Silver Spinner Ring, lotr ring magnet fuse keeps blowing... ?
i googled around and most problems have people saying that on powerup
the magnet engages until the fuse blows. mine blows when the spinner
switch is activated. i did see some posts where people had put 5A in
there,
i replaced fuse once with an old one i had around, it was a 4A SB,
and it worked about 5 times before it blew(not five games. put a 3A in
there cause that's all that was available in my big hick town and it
worked about 3 times. bought some new ones (4A) and they blow as soon
as the ring ramp switch is hit.
i've tested the spiner switch, ring optos, and the back trough switch
and all seem to be working well.
i did find some comments on Q6 being a bad transistor, but then again
it sounds like the magnet would engage on startup. but i think i need
to test it anyways, i just can't get my meter down there to check it,
need different points(yes i know i can take off the display hehe,) so i
think i'll take the board off and see if i can get at it from the back.
yes?
board is under warranty and i won't be attempting my first board work
on this one, any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
I had something similar to this when I first acquired my LOTR, the magnet
was 'dead'. Using a higher rated fuse was not the answer.
Try replacing the fuse (using the CORRECT one) and test the magnet through
the diagnostic tests. By pressing the test button on the inside of the door
(I can't remember which one exactly) you can test the magnet 'by hand',
sending a pulse to the magnet. My problem would cause the fuse to blow after
a few test 'pulses' (you can hear it buzz slightly). If it blows the fuse
doing this you know that the activating switches on the playfield (ie
spinner, optos etc) are not causing the problem. One word of caution,
repeated tests, waiting for the fault to jump out at you, is likely to lead
to Q6 failing, giving you something else to sort out, yeah, like I did :-(
If I remember rightly, changing the diode in the magnet connector sorted
things out. This does mean taking apart the magnet assembly to get decent
access.
A while back I had a similar problem. what I found was the spinner was
not allowing the switch to open. I adjustment the spinner and the
switch and no problem since.
what you might do is the next time you think the spinner causes the
fuse to blow, immediately go into diagnostics and see if the spinner
switch is open.
I am not sure if this is the same issue but my game worked for a while
without any trouble (~100 games) before the fuse blew. If your game never
worked well from the beginning then maybe you have a different issue.
But I found that the fuses I was using were part of the problem. I could
not find the regular type SB in 4A so I used ceramic 4A SB fuses. These
would blow on the first or second engaging of the magnet. Once I put in the
regular type 4A SB my problem went away.
I also did replace my Q6 and the diode on the magnet itself during the debug
process to fix this issue. Not sure if it was only the fuse or a combination
of all three things that I changed.