Road Show - Bob’s Bunker choice

[Taxiturn]

Evening,

Mildly baffling one here. Just taken receipt of a Road Show on loan. When you enter the spinner scoop for the “Bob’s Bunker” item choice, you press the right flipper to buy the item with points, and the left flipper to pass. The left flipper choice works fine, you tap the button and the ball immediately kicks out without buying the item.

But the right flipper choice more often that not does nothing, almost like the button isn’t working. I’ve tried tapping, holding, it generally just ends up timing out and then the ball kicks out as if I’ve declined and the game carries on. On some occasions, the item does get bought, but there’s no real rhyme or reason to it i.e. sometimes it happens a couple of seconds after I’ve pressed anything. I know that Road Show is coded so that you should always have sufficient points to buy whichever item is presented, so it shouldn’t be that it’s failing because of that.

The right flipper works absolutely fine otherwise, so I’m comfortable the button is okay. Any ideas for other things I can check on this one?

The only other faults that I’m aware of with the machine are that the left ramp exit microswitch is faulty so the ramp doesn’t register right now (parts ordered), Ted’s eyelids have been removed (painful), and a couple of the flashers have been switched off. Any ideas appreciated!

Many thanks,

Simon

 

[David_Vi]

Go into switch edge test and press the right flipper button. See if you get right flipper and upper right flipper come up in the test.

Although RS doesn't have an upper right it may be using the upper flipper switch/opto for other functions. Unfortunately I don't have my road show to confirm.

The flipper opton boards have two optos on them. One for the right flipper and one for the upper right.
Then you have the plastic opto interrupter which the flipper button pushes out of the optos. If the opto is dodgy (cold solder) or the interrupter is damaged you might be getting inconsistent results.

I can't see any other reason if your right flipper works correctly.

What do you mean when you say "flashers switched off"? They don't work?
Bulbs could be dead, a wire off, a bad connector, or worse a transistor is shorted open on the driver board.

Congrats on borrowing the best game ever made

 

[Taxiturn]

Hi David, thanks for the reply.

In switch edge test I can get both R main and R upper flipper to show up, and with that in mind I went into the bunker a few times trying to deliberately use the edge of the button. A couple of times it triggered straight away, great, but then on several other occasions I couldn’t get it to go with full press, half press, rolling my finger around… so does sound like some kind of inconsistency somewhere in the flipper mech.

On the flashers, I gather there were faults with them e.g. one always on, so they were disconnected but I haven’t looked into that. Just included it in case it could be at all relevant!

In other news, the left ramp has started registering again, I’m assuming there must be a switch compensation setting which kicked in to just require the entry switch after X games without an exit switch hit. Will still be replacing the microswitch when it arrives.

 

[David_Vi]

Visually inspect the flipper button opto, you'll see how it works and hopefully be able to suss it out and see if anything is wrong.
If you've got a 1/4" nut driver you could try swapping the left and right flipper opto boards and see if your problem moves. That'll tell you for certain what it is.

On some games the end of stroke switch on the flipper mech itself tells the game to lane change to select things but I don't think so on this era. I wish.

If a flasher gets stuck on it's a shorted transistor on the driver board, or something else shorting it to ground. It's not something you can easily fix without experience of working on a circuit board.

 

[Asiapinball]

Swap the flipper opto boards over side to side. If the fault moves to the other side it is the board that is at fault.

 

[Asiapinball]

.... as David said.

 

[Taxiturn]

Visually inspect the flipper button opto, you'll see how it works and hopefully be able to suss it out and see if anything is wrong.
If you've got a 1/4" nut driver you could try swapping the left and right flipper opton boards and see if your problem moves. That'll tell you for certain what it is.

On some games the end of stroke switch on the flipper mech itself tells the game to lane change to select things but I don't think so on this era. I wish.

If a flasher gets stuck on it's a shorted transistor on the driver board, or something else shorting it to ground. It's not something you can easily fix without experience of working on a circuit board.

Thanks David, I’ll have a nut driver as soon as Mr Retro has them back in stock (I pre-empted something like this would happen!)

I’ll have a look at the flipper opto boards once I’ve got the right gear, thanks.

I won’t be doing any work on the driver board… would maybe have a crack if it was my own machine, but it isn’t.

 

[drhex]

Bit holders work for this specific screw size, I am sure you have one popping about somewhere. When you have the board out clean the optos with some alcohol, usually they‘re just dirty.