For the first time my machine crashed not once but twice tonight during Martian Bowling. From never crashing to twice in one night?

I read that this was a known bug. Will this be eliminated with Nucore?

Also about a week ago my Up/Down Post started to buzz when energized sometimes a little sometimes alot.

I decided to just replace the coil and its sleeve with new parts. I did this about 2 nights ago.

It was quiet and not making a sound until tonight when it started a very low buzz which then became fairly loud.

Anyone have ideas as to why this would happen? I made sure that the assembly is completely alined without any friction or restrictions from the playfield surface

and nothing is touching or shorting the assembly.

Eddie wrote: Anyone have ideas as to why this would happen? .

On other machines, I have seen coil buzz when a plunger stop wears down, and the plunger is allowed to oscillate inside the magnet.

I've played the crap out of my RFM (it's still on an early rev, maybe even 1.0) and it's never crashed in Martian Bowling or anywhere else.

Where did you hear about this bug? And what are the symptoms of the crash?

The coil stop is the first thing to look at when coils buzz. If the plunger doesn't rest against the stop then it can buzz. If a new coil stop doesn't fix it, and the plunger is >< this close to touching sometimes you can tweak the bracket a little to bring the stop into contact with the plunger.

I've never had rfm crash during martian bowling either. Even running on Nucore =)

Does buzz here mean a physical rattle or an electrical buzz?

I made a mistake about the crash the first time was in Martian Bowling the Second time was in Martian Tank.

The Crash is as follows. Playing in the Mode the screen just goes Black and then the machine restarts. No Error Codes
at all.

I learned about the crash Problem on RGP seems like it is fairly common.

THe Cil Problem is as follows

The sound appears to be an electrical Hum more than a mechanical buzz. As if the coil plunger is being restricted from motion overloading the coil.

The plunger only rests against the rubber stop/grommet when the coil is NOT energized.

I just had a thought could it be the ball resting against the plunger causing the buzz? I haven't tried raising the plunger by itself yet in the test mode. I will tonight.

There I was playing my third game of the eve and was just about through Multiball when after hitting the main saucer 3 out of the required 5 times I had a crash again! the same symptoms as described in the earlier posts.

As for the Buzz, it was caused by the ball resting against the plunger shaft! just slightly move the ball and no more buzz.

I've had some occasional crashes as well, often during multiball too, but never fixed it (I sold my Pin2000 pins last month). I think it's a heat problem on your cpu, maybe it's time for a better cpu fan?

Eddie,

It shouldn't be crashing that much. My original games have never crashed AFAIR. You have a problem somewhere.

Seems you might have a heat problem causing the machine to go to a black screen and then reboot.
This can be cause by two things and it is always best to replace these with new ones right away.

- take out the computer unit from your machine.
- open the cover and clear out any dust with a compressor or a air pressured canister.
- Remove the power supply and open it, do be warned that there are high power components in there that might still be charged that can give you a hazardous shock.
- Use the pressured air to clean out the power supply and also replace the fan with a new one.
- put the power supply together and put it aside.
- Take of the heat sink of the cpu and take off the fan of the heat sink.
- Replace the fan with a new one after dusting off the heat sink.
- Put some heat dissipation gel in between the heatsink and cpu.
(do not use too much, just a little bit with common sence).
- make sure you connect the fan connection to the motherboard or other connector like the power supply.
(when connected to a power supply, then fan is always on, this might not always be the case when connected the the cpu board).
- When everything is clean, dust free and connected, you can put the power supply back in place.
- It is always good to measure the 5 volt and 12 volt to see if they are around those voltages and not like 4 and 10 volts.
(If there is too much difference, put in a new power supply)
- Now when you have put things back in place, put the computer back in the machine and go through every mode by hand to see if it still does those sudden reboots.

Your computer should now be clean for several months, it is always good to clean this out every now and then.
Depending on your location and the amount of dust forming inside.
You will see that it is probably also a lot more silent for the next several months.
Chances are that a person has been fiddling with the computer unit, replaced the fan, but did not replace the heat guiding paste between the cpu and the heat sink.
This is a common problem because not all pinball mechanics have this heat paste in their suitcase.
Then when the machines comes up they think it will keep on working.
In the end you will burn our cpu and need to replace it since it is burned from the inside and you will get weird problems like a machine just stopping and rebooting or just get stuck with a picture and possibly also a tone.

Do check the DB25 parallel cable to be seated firmly and screwed on tight.
You might have a bad connection causing the communication to do weird things.
It might be thinking it is getting a signal that it has to pulse a coil while not getting the normal signal to do so.
But this is probably not that cause, you probably will have solved the problems after cleaning out the computer and replacing the fans.

Hope this helps.

During my crashes, the screen just freezed and the sound continued to loop. I think _that_ was a heating problem; sorry I didn't read the responses in this thread well enough.

Cleaned and checked the mother board and installed another new fan the correct way with paste. ( The board was very clean with almost no dust at all and seemed to be running very cool before I just installed the new fan)

I got the reset again during Martian Bowling once more today. If its in my code I will probably get this with Nucore as well.

I do have the latest version so the bug should have been squashed.

Eddie wrote:Cleaned and checked the mother board and installed another new fan the correct way with paste. ( The board was very clean with almost no dust at all and seemed to be running very cool before I just installed the new fan)

I got the reset again during Martian Bowling once more today. If its in my code I will probably get this with Nucore as well.

I do have the latest version so the bug should have been squashed.

You can do permanent thermal damage to a processor and even though it work it can be flaky. The machine I took to expo last year crashed, as you remember, because the main system fan died and I had that really hot alpine amp under it. Even though it still worked it did all sorts of weird things until I recently replaced it. I think you have a system that sort of works most of the time but exhibits failures frequently. I think once you install your nucore machine you'll be much happier.

Yes Nucore will be a good thing to have. I just find it funny that the only time the machine does the reset is during the Bowling or Tank round and nowhere else during the game. Then it seems to work fine for days before it happens again. Also it never happened in back to back games. I know this will all be a moot point with Nucore but I hate not knowing the actual cause of things. I dont know the workings of MPUs so I would think that it would cause the game to reset in may places during a game.

You do not want to know how many mysterious problems can occur with computer systems these days....

It can be a bug in the code, but chances are that the code is fine, but that during programming of the eproms/rams that there could be a bit fallen over as we call that here in the netherlands.
Once i refurbished a star trek the next generation.
There was something wrong with it and each time that we did a specific shot, the machine would energize all the coils, buzz and then reset.
Turns out it was something in the eprom..... a defective eprom looks good on the outsise, but during a check on a burner, it turns out that the crc check came out differently every single time.
Then burned a new eprom, stuck it in the machine, test all possible shots and functions and the system was working perfectly.
Just something we could not see with the naked eye caused so many problems.....
So it can be so many things gone wrong with your machine that we cannot see without doing more research.

A damaged cpu can cause many different problems and even at random intervals.
A machine can work fine for days, but can also crash every single minute when doing something while the same thing used to work fine before.
A machine/computer can work fine while in standby and just showing an animation but start crashing when your doing something with it.
The same thing can happen when a hard drive or other storage device is damaged or missing information.
Once a transflash card got cracked and caused my phone to overheat when recharching.
Nothing to be found in the phone and worked fine without the card.
But it is due to testing and trial and error that you can find these causes.

I am running on version 1.6 and have done bowling and tank mode several times.
even tested it by hand to see if there were bugs to be found.
So far nothing found on this side of the screen.
So i guess you might need to look in the prism card or exchange the cpu.
But why keep testing while your going to use nucore pretty soon.
just keep playing while you can and enjoy the game even more when you have nucore installed.