Star Tech Journal

December 1 997
STAR .... TECH JOURNAL
Return ol tlte Silver Ball
Todd
Erickson
•
Summit
Amusement
•
St
Paul,
~
Minnesota
FLIPPERS THAT CAUSE GAME REsETS
PROBLEM
SOLUTION
Several of my pre-WPC-95
pinballs have had major prob-
lems with resetting when both
flippers are energized at the same
time. The problems are even
more frequent with 3- and 4-flip-
per games. All of my "Adams
Family" games have gone
through this and currently my
"Twilight Zone" games are going
down.
I feel that it would be best to sim-
ply replace these parts as the
game nears three years of age. I
also don't like the plugs on the
PC boards. Using a magic
marker to mark the unused plugs
helps.
SYMPTOM
One of the operators that I spoke
with was aware of the reset prob-
lem but couldn't locate the cause
of it. They sometimes work when
they are warm, but not when they
are cold.
The problem appears to surface
when the games are about three
to four years old and the main
culprit is BRl. The other prob-
lematic parts are CS, C4, LM 323
(Sv regulator) and BRS.
All of my
"Adams Fam-
ily" games
have gone
through this
and currently
my "Twilight
Zone" games
are going
down.
I also had a "Fishtail" that had
an unexplainable drop in income
that seemed to be caused by an
intermittent BRL The location
never bothered to tell me about
the problem and it seemed to
work fine when it was warm. Af-
ter over three years of use, spend-
ing $15-$20 seemed a wise invest-
ment to remedy the problem.
These are a pain to repair on lo-
cation and I believe that it would
be much cheaper to simply re-
place the problem parts as part
of normal three year mainte-
nance.
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