Before I even start this thread, I want to give a huge THANK YOU to a handful of you here on NLG that have helped me tremendously without even knowing it. I have spent weeks reading through old threads involving troubleshooting and pretty much anything to do with these machines. I have learned so much just from reading your old posts and without the knowledge you guys have put in these old threads, I would not be as far as I am...
So thank you in no particular order to Dale, Tollguy316, Fusco, rokgpsman, rickhunter, and Mk1Mod0 (I read your stuff on Pinside too
). There are others as well that I am forgetting, but thank you to all of you for your past help and for any future help as I am sure I will be asking plenty of questions.
Now, the reason for posting this thread right now is twofold. One is to "check my work" and see if I have diagnosed my current situation correctly as I think I am stuck in the water for now until I can acquire some needed parts. The other reason is so that folks having future problems have another thread to maybe find an answer or two in, much as I did looking through all the old posts. When you guys post your knowledge publicly, it really helps and it is a crime to troubleshoot in PM's as then that knowledge is lost to people looking for answers.
To fill you in on what I have, I acquired 3 machines which I have currently nicknamed "Mostly There", "Partially There", and "Hardly There". Mostly is a 16" top which I was told was working recently until it developed a dot fail error. Previous owner took the game kit out of it and sold it to me for a great deal. I figured that was the best machine to try and get running first and figured it was probably just a power failure. Easy enough fix, so I thought...
Partially There and Hardly There were leftover parts machines that belonged to a friend of mine which he used to get 3 other machines up and running. One of which is my working Mermaids Gold that has been running great for a couple of years and is my example machine to troubleshoot these other 3 as I work on them. Partially was a 16" top and Hardly was a 9" top. For the time being, I swapped the tops (even though the exteriors do not match) because I want to get a 16" and a 9" up and running first as those are the kits I have. I am not swapping games in my MG because of the deck lid with the 3 chest buttons. It wouldn't make sense to put any other game in there. Besides, I gave it to the wife for valentines a couple of years ago and she would kill me if MG came out of it. The Hardly machine which was the original 9" machine was obviously left outside in a past life somewhere as the inside has a LOT of surface rust on it. This is the reason that it will be the last machine and the reason that I swapped the tops because the lower cabinet on that machine will take a lot of work to get back in shape and going again. If I end up getting all 3 machines up and running, then I will swap the tops back.
So, I spent all day today messing with Mostly and trying to get it up and running. When I powered it up, I did not even get the dot fail that the previous owner told me was there. All I got were the fluorescent lights and that was it. Nothing else. A quick check with my multi-meter told me that it was a lower power problem. Well, that, and the fact that only the 2 outer lights were lit on the I/O board. I went ahead and removed both upper and lower power supplies and did the ATX power mod running both upper and lower off the same unit.
Once I powered the slot up, all 5 lights came on on the I/O board so knew that was a good sign. But then the 6th light on the far left came on. There also was no bong on start up and nothing was happening on the DMD. Door showed a dot fail error. Figured I would start with the absence of a bong. Swapped out the coin tray to a known working speaker. Still no bong. Swapped in the CPU board from "Partially There". With this CPU board in, I got a bong, only it wasn't just a bong. It was a very high note followed by an immediate bong. One second later, another high note immediately followed by a bong. Rinse and repeat. The high note/bong combo never stopped until I killed power. The far left light came on with this CPU board in as well.
This time, I pulled my CPU board out of Mermaids Gold and put it in the machine. Got a single bong at startup (and the machine starts a LOT faster with this CPU board for some reason) and no left light. However, after the initialization, it still came up with a dot fail and no display at all. But at least this time, the slot booted.
Between the 3 machines, I have 3 dot controller boards. That's pretty much the only board that Hardly had with it. I try each board while running my MG CPU. On 1 dot controller, the red LED on the board comes on very faint and no green light at all. On the other 2 dot controllers, the red LED lights fine, but the green LED blinks. I got a dot fail on all 3 boards. I went and got the dot controller out of my MG and put it in. It gave me a solid red and solid green and loaded up perfectly with full display. I was actually able to play without having to do a hard clear. It even took the 3000 credits I had on my MG machine and when I put the CPU and Dot controller in the other machine, I had 3000 credits and it played fine.
So, it looks like I have 2 bad CPU boards and 3 bad dot controllers. The one thing I wish I had tried, but can do it another day, was to swap the I/O card from "Partially" to "Mostly" and check that it works with the MG stuff. I know the I/O card in Mostly is working anyway.
So did I diagnose this properly or is there something I am missing? Has anyone seen the flashing green light on the dot controllers before and are those cards toast, or is there a fix for them? Also, why would I be able to play MG on the Mostly machine without doing a hard clear? From what I was told, it was running Stroke of Luck last and should have needed a hard clear.
I know folks like pictures, so I will put up a couple of what I am starting with and then one of "Mostly" when it was alive and running Mermaids Gold. In the meantime, I am on the hunt for parts and software. I think I might have a line on a couple of CPU boards, but now I am going to need 3 since both are bad and "Hardly" didn't have one. And now I have to find 3 dot controllers too, unless there is a way to get these old ones running again?
Any pointers or info would help!!