Audits for Congo at CA Extreme

[Josh Lehan - Krellan]

Here's some audits for my Congo game that was at CA Extreme this year.

B301 (games started) = before 146, after 475
B302 (games completed) = before 129, after 448
B321 (hr:min:sec in play) = before 10:09:00, after 28:18:50
B322 (total minutes on) = before 2040, after 3712

I upgraded the ROM about a year ago and that's the last time audits
were zeroed. So, the game got more than a year's worth of play at the
show :)

So, at CA Extreme there was:

329 games started
319 games completed - 97% percentage - A lot better than I was
expecting, I figured with free play many people would just start over
their bad games

27 hrs 52 mins powered on
18 hrs 9 mins 50 secs actually being played - 65% percentage - Very
good utilization

3 minutes 24 seconds per completed game - Right on the mark - I
consider 1 minute per ball to be just about ideal - Add a little for
extra balls
3 minutes 18 seconds per started game

This was the FIRST EVER time that I brought a game to any show, and
had the game both working when it was brought in and working when it
was brought out!

Minor breakages happened:

Bad left outlane switch solder job, my fault when replacing this
switch a while earlier. This was working fine, but moving the game
vibrated my marginal soldering work just enough to cause it to no
longer make good contact. The problem manifested itself further down
the switch matrix, and caused faulty intermittent volcano opto ghosts,
causing volcano to randomly toss out locked balls, which led to the
red herring of a bad opto board. Much thanks to Mark Shostak who
kindly helped resolder some marginal solder joints on that board for
me. It didn't help the problem, but enabled it to be eventually
traced back to that left outlane switch. Learned a new diagnostic
technique for switches with ghosts: pound the playfield in various
areas and see what areas are "haunted", repeat and narrow down the
area until you find where the fault is.

All balls jammed in Amy VUK, game unplayable. Fortunately somebody
turned the game off before ball searches overused the coils. The dual
kickouts for the Amy VUK had somehow both fired their plungers, and
both of them had gotten stuck against each other, resulting in a
stalemate where neither could move, just like an old analog typewriter
with sticky keys. Because I didn't see this in person, I don't know
if the game fired both kickouts at once (something the software should
never allow), or if one kickout got jammed and the game fired the
other kickout later on. Fortunately this only happened once, and was
a fluke: after the plungers were both manually pushed down into their
proper position, the game played fine, and didn't happen again.

Both left flippers cut out and wouldn't flip. No sound from coils, so
not a mechanical problem. This happened near the end of the show,
only rarely, and wasn't reproducible at the show. Moving the game
back home, vibrating it some more, helped bring out the problem: first
game I tried, the problem happened almost immediately. Switch test
quickly proved it was the button, as nothing appeared on the switch
test at all when hitting the left flipper button, but the right
flipper button was perfect. I suspected the ribbon cable connector on
the flipper opto board, as the same problem had happened to the right
flipper earlier. Sure enough, wiggling the connector brought the
flippers instantly back to life. I'll attempt touching up the cold
solder joints on the connector soon enough, but for now, wiggling it
works.

Stripped leg bolts caused by bad leg plates. Got the game back home
and the bolts were difficult to put back in, or not "biting" at all.
Tried some new bolts, same thing. Game still is playable and fairly
stable, but it's wobbly. So, I'll replace the leg plates sometime.
Too many sloppy moves, I guess. I'm really liking the ability to
remove the head of the game, as that lightens the weight, which helps
a lot with moving the game when I'm not lucky enough to have a strong
person as my helper. I wish I was stronger myself.

I'm glad I brought the game!

Josh

[TG]

I didn't get to the show until Sunday at 3:30, and I was eyeing your
Congo until closing time at 9:00, and it never didn't have someone
playing it, so unfortunately I never got to play it. There were a lot
of games I didn't get to play. There are so many games at CAX, you
almost need the whole 2 days to get to them all! Thanks for bringing
the game. Maybe I'll get a chance next year.

Todd