PLEASE, Help a guy play Santa for his new wife

[Hemiman426]

Hello Everyone,

Here’s my story. I live in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, IL. After a resent trip to Las Vegas with my newly wed wife, I came up with the awesome idea for her charismas gift this year, an older Video Poker machine. After all, she just gets such a thrill out of playing 5 cent Video Poker when were in Vegas.

The Machine

So off I go the nice husband that I am and start searching for her Video Poker machine. In the effort of time, I found a 1989 IGT Player Edge PE Plus for sale locally. So I meet up with the guy selling it, check it all out. Screen is VERY clean and sharp, no burn in and such, and as you can see from the pictures below, the machine is in generally VERY clean shape for its age.

Serial Number: 180172
Model Number: B1075D
DESCP: PE +
Date: 05/89

How it got home

So I buy the machine, paying too much for it I’m sure. (But what the heck. I’m in Illinois with the 25 year law, it’s clean and everything works, and it’s Christmas time after all.) The guy takes all his coins out of the machine. We wrap the machine up in a moving blanket and lay it down on its back flat and strap it in tight with tie downs in the front of the back bed of my pickup truck. After a two hour smooth ride home (all interstate). My brother and I unload the machine into the house. Because of the cold weather, I opened the front of the machine, took the hopper out, and let the machine warm back up from the cold ride home for 2 ½ hours before plugging it in.

And now the start of my problems

So after placing the hopper back in, I plugged the machine in and flipped the power switch on, the machine comes to life and lights up. Everything lights up expect the monitor, black, black as coal. I unplugged the machine and tried it again. Same thing, but I can hear the monitor spark up. Kind of like when you power up an old CRT tube type TV, you can hear the static snap of it powering up, but blank screen. I checked all three fuses on the back power panel with my meter and they all checked out good.

So I unplug the machine again and remove the hopper and start poking around. I found about five bucks worth of quarters wedged in array of places from stuck in the back of the power supply to hidden on the bottom of the machine behind the main transformer. I Removed all the quarters and tried powering up machine again, same results no go, and the screen is still not coming to life.

With the machine powered up. I started performing a wire harness wiggle test. Nothing changed, but I did find the below wire that was either ready to break, or broke off during the move.

The broken wire

So with the picture below, it looked like this yellow with orange tracer wire might have come out of the #6 block position? I’m hopping that someone can confirm this for me?


Below are the rest of the pictures I took of the machine. I’m hopeful that someone here can help me bring this machine back to life in time for Santa to deliver it for Christmas day for my new wife.

To all, a big thanks in advance to all that help me in my endeavor and short time line.

Thanks
Mike

[slots4home]

Mike,
It sounds like something shorted out with all those quarters wedged in the power supply.
Can you look to see if where those quarters were if theiris a burnt wiring or circuit board.
I do not have one of those machines or I would check for you.
maby some of the regulars can chime in to help.
I have had that similar problem when you lay a machine on its back and the coins will find a way to create a problem.
Good luck
Darell
Slots4home

[blueridgeslots]

Your correct, that wire goes where you pointed to, but doubt that is causing the black out, put it together, turn it on and see if the game will make noise when either inserting coins with the door closed, or pushing the small button on the coin optics with door open and lighting any buttons, if it does than the Monitor is dead, very common, a TV shop around you should be able to fix before Christmas, if it doesn't do anything with the coins, look a the fuses and see if the coins blew one, the broken wire should only effect the buttons and can be easily repaired

[Hemiman426]

Your correct, that wire goes where you pointed to, but doubt that is causing the black out, put it together, turn it on and see if the game will make noise when either inserting coins with the door closed, or pushing the small button on the coin optics with door open and lighting any buttons, if it does than the Monitor is dead, very common, a TV shop around you should be able to fix before Christmas, if it doesn't do anything with the coins, look a the fuses and see if the coins blew one, the broken wire should only effect the buttons and can be easily repaired

Blue,

Thank you for your quick reply. Before I did the wiggle test on the wiring. With the door closed, the machine made NO noise when a coin was dropped in, but does make noise when you press the "Card Hold" buttons. So I'm guessing that I broke the wire off that pin. You can tell it was repaired once before. But the repair job was a cheesy job. Just crimpted, not soldered.

Now to find a TV repair shop that I can trust and is quick. One thing that might help me out there would be to have the SAM for the monitor. Anyone have a SAM for a Ceronix 1492?

Thanks again.

Mike

[Neonkiss]

All of those pins will be just crimped from the factory. Only a repair job would have soldered pins. Another way to tell where that wire came from is to look at the pins on the connector. The male pin will stay in the white socket and you should see a pin that is not connected to a wire on the back side. But I think Blueridge confirmed it's location. It takes a special tool to remove old pins from the sockets. Their made by Molex and very common. The most common size pin is the .093 series. New pins just push and lock into the old socket.
As far as the boards go. Does anyone know if that Ceronix chassis has a fuse soldered onto the board protecting that circuit ?

[Hemiman426]

All of those pins will be just crimped from the factory. Only a repair job would have soldered pins. Another way to tell where that wire came from is to look at the pins on the connector. The male pin will stay in the white socket and you should see a pin that is not connected to a wire on the back side. But I think Blueridge confirmed it's location. It takes a special tool to remove old pins from the sockets. Their made by Molex and very common. The most common size pin is the .093 series. New pins just push and lock into the old socket.
As far as the boards go. Does anyone know if that Ceronix chassis has a fuse soldered onto the board protecting that circuit ?

Neon,

Thanks for your reply. You are correct on the pin issue, and I have the tool you talk of for removal. The pin issue seems to be answered, at least for now. I will make this easy repair when I get back to where I have the machine stashed so the wife doesn’t find it till Xmass.

As for a fuse on the Ceronix chassis, yes there’s a fuse mounted on the board. Visually it looks to be fine, but I've not checked it with a meter because of the high voltage lurking around that area. I’m a little gun shy to be probing around this area. As an FYI, when I power up the machine I get the static snap noise, so that would lead me to believe that it isn’t a power issue???

Thanks again for you comments.

Mike

[Neonkiss]

Someone with better knowledge of monitors might be able to chime in here, but I would imagine if your getting the high voltage static crackling from the monitor it might be just missing the input signal from the MPU. The monitor sounds like is OK.

[Hemiman426]

Someone with better knowledge of monitors might be able to chime in here, but I would imagine if your getting the high voltage static crackling from the monitor it might be just missing the input signal from the MPU. The monitor sounds like is OK.

And there my friend is the missing link. Like I said in my original post. Prior to moving the machine the screen was beautiful, but now it's just black on power up.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm hopeful that someone will read this post and share some trouble shooting thoughts.

Thanks again.

Mike

[TZtech]

Hi

Have to agree with Neonkiss. Monitor is probably fine. Remove the prosessor board and then take out the backplane board. Normally when coins do cause a short they get under this board and cause burnt traces. There re also some parts that look like caps but are actually fuses on the backplane board. While you have it out may as well check these.
Another common problem is the power plug from the transformer to the backplane. Check for any signs of browning on any of the pins.

I have one in the shop - will try and get some picks tomorrow.

Regards
Ian

[Hemiman426]

Ian,

Thanks for your comments. So after reading everyone suggestions I decided to sneak out of the house and go work on this thing.

So off we go down the path of removing the backplane.

During the process of the removal of the backplane, I retrieved another six bucks in quarter. I couldn't be certain where they were jammed because all's I heard was some of them falling down as I slid the backplane out.

I took the processor board out and checked the fusees and they all checked out good. I also check resistors and they checked good with an avg of 180 ohms. As you can see from the pictures, there was a repair made to a bad trace once before. I checked it and it's still good. I didn't see any other areas of burn, so I would say that the boards good.

The main backplane transformer shows no sign of burning, nor do any of the wires on the main backplane. (see attached photos)

The Main On/Off switch and fuse area appears to be healthy. No burnt wires or fuse holders.

For now, I'm going to take a chance and put this thing back together and power it back up, now that I have over ten bucks worth of conductive coins out of the mix.

Thanks again, and I'll post my results later.

P.S. On a positive note. So far so good, we haven't had any puffs of smoke come out this thing yet. Keep your finger crossed for me.

Mike

[Neonkiss]

Hey Mike, On a positive side for every quarter you've retrieved out of the machine your purchase price has gone down
Be sure NOT to remove the quarter in the coin comparator..

[stayouttadabunker]

I noticed something on photo P1001990.jpg
There's a 6-pin molex connector that comes out of the power supply.
Each orange wire contains 12Volts to make a total of 24V.
Each blue wire is a "ground" for the 2 orange ones.
It basically has 2 blue wires and 2 orange wires and nothing in the middle 2-pins.
It certainly looks like the back of the 2 blue wires...the connector shroud looks burnt out.
You need to clean those particular pins on the motherboard at J-11.
I'll bet ya a million bucks that those 2 blue male pins and the blue females are not getting a clean connection.
Use a little cleaning slovent or some fine sandpaper on the pins.
What happens after time is that the connections get a little soft/loose and start to arc a litle.
That's why the white 6-pin female molex shroud is getting black.
Then there gets to be a thin non-conductive residue on the points where they contact, leaving you with "iffy" power.



ADD>>>>I zoomed in on the pic ....it's only writing...crappers...I think it says "CM  FB"....not burnt out....something else is wrong...sorry
send more pics!

[Hemiman426]

Stay,

Thanks for the reply, but I think you might see something there that's the cause of a bad picture. I recheck that connector again after seeing you post. Have a look of the new pics of that connector... They are clean and tight to the board.

Thanks again for the help.

Mike

[stayouttadabunker]

hemiman,
when you turn it on...are the buttons on the panel lighting up okay?
I know you hear a crackling when it's on...but what about the panel buttons/switches...do they look normal to you?
Does the machine accept coins?
Something happened during the machine's move....maybe there's a loose wire going to the monitor from the chassis?
Jiggle connections with something non-conductive...the problem might be up where the monitor is somewhere.
What ever you do....dont touch that big red wire with the rubber cap on back of the monitor.  There may be still juice in the capacitor.

[Hemiman426]

Hello Everyone,

I am PLEASED to announce that the video issue has been fixed. Please see attached pic.

I would like to thanks EVERYONE that help by adding their thoughts.

Now onto a couple of other issues (simple I hope). I will start another thread for them. See the new thread at: http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=1275.new#new

P.S. I made about twelve bucks on the deal...  Hahahaha :3

Thanks again to all.

Mike

[Neonkiss]

 

[StatFreak]

Hello Everyone,

I am PLEASED to announce that the video issue has been fixed. Please see attached pic.

...

Mike

What was the problem, finally? Curious minds want to know how you got it working.

[Hemiman426]

Hello Everyone,

I am PLEASED to announce that the video issue has been fixed. Please see attached pic.

...

Mike

What was the problem, finally? Curious minds want to know how you got it working.

Start,

The only thing I did was take the machine completely apart, removed the loose coins, clean everything up inside. (real general) put it back together, and boom, video worked again.

Thanks
Mike

[theDotster]

The only thing I did was take the machine completely apart, removed the loose coins, clean everything up inside. (real general) put it back together, and boom, video worked again.

Thanks
Mike

Sorry, I've only just seen this thread....

I had a similar problem shortly after I got my machine and it was down to that white molex, so my money is it was on that. If this happens to it again I would look there first.

Did you find out what that cable plugged into? It looks like it is for plugging in a jackpot bell.

Paul

[Hemiman426]

The only thing I did was take the machine completely apart, removed the loose coins, clean everything up inside. (real general) put it back together, and boom, video worked again.

Thanks
Mike

Sorry, I've only just seen this thread....

I had a similar problem shortly after I got my machine and it was down to that white molex, so my money is it was on that. If this happens to it again I would look there first.

Did you find out what that cable plugged into? It looks like it is for plugging in a jackpot bell.

Paul

Paul,

Thanks for the reply, No I haven't received any confirmation on that plug, but I'll bet you're right. I forgot all about the bell option.

Thanks

Mike

[stayouttadabunker]

The black plug in picture P1001972A.jpg is a 6-pin female connector and is not for the bell.
I'm not exactly sure what it's for because I cant tell if it is longer or stuffed into the top box.
It's possible that it's a harness for your hard meters.
What is the silver, metal box right next to it in the back there ,on top? The wire looks like it's coming out of that metal box on the back wall.
I know the silver cover on the bottom right, with the holes - is for your power supply.

The bell plug is black also, but is only a 2-pin female connector and plugs into the J11 (2-pin male) header on the right side of the motherboard.

[Hemiman426]

Hello and Merry Christmas to all,

I just wanted to give everyone an update. Well after calling Ron, I got the number for a local (Long Grove, IL area) guy that repairs machine.

What was found:

Bad monitor unit.

Bad motherboard

Bad coin comparative

So after driving 50 miles in the heavy snow on unplowed roads to drop off the machine, then driving back under the same conditions, and lighting my wallet a BUNCH. we were able to give my wife a VERY BIG suprise for Christmas!!! You should have seen the look on her face when she removed the decorated refrigerator box covering the machine.

Thanks again to everyone that pitched in.

Merry Christmas.

Mike

[knagl]

Sorry to hear that it tuned into a little bit of a money pit, but glad to hear that it all worked out and you got your wife a great surprise for Christmas!