Re: Are you an EM expert? I need your advice

Hmm, I caught a bunch of really great responses and likely answer to my
problem on Google but my OE news reader can't see them.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/browse_thread/thread/6ae1dff1178a0224/e9aeddca39729a97?lnk=gst&q=Are+you+an+EM+expert%3F+I+need+your+advice#e9aeddca39729a97

Thanks for the great help Steve!!
Pasting in his very thorough response:

Steve Yates
On Jul 18, 3:05 pm, Steve Yates <stevegoo...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Jul 18, 11:53 am, "John in NC" <john_ncNOS...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> I
finally got around to restoring my Captain Fantastic.

: :


Status now is as it was before teardown. I have a problem with the 300
scoring. The two top lanes and the right inlane are supposed to score
300 and advance the bonus X3 but it only registers 200 X2. Some times it
will give 300/X3 or even 400/X4 but when it does, the reels and bonuses
will increment in "spurts" (not rythmically) The 300 relay is firing ok.
Where do I look for this problem?


I think I can save you a LOT of headaches on where only 200/X2 is scoring.
Scoring 400/4X would not make any sense though so if you are really seeing
this you have some other problems. I went through this with my Capt
Fantastic and it was one of the most frustrating issues I've ever had to
trace through an EM schematic. Part of that was because the schematic did
not match how my game came wired from the factory, but even after I
realized that it wasn't simple because the logic for this scoring is
fairly complicated and jumps around a lot on the schematic.


I'll post a detailed description of the problem later along with some
pictures, because I think it may be fairly interesting to some. If you
are in a hurry, the short answer is check the make-break score motor
switches at positions 5D, 6D, and 7D. The normally open side on one of
those is not closing reliably.


Steve Yates



OK, for anyone who's interested, this is the long answer of what I
think is going on. I will warn you that it is very long and may be
tough to get through.

If you look at the circuit for the Bonus Unit Step Up Solenoid in the
following picture, the yellow area shows that the bonus is increased
through a switch on the "300 AND 3 ADV." relay through score motor
switch 11B.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/part1.png


The motor sequence diagram shows that cam 11 activates it's switches 6
times per half revolution of the motor.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/motorseq.png


The green area in the first picture shows the hold circuit for the
"300 AND 3 ADV." relay. You can see that score motor switch 6B will
open the hold circuit so the "300 AND 3 ADV." relay will de-energize
at that point. If you look at the motor sequence diagram again, you
can see that cam 6 triggers its switches after the third pulse of cam
11, so after 3 bonus advances the yellow circuit will open and we
would get the correct number of bonus advances.


This is a perfectly reasonable way to do 3 advances. When I went to
check for proper operation of switch motor 6B though, I noticed that
there were no wires soldered to this switch on my game, and it looked
like there never had been. That means something else had to be going
on if this were to ever work correctly.


In addition to the "300 AND 3 ADV." relay, there is also a "BOTTOM
LANE GATE 300" relay on this game. IIRC, this relay does the exact
same thing as the "300 AND 3 ADV." relay, except it also closes the
gate on the lower lane. The pink section in picture 1 shows that the
bonus advance circuit through this relay, and for some reason it is
different than the circuit for the other relay even though they need
to advance the bonus the same number of times.


The pink section does not show the full circuit for this bonus
advance. You need to look at C-9 and H-26 on the schematic to see
what else wire 14-6 connects to.


Picture 3 shows this wire at C-9. You can see that it is wired to
make-break switches at score motor positions 5D and 7D. When either
of these switches closes the bonus will advance once, so this gives us
2 of the 3 advances we are looking for.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/part3.png


To find the third advance we need to jump to H-26 as shown in picture
4. You can see that a make-break switch at score motor position 6D
also pulses this wire.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/part4.png


Picture 5 shows that the hold circuit for the "BOTTOM LANE GATE 300"
relay is opened by score motor switch 8B. Looking at the motor
sequence chart again you can see that this happens after motor swithes
5D, 6D, and 7D have advancewd the bonus 3 times.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/part5.png


Apparently someone realized that it didn't make sense for these 2
relays to have such different circuits to do the same bonus advance,
so the "300 AND 3 ADV." relay is actually wired the same as the
"BOTTOM LANE GATE 300" relay, even though the schematic was never
updated.


If either of the motor switches at 5D, 6D, or 7D is not closing
properly then you will not get all ofthe points and bonus. Since the
bonus is advanced by 3 discrete switches rather than a cam which
pulses multiple times, there isn't really any way to give more bonus
than expected unless there is some sort of short, so this would not
explain 400 points and 4 bonuses advances if you actually saw this.


For even more fun you can try to understand how the 300 points is
added from these relays. I'm glad I looked at why the bonus wasn't
incrementing rather than why I wasn't getting 300 points. These
points are actually added by the EOS switch on the bonus unit stepup
coil, through make-break switches on the 300 relays so that if either
of them is energized when the bonus advances, 100 points will be
scored. If neither of them are energized you will instead get 1000
points with the bonus advance, but only if you the game is configured
for 3 balls per game. The route to the 1000 Point relay is so
indirect and has so many other branches that it is pretty tough to see
what is really happening. If you're interested the yellow section in
picture 5 shows how the 100 (300 total) points is added, and the pink
section shows how 1000 points is added in a 3 ball game when neither
of the 300 relays is energized.


http://REELpinball.com/captfanschem/part6.png


I had 2 copies of this schematic and marked up one of them to match
the actual wiring that I found in the game. I wasn't able to locate
that copy tonight though so this is done from memory, but I believe
this description matches what I found. There is also no guarantee
that all Capt. Fantastics produced match what I found in mine. It's
possible they produced somethat match the schematics.


I hope somebody got something out of this. I apologize if anybody's
brain hurts.


Steve Yates


By the way, the game that I learned all of this on is for sale. RGP
special price is $100 less than what is listed on my site.


http://REELpinball.com/games/captfantastic/
-----------------




"John in NC" <john_ncNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4Z2gk.3331$dP6.2536@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I finally got around to restoring my Captain Fantastic. Stripped down the
pf, sanded off the badly worn artwork and installed the Arcade Grafix
overlay I have been sitting on for 3 years. I tore it down 3 years ago and
remembering whee everything went was a callenge. Hint take more pictures
than you think you'll need. I didn't and some of the rewiring was trial and
error.

I fired up the playfield in the machine after putting the pf back together
(looks better than I thought it would) and the chime unit had a constant
buzz (told me a normally open score contact was closed, not too bad to
find) next I smoked a pop bumper coil (literally, need to order that).

Status now is as it was before teardown. I have a problem with the 300
scoring. The two top lanes and the right inlane are supposed to score 300
and advance the bonus X3 but it only registers 200 X2. Some times it will
give 300/X3 or even 400/X4 but when it does, the reels and bonuses will
increment in "spurts" (not rythmically) The 300 relay is firing ok. Where
do I look for this problem?

Also, the special does not register on the 3rd drop target completion. Is
it supposed to? I don't recall. The left outlane didn't either until I
discovered one of the rollover contacts didn't even have a wire to it. I
jumped it to yellow (gnd I believe) and now that feature works.

Thanks,

John



.

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