New Life Games Tech Forums

Hi all. A newbie needs some direction and help. I have an S2000 Slingo that I have had for 7-8 years. I have never had any issues other than I had to have the battery replaced about 5 years ago ( sent it off since its a soldered battery). Last week I was playing and the reels went into a general reel tilt. Searching the group, I found the help and opened the door , turned the reset key and closed the door and it rebooted fine. The next day I was playing my new game king and I saw the candle on the s2000 flicker for a moment and it said call attendant and then went back to normal screen. Wasnt playing the Slingo at the time, but thought that as odd. Came home and turned on the machine last night to play and it boots, and then went to the Slingo upper screen and flickered between that screen, and the blue call attendent screen. I hit the rest switch again and nothing. Tried opening the door and closing- no luck.

Opened the door, looked at the motherboard lights and the top amber light is flashing.Error messages say main door open, bill door open (even thought its closed). Closed door and reset and occasionally it will allow a game to start but goes into a general reel tilt and now it goes right to call attendant but the upper screen says Com failure.

I want to learn how to troubleshoot, so I need some direction to help myself and this great group plan a line of attack. after reading everything I can, I assume I should start with door optics, could it be the battery as well? I just need help in giving more info.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Bruce

First thing I'd look for would be a door optics alignment issue. Make sure they are clean and the door is latched completely. Secondly I'd check to see of the green battery on the MPU is leaking acid. A trace for the door optics runs underneath it and gets damaged when the battery leaks. If that proves to be the problem do a search under green battery and you will vet a litany of info on what to do with it

Thanks Cowboy,

I will do those this evening. Again I am a newbie and will search the door optics for pictures etc. I assume when you see the door, there are two small brass colored things , one on the door, and one on the cabinet. Other than alignment, which I did see a post regarding using pencil lines, etc, is the optic visible and does it need to be cleaned with alcohol or something like that or is it a magnetic contact that has to align and simply aligning will be the only issue.

Secondly, removing the MPU- is there a latch or something to disengage before I can remove- I will also search for that.

Bruce

Door optics, if good, should never need more than dusting if even that, it's an LED transmitter/received setup. If your cashbox door is showing open then it is a micro switch on the inside of the door and it can be bypassed by tying the two wires together.

As far as your MPU, you'll need to turn the machine off, remove the coin tray and it will just pull out. Same board as the battery you replaced 5years ago, but this battery is a larger 3 cell and has a green wrap on it. Post pics when you get the board out and we can help you proceed from there if necessary

When I open the cashbox door, there are already two wires tied together with taped ends. I have reseated the cashbox and checked the door. It goes through its cycling when I close the door, so I assume it thinks closed.

How about the Com error on the vision screen- that was the last thing I saw late last night before I shut her down.

So remove the hopper I assume, and then pull the mpu out and Ill take some pics.

Thanks again- awesome group of people here

On an S2000 the MPU is mounted to the left hand lower cabinet wall with a handle to pull it out. By coin tray I was referring to the actual tray that hangs on the bottom front of the machine

Well, the optics look clear- hard to tell on the alignment but everything looks the same. Now onto the green battery. Attached are two shots and the magnified one definitely shows some leakage. I'll start to research this, but does this mean the board is  fried?

Bruce

You'll want to remove that battery and check underneath it for trace damage. The board may be shot, but could well be fixable. Take a full size pic of the board. There's a good chance that battery doesn't need to be there at all.

So, remove the board from the metal carrier and desolder the battery or just cut it off the board. I have a full size pic at home. Should I post that before removing battery?

Which method should I use to clean the residual damage or dont clean with anything and just inspect the traces.

Desolder or cut the legs, either way is equally effective. Clean with back in soda and water to neutralize the acid. Look carefully for acid damage. The battery needs to go either way, bit if there's no damage to the traces then your problem lies elsewhere. And yes, post a full size pic of the board so we can determine if the green battery needs to be just gone or replaced with new

Here is the full size board pic and a close up of the board with battery desoldered. Do I test the traces with a DMM?

Yep, test with the DMM and don't replace the battery, it's not needed on that board. If you find a bad trace the easiest fix is small gauge jumperwire ffrom nearest solder point on each side of the bad spot

I can test some of the runs, but some of the traces lead under other components and I cant see where they go. I can use magnification to see where one point of solder is, but then the lead will run under a capicitor or something and not come out so I dont know where the other contact point is.

Do you just put the board back in the game and see if it works at some point?

one of the traces runs under L2 and one under J8

From the photo it looks like both traces to the right of the 4 where it's printed U84 may be corroded all the way through, or close to it.  Try repairing that and see what happens.

Good eye tilt, looking more and more like the battery was the problem.
Smileman, if it's the board and it can't be repaired, which does happen, post a WTB in the classifieds. Those 502 boards aren't to expensive. I may even have an extra that would only cost you a $25 donation to the site and an address to send it to

Thats exactly where I am looking as well. The one to the farthest right of that number 4 runs under the LC orange round thing and I can see the other end solder point to put my lead on. The one closer runs under J8 and I also cant see where to put my leads.

How does one repair a lead?

Thanks Tilt as well. Hopefully we are getting close. Its kinda fun diagnosing, although I have too many other projects right now. SO I will stick with this one to get it done.

Cowboy
The green battery is NiMH it is alkaline.
You should use a mild acid solution like vinegar and water then lots of water to neutralize corrosive property of the green battery.
Baking soda is going the wrong way on the PH scale.

Trace repair is tricky but it can be done.

Rich

Okay will try vinegar and water. I assume we are not flooding the circuit board- qtips yes??

Since the traces arent badly broken, would a conductive pen repair work? Anyone with experiences on that- Durable enough?

Also, to check if they are broken, I guess i could scrape down to copper in two spots well away from the corroded areas and use my DMM on these. Just dont have solder spots for two of these traces because they run under other components.

Scraping the traces is fine and will also be helpful as a solder point for a jumper wire if necessary.

Scraped all leads that were near the battery terminals that looked corroded and was able to test continuity and there were no breaks above or below board. Could this mean simply the corrosion was giving the flaky symptoms? Should I simply put board back in and try. I coated the small scraped areas with nail polish.

Give it a try,  can't hurt anything. Could still be something else causing the problem altogether, but you just tackled the biggest culprit

That would be the way I would go. What have you got to lose but a little time that it will take..
It does not take much resistance change to make that part of the circuit malfunction.
You may get lucky and just the clean up will do the trick.

Rich

So started the game up and everything started fine, but got the vision screen to come up with COM link failure instead of the slingo screen. But I was not getting the door open messages so I remembered reading that these machines stack error messages and maybe since this was the old erro message I just needed to open the door and reset, so I opened the door and used the reset key, and then the reels spun, the video screen said Please Wait and BINGO ( or should i say SLINGO!!). Got teh normal messages in the VFD (sp?) about Closure MB and Restart, but played several games and it seems to be working. I'll leave it on and see how she goes.

Couple more things- Should I replace the small coin battery or wait till I get a low battery message. I read about people changing them to a battery holder, so you dont have to resolder the battery each time ( Not sure where to get the parts though).

Secondly, Cowboy I was planning on making a donation anyway to the group. Last time I made one ( about 4 months ago) , they had to email me and ask who made this payment. Is there a way to make it so they know its from me directly?

And to all who helped- you guys are awesome. My brother in law was impressed and asked how did you fix that. I told him there were way may people like me who enjoy these games and pinball and old video etc and we help each other. I hope to contrbute as I learn more.

I am starting on a GK to Video Slot conversion after the holidays so I am sure I will be back-lol

Thanks,

Bruce

Actually a 3rd thing. Since I only have the basic sound ( no bat ear speakers, just teh flush ones that say vision on them), is it possible to get the improved sounds? If I understand, I would need a Multimedia board, bat ear speakers, do I need a subwoofer ( dont know where that would go). I assume the MM board would only create new sound for the spins? The slingo audio is controlled by a different area of the machine yes?

What other mods would have to be made the the machine to allow it to have that richer improved sound and are these mods difficult? ( Hey I just tackled something I hadnt before so why not)

Bruce

Check the voltage on the coin battery anything above 2.8 should be OK.
Putting in a holder makes replacement easy.I usually harvest the holders from old computer mother boards I always seem
to have old dead computers laying around for spare parts.
Not sure on the slingo what you need for good sound beside a mm board..
The bass speaker should be where the coin tray is.
Check the connector there many times it gets bent up when thetray or panel is slid in when the mpu is replaced
It may be easier to remove the connector from the kick plate and connect it separately.
I'm assuming there is a speaker there.

Rich

Thansk will do- good idea on the battery holder from a computer- I assume they are the same size.

No speaker where the coin tray is that I can see. These visions only has small speakers in the top box. Pitiful sound when you compare to today. I understand about the MM board. Does this piggyback onto the MPU?  Do I need to get new sounds chips and remove existing chips on the MPU?

What about changing speakers?

Bruce, glad you got it going :3- As far as sounds go the vision machines get all their sounds from the top box, they don't have associated sound Simms like standard games do. Better speakers may be your only option there. Thanks for the donation to the site and come visit us forany questions you have in the future

Bummer on the sound setup. I thought I saw somewhere where simply the reel spinning sounds which are generic were actually controlled by the MPU and all other sounds the top box. Anyone else have a slingo which has been modified.

Try a search under vision sound. It's been discussed before but I sure can't remember everything that was discussed