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STTNG Coin Door Interlock Switch Not Behaving


daisy

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Hi everyone

My Star Trek Next Gen machine has been sitting dormant for a couple of years now and on firing it up again it has developed a problem.

The interlock switch, that shuts off high voltage things with the coin door open, does not work now as advertised. With the door open it doesn’t activate and switching the switch has no effect. The switch itself tests fine, however I have 13 volts on both of the wires connected to it ?? During game play the game triggers a door open warning randomly and once the ball is lost the warning vanishes, however the machine takes extra time to recognise that the ball has drained.

I have had power issues with this machine in the past. When I first got it it would reset over and over and this was resolved with some new caps and bridge rectifiers. It has again started to reset again with high power drains like all flippers activated at the same time, however, these resets have stopped but been replaced by the coin door issue.

Any help ? Cheers

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A few things to look at with this one.

What happens when you enter test mode and trigger the switch manually? Does it register consistently?

What state is the CPU board in? Any signs of battery leakage or corrosion?

What are the voltages on the power driver board?

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2 hours ago, Gemini2544 said:

My Black Rose does this too with the door switch. As the machine itself isn't playing up I just left it as is. Will be interested in what you find.

I actually prefer no high power switch off via the coin door. Just means you need to be careful like you had to in the past. Much better than that stupid yellow metal bracket to hold it closed that always seems to be missing from inside the cabinet.

Supposed to make it safer but installing the yellow metal bracket bypasses the safely aspect so why not just go back to the ."only qualified people should be stuffing around inside the machine".

Not like anyone is suddenly becoming qualified by using a yellow metal bracket is it?.

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If I could just bypass it I would Steve, but for some reason the machine is see the switch both open and closed even with it bypassed. The 13 volts on both wires leading to the switch is proving hard to resolve.

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I would guess that the cables between the Interlock switch and the transformer have a bad connection. I don't have a photo of my STTNG but I do have one of my RS. You can see if you look close in the attached picture that there are some black-yellow wires that come from the interlock switch and go between the Transformer output plug and the plug to the cable that goes up through the trunking. In my picture the form a loop sitting between the two white plugs.

My first guess would to re-seat the two white large molex plugs . The black-yellow wires go to the interlock switch and open circuit the output of the transformer 50vac. The diagram shows this cable and plugs and the black-yellow wires 

WPCtrans.JPG

Interlock.JPG

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Just ran some tests on my STTNG. The coin door has the 2 switches - the top one is the power interlock, while the bottom one is the Coin Door Closed sw#22 on the switch matrix.

Holding in both switches, I can start a game and have power to the flippers - if I release the interlock switch it kills power to the flippers (as you'd expect) however you don't get any warning message about the coin door being open; alternatively if I hold in the interlock but release the Coin Door Closed switch then I get the DMD message that the coin door is open however I still have power to the flippers. This is the reason why you are still getting open and closed messages, even though you've bypassed the interlock switch, as those messages are caused by the state of the second switch (ie not the interlock).

In your original post you say that you get the coin door open warning message, so this is not the interlock switch but rather an issue with the switch matrix sw#22 switch. To confirm, when you get the message during a game, do you still have power to the flippers?

The coin door closed switch (sw#22) connects to the coin door interface board J9-4 and J9-5, which then connects J3 from the interface board back to J207-2 (for the row) and J209-2 (for the column) on the CPU board. So you could have a flakey switch or J9 connector on the coin door interface board.

Edited by Manny65
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Everyone, thanks for the answers. I’ll try to fill in some of the blanks.

Firstly, my wiring diagram shows the interlock switch as being 2 switches - 1 for 20v and 1 for 50v - with 4 wires, 2 red and white and 2 black and yellow. My switch only has 2 wires, white and red, and green and red, both of which have positive power ??

In the past my switch worked fine. I could test it in the menu and manually activate it with the correct response.

ocyen - in test mode the switch registers as open and activating the switch has no effect. The plugs under the battery holders are all pretty good but 1 and have included some pics. Both sides of the connector are in good shape and the pins are too, both affected tested ok. Voltages on the power board - TP2 (5v) 4.85v, TP3 (12v) 11.9v, TP6 (50v) 79.0v, TP7 (20v) 23.3v and TP8 (18v) 19.3v.

boots - both J209 and J210 both look fine and as a test, the coin door registers as open with J209 unplugged.

gemini - the coin message is displayed when activated the whole time on my dot matrix, so playing the game becomes hard.

sonny - I don’t know which connector you are referring to but they all look good. Bypassing the switch has no effect.

mario - my door switch does not have wires to the transformer, they both go to a board on the inside of the side wall and are marked as mem protect and an earth. See the pics I have included.

manny - my machine only has 1 switch with 2 throws. Only one is connected. See the pics. In the past, before all this, with the door open the message said that high voltage playfield things had been shut down, but they never were - flippers still worked even with the door open.

For everyone - the 2 wires that are connected to my door switch plug to a board and their pins are labelled as mem protect and gnd. Bit concerned that the 1 marked as gnd actually has 13v on it, just like the other. I have checked and the pins are not connected together, but the gnd does not connect to the dedicated gnd wire for this board. Might need to take it off and have a better look at it. It has a lot of plugs on it for switches and buttons.

I don’t have any other switches or wires. 

I have also noticed that the fuse at F103 is blown. Anyone know what I need to replace it ? It only has 230v marked. I have been playing with J210. Might this have blown it ?

‘Thanks a lot to everyone. Feel like I’m at least getting into the problem.

‘daisy

8F6F7002-8FF4-4B48-A8E8-88BFE53CE6CE.jpeg

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C1BD05E2-ECBC-4072-AE39-6938229CAAEB.jpeg

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1 hour ago, daisy said:

Firstly, my wiring diagram shows the interlock switch as being 2 switches - 1 for 20v and 1 for 50v - with 4 wires, 2 red and white and 2 black and yellow. My switch only has 2 wires, white and red, and green and red, both of which have positive power ??

manny - my machine only has 1 switch with 2 throws. Only one is connected. See the pics. In the past, before all this, with the door open the message said that high voltage playfield things had been shut down, but they never were - flippers still worked even with the door open.

 

Yep this is easy to solve - someone has removed the "coin door closed" switch and rewired the interlock with the wire from the "coin door closed" switch.

The white/red and green/red are the switch matrix wires for switch #22 "coin door closed" (refer to the switch matrix diagram in the manual). These wires are supposed to go to the switch in the directly below the interlock (the blank hole in the bracket on your game is where the coin door closed switch is supposed to be).

Your interlock wiring has obviously been rewired to bypass the switch (since that switch is now being used as the "coin door closed" switch in the switch matrix) - this is why even with the coin door open you have power to the flippers.

 

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Here's a pic of my STTNG interlock and coin door switch - note the interlock switch on top with the red/white and black/yellow wires 18 gauge wires for the power, while the white/red and green/red 22 gauge wires go to the coin door switch below.

To find the interlock wires, look at the 12 pin connector at the transformer - you should be able to see the red/white and black/yellow wires separating from the loom to head over to the interlock switch (see the red arrow - I just reused @c_mario pic from his RS machine, but STTNG has the same loom)

STTNG interlock switch.jpg

WPC Interlock Wires.JPG

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Thanks Manny, I had a good look at my Black Rose. The white/red and green/red are there a SPST push button switch. It does register correctly on switch test #22. The other switch & wiring is missing on mine so I'll  need to do a search for them.

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Good info. 
so essentially my machine has no voltage protection. I have included some pics of the wiring around the door. I can see the black and yellow and red and white heavy gauge wires, but they are not damaged or bypassed and look as if they have never been run down to a switch on the door.

Still have questions about the wires I do have. What was the purpose of a mem protect switch ? Why did it, in the past when it was working, trigger the door open message ? What might have happened to make both wires now have voltage ? Did any STTNG games miss out on the second switch ? What fuse is in F103 so I can replace it.

cheers everyone !

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9D473DA3-F8D7-46C7-8580-D124FC4E5B23.jpeg

A72C7193-A58D-478E-87CF-9DB9F80DE8D9.jpeg

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21 minutes ago, daisy said:

Good info. 
so essentially my machine has no voltage protection. I have included some pics of the wiring around the door. I can see the black and yellow and red and white heavy gauge wires, but they are not damaged or bypassed and look as if they have never been run down to a switch on the door.

Still have questions about the wires I do have. What was the purpose of a mem protect switch ? Why did it, in the past when it was working, trigger the door open message ? What might have happened to make both wires now have voltage ? Did any STTNG games miss out on the second switch ? What fuse is in F103 so I can replace it.

cheers everyone !

Rather than say your "machine has no voltage protection", I'd say that it doesn't disable the high voltage when working on the machine.

Your machine is an export machine (the game label shows it as 230V), so it is entirely possible that WMS did make games for certain countries where the high voltage interlock wasn't used. However I do find it strange that your machine has a DPST switch being used for the standard coin door switch, rather than a SPST switch, which would have been more expensive - the DPST switch is used for the interlock to disable both the 20V and 50V power. The wires at the 12pin transformer connector do look untouched, although if someone wanted to remove the interlock they could have easily shortened the red/white and black/yellow wires and re-pinned them into the connector to make it look clean, such that you could tell.

The coin door switch (also called memory protect) allows the game to know when the coin door is open and the machine is being serviced. When it sees the coin door is open the game will flash the DMD message that the high voltage has been disabled (although that's not true in your case because there is no interlock switch), also it'll stop updating the audit information such that testing flippers, coils, switches and clearing/testing coin chutes are not included audit logs.

If your game triggers the open door message while playing, then the CPU is detecting the circuit opening - now this could be an intermittent failure of the switch, or an intermittent connectivity issue on the J9 IDC connector on the coin door interface board, or cold solder cracking on the J9 header pins, or a damaged wire causing intermittent connectivity. It could even be that the switch button isn't being fully depressed - this could happen if the plate of the coin door that depresses the button has come loose. So you just need to work your way through troubleshooting the connections to find the issue.

Why to both wires have voltage - possibly because they are connected to the switch matrix.

You'll find the list of fuses specified in the manual - if you don't have the manual you can download it from IPDB

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Hey Manny, thanks for all that. Yep, found the fuse list in my book and have replaced it.

I have tested the switch and it works fine. It has worked perfectly in the past too so I think it’s something in the solder or wires that has deteriorated while it sat dormant.

I will remove the little board up the front and test the connectors there first. The wire connected to GND is definitely not getting GnD so problem there somewhere.

‘Thanks again, I’ll let you know.

 

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8 minutes ago, daisy said:

Hey Manny, thanks for all that. Yep, found the fuse list in my book and have replaced it.

I have tested the switch and it works fine. It has worked perfectly in the past too so I think it’s something in the solder or wires that has deteriorated while it sat dormant.

I will remove the little board up the front and test the connectors there first. The wire connected to GND is definitely not getting GnD so problem there somewhere.

‘Thanks again, I’ll let you know.

 

You've misread the labelling on the PCB - the "PWR GND" printed on the PCB is for J6-1, NOT J9-5 (which is switch matrix column 2 for the coin door/memory protect). I've highlighted both of these in yellow on the schematic. Please don't ground the switch matrix column!

Coin door interface board.jpeg

Coin door interface schematic.jpeg

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Hey Manny, yeah, I have taken the board off and realised that I had read the labels wrong.

what voltages should be on those lead - the J9/ 4 and 5 ?

And thanks very much for the schematic - I diDnt hav e that one. So far the board looks good. I’ll check it properly with your schematic.

 

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15 hours ago, daisy said:

Hey Manny, yeah, I have taken the board off and realised that I had read the labels wrong.

what voltages should be on those lead - the J9/ 4 and 5 ?

And thanks very much for the schematic - I diDnt hav e that one. So far the board looks good. I’ll check it properly with your schematic.

 

The coin door interface schematic is in the STTNG manual.

Looking at the below switch matrix page from the WPC Theory of Operation Manual I can see why you a measuring 12V on each switch wire. Note that since the column is strobed you'd typically test it with a logic probe and scope, as a DMM is not going to be able to confirm the correct operation of the circuit.

In regards to you specific issue, given you've verified the switch is working correctly and you mentioned that the machine hasn't been used for a couple of years, it is possible that the connectivity of J9 IDC connector onto the header pins on the coin door interface board is the issue - did you try reseating the connector and seeing if the issue disappeared? Note that this can be a temporary fix but it also highlight where the issue is such that you can replace the header and connector to permanently fix it.

WPC Switch Matrix Theory.jpg

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