wms 40x all lights flickering and slow reel spin

[Lukea]

I have a WMS 40x that all the lights flicker and the reels spin slower than normal, I was wondering if this is a power supply issue or..... I've purchased a new computer supply to replace the wms supply but I'm not to comfortable to replace myself as i don't want to fry the boards and ruin my machine. everything works normal just slow spinning and light problem. also any one have parts for these machines i need reels my #1 is getting pretty well used thank you.

[rokgpsman]

With the machine powered on open the main door and take a look at the boards in the card cage (lower the card cage door if necessary). The upper board in the card cage is the I/O board. On the right side of the I/O board are 5 red lites, make sure they are all ON. And over on the left side of the I/O board is a single red lite, make sure it is OFF.

On the flickering lights problem, do you mean the fluorescent lights, or the pushbutton lights? If it is the fluorescent lights that are acting up you can try another fluorescent tube/lamp. Or can try replacing the starter and see if a new one fixes it. The starter is the small metal can near the fluorescent light in the top box. For the fluorescent lights in the belly glass area the starters are on the inside of the main door. Their is a starter for each fluorescent lamp.

If the flickering lights are the pushbutton lights then you may have a power supply problem.

What is the problem with your reel#1? Do you just need the reel "wheel", or the entire reel assembly (reel base with stepper motor, reel control circuit board, reel)?

[tollguy316]

Is it a dotmation or non-dotmation ?  rokgpsman hit it on the head.. Let us know what exactly is flickering...
 I have power supplies and reels available.  Bill

[Lukea]

all 5 lights on right are lit, one on left is out, the push button lights are flickering as well as payline and bet 3 coins lights[size=78%] and the reels spin like they are sputtering, mainly reel one and two and they are noisy, it is a non dotmation machine.  Tollguy316 how much do you want for the power supply and reels. and if my power supply is bad should i veer away from the wms supplies and try or do the computer power supply conversion? it seems like all this happened over night, number 1 reel was always kinda noisy from when i got it, but the the sputtering of the reels and lights flickering seemed to just happen.. [/size]

[tollguy316]

Did you recently move the machine ?  The power supply should be good if all 5 lights are on and the rest  on the left is off ( although it's goos to have a spare)... check the 2 boards... slide them out and make sure there are no bent pins... re- insert the boards firmly.  It's  an odd problem ... hmmmm. ..
 I'm  not ruling out the power supply though... any humingcoming from inside the machine ? Open the main door and pull the white button  out ;then poke your head in the machine. Any odd smell or noise ?  Try taking out the hopper and then turn on the machine... also try disconnecting the main harness to the door... trying to see if a short somewhere is causing the lights to flicker... any other details you can offer ?


 

[tollguy316]

You did check the fluorescent  starters as rokgpsman mentioned, correct ?

[Lukea]

yes all fluorescent starters are good, no odd smells no humming, pulled and reinserted boards, lol i'm lost machine hasn't moved... how much do you get per reel with motors and power supplys?

[rokgpsman]

I'm thinking that the power supply in the lower part of the machine is maybe going bad. WMS-40X machines are known for this, they are otherwise fairly reliable. There are 2 circuit boards inside the power supply assembly (big gray box). One board sits on top of the other. The top board is the one that generally goes bad, but the bottom board has important stuff too. The power supply could be flaky in a way that the voltages are still there enough to keep the 5 status lites lit on the I/O board, but flaky enough to be causing flickering button lites and oddball reel motion. These voltages are DC but if one of the filter capacitors has gone bad there could be a lot of "ripple" (AC voltage variations) mixed in with the DC voltage.

We haven't seen any photos of your cpu board or I/O board. Have you looked over the boards for any damage, burned parts, etc? What about battery leakage on the cpu board?

Since you don't have another machine or parts available to you to try in your machine so you can find out exactly what is wrong then you have to go with your best assumption based on what your machine is doing.  From what you are describing I'd try another power supply, or try fixing the power supply. There are no guarantees on any of this, you won't know until you try something if that fixes it.
As one of the NLG members says, "the advice given here is free and worth every penny"   

Here are some choices:

1) buy a complete power supply assembly (big gray box) and install it.
2) buy one or both boards that go inside your power supply assembly and install them.
3) buy a computer power supply and mod the machine to use it in place of your power supply. This has been written about extensively here on NLG and other websites. It does involve wiring but isn't brain surgery.
4) send your card cage boards (cpu and I/O) to someone willing to test them for you to prove they are ok.
5) sell the machine to someone and let them deal with the problem. Buy another machine that works, enjoy it.

[rokgpsman]

Here is something you can do just to make sure that none of the fluorescent lights or their ballasts are causing the flickering lights problem.

Below is a photo of the power supply showing its connectors. On the side are 2 rows of connectors where the wiring cables from your machine plug into. The lower row of connectors are all 120 volts AC. Your fluorescent lights each have a power cable that connects to one of the connectors on this bottom row.

To prove that none of the fluorescent lights & their ballasts are bad and loading down the power supply you can simply disconnect their power cables that plug into this lower row of connectors on the side of the power supply. All this will do is not send power to the fluorescent lights, and they are not needed for the machine to operate. Unplug the machine from the wall outlet, then disconnect each wiring cable from the bottom row of connectors. The cables you disconnect go to each of the fluorescent lights, plus to the hopper (on a dotmation machine one of these cables goes to the dotmation box in upper part of the machine). Then turn the machine back on and see if the lights are still flickering. Don't try to play the machine, just observe the flickering lights to see if anything changed. Then turn the machine off.

All of the connectors on the lower row of the power supply are the same so it doesn't matter which connector you plug each cable into. But it's a good practice to mark the wiring cable connector with a number and mark the mating connector on the power supply with the same number. That way you can plug them back in at the same place.

[Lukea]

problem fixed, replaced a cap in the power supply thanks everyone for the help and thoughts