Anyone have Gorgar with a Rottendog board?

[Ethan Winer]

John Robertson has been helping me with a strange set of problems in my Gorgar. John seems to think that the Rottendog replacement board I installed is the problem. But I returned the first board I ordered and got another, and have the same problems. So my question is, does anyone here have a Gorgar with a Rottendog MPU-327 board and NOT have any issues? That would rule out a design defect in the Rottendog board. Note: I have the same MPU-327 board in my Firepower machine, and that works perfectly.

[John Robertson]

On 2023/04/09 10:21 a.m., Ethan Winer wrote:
> John Robertson has been helping me with a strange set of problems in my Gorgar. John seems to think that the Rottendog replacement board I installed is the problem. But I returned the first board I ordered and got another, and have the same problems. So my question is, does anyone here have a Gorgar with a Rottendog MPU-327 board and NOT have any issues? That would rule out a design defect in the Rottendog board. Note: I have the same MPU-327 board in my Firepower machine, and that works perfectly.

You are still getting the multiple responses from the lane rollever
switches?

What EPROM are you using for the game - is it part of the RD Board?

Have you spoken with RD about this?

John :-#)#
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[Ethan Winer]

It's many more seemingly unrelated problems than just the rollover switches. I spoke with the company I bought it from, Pinball Life, and they were nice enough to send me a second board to try. As I mentioned. I tried to reach Rottendog but they don't answer their emails and there's no phone number listed on their web site. But surely someone somewhere must have a Gorgar with a Roittendog board in it. Hence my second post today.

[Ethan Winer]

Sorry, yes, the EPROM is in the RD board. The EPROMS hold more than a dozen Williams games, and you select the game you have with a series of tiny slide witches.

[John Robertson]

On 2023/04/09 1:52 p.m., Ethan Winer wrote:
> It's many more seemingly unrelated problems than just the rollover switches. I spoke with the company I bought it from, Pinball Life, and they were nice enough to send me a second board to try. As I mentioned. I tried to reach Rottendog but they don't answer their emails and there's no phone number listed on their web site. But surely someone somewhere must have a Gorgar with a Roittendog board in it. Hence my second post today.

you did try the Switch Test to see what switches were registering when
you activated the switches that are giving trouble?

Those results may help narrow down the problem...

[Ethan Winer]

On Monday, April 10, 2023 at 2:31:11 AM UTC-4, John Robertson wrote:
> you did try the Switch Test to see what switches were registering when
> you activated the switches that are giving trouble?

Aha, you may be on to something! The switch test doesn't show multiple hits, but one of the affected roll-overs shows up as stuck. I press switch 27 down that and the display shows 27. Then I hit the next switch over and that displays 28. But then a few seconds later 27 displays again. Same for other switches after hitting switch 27. The display pops up 27 again rather than remain showing the last switch I hit.

I lifted the playfield and pulled the bottom contact out a bit, and confirmed there's a gap. But after dropping the playfield again 27 is still stuck. This switch as way up at the top of the playfield, so I have to pull the playfield out all the way to really get in there. I'll do that in the next day or so and confirm that the gap is large enough. Or maybe the spring that lifts the wire that the ball activates as it rolls over isn't secure and the wire is falling down. More soon.

Thanks SO MUCH John for your continued interest in helping me with this crazy problem!

[Ethan Winer]

Hi again John. I re-ran the diagnostics, and as before it looked like one of the roll-over switches is stuck. But it's not. I checked the gaps on all three switches in the group, and also verified all three switch diodes are good and not shorted. I said earlier that another problem is the score for players 3 and 4 "slip" and lose points as the game plays. When the diags got to the score displays, players 3 and 4 were wrong showing 111111 or 222222 when players 1 and 2 were up to 777777 and 888888. So the problem is still a bunch of unrelated things. My next step is to examine closely all the Molex connectors that go to the Rottendog board, that used to go to both the CPU and driver boards. Maybe something is loose, or a single strand of stranded wire is shorting an adjacent pin. Those connectors are old, and some have been replaced and repaired and look a little messy.

[cfhatprovidedotnet]

there was a problem with rottendogs on sys3-6 games where the upper right mounting screw would ground out one row of the switch matrix.

[John Robertson]

On 2023/04/18 2:02 p.m., cfhatprovidedotnet wrote:
> there was a problem with rottendogs on sys3-6 games where the upper right mounting screw would ground out one row of the switch matrix.
>

I saw a similar problem with an aftermarket WPC MPU board shorting the
+5VDC power rail when you tightened the lower right mounting screw.

Don't these people ever test boards in games???

John :-#)#

> On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 12:45:43 PM UTC-4, Ethan Winer wrote:
>> Hi again John. I re-ran the diagnostics, and as before it looked like one of the roll-over switches is stuck. But it's not. I checked the gaps on all three switches in the group, and also verified all three switch diodes are good and not shorted. I said earlier that another problem is the score for players 3 and 4 "slip" and lose points as the game plays. When the diags got to the score displays, players 3 and 4 were wrong showing 111111 or 222222 when players 1 and 2 were up to 777777 and 888888. So the problem is still a bunch of unrelated things. My next step is to examine closely all the Molex connectors that go to the Rottendog board, that used to go to both the CPU and driver boards. Maybe something is loose, or a single strand of stranded wire is shorting an adjacent pin. Those connectors are old, and some have been replaced and repaired and look a little messy.

[Ethan Winer]

On Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 5:02:13 PM UTC-4, cfhatprovidedotnet wrote:
> there was a problem with rottendogs on sys3-6 games where the upper right mounting screw would ground out one row of the switch matrix.

Hopefully that's been fixed, but I will definitely check that out on my board!