Bally Black Pyramid (Bally, 1984) Most light and Solenoids not working! ugh!!!!

[fazborg]

@pinballdaveh, my black pyramid is so temperamental!!!

Self Test #1: ONLY the upper left P light is blinking
Self Test #3: ONLY 10 and 11 solenoids are firing

Everything was working perfectly after I installed a NVRAM module to eliminate the battery backup.

Than, after about a week, everything stopped working. No idea.

Any help greatly appreciated!!!

 

[pinballdaveh]

@pinballdaveh, my black pyramid is so temperamental!!!

Self Test #1: ONLY the upper left P light is blinking
Self Test #3: ONLY 10 and 11 solenoids are firing

Everything was working perfectly after I installed a NVRAM module to eliminate the battery backup.

Than, after about a week, everything stopped working. No idea.

Any help greatly appreciated!!!

It sounds like there’s a data wire connection loss between the mpu and the other boards.
female connector pins are usually the problem and connectors should be repinned.
Have you tried putting the original ram chip back in? Any difference?

 

[fazborg]

It sounds like there’s a data wire connection loss between the mpu and the other boards.
female connector pins are usually the problem and connectors should be repinned.
Have you tried putting the original ram chip back in? Any difference?

Thank you so much! Repinning those connectors sounds scary. Odd that they just stopped working. So, you thin kI need to replace several connectors?

I switched back to the old chip but no change.

 

[pinballdaveh]

Thank you so much! Repinning those connectors sounds scary. Odd that they just stopped working. So, you thin kI need to replace several connectors?

I switched back to the old chip but no change.

Has the connector wiggle test had any change?
Has there ever been any battery problem with leaking?
Unseen corrosion inside the female connectors causes problems.

 

[fazborg]

@pinballdaveh, thank you for all the advice. I was travelling and finally back.

I tried unhooking and reconnecting everything.

No issues with battery leaking.

Female connector problem makes sense but seems odd that everything stopped working at the same time - the lights and the solenoids. And, so many of them. Seems like there would be one common problem. I recall that sometimes the thing would have an issue when we would lift the playing surface up (almost like something was loose). We'd wiggle the wires and it seemed to fix itself. But never had everything just kinda stop working at once... There has to be a common cause. Could the main board juts go bad?

 

[pinballdaveh]

@pinballdaveh, thank you for all the advice. I was travelling and finally back.

I tried unhooking and reconnecting everything.

No issues with battery leaking.

Female connector problem makes sense but seems odd that everything stopped working at the same time - the lights and the solenoids. And, so many of them. Seems like there would be one common problem. I recall that sometimes the thing would have an issue when we would lift the playing surface up (almost like something was loose). We'd wiggle the wires and it seemed to fix itself. But never had everything just kinda stop working at once... There has to be a common cause. Could the main board juts go bad?

If the problem responds to wiggling or exercise of the connector then that’s a problem in itself.
Temporary cleaning of the pins might happen but not meant as a solution to the problem.
Also movement of the connector could cause stress on the male pins solder connections and cracks might happen.
The main board could be bad, but you always want to eliminate the chance of a connector failure. And usually when it’s a intermittent problem, it’s usually a connector problem.
So even swapping boards might not help if the connector problem still exists.

 

[fazborg]

@pinballdaveh, thank you for everything!!! This pinball is my nemesis. I've been avoiding it. So, if you were here, what would be your first step to identify the problem? Here's what's confusing...
- The issue is with both the light and solenoids - which I think are controlled by different boards? Odd they both are affected.
- The problem happened all at once so it seem like it would have a single cause
- And, it seemed like the problem was aggravated when lifting the playing surface (which made me think it was a connection problem under the surface)

Any, is there any simple testing I can so get to the root cause? Thanks!

 

[pinballdaveh]

@pinballdaveh, thank you for everything!!! This pinball is my nemesis. I've been avoiding it. So, if you were here, what would be your first step to identify the problem? Here's what's confusing...
- The issue is with both the light and solenoids - which I think are controlled by different boards? Odd they both are affected.
- The problem happened all at once so it seem like it would have a single cause
- And, it seemed like the problem was aggravated when lifting the playing surface (which made me think it was a connection problem under the surface)

Any, is there any simple testing I can so get to the root cause? Thanks!

When the machine is in self test all lamp function, does the results change when wiggling any connectors? Test the same on the solenoid test.
does the same amount of lamps and solenoids work on self test as they do with gameplay?
There’s a method of using a jumper wire to ground the driver transistors tabs forcing the coil it drives to power on. The power transistors are on the bottom row of the solenoid driver
Board. Run jumper from ground braid to each tab individually for each coil.

 

[fazborg]

@pinballdaveh, Super helpful! I'll play with it tonight. Thank you!