sorcerer won't boot up

elfyhead

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just bought a sorcerer. real project, as the cabinet and playfield are in sad shape. but the boards look pretty good, except for one hacked connector.

however, it won't boot up at all.

the diagnostic LED shows 7. the only reference to this i could find was on ed cheung's system 9 page, where he says that it means that the 12V was "disconnected during power up"?

i haven't had a chance to check voltages, but i thought i'd ask here first what i should be looking for.
 
Definately start with your meter, see if 12v is missing. Also is there any corrosion from bad batteries? CPU can cause boot issues as well
 
Definately start with your meter, see if 12v is missing. Also is there any corrosion from bad batteries? CPU can cause boot issues as well

yeah, i'm gonna start probing voltages tonight. unfortunately the schematics in the online sorcerer manuals are terribly hard to read. but the system 9 troubleshooting guide i found has several things to check when a "7" is shown on the CPU readout, so i'll be going through that checklist...

no corrosion from bad batteries. the batteries are still on the CPU board, but have not had any problems. and i just put new ones in, until i can get the problems fixed and then move them off.
 
checked voltages.

+5 is steady at 4.87.

+12 is steady at 11.97.

-12 is steady at -14.3.

so that looks all OK.

the CPU diagnostic produces a pitch that lowers in frequency over time, but doesn't bring up an error code on the 7-segment display, so the ROMs seem OK. the sound diagnostic produces both sound and speech (though it's faint - i'll have to check/fix that later). so the crystal seems OK.

going to follow the troubleshooting guide next, which indicates checking for AC on the +5, and several CPU chip checks (reset line, IRQ, address & data lines, etc.).

any other suggestions are welcome!

turns out this machine is a bit of a frankenstein. it's got one display from a Pinbot, a power board from an F-14 Tomcat, and a flipper power board from High Speed! :).

and, unfortunately, one serious board hack at IJ10 (the switch row connector). see attached photos. other than this one hack the boards are in remarkably good shape (though admittedly i haven't looked on the backside yet)...
 

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following the advice of the troubleshooting guide, i checked for AC on pin 17 of the CPU chip. and on the +5V at the input connector. i've got more AC than DC voltage. sigh. so, i'm replacing the C10 capacitor on the power board - this is the big one (not cheap!). since i'm replacing that one, i went ahead and put in an order for all the electrolytics on all the boards. if anybody cares, here's a full list:

flipper power board:
C1 - 100 uf, 150 V, axial

speech board:
C12 - 10 uf, 20 V, radial (low leakage)

power board:
C1, C3 - 100 uf, 150 V, axial
C5 - 100 uf, 100 V, axial
C7 - 100 uf, 25 V, radial
C8 - 47 uf, 63 V, radial
C9 - 1000 uf, 25 V, radial
C10 - 18000 uf, 25 V, axial

driver board:
C2, C5, C7, C53 - 100 uf, 25 V, radial
C9 - 22 uf, 10 V, radial
C12 - 1 uf, 25 V, radial
C24 - 470 uf, 16 V, radial
C32 - 10 uf, 20 V, axial (low leakage)

note that C2 and C5 are listed as above on the schematics, but on the board i have they are both 68 uf, 50 V.
 
The 5v line may be a bit low, some wms games sys9-11 are finicky with this, and should probably be no lower than 4.9 could just be some resistance on the connectors, replacing the caps on the 5v line may change this or just repinning the power board and the mpu both male and female may solve your problem, I always replace connectors that are tarnished beyond slightly..
 
yeah, i'll see what the voltages are after the cap replacement. shopped it tonight - just waiting on the caps now :)...
 
to close the loop on this, it turned out that it was the battery holder. when i got around to measuring voltages everywhere in the backbox, there was no voltage across the terminals on the battery holder. i had put new batteries in when i bought it, but must not have snapped them in correctly or something.

fixed that, and replaced two fuses (solenoids and playfield lights) and she's up and running!

have one switch column that is probably out (column 6, which controls the two upper switches, and the lane change), and perhaps another broken wire (the D switch doesn't work, but everything else in its row and column does). and it needs a flipper rebuild. but after that it'll be fully functional (though not very pleasing to look at since the cabinet is still thrashed!)...
 
Great game from a 6-yr Sorcerer owner! Everyone in the fam loves it! Make sure you get the speech working!
 
What the laugh? Or the music?

I remember playing it in the 80s in an arcade in DE- I never forgot those eyes in the back....

the looped music. she hates it!

the eyes are very cool. i'm glad the bulbs are OK on mine (both the GI and the flashers), because i can imagine it's a pain in the rear to swap them (i reached back underneath, and i think you'd just have to unscrew the whole plastic to do it)...
 
t
have one switch column that is probably out (column 6, which controls the two upper switches, and the lane change), and perhaps another broken wire (the D switch doesn't work, but everything else in its row and column does). and it needs a flipper rebuild. but after that it'll be fully functional (though not very pleasing to look at since the cabinet is still thrashed!)...

the D switch was just the switch, not the wire. some mucking around with the blades and the wire and it works now.

for the switch column, i first replaced the 74LS244 in front of 1J8. it was socketed, so that was an easy check, but that didn't fix it. next was the 3904 transistor at Q12. replacing that fixed it, and all those switches work now.

there is a single bad lamp socket (the green/middle one in front of the drop targets), but otherwise electrically it's completely working.

the flippers still need a rebuild, and then cabinet work. i wish to hell i lived closer to santa ana - there's a bare cabinet for sale there on ebay, which would be perfect for me, but it'd be prohibitively expensive to ship it or to drive out to bring it home :/...
 
Just play and enjoy it. My playfield's a little chewed but nobody cares in the dark..

WELLLLLLLLLL DONE, MASTER.........................
 
more in the sorcerer saga.

a couple of months ago i was switching from serial to parallel flipper coils and somehow i borked the board. not sure how, but immediately after the re-wire that board booted into error code 7 again :(.

rather than mess around more with it i decided to just buy a working replacement board, so did that off of ebay. put that new board in yesterday, and it boots into error code 1. :(.

the guy i bought the board from had replaced the factory RAM with zeropower RAM, which seemed kind of nice at the time. but after poking around, i haven't seen anybody else do this on a system 9. i'm wondering if there would be a problem with that? i've seen it mentioned on a number of system 11s, but no system 9s.

anyway, i'm starting to follow the system 9 troubleshooting guide.

pressing the sound diagnostic switch produces proper sounds. pressing the CPU diagnostic switch causes the LED to flash to "0" then back to 1.

all the DC power levels look OK (+4.84 on the +5V input, +12.84 on the +12V input, +4.76 at Vcc of U11 and U17, etc.).

but i'm getting AC power levels that don't seem to make sense to me. i tested on J17 and seemed to get crazy-high values (+10V AC on the +5V input and +27V AC on the +12V input). so i went back to the power board, and if i test across test points 2 and 3 i get almost 100V AC?! that doesn't seem right. i did it with 3 voltmeters just to be sure (my fluke, another (cheaper) digital one, and my trusty old analog micronta) and read the same with all of them. am i measuring this wrong somehow? i haven't changed the power supply at all, and i know it worked with the original board previously, so this seems very odd.

thanks in advance for any guidance.
 
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