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Author Topic: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.  (Read 3177 times)

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Offline jbshocks

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Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« on: January 23, 2016, 02:05:37 PM »
I have 6 ultra machines and up until now the old batteries have been working ok.  I have had 3 fail in the last year.   One doing extensive damage.   In this instance there are a couple of things going on.  The board boots sometimes and will go crazy and reboot.  You can see that it has damaged both sides of the board having vented through a hole near the battery.  My first thought was to see if I need to replace the sockets on u9 u10 and tr16 and tr17.   So I removed the chips one at a time from one of my working machine and none of the 4 are required for the machine to function, at least in coin only mode.   Nearest I can tell, these ICs are only used for casino communication.  So the good news is if you have damage, remove those chips, clean well with vinegar and a tooth brush, rinse with water and then alcohol and move on.  Don't screw with those sockets and risk making something worse.   There are also 2 broken traces on the back that feed back to the memory chips.  I suspect they are shorting the memory.
My plan is ad a blocking diode and a coin cell and see how it works.  on some of my other ultras I have found a replacement nicad on ebay but it is a cheap knock off and it scares me so I am hoping the coin cell can work long term.  I will post pictures. 
« Last Edit: January 23, 2016, 02:57:10 PM by jbshocks »

Offline jbshocks

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2016, 02:51:11 PM »
Good news is the that with the board cleaned and the 4 casino communication chips removed the erratic behavior and failures to boot have stopped.   The board works perfectly in a different machine.  The bad news is that the coin cell and blocking diode doesn't seem to work.  Attached is a picture of the set up using a 2035 and 1n4004 diode. 

Offline jtwine

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2016, 07:31:07 PM »
Would 3 volts enough, or does it really need to be close to 3.6v? 
-=- James R. Twine
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Offline jbshocks

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2016, 09:30:48 AM »
with the diode installed the voltage drops.  I measured it but I don't recall the exact value.  2.8 comes to mind.   Maybe that is just to low.  Maybe a 3 cell AA pack would work better.

Offline jtwine

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2016, 05:04:34 AM »
If I have the correct datasheet, the DP RAM needs 2v minimum when in standby (data retention) mode.  So checking the VCC pin on the chip will tell you if enough voltage is getting there with your setup.

Not sure how much other stuff the battery connection goes through, so dunno what else might be stealing power from it.

If you end up on the hairy edge with the voltage, do you have a diode with a smaller forward drop?
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Offline jbshocks

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2016, 06:02:46 AM »
by the way the coin cell holder didn't have room so that was a prototype.  If it worked I would obtain an edge mount.   I still have the parts on the bench and they measured 2.9v with the diode in place.   I likely have other diode options but if it is that close to the edge of working I wonder if it is a viable long term solution. 

Offline rokgpsman

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2016, 11:16:59 AM »
A very common mod for pinball owners that some slot machine owners also do is to add a battery holder off the circuit board. This prevents battery leakage from ever harming the board. You can get an inexpensive battery holder that holds 4 batteries. Add a diode in place of one of the batteries to drop the voltage of the 3 batteries from 4.5 vdc down to around 3.8 vdc, it will drop a little more as the batteries get older. This will work fine for boards expecting 3.6 vdc. Also, on older boards where the original battery was rechargeable, such as a nicad, the board usually has a charging circuit to recharge the battery when the machine is powered on. The diode prevents the circuit board from trying to charge the batteries in the battery pack (as it should) since it blocks electrical current from going backwards to the battery. On more modern circuit boards a long-life non-rechargeable lithium battery is used and there is no recharging circuit, it isn't needed since the battery lasts for years in a casino environment. In fact, on these newer boards there is often a diode on the board to prevent back-current from being sent to the non-chargeable battery.

Just solder the 2 wires from the battery holder to the circuit board where the original battery was connected. The diode used can be any of the common 1N400X versions.

Below is a typical setup:

« Last Edit: January 25, 2016, 11:33:24 AM by rokgpsman »
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Offline jtwine

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2016, 05:43:43 PM »
Neat - I never saw anyone place the diode in one of the battery slots.  Good idea.

Btw, I have seen the same thing done to older Williams Defender and Stargate hardware, which is similar(?) to some of the Williams pins.
-=- James R. Twine
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Offline jbshocks

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Re: Board repair and get your battery off your ultra now.
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2016, 05:54:28 PM »
only all my bally pins I just use a super cap.   I could try that on the slot and see how it works. 

 

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