STTNG saga over the weekend.

Frax

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So, Punkshere2Stay was coming over with his family to play my shiny-fixed STTNG on Saturday. I had just fixed the second cannon the night before, new motor bushing from Australia, new cannon harnesses on both cannons, dome light mods, everything I needed to fix on the machine to get it back to 100% playable after I caused the motor bushing to self-destruct and the right cannon harness (factory) shorted out right after that....

Played a few games saturday morning, kids played a few. My little 2.5 year old for some reason decided that he needed to turn it on and off a few times so I got pissed, turned it on, and commanded that it stay on. My wife and I played some online games....lost track of time, I hear the game shut off. It had been 2-3 hours. Little brat got tired of playing with his brother so he turned off the machine to get our attention.

I turn it back on, and see a very brief message about a short on column whatever row whatever that disappeared way too fast for me to get the numbers. Gut reaction, I turned it off right away and tried to remember what the message said. Turned it back on to see if I could get the error back annnnnd....

CHECK FUSES F114 AND F115.

What the hell is that? Cannons are going nutso, won't stop trying to home, after a few seconds the system menu comes up and it's like someone is just pressing coin door buttons completely at random. Holding the right flipper button (Which is an opto?) made the random switch fires stop for some reason.

I freak out. I'm PISSED. Guests 10 minutes away and a major problem comes up out of nowhere? FUUUUUUUUUU........ Punks gets her, we get all the kids situated and everything, his wife is playing Stargate, I pull up Pinwiki and get to work. Says we need to test voltages at some test points, and the driver board.

We pull the fuses first. They meter out as "okay", there's continuity there at least. Put them back in. No 12v at test point. Wiki says it's the bridge rectifier. Not like I would have that on hand. CRAP! I go ahead and unsolder the rectifier after metering it out and it looks bad, or at least failing, but I don't have anything to replace it with. I resign myself to ordering some parts.

Punks turns into Superman at this point, he ordered the rectifiers along with some parts he needs from PBL. That was great, because I only need rectifiers and 1 box of bulbs. But no, that's not good enough. He goes by a local place and picks up a rectifier AND drops it off at my house today, even though the parts will be there in a few days. I soldered it in tonight, and let me tell you, the absolute WORST part is trying to take off that heatsink that covers BR1 and BR2, get new thermal paste on them, and then get the heatsink screwed back onto the still-good one without twsting it off the board or cracking the solder.. Not fun. White goop everywhere that had to be cleaned up off the table, off the rectifier sides, the heatsink, the underside of the driver board... mother...

Get the board back in the machine, Hook everything up. Turn it on. Indicator led, no 12v. Test point, no 12v. WHAT THE..... Test point for 18v unregulated line voltage.... 1 volt? Man, I already checked these fuses. They were good. I got some boxes of fuses in a sample kit from Marco at TPF, so I pull this 3.5A slow blow and put in a 4a fast blow, and the 32v 8a fast blow with a 250v 10a fast blow, JUST to see if this is the issue despite having pulled them both out of the machine and metered them.

Machine comes right up.

Rectifier, fuse, or both? You decide. I don't know. I do know that my game now has a shiny new rectifier rated for 600v instead of 200v, and that I need a new 8a fuse, and that it's working.
 
Also, be prepared to change the fast blow fuse in a few days. Every fast blow I ever put in my addams when I was out of the slow blow burned up supa quick! My game also had a few other issues, but who knows
 
Oh, the slow blow fuse is an was perfectly fine. The one causing issues was a 32v 8a fast blow. Theres now a 250v 10a fb in there until I get the right one. It wont be getting any real play until I do just in case there is still an issue.
 
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