Bally Black Pyramid (Bally, 1984) Solenoids 1,2,3,5,6,8 Not Firing

fazborg

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Also, moving target not moving. Any help greatly appreciated! @pinballdaveh
 
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Sometimes helps to tag @pinballdaveh on these so he sees them sooner.

I'm thinking we might add a note in this section to remind people of that.
 
Ah - thank you for the tip!!!
Do you know about the self test button steps to the solenoid test? Do any coils fire?
Do you know about using a jumper wire to ground out the metal tab on the solenoid driver transistors to force the coil to fire? Do any coils fire?
With such a quantity of coils not working the fuses and power supply connections come into question along with components on the solenoid driver board and it’s connections.
 
@pinballdivah, thank you!! I do know about the self test button. The only coils firing are 4, 7, 9, 10, 11. The rest are dead at the moment.

I don't know about about using a jumper wire to ground out the metal tab on the solenoid driver transistors to force the coil to fire. Any more info on how to do that would be great!

For more history on this... everything on the pinball was pretty much working and then all these coils stopped working at once. I looked at all the fuses and they seam ok. I did accidentally short a flipper coil and it sparked. Wonder if that blew something?

Thank you for all the help!
 
@pinballdivah, thank you!! I do know about the self test button. The only coils firing are 4, 7, 9, 10, 11. The rest are dead at the moment.

I don't know about about using a jumper wire to ground out the metal tab on the solenoid driver transistors to force the coil to fire. Any more info on how to do that would be great!

For more history on this... everything on the pinball was pretty much working and then all these coils stopped working at once. I looked at all the fuses and they seam ok. I did accidentally short a flipper coil and it sparked. Wonder if that blew something?

Thank you for all the help!
To force each coil to fire individually, hook a jumper wire from the braided ground bare wire to each individual driver transistor metal tab momentarily.
The driver transistors are along the bottom of the solenoid driver board.
If all coils pull in individually when tested then it’s a board or connection problem, most likely a data loss from the mpu board connector j4 to the solenoid driver board j4.
 
@pinballdaveh, we did more troubleshooting... The solenoids are randomly working. Something is definitely loose. We found that when we lifted the board, everything started working again and then we started to drop the board and they stopped working again... Loose connection somewhere. Not sure how to find the issue other than keep moving wires...
 
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@pinballdaveh, we did more troubleshooting... The solenoids are randomly working. Something is definitely loose. We found that when we lifted the board, everything started working again and then we started to drop the board and they stopped working again... Loose connection somewhere. Not sure how to find the issue other than keep moving wires...
When Bally machines of this age start showing these intermittent symptoms and assuming that all of the boards have had any cracked connections repaired, replacing of the female connector pins would be next. The smaller brown connectors j4 on the boards mentioned would be first
 
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