**Video Poker, Keno, Slots, 21** Gaming machines > IGT AVP (Including G20,G23)

G20 Telltale battery and other issues...

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rickhunter:
Last night I turned on my G20 to find the telltale battery error (wish there was a way to just get rid of this stupid battery)

1.  The battery tested at .98 volts, since I hadn't turned on the system for a prolonged period of time in months, I thought maybe leaving the machine up for a few hours would charge up the battery enough.  It didn't, so a new battery was installed.

2.  Changing the battery while the system is up does not make the error go away, you need to power cycle.  In retrospect, you probably shouldn't change the battery while powered, although it didn't seem to hurt anything at the time.

After the battery change, I noticed that none of the door switches would respond to changes.  All doors were shown as closed and the machine operated normally, but when I opened the main door, no open door M indicator and the slot would play with any open door.  Power cycling didn't work, removing power from the cabinet for a few minutes didn't work either.  Booting up with ekey7 and diagnostic key would show all switches closed, any changes to the actual switch wouldn't register.  The only 2 switches that worked were the diagnostic switch on the PCI card and the jackpot reset key switch.  So I replaced the mpu with another one, booted diagnostic key and switches worked as they should.  I put back the original mpu, booted diagnostic key and switches worked as they should.  So I booted the machine up, played a few games, switches continued to work as they should.  Left the machine up in idle for about 1 hour, came back and the switches again wouldn't respond.  So I replaced the PCI card in the mpu, re-enabled games and configuration.  Played a few games, switches worked.  Left idle for 1 hours, switches worked.  Left machine on for 3 more hours and switches worked.  At this point I believe the Pci card to be the culprit as that was the only thing that is different from the original setup.  But I'm left wondering why putting a different mpu "fixed" the switches temporarily, only for the problem to return a bit later.  Anybody run into this issue before? 

I know the telltale battery's main purpose is to backup information regarding door switches so the casino can tell if the system was breached while it had no power, so I'm also wondering if changing the battery on the fly with power to the system messed up the pci card somehow.

Stayouttadabunker:
There's no way your machine should play with all the door sensors "seeing" as in a closed state, when in fact, isn't.

The only thing I can think of is that your machine had a stuck logic signal.

Sort of like when an S+ slot is caught in the "[61]Loop".

It has been proven that the [61]Loop" is unexplainable and the only way out is thru the use of a Clear chip.

What you may have accidentally proven though, is that the stuck logic signal emanated from a chip located on the backplane or PCI card?

Slotman:
I have had this happen before.  Only switches that would trigger are the ones that dont run through the PCI card.  I had some extra cards so the easiest at the time was to swap out the PCI card.  Problem solved.  Threw the PCI card in with the others.  Somewhere down the road I must have grabbed that card again because same thing happened with another machine.  Sure enough, it was the same card but had worked for a while before showing the problem again.

Moral of my story, the PCI card I had would intermittently do the exact same thing with no rhyme or reason.

Tilt:
I wish there was a way to ditch the telltale battery in the AVPs too.  Without a set of schematics for the boards it's tough to do and from what I understand IGT didn't publish schematics for these machines, only wiring diagrams.

I have a G23 and shortly after I got it I started getting telltale battery errors.  They seemed to pop up randomly.  I would have thought it would come on when the machine was first turned on and then go away after a few minutes of charging, but it didn't work that way.  It may start up and play fine for 30 minutes, and then the error would come up.  What I found was I could just unplug the battery and plug it back in and the error would clear for awhile.  I did it with the machine running too like you and never had any problems doing that.

Because of the destruction the varta batteries have caused on 50X/3903 MPUs I decided I would relocate the batteries off the mpu board and convert it to a AA battery instead of the NiMH battery back.  It was a common practice in the pinball community.  So I bought the holder and installed a blocking diode (so the machine couldn't attempt to charge the non-rechargeable batteries), and the machine came up with the telltale battery error screeen.  The voltage was fine, so the only thing I can think of is the AVP circuitry monitors not only the battery voltage but also charging current.  If it doesn't meet certain criteria it tosses the error message.

So I ended up buying a new NiMH battery pack and extended the battery leads so I could locate it inside the machine to a spot if it leaks it won't harm anything.  It's been fine ever since and it sometimes goes a couple of months without being powered up.

One thing I have noticed if you disconnect the Telltale battery with the power off when it boots up the next time it will show all the doors status' as being open initially and then they will clear.  Yours seems to do the opposite and don't clear.  It sounds like you have your issue isolated to the PCI card.  I don't know if I just got lucky plugging and unplugging my telltale battery from the machine with the power on (quite a few times too) and never hurt anything, or if there's differences between the G23 and G20 that let me get away with it? 

Ash100:
I had a similar problem with an SAVP, but it was the opposite of what Rick was experiencing.

This game wouldn't show any of the Doors Closed other than the Logic Door, which never showed open. This made it impossible to troubleshoot because I could not access the system with an eKey or Diagnostic.

I tried a different Brainbox, same problem.

I ended up swapping the Backplane and it fixed the problem.

Now that I'm reading this post, I am wondering if the Telltale Battery had anything to do with the problem.

Thanks for sharing.

Curtis ash100

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