{"id":65,"date":"2007-06-01T18:50:08","date_gmt":"2007-06-02T02:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.11h.net\/brian\/65"},"modified":"2016-05-31T11:34:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T18:34:03","slug":"phoenix-sound-board-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/11h.net\/blog\/phoenix-sound-board-woes\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix: Sound Board Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sb\"<\/a>After all that work replacing the interboard connector on my Phoenix pinball machine, I’m now treated with problems from the sound board. I think this machine has it out for me: Quick drains on the balls in play, letting my girlfriend & her friend consistanty win over me. Its saying “Just put me out of my misery! Stop fixing me!”.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the sound board in Phoenix is driven by what would be solenoid outputs from the driver board. However, instead of driving solenoids, they drive 5 input pins (left connector pictured above) to the sound board to trigger a particular sound to play. I’m not sure on the specifics of which combination of pins causes what sound to play.<\/p>\n

The issue I had was the sound board decided to just start playing boring “tones” (single musical notes) instead of the “Cool” electronic sound effects (if you consider Phoenix’s weird<\/em> startup sound “cool”, that is).<\/p>\n

After reading thru the documentation, I see that the sound board has a little red toggle switch to change between “tones” and “effects”. Hmm… could I be so lucky? Did I just bump the switch while moving the unit? Of course not. The switch does nothing. What’s worse, is it will?occasionally<\/b>?play a sound effect, but not too often.<\/p>\n

The first thing I check is all the old ‘scanbe’ sockets on the board … thinking one was loose. Well, one was loose, I pushed it in, and tested every single connection to ensure the socket wasn’t (yet) defective. No go.<\/p>\n

Since my game didn’t come with a manual, and the online “Phoenix” manual left out all the schematics, back to the internet I go to see how this thing works. Unfortunately, none of the troubleshooting guides I could find even described the problem I had. And most of the schematics and drawings of the sound board didn’t match the one in my system. I was able to find a schematic that was close enough to my sound board, but I couldn’t correlate the labels (IC3, etc) with the board since the board doesn’t even have them printed on it. Finally i find a screencap of the left half of the sound board that labeled the sockets and components. Its good enough to start debugging this beast.<\/p>\n

At least luck was on my side — Starting from the Red Toggle Switch and working backwards, testing every component in its path, I found one thing that didn’t look right. The switch eventually goes to “IC9” pins 4 (out) and 5 (in). IC9 is nothing more than a bunch of non-inverting buffers. Test the voltage on pin 5: 0 volts. Check. Test the voltage on Pin 4: about 2 volts… hmm… Change the switch. Pin 5: +5 V. Pin 4: About 2 volts. “Well there’s your problem!” Lucky for me (although a little scary) there were a few unused buffers on this IC. A simple matter (*cough*) of lifting the output-pin, and soldering jumpers to connect the switch to unused pins 2 & 3.<\/p>\n

\"DSCF2839\"<\/a> \"DSCF2842\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Left: Jumpers to switch the buffer used on the IC to an unused one. Right: Lifted (and broke) output of ‘dead’ buffer. Click to enlarge. <\/em><\/p>\n

After making this change, I plugged the sound board back in, started a game … w00t again! Another mystery solved!<\/p>\n

Update 2008-01-12:<\/em>\u00a0 After only a few months, the exact same thing happened again — only this time the unused buffer that I switched to failed in the exact same way.\u00a0 After a quick trip to Alphatronics<\/a> to buy a new 74HC4050 non-inverting hex-buffer, I’m in business again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After all that work replacing the interboard connector on my Phoenix pinball machine, I’m now treated with problems from the sound board. I think this machine has it out for me: Quick drains on the balls in play, letting my girlfriend & her friend consistanty win over me. Its saying “Just put me out of my misery! Stop fixing me!”.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the sound board in Phoenix is driven by what would be solenoid outputs from the driver board. However, instead of driving solenoids, they drive 5 input pins (left connector pictured above) to the sound board to trigger a particular sound to play. I’m not sure on the specifics of …<\/p>\n

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