Data East Solved Lethal Weapon 3 (Data East, 1992) Tripping Out?

[LukaUK]

Hey folks I hope I have come to the right place to hopefully get a Lethal Weapon 3 pinball table working again. Firstly it had a issue where when it launched the ball it would launch 2 instead of one (not in multiball mode just normal play) but after being on for 30 minutes or so it would stop that. Anyways the problem we have now is a few weeks back the pinball was on and the building was hit by a power surge and a few of our machines really didn't like it (Naomi cabs showed JVS errors suddenly) but the pinball seemed fine so we pressed the start button and went to launch the ball and it tripped out the building electrics! We reset the fuse box and tried again and pinball tripped it again which was weird.

So we open the top/header box and looked at the fuses and them seemed OK besides one that looked blown but what we did was take every fuse out and checked it on a multi-meter which showed them all good besides the blown one. Also would the fuse being blown cause it to kill the buildings electrics that badly from a blown fuse, I always thought it just wouldn't not turn on or display a error.

Here are a load of photo's of when we opened her up and before we went out and spent £250+ for a new CPU board which seemed to work and play (with no sound) but is now tripping out the buildings power again and not playing, it shows some lights but you can't start the game and after a short time it will trip out.

http://imgur.com/a/z0YzI/all

I have no idea what to check next and it feels like we have hit a brick wall, so far we have checked:

• Line filter looked clean and tidy
• Looked at the vairistor and it doesn't look burnt
• Reseated any cables that looked like they could be a problem
• Tried the table on a different plug and mains socket completely
• Installed a new Rottendog Amusements MPU & Driver Board (MPU004 Data East/Sega)

When looking inside everything seemed tidy and clean, no damp or creatures living inside. I am stumped could anyone offer any advice or guidance pretty please? We are so gutted because we paid rather alot for this pin and it only lasted about a few weeks before breaking down.

 

[pinballdaveh]

usually a power surge will blow apart a varistor shorting the line voltage. visual inspections of parts does not mean that they could be bad. the schematic shows that the on/off switch is after the line filter and before the transformer. by turning the on/off switch to off and plug the machine back in , does the house circuit breaker blow? or the load of the transformer primary winding might stress an already weakened line filter or varistor. are the transformer primary voltages settings plugs or connections correct for your house outlet plug voltage? replacing the line filter and varistor would be the first things i would replace after a surge even if they look alright. because the line filter , varistor , and tranformer primary winding , and on/off switch are the 4 things that would make a house breaker or fuse blow if they were bad.

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Leaky Shorts...?

Another weird one... I guess you can rule out the varistor/filter cause it would trip the breaker as soon as the game was plugged in. Just to make sure I would remove that stuff or test applying power to primary side of/and leave the power switch off. An overload drawing too much in game circuits would blow fuses on secondary or line side of power supply. The game fuses would go before mains breakers. That is if there were no issues with the mains wiring or a weak breaker. 'LukaUK', did "Tried the table on a different plug and mains socket completely" mean it was on a different circuit breaker? Are you posting from U.K.? Do your breakers have ground fault detection ? That power surge could have created a leak to ground in that pinball machine. I hope you return to Pinball Nirvana when you get this sorted out...C_S

 

[LukaUK]

Hi folks thank you for your advice and we have managed to get it to work :) we moved the unit from one plug socket which was on a old ring main from when the building was made , over to a new socket on a newly installed socket and ring main also it's on a medium length extension cable. So far it has worked fine also we have been turning it on from the killswitch from the bottom instead of it just being on at the killswitch all the time and turning it straight on from the socket (if that makes sense). One thing we can be sure of is the old MPU is definitely dead which is a shame but the replacement is working well.

Coil_Smoke - Yes we do have ground fault detection in the U.K

On a different note because I haven't played that many pinballs in my lifetime so far, after you lose all three balls and it does that random number thing where you get a free credit if you get the matching number (I don't know if it has a name). If you get a matching number the machine fires up again and plays the music etc but it makes a loud bang inside as if the solenoid for the gun noise gets triggered and it don't half make you jump... is that normal? I'm guessing in a noisy arcade it will get your attention if you start to walk away or is that a fault which we can live with?

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Glad you got back to us and have your pinball machine running. That reward for random matching the last digits is called "Match Feature". There are settings for the match feature on solid state games. The knocker is a solenoid that strikes a bracket mounted to the cabinet and/or back box. That loud pop announces credits earned. Credits are awarded during game play and for that matching score tally. That sound making feature is common to all pinball machines going way back. I wonder what was the first game to have a cabinet knocker? So yes that sound is normal and can be turned of in settings menu. The knock is the most desired sound you can get out of these games. It is meant to excite, entice, be heard and be felt in a noisy arcade.