Williams Firepower Lites/ Target/ Speech Issues

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Restoring this game and after re-installing all the play field parts I have a couple of issues.

A few lights wont come on off hand here is what I recall.."Shoot Again", Number 4, and the 3 rd light on the Extra Ball targets. Diodes are good, cleaned all lamps, and brand new bulbs.

Two targets are not working located straight front right center. I noticed a previous replacement was made on a target and no diode is present. I did not test much before I stripped the game since it was in storage for years wanted to clean it before I ran too many test. So Im not sure if they worked before. I take it the diodes are used to prevent reverse voltage but wasn't sure without diode will the switch work? The blades are making good contact with each other.

The sound for game play works good but the words are gargled, I know it did work good before I stripped the game so I screwed something up. Connections seemed solid cleaned semi corroded potentiometer tabs with rubbing alcohol still no luck.

Any hints would be helpful to help speed up my troubleshooting Im used to EM games so this is a little different then I'm used too.

Thanks
 
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All switches need diodes on them, to prevent multiple switch closures within the matrix. So if the switch was good, even without the diode, you should see something happening. Also don't forget that you can't clean switches the same way in a solid state machine. They're all gold plated, and if you use a switch file on them you're going to remove that plating. Once the underlying material is exposed it will start to corrode and then you're stuck re-cleaning them all the time. Usually just plain paper with some alcohol is all you need to clean the switches.

The lamp problem appears to be a dead row #1 in the lamp matrix, this is the red wire with brown stripe. Could be a busted wire somewhere between the driver board and the first lamp, but could also be a driver board problem. Usually the first suggestion is to replace the IDC connector at the driver board, as that's the most common failure point. After that, you need to really start digging. Are you familiar with how to perform the switch test sequence in the diagnostic menus?

As to the switches, it's again likely a busted wire or bad connector somewhere, but could be a driver board problem.

The speech issue could be a couple things. First thing to check is that all the screws are tight for mounting the speech and sound boards, loose screws can cause the audio to get garbled pretty bad. You could also try wiggling the ribbon connector between the speech and sound boards, they aren't the best design and often causes garbled speech when the conductors inside the ribbon cable start to break. The cable is replaceable on the speech board, but is a bit involved.
http://www.siegecraft.us/the_siege_blog/blog/2012/06/speech-board-ribbon-cables.html

Here's a good couple reference sources for Firepower and other early Williams games.
http://www.firepowerpinball.com/
http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_System_3_-_7

-Hans
 
Thanks for the link looked up that link and having a schematic of the boards does wonders. The light issue was from a loose wire in a terminal connection, thanks to a added wire tie I thought would be helpful but actully it pulled the wire to tight from the connector and of couse it was hidden from view lol. The target was another error on my end had the new rubber mounted too closely not giving target a good recoil to hit ground. Also the sound was my ignorance as well that the knob on the speech board that i know now from the link is used too level out the game volume with the verbal speech. I thought it just had two separate volume controls for some reason and turned it up all the way on the speech board making the speech nearly mute.
I tend not to use files on even EM games except for maybe the flipper switches. I have a little $6.00 roto tool I bought from harbor freight tools and use a little wire brass brush along with 90% rubbing alcohol, it does better than files or sandpaper i think plus it does damage or pit the contact points, so far games working great now that I fixed my errors.
 
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