Skee-Ball extreme

Occasionally , these units go into a mode where the ball release solenoid it's constantly energizing. This is indicative a failure in the 68HC11 micro controller in the CPU. I usually carry 3-4 of these as spares, as a majority of the board level failures on these are solved by replacing the 68HC11.

As a plus, send your old ones back to Skeeball and they'll recompile them and send them back.

Time Crisis III I/O errors

Namco has a really profitable franchise with their Time Crisis titles. We have the Time Crisis III version. It's been a real good bread winner for us- A few years ago it started having problems in the I/O system- Guns wouldn't shoot, switches wouldn't work, etc. This would even effect the test and service switches. Well, I fought, and fought, and finally figured out the problem was due to a short in the gun harnesses. We started using Happ controls replacements over OEM, based entirely on price. ($150ea as compared to $600ea) The only problem is the Happ ones are more prone to failure, as the pin to stop the guns from twisting is easily broken off. This in turn causes the wires inside the hose to wrap around each other and eventually short out.
This is a somewhat frequent problem, and since I just replaced another one, I thought I'd mention it here-

Updated

OK, so, my original thought was that the switches were NO (Normally Open) well, they weren't, and this caused a lot of wasted time. My one replacements switch is a NO only, and since the switches are SUPPOSED to be Normally Closed (NC) I now have -0- replacement switches.

No problems, I jumpered the Gate Closed switch, and disconnected the Gate Open switch until I can get replacements. This will work fine until someone wins a prize and the gate opens. But I should have switches in way before that happens-

Stacker Giant Gate Error

After the gate on this thing opened to dispense a customer's prize, the gate would not close. So I pulled the prize box out, and discovered that the gate limit switch had shattered- After replacing the switch, the gate would still not operate. I poked around a little more, and found that the the gate 'up' limit switch had broken too-

Now here's the thing, I only had ONE replacement switch-

Lake Geneva Gameroom

We stopped in Lake Geneva, WI on the way home from Milwaukee this weekend, found an arcade. They have a lot of old classics in there, Tron, Pacs, Galaga, Asteroids, a BUNCH of stuff. A lot of the games weren't working, but a lot were! They had some old Chicago Coin EM stuff in there too!

I couldn't find a website, but they're in the main downtown area, if anyone's looking to play some classics.

I played the Tron, unfortunately, I didn't get past the 1st level, due to a bad trigger switch.

Jeep2000 played a Pac Jr, but apparently the monitor was a lot smaller than it should be-

What a day!

Tuesdays are usually busy, just because I've been off for 2 days-

Where to start- OK, both cosmic bowlers were down, easy fixes though, the pins were broken, causing the sensors not to read 10 pins-

The giant stacker left prize box was acting up- so there goes another set of sensor boards. But I've since learned that the LED's on these boards are very prone for failure, LED's cost about 90 cents- so score one for a bargain repair next time!!

Skee-Ball, a recurring problem where the game counts more balls than are thrown- usually a loose connector or memory reset works on this case. This time I re-seated the connectors and everything is fine-

And there was a lot of other small little repairs too, I just can't think of them!

Silent Scope EX

Well, I got around to looking at this one this morning- as suspected, both ground wires had come loos from the connector on the gun IO board- an easy, quick, fix- Next on the agenda- why does the Star Wars Trilogy keep locking up?

Cascade of small repairs..

I started out this morning, just by wanting to change out the gun hose for "Lost World" This becomes quite an ordeal, since the wiring harness is too large to go through the housing- I've always had this problem, and have solved it by cutting and the resoldering wires- this unfortunately shortens the life of the harness. This time I decided to cut a slot into the housing to allow the house to be attached without deconstructing it. Now the lost world is FINALLY tracking again, with both guns- PHEW!

Afterwards, I remembered I had gotten the 30$ potentiometer from happ controls in for the Midway's "Off Road Thunder" This pot for some reason is alot more expensive than others, the only difference I can see is the connection. Anywho, I switched out the pot and it's working just fine now.

About this time I noticed the "Big Buck Hunter 2" was rebooting non stop- I checked the 5+vdc on the power supply, and sure enough it was low- cranked it up to 5.2 and it's steady now. Of course, it's then O noticed that there were a bunch of credits on the game, sure enough, the start button was broken. After a few minutes, and a search for the right switch that problem was fixed.

Parts and Silent Scope EX

Lots of parts came in today, a few potentiometers (Off Road Thunder), a hose for Lost World, now I'll have to start working on those 2 again-

On another note, our Silent Scope EX has stopped tracking- this game uses two pots for motion, since neither one are working, I'm assuming it's going to be a ground issue- we have a fairly large group in today, so I won't be able to tear this one apart just yet-