Fish tales

I installed the external battery holder last week and to day I have started to disassemble the playfield for cleaning, it is very dirty… 

 

 

Before the disassembly I run through the solenoid test and found that the solenoid that should drop the target in front of the Casters club VUK didn’t do what it should. It was energized but didn’t drop the target. The reason turned out to a broken actuator, it should push the target when the solenoid is energized. I need to order a new one.   

 

 

Fish tales

There hasn’t been so much time to spend in the workshop the last days. But I have at least managed to disassemble the knocker unit, re solder the cable, glued back the loose wrapping paper, cleaning the coil sleeve and polished the plunger, it does now give a nice knock. While working with the knocker I added a cable clip to secure the two cables for the topper. Both to make sure they are not shorted in to something by accident and to relieve the strain at the knocker cables since they are tied in to the same cable loom. I have also prepared an external battery holder with a bracket to secure the batteries, getting it in to the game will be a job for another day.  

 

Fish tales

Yesterday I got a new project in to the workshop, a Fish tales with severe booting and rebooting problems. When powering it up it gave some intermittent noise and flashes for quite a while until it finally managed to boot. When then starting a game it rebooted almost immediately. Rectifier bridge BR2 and capacitor C5 has already been changed by another repairer. To my experience the most common cause for this kind of problem are the connector J101. When inspecting it I could see that it had been quite hot. I put the connector back at the board and now it booted properly but still rebooted during gameplay. I replaced the connector and now the game boots and plays as it should.

There is still some work to do at the machine. I will move the batteries from the CPU to an external battery holder, there is a lose cable at the knocker and I haven’t yet taken off the playfield glass to examine the playfields upper and underside. I also found two lose connectors that first worried me a bit, but they are for the animated fish topper, which is missing at this machine.