Talon claw machine keeps resetting

C65Mustang

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My daughters small claw machine keeps resetting after being coined up. You can stop a game and maybe even play a few but sooner or later the game will reset, loose all coined up count and do its startup cycle check all over again. Any ideas?
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I have the same style crane, and it does the same thing once in a while. Check your 5 volts at the power supply and at the board. Make sure its getting good +5 volts at the board, maybe a little higher up to +5.1v. Reseat all connectors that are plugged into the board. Sometimes the connector pins may develop a little resistance and that will affect the voltage.
 
A little contact cleaner on the pins of the connectors wouldn't hurt either. Take each connector off one at a time, spray a little contact cleaner in there, and then install the connector back on the thee board. Work the connector ON and OFF a few times to get the contact cleaner to rub over the pins on the board. Do this for all the connectors.

The contact cleaner should evaporate pretty quick, but let it sit for a few minutes before turning the game back on.

And when you turn the game back on, don't forget to check your voltages at both the power supply and carefully on the board.

Beyond that, possibly reseating any socketed chips on the board, or totally repinning all your connectors (which I'm too lazy to do on my own machine).

My crane does the same thing, and when I do the above, it tides me over for many months of use.
 
Ok I messed with this a bit and the voltages are all weird. The 5V part has to be above 6 for h e claw to work at all and the 12V is way above 13V. If I put the voltages down to where they should be then nothing happens. Once I raise the volts back up then the game kinda works but still with the same resetting issue. I cleaned all connectors and reseated all the larger chips. Maybe this board is just shot? Anyone have a replacement they would sell me?
 
Where are you measuring the voltage? At the power supply? Or on the board? If only at the power supply, then its possible you're getting a massive voltage drop before it hits the board, which makes sense if you're having to jack it all the way up to 6V. Lower it back down to 5.25V while sampling the voltage at the power supply itself, and then check the voltage at the 5.25V "measuring point" on the board.
 
Where are you measuring the voltage? At the power supply? Or on the board? If only at the power supply, then its possible you're getting a massive voltage drop before it hits the board, which makes sense if you're having to jack it all the way up to 6V. Lower it back down to 5.25V while sampling the voltage at the power supply itself, and then check the voltage at the 5.25V "measuring point" on the board.



Ok when I set the voltage so at the 5.25 measuring point is at 5.25 the claw just sits there and twitches. But if I crank it up to 5.86 it seems to be working again but I wonder for how long. I am thinking about replacing the power supply but maybe also the board. Does anyone have or know where I can find a new or used working PCB for this claw machine?
 
same problem with these and treasure chest cranes. Even after putting in new power supplies and adjusting the +5 to about 5.35 vdc, they still reset.
the goal would be to bypass the reset circuit somehow so they arent so picky about
the +5 vdc. Anyone have any idea how to do that? its the most common issue with talon and treasure chest cranes that use the same board.
 
Looks like the site http://www.jernie.com is not up anymore. There use to be a guy selling newer boards but when I contacted him he was reluctant to sell me one because the new one had a similar issue. He said there is a transient power fault on the board. Also he mentioned he had a whole pile with this issue due to a design flaw. I would love to try an arduino board to get it going but I don't have the time to figure that out at the moment so I am going to try and sell mine. Hope you figure something out though.
 
same problem with these and treasure chest cranes. Even after putting in new power supplies and adjusting the +5 to about 5.35 vdc, they still reset.
the goal would be to bypass the reset circuit somehow so they arent so picky about
the +5 vdc. Anyone have any idea how to do that? its the most common issue with talon and treasure chest cranes that use the same board.
Some good news. My step dad is good at troubleshooting boards so we looked at it some today and the issue is finally resolved for me (So far anyway. Longer testing is needed). Here is a quick video https://www.fabozzi.net/wp-content/uploads/videos/Talon_Claw_Machine_Reboot_Issue.mp4 and I have put together a long walk through of things I tried on my website https://www.fabozzi.net/talon-claw-machine/ scroll past the pic and click troubleshooting. Part 3 is what did the trick for me. Still new at posting so not sure how this is going to look in the thread but basically... From the upper corner connector where the AC comes into the board here
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on the back of that area solder a wire to the ground. I used 18AWG
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then connected it to the ground (NOT AC GROUND) on the power supply here
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My step dad was surprised about how small the ground wires in the machine are so using a thicker gauge than what is in there is recommended. Ground is important.
 
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Whoa, nice catch! Thickness/amount of ground wire is often overlooked but we forget that just because it is common does not make it infinite. I hope that your game keeps working well, and maybe that will take care of the problems some others are having.
 
Well here are the results of the testing. Had the kids run about $30 through it. I had 4 or 5 motor switch error problems in that time span (unrelated to the reboot, new switches ordered. Some of the levers are broken and the material is worn). No random reboots so it looked promising. I then left it on while watching a movie and it all of a sudden started randomly rebooting. There was no set interval. I then set the dip switch to demo mode. It did not reboot anymore instead it would every now and then move the claw and drop it to attract attention. I could put money in as normal and still play it too. I also did have the speaker unplugged because it is so loud so I may plug that back in for an accurate test. Volume is all the way turned down too so if there is a tweak for that I would interested. I will probably test it some more once the switches come in next week.
 
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I did this mod and made sure that the voltage was right around 5.35VDC and now it's resetting all the time I will post a video here in a minute.
 
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