Skateball Flipper Issue TECH

tomdotcom

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Just got myself a Skateball the other day and need some help getting
the flippers working properly.

The guy before me had a piece of cardboard shoved into the relay to
make them work. So when it's in there they work fine, but if you take
it out the flippers are totally dead. Can I just replace that relay?
Or would something else be wrong down or up the line that would cause
this?

See my 2 pictures that I took. One is with the cardboard in and one is
when I took it out.
The part# is e-00146-0795 (relay,printed circuit)
The relay socket is e-00592-0002
The relay holder is m-1839

Also where could I buy this if it just needs to be replaced?

See the 2 links below to see what I'm talking about.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3423/3857487571_fd34984fc3_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomdotcom88/3858273608/sizes/l/
 
Did you check the fuse under the playfield?There must be something keeping that relay from energizing when a game is started.Hopefully Lindsey will chime in...he's quite the expert on Bally/Stern stuff.
 
Haven't checked the fuses yet. I'm just going to replace them ALL on the whole machine. It's a start anyhow. I got 4 pins all in one weekend, 3 of which need some work. Especially Skateball. Dr Who and Time Machine just have some small obvious problems. Skateball has some not so obvious ones :)
 
Dr who and time machine are totally playable..they aint going anywhere...yet...

Gonna have to do some research in the pin repair guides. Would be nice to not waste too much fixing the wrong thing though..
 
The under playfield fuse is for the actual flipper voltage. This won't affect the relay. The flipper relay circuit is pretty straight forward....check diodes CR15, CR20...transistor Q5...and less likely U4. Do you have voltage at the banded side of CR20?



Edward
 
That's the flipper relay (obviously).

There are a row of transistors on the bottom of the board that the flipper relay is on (The regulator/driver board). The right most transistor will drive the flipper relay. The first thing I would do is manually ground the metal tab on that transistor. That should energize the flipper relay. If it doesn't I would check the relay coil and see if it's open. Also take a look at the solder connections at the relay. If it does work I would check that transistor and even the pre-driver. Check the diodes too for grins.

There are 2 types of solenoids in Bally/Stern games though the coils are the same. Momentary solenoids and continuous solenoids. This is important to note because the flipper relay is one of the continuous solenoids. It's driven directly by a PIA output where the momentary solenoids are driven by data sent from a PIA through a 1 of 16 decoder. Continuous solenoids can be on all the time where momentary solenoids cannot.

If you look at the regulator/driver board schematic it should become more clear. There are a whole bunch of possibilities but I would start by manually grounding the metal tab on the right most transistor and go from there.
 
Ok so I made a little jumper wire with an some wire and alligator clips. Then I put q15 to ground, which is the transistor that controls that flipper relay and the relay closed right away. So I must have something else wrong.

The j1 molex connector on the rectifier board is severly burnt, and it looks like someone has also hacked the wiring a bit and tied some wires together with solder in that area.

Maybe that's where I should be starting first?

Anybody want to take a peak at the schematic and see what else I should be checking out? Maybe you'd like to see some pics of the connector?
 
Fixing the rectifier board connectors is a great idea but the fact that the flippers work when you manually engage the flipper relay tells me that the rectifier board connectors will likely not fix your problem.

I would be more concerned with the connections between J4 on the MPU and J4 on the regulator/driver board. Pin 8 on J4 of the driver board is the flipper disable. That pin should toggle when the flipper relay is being turned on or off by the MPU. You could check the rest of the components on the driver board but the easiest way will be to manually toggle pin 8 on J4 and see what happens. If the flipper relay works when you do that I would do a continuity check between J4 pin 8 on the driver board and wherever it goes on the MPU. You should be able to use the color of the wire to figure out which pin it is on J4 on the MPU. Or you could dig into the schematic (which I'm obviously too lazy to do :)).

At that point you've basically traced the signal back to the MPU. If you still haven't found the problem you'll need to look at the U11 PIA and it's socket.

That should basically cover the circuit from front to back.
 
Awesome thanks so much Lindsey!

There are "seperate" issues with the rectifier board. Looks like they hacked the wiring a bit to bypass things possibly.

One thing at a time though haha.

Here's some pics of the rectifier board troubles just cause. That'll be my next project after the flippers :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomdotcom88/sets/72157622199582934/show/
 
That's pretty much what I was expecting. Those boards are almost always hacked. Believe it or not I've had a few games that came in with that thing looking immaculate but that's definitely the exception.

Rebuilding those boards can be a pain but fortunately the parts are pretty cheap to redo the whole thing. The biggest pain is typically desoldering the bridges because the huge traces act as a heat sink.

Let us know how it turns out :)
 
Q20 is the +5 voltage regulator..that aint gonna work hahah. Guess I'll just have to try and get some parts tommorow. I was really hoping to try and get it working tonight. Damn!!
 
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I tested the transistor at q15 with my multimeter and it was at 500and something. Which is between the 400-600 it's supposed to be. So could it still be that transistor? Or should I test the diodes and resistors as well?
 
Alright I'm slowly learning things here.

I tested r37,38,39 resistors and they all tested at the right levels.
r37 3.9k
r38 120
r39 330

I also tested the cr15 diode and it seemed fine and the same value as other diodes.

So maybe I need to start looking into some other things?

Or could I still have a problem with these parts even though they tested fine?
 
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