you'll have to dig a bit deeper, but it's at least making the speech, so should be easy to diagnose. Oh, and don't forget that the master volume control is inside the cabinet near the ball roll tilt..... no need to blow out your eardrums :)

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
Just wait until you clean/wax the playfield, rebuild the flippers, and get some super shiny new balls in there. It's a fast as hell game.

With the speech, spin that pot all the way about a dozen times to scrape the carbon off, see if that helps. Also, re-seat the ribbon cables too. Otherwise you'll have to dig a bit deeper, but it's at least making the speech, so should be easy to diagnose. Oh, and don't forget that the master volume control is inside the cabinet near the ball roll tilt..... no need to blow out your eardrums :)

-Hans
Click to expand...

Hahahah...yeah..didn't realize there was a master volume ... I turned it to no avail... i've cranked the pot on the sound boards 30 or so times..no change. Is there a driver for just the voice that may need to be replaced? I did reseat the ribbon connector as I took out the speech board and reflowed solder on the solder points of the pot. No difference.

I had already waxed it while I was waiting to pick up the parts..and yes...it's a blast! I'll keep checking on the voice and I need to check resistor / cap on the one coil, but this is awesome :)
 
According to good 'ole Clay, the common source of the problem for low speech is IC3 on the speech board. Just re-stating his info there, as I just don't have the time to really dig into it, and he's usually on the money with this stuff.

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
According to good 'ole Clay, the common source of the problem for low speech is IC3 on the speech board. Just re-stating his info there, as I just don't have the time to really dig into it, and he's usually on the money with this stuff.

-Hans
Click to expand...

OK...I will check it out. It is starting to develop other problems now. As the machine warms up, she starts randomly rebooting and / or going nutty. So it's time to go through and replace connectors / pin headers, reflow solder and get everything square on that end. Also, is there any other place you know of that has the 40pin (or 4 10's) interconnect female? GPE seems to be out :/

thanks again. hopefully the next post will be of a working pin :)

Here's a pic of her at 80% working... it's in pretty decent shape with a little wear around the # "6" on the playfield. Eventually will sit next to Flash and 3 California Speeds... I'll call it "the Steve Richie Row" ;)

firepower2.jpg
 
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You're on the right track if you're getting hot reboot issues. I personally prefer to get all the old solder off and apply fresh, as opposed to just reflowing, but your mileage may vary.

The displays look great too, no burned segments in the glasses that I can see.

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
You're on the right track if you're getting hot reboot issues. I personally prefer to get all the old solder off and apply fresh, as opposed to just reflowing, but your mileage may vary.

The displays look great too, no burned segments in the glasses that I can see.

-Hans
Click to expand...

Yeah, the displays are nice, no segments flickering. I do notice that on the master, the comma before the "ball in play" window flickers a lot. Hoping that's normal.

Probably a better idea to replace instead of reflow. do you replace the interconnect pin header typically or just replace solder and then replace the receptacle side?
 
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Bullwinkle said:
Yeah, the displays are nice, no segments flickering. I do notice that on the master, the comma before the "ball in play" window flickers a lot. Hoping that's normal.

Probably a better idea to replace instead of reflow. do you replace the interconnect pin header typically or just replace solder and then replace the receptacle side?
Click to expand...

It all depends on how close they trimmed the bottom half. Sometimes they really ground them down way too short and the pin barely makes it through the board, but normally I keep the male pins unless they are damaged.

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
According to good 'ole Clay, the common source of the problem for low speech is IC3 on the speech board. Just re-stating his info there, as I just don't have the time to really dig into it, and he's usually on the money with this stuff.

-Hans
Click to expand...

the IC in question is a LM1458N dual op amp (spec sheet calls it a general purpose op amp). Can I replace it with a NTE858M dual op amp? I also have a TL082 dual op amp from the shack.
 
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Bullwinkle said:
the IC in question is a LM1458N dual op amp (spec sheet calls it a general purpose op amp). Can I replace it with a NTE858M dual op amp? I also have a TL082 dual op amp from the shack.
Click to expand...

The NTE cross reference app comes up with NTE778A. Not sure if the two are compatible, baby harassing me too much to read into detail.

-Hans
 
LOL I'm definitely curious if this solves your problem, as Mom's firepower is starting to get some really bad static in the speech, regular sound is fine. Already did all the connectors, I'll probably end up throwing a cap kit and new speech amp at the problem.

-Hans
 
Does anyone have a picture or know what is suppose to be at the top of the divider between the shield lane and the flipper return lane on the left side? Previous owner decided it should be a woodscrew :( It looks like it should be a post or at least something covering the screw itself! I checked ipdb but no shots that really show it. I just need to cover it up , assuming it's just a chrome cylinder or something like that.
 
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Mine was the same thing, except they used a couple of locknuts as spacers :::sigh:::
I ended up going to the hobby shop and getting some brass tubing that barely fit over the screw, and cut a piece to length, looks much nicer now.

I did track down the part number for what's supposed to be there, it's called a "Support Post", and the original part number is 2A-4020, if you want to try and track it down.

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
LOL I'm definitely curious if this solves your problem, as Mom's firepower is starting to get some really bad static in the speech, regular sound is fine. Already did all the connectors, I'll probably end up throwing a cap kit and new speech amp at the problem.

-Hans
Click to expand...

Hans, this part indeed did fix the low volume voice. It has the same op amp located at U2. I grabbed two but only replaced the one so far and it worked perfectly!

Now just a little more tinkering and I should be good to go! :)
 
I "think" the random reset / lockups have been resolved (haven't had it happen for a bit now so here's hoping). Replaced every pin header on the power supply board, MPU and Driver board including interconnect male & female. Also replaced all sockets with machine sockets and replaced both bridge rectifiers. I would love to have known exactly which part it was, but I don't have that kind of patience!

Now I'm down to fixing the slingshot coil ...almost 100% :)

EDIT: That 'll teach me to post. Figured I was safe after 4 hours of continuous play and no hiccups. I walked away..and came back to blank displays and the background noise running. Gah!
 
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Bullwinkle said:
I "think" the random reset / lockups have been resolved (haven't had it happen for a bit now so here's hoping). Replaced every pin header on the power supply board, MPU and Driver board including interconnect male & female. Also replaced all sockets with machine sockets and replaced both bridge rectifiers. I would love to have known exactly which part it was, but I don't have that kind of patience!

Now I'm down to fixing the slingshot coil ...almost 100% :)

EDIT: That 'll teach me to post. Figured I was safe after 4 hours of continuous play and no hiccups. I walked away..and came back to blank displays and the background noise running. Gah!
Click to expand...

When it resets like that, does it reboot right away if you flick it off and on? or does it stay dead?

If it stays dead, try some freeze spray on suspected areas that might be causing the problem. If you freeze an area, and it comes back up, then you know what area to look into. Then you start hitting individual components until you track it down. Can potentially go through a couple cans of the stuff though, and may still not find the problem.

Another thing I would do is check the 5v line when the machine has sat overnight, then again after it's reset on you, see if the voltage is wandering. Have you checked your wall voltage too? Could always be a problem with low line voltage going into the machine.

-Hans
 
HHaase said:
When it resets like that, does it reboot right away if you flick it off and on? or does it stay dead?

If it stays dead, try some freeze spray on suspected areas that might be causing the problem. If you freeze an area, and it comes back up, then you know what area to look into. Then you start hitting individual components until you track it down. Can potentially go through a couple cans of the stuff though, and may still not find the problem.

Another thing I would do is check the 5v line when the machine has sat overnight, then again after it's reset on you, see if the voltage is wandering. Have you checked your wall voltage too? Could always be a problem with low line voltage going into the machine.

-Hans
Click to expand...

It doesn't stay dead, however it will typically fail again very quickly (within a game or two) and continue to do so until I leave it off for a while. I've replaced the two 3am diodes with the recommended upgrade (I think that just about covers all components on the power supply board). If I recall correctly though, I think my voltage on the +5 at the MPU is a bit low at the test point. I will get voltages tonight. I've replaced all the pin headers, but I will replace the corresponding connectors this evening to make sure the wiring is not the issue.

thanks,

-tom
 
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