Super Mario Bros. sound issues

Linolium

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So I just got a Gottlieb SMB pinball machine (System 3). The game plays fine, with the usual burnt out light here and there, but there is a fairly noticeable lack of sound. I tried new sound roms (A1, A2, and one other I can't remember off the top of my head), but they didn't fix the problem.

The voice-clips and sound-effects do work under the following conditions:
1) When the machine is turned on I hear 2 tones.
2) When you become super, you hear "I'm Super Now!"... and nothing afterwards.
3) When you get a starman Peach says "You're invisible now!" then the sound returns for a few mins EXCEPT for the background music- just voice and sound fx. But this only lasts for a min or so before going silent again.

Music never works.

Where should I look to fix this problem? I know it would be either the Sound board or the Aux Sound board, but I don't know which one would cause this problem. I would prefer to fix the board(s) rather then spend $100+ on a new board or two.

Because the sound does work at times I assume fuses F10 and F11 are fine as well as the audio amps, but I could be wrong...

Also I've been referring to http://www.pinrepair.com/sys3/index.htm as much as I can, but there really isn't much about sound troubleshooting there.

UPDATE: I tested grounds, the voltage pot on the mini powersupply, and cable connections and they're good but still no sound. The sound does seem to randomly work at times. I heard the attract voice say "Why don't you-a try this-a game?" as well as some other random sound during gameplay. I'm begining to think the sound rom I don't have a spare for is bad (DROM?)

Peace,
-Linolium
 
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Have you checked in the game settings to see if the music may have been disabled? It sounds like everything else is working otherwise, maybe the previous owner didn't like the music and disabled it in the settings.
 
Sounds should all be on, I'll double check tonight. No sounds played when I cycled through the sounds in operator-mode's sound test.

The sound effects work sometimes. I see no real reason for the sounds to work only for a couple events. Sometimes I hear a high pitch sound or some garbage when the sound does decide work.
 
Not yet... I re-seated all the connectors (grounds and other sound-related). I guess I'm kinda nervous about doing those mods :). I'll do them for real tonight.
 
I did the "John Robertson" ground fix/hack and the sounds still don't work.

I poked around with the pinmame roms in a wave editor and it seems I only hear some voice clips from the AROM2 chip. Maybe I really do need another new set of sound roms :(.
 
So I found 1 bad rom, AROM1, but that's only a voice sample rom... it has nothing to do with the BGM. I think now there is a problem with the main sound board. It doesn't seem to be communicating to the aux board except is rare situations. Could this be a ram issue? Processor issue? Crystal issue?
 
i know this is very old, but i also have a system 3 with screwed up sound, did you ever find a fix for your problem?
 
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