New Life Games LLC
**Video Poker, Keno, Slots, 21** Gaming machines => IGT AVP (Including G20,G23) => Topic started by: rickhunter on March 07, 2022, 10:19:14 AM
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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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I haven't turned on my machine in awhile and am getting a configuration error. Turning the operator key doesn't clear the error. Is this a battery cause? Is it my PCI card batteries I need to replace again or the backplane battery? I unplugged and replugged the backplane battery but haven't replaced either.
I did wipe the cabinet memory and safe storage after the operator key didn't do anything.
It shows all the letters on the screen but they are all colored black.
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Do you get the presentation manager up? Or is it the green or red colored screen?
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Do you get the presentation manager up? Or is it the green or red colored screen?
It's a black screen with the "Configuration Verification Required" box. Turning the key doesn't do anything. Putting in the Ekey7 it says it's verifying but it doesn't get to where you can configure it.
I think I remember when I had to wipe the safe storage and cabinet memory before, I think it got to this screen but then turning the key made it progress farther where you can configure it.
Do I need to replace the batteries on my PCI card? I tried pushing the little white button as well.
Is there anyone in the SoCal area that knows how to fix this and can come over and help me?
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Make sure your logic door and the main door are open or it won't let the configuration proceed. IT could again though be that it's stuck thinking the doors are always closed.
The machine should let you configure it even if the batteries are flat. It will just tilt and tell you the batteries are no good AFTER you are done setting it up. :P
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Make sure your logic door and the main door are open or it won't let the configuration proceed. IT could again though be that it's stuck thinking the doors are always closed.
The machine should let you configure it even if the batteries are flat. It will just tilt and tell you the batteries are no good AFTER you are done setting it up. :P
I have both the main door and bottom door open. How would I make sure it is thinking the doors are open. All the circles are black at the top.
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So I loaded the diagnostic usb and under switches, it has a check mark by ALL the items. I opened the bill validator door and the removed the can and left those open as well as the main door and the bottom door and rebooted. The diag still had a check mark by all of them saying they were closed.
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Had the same issue on my G20, it was the PCI card in the mpu. Replaced that and all the switches are back to behaving the way they are supposed to.
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Had the same issue on my G20, it was the PCI card in the mpu. Replaced that and all the switches are back to behaving the way they are supposed to.
Should I try replacing the batteries first?
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That didn't fix the stuck door switch issue for me. Although weird things happen all the time on these things, and it is definitely the easier and cheaper solution to try first.
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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?
61 loop is caused by a bad or corrupt eeprom in the motherboard(backplane). 99% of the time if you clear the machine a few times it fixes it if that doesn’t work you have to replace the eeprom.
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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 just got my first avp and that is on my short list on things to figure out. The early 2.5,3.0 trimlines look like they would be easy enough to test i get my brainbox today and plan to test it soon. The later backplanes i have seen schematics for and they are a lot more complicated but i don’t have one of those backplanes to test on.
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Hope you are successful. I only have a single AVP machine (G23V2) and the telltale battery is mounted on the cabinet controller board (aka Blackfin board) which plugs into the backplane. I removed the battery from the board, extended the leads, and put in in a place where if it does decide to leak one day it won't damage anything. I think the machine not only monitors the battery voltage, but charging current as well. I had one that kept giving me a Telltale battery low tilt, but it measured 3.6VDC when checked with a DMM. I tried replacing it with three AA batteries and a diode to block the charging current (somewhat common in the pinball world), but that didn't work either. So I replaced it with a 3AA NiMh battery pack for a cordless phone and it's worked fine ever since.
Here's a photo of my Cabinet Controller Board that the battery used to reside on.