New Life Games LLC
**Reel Slots** Gaming Machines => Bally Alpha Reel Games => Topic started by: keystone9 on November 21, 2014, 06:55:15 AM
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I have a Bally Alpha reel game that when I restart the game I have to push and hold the reset button for the game to boot and then all works well. Any idea of what can be done or looked at to have a normal restart? Thanks. Bill.
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Have you tried a different mpu power supply?
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Yes I did. Bill.
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I know it sounds like a stretch, but got a different bios chip you can try?
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Just curious...you might try this...
Turn the machine on and close all the doors. Let it boot up to the point where it locks up again (and I mean fully locked up...not just the blue screen that keeps flashing false errors during the normal boot process). Typically at that point a blue screen will pop up saying "call attendant" (not flashing any other errors). Instead of opening the door at this stage, try turning the jackpot key one time. Sometimes an ugly brown orange window will pop with message about what the problem is...or at least give you some clues. It might tell you something about NVram failure, or might point out something about jurisdiction conflicts, or even something mechanical like a display failure...or other things to point you in the right direction. The message is typically followed by a message to turn the jackpot key again to restart the machine, which is essentially what you are doing by holding in on the reset button.
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Based on his description, I'm assuming that when he powers on, all he gets is a black screen with no response form the MPU, until he holds down the reset button. Am I correct?
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You are correct Rick. Over the weekend I am going to try another MPU power supply and see what happens. Thanks. Bill.
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I tried another MPU power supply with the same results, not powering up correctly. Next I am going to try a different bios chip and see what that does. I will post the results. Bill.
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Try replacing the 24 volt power supply in the cabinet, and the 5/12 volt if that doesn't fix it. It has to be something at power up in the cabinet. I had a cabinet that would not show video on screen for about 30 seconds, and then it would pop on with the video and it would be 1/2 way in the boot process. It turned out to be a 24V power supply with bad caps. You can eliminate the mpu by powering it out of the cabinet and hooking up a vga monitor to see if it just powers up to a boot screen in a normal fashion. Pull out the mpu and plug a power cable to it and a vga monitor and see what happens.
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Ok. I replaced the 807 bios chip with a spare that I have and bingo, the game boots up like it should. Now can somebody tell me what the bios chip does in the operation of the game and why they go bad? Thanks. bill.
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BIOS (Basic Input Output System). It's basically the low level software that manages the hardware in the lowest levels. The OS, then uses BIOS API (Application Programming Interface) calls in order to move data from one place to the other. This allows for an OS to run in different hardware platforms without having to write an OS for every hardware configuration. It is VERY rare for a ROM eprom to go bad, but it does happen on occasion. Your situation is especially puzzling since most of the failures is either works or not at all. About the only thing I can theorize is that there's some kind of poor connection inside the prom, that as it powers up and heats up, it expands just enough to make contact, but again, that would just be a guess. Glad you got it going though, and this will serve as another solution for this kind of problem.
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Thanks guys, we learn something new every day
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It's one thing to learn how to repair but it's also great to get an idea on how things work. Thanks. Bill.