Ultra Lock up

[jbshocks]

My ultra has been running perfect for a number of weeks and yesterday after it had been on about 10 minutes the on screen LEDs went out and no buttons worked.  I looked at the main board and the 4 LEDs were lit solid.    I did a ram clear and it came back up and worked fine.  About 10 minutes later the credits went to 0 and the reels would not stop spinning.  This time the main board LEDs blinked as they would under normal conditions.  A simple power cycle brought it back up and the credits returned.  It worked as normal for another 1.5 hours.  Is this just something that can happen from time to time with an old ultra?  The only thing that has changed recently is fixing the Vcc2 voltage to get the BV running.  If the trouble continues I may disconnect VCC2 and see if it clears up.

[uniman]

I really don't know! Seems like Ultras are dropping like flies lately. Just had fella email me and his Ultra had a problem after ten years of no problems. His problem turned out to be an easy fix.
Gposing really has a troublesome machine too!
And now one of my boards is now taking a dump!  Machine plays fine for about 30 minutes and, like yours, the lights go out! (door led's) Board lights solid on.
Changed power supply, didn't help. Changed battery as it still had the original, didn't help. As soon as I do a ram clear it works again for another 30 minutes or so. 
Would think if was a heat problem or bad trace it wouldn't reset at all while it's still warm.

[jbshocks]

this is the type of thing that bad capacitors  will do.. Do you see leaking or bulging of the caps on your 30 minute board?

[uniman]

No longer a 30 min board, just took 10 minutes this time. And I disconnected the Vcc2 to the bv and disabled the bv.
I was thinking maybe some of the caps are reaching the end of their life.
Don't see any bulging or leaky caps.

[uniman]

Follow up on my assumed faulty board;
I took the board out of the machine and made a little test station in my garage. Just a backplane, power harnesses and power supply. This way when the board went out I would be able to check voltages on the board. (by the way the led's on the board all flash when it goes bad, not solid on as stated above)
After an hour it was still humming right along. Hmm, maybe it needed a small load so I added the door ribbon cable and led display. There it sat flashing errors 50 and 31 as expected.
(door open and hopper error) It just kept going. So I put it back in the machine and powered up. Now on the power up there was a hesitation, saw that too at the test station, like it needed a moment to get a steady 5Vdc. A clue? I let it set for an hour and all went well. So I played it for 10 minutes and now, three hours since I started this testing, it is still going strong.
Go figure.

I did take one of the power harnesses from this machine for the test in the garage and replaced it when I was done. Maybe the harness needed to be reseated?
As long as it is working!!

[jbshocks]

maybe just ecn1 &2 wanting to repeat? Mine may have also been all 4 blinking together

[uniman]

maybe just ecn1 &2 wanting to repeat? Mine may have also been all 4 blinking together

Do you mean reseat?
I had this board in and out of that machine several times and it failed each time until now.

[jbshocks]

Yeah reseat.  I supposed any connector could have been unhappy.  Do you use any contact conditioner?  Like deoxit gold?  I ordered some up to try.

[jbshocks]

I thought I would share something I found.  I was planning to change the caps on the 12 volt line and Vcc1 and 2.  I found that capacitor C8 on Vcc1 was loose from the factory.  It had no visible solder.  I am sure I could have pulled one leg with out heat.  I could have tried to just solder it and see if the machine starts to behave but I had the capacitor anyway.  So I just changed out the one cap.  Its the one between ECN1 and 2.  Might be worth looking at if anyone has a flaky board. I will report the long term findings.