TEMPEST spinner issue

SkippyJoe777

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Having a problem where my TEMPEST spinner is only sometimes moving the shooter around the tubes, every once and a while it quits working and no matter how fast or slow the spinner is used the shooter will not move and stays stationary. Has anyone else ever experienced a spinner periodically not working? Is it a problem in the main board or in the spinner itself? How can I test this issue so can narrow the problem down to either the board or spinner?

Any help would be appreciated.
R/
Joe
 
Two possible issues. One, the optics on the spinner may be dying. Easy to check with a volt meter. Second, the pokey chip which does the spinner input may be dying. First Rey reseating both pokey chips on the aux board.
 
Reseated the Pokey chips and ran a self test as per the manual and did not get "P or Q" to indicate a bad Pokey. I have been researching a way to check the Opto board online and cannot find a procedure. How do I do this??
 
Easiest way is to watch the pulses with an oscilloscope.
 
You can do it with a volt meter. If the receivers are working well, they'll read close to a 5V signal. Take off the board and put a piece of cardboard in the slot between the emitters and receivers. Measure the voltage at the emitters when you remove the cardboard. Should be near 5v. If it's not present or below around 3V you're not getting enough of a signal for the gameboard.
 
Having a problem where my TEMPEST spinner is only sometimes moving the shooter around the tubes, every once and a while it quits working and no matter how fast or slow the spinner is used the shooter will not move and stays stationary. Has anyone else ever experienced a spinner periodically not working? Is it a problem in the main board or in the spinner itself? How can I test this issue so can narrow the problem down to either the board or spinner?

Any help would be appreciated.
R/
Joe

This happened to me before and it was broken solder joints on the header pins on the optic board. Try reflowing them.
 
Thanks guys, I will do some more troubleshooting tonight and see what I can come up with. I don't have an O-Scope but do have a DVM so I will check the voltage and reflow the solder on the optic board connections first.
 
Between swapping the Pokey chips, cleaning the encoder wheel and optics, and re-flowing the solder on all 4 optic board pins the Spinner is now working fine again. Lost the monitor in the process but it came back up after re-seating the the PCB connectors. Thanks again for the tips!
 
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