New Life Games Tech Forums

I have a Williams Reel Em In (model 400) with 3 spinning reels
(no dotmation or video screen). The game must "warm up"
before it will boot. Here's the rundown:

1. Turn game on. Get the initial powerup "bong".
2. All five LEDs on the Slot I/O board are on.
3. The Slot I/O fail LED is off.
4. The front red display LEDs are blank.
5. Wait 5 minutes.
6. Turn off for a few seconds, and turn back on.
7. game boots and plays perfectly.

Now i've tried everything. and i do mean *everything*.
What I did was move each component from this
game to a fully working game. And everything works
perfectly in the other game. here's what i moved and
tested:

1. CPU board
2. Slot I/O board
3. Backplane board
4. stock wms Power supply (minus switcher)
5. new ATX computer power supply
6. front door LED panel
7. Transformer (ok fine i'll try anything).
8. coin counter board disconnected, just to remove that as an issue.
9. DBV disconnected, just to remove that as an issue.
10. Hopper removed, just to remove that as an issue.
11. Reels disconnected, just to remove that as an issue.
12. Power supply 47mfd cap replaced by the way. And
I'm using a switching ATX power supply (but i've tried this
game with a working 'stock' power supply too, same result.)

There's nothing left to test! Again game turns on, gets the intial
power-on "bong", and just sits there. Not front door LED displays.
Wait 5 minutes like this, power-off and then back on, and game
works perfectly.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Well Clay, here's my non-slot specific, electrical engineering thoughts on your issue...

First, your issue could very well be thermal with the "warm-up" that's required.

Second, you mention that you tried every component in another chassis and could not make the problem move.  I am assuming that you were trying 1 part at a time.  Well, that points to the fact that there is an inter-operability issue with multiple components (ie: the power supply and CPU in combination, etc).  These are obviously a total bitch to debug.  But, that is why I suspect that you golden checking in a working chassis didn't make the problem move.  It's also possible that since it seems to be thermal, that the thermal conditions in the golden chassis are different.

Wish I could be of more help...

Right tried all components one at a time in the other working game.

But i fixed it.

What i did was this... i was using a computer ATX switcher for the
power supply instead of the original Wms switcher. So i went
back to a 16 pin power supply i had which was stock, and i
knew it was working. I made a 16-to-12 pin converter,
installed the stock wms 16 pin power supply, and the game
now boots without the 5 minute wait!

This is the first model 40x I used a computer ATX power supply
and the game would not work. I've probably done 50 like this
too. I guess there's a first time for everything.

picture of the 12to16 pin converter (this is a stock wms one,
i made my own for this machine).
(http://www.pinrepair.com/slots/wms/12to16ps_1.jpg)
(http://www.pinrepair.com/slots/wms/12to16ps_2.jpg)

Is your ATX supply bad, or not pumping out enough power, or... ?

i tested several different ATX power supplies including a couple
brand new 400 watt models. no love.

Is it possible that some of the other cabling is bad (since I assume you didn't move and test the cabling in your other chassis)?

YES. it turns out the cable i made for the ATX had a
questionable crimp on one of the pins. This seems to
be the problem!

What do I WIN?!!!

....

Oh wait... this isn't Expo...

:)

unfortunately nothing to win because when i put all the
stuff, it didn't work again. so even though the cable was
questionable, it was working.

what i do now to test crimped pins is to gently
tug on the cable. in this case the wire pulled out.
that's not a good thing, but it wasn't the reason
why this was not working.  i mean i got it working,
but i'm still not sure why!