Sanyo fantasy video & electronics crash during fever

[squib308]

Allright, so the sanyo fantasy machine previously mentioned is working better after I sorted all the colored balls & regular balls out. I don't know if all the colored balls are slightly too big, or there's one or two bad ones, but so far so good.

New problem - during the fever, it crashed. There's a little guy/clown, with the message error going up the screen (think star wars text), and his 'voice bubble' says 'WAIT'. There were balls in the hopper, and nothing was jammed up as far as I could see. While the error clown was on the screen the shooter still worked, and it would pay out balls if you got it in one of the holes, but the hole that starts the 'reel' spinning didn't do anything. It seems like a blue screen of death, except this isn't windows it's running, so I guess it's the clown of death.

I unplugged it, plugged it back in, and the screen had just the 'sanyo girl' as I call her & was otherwise unresponsive. Still the shooter worked, and it would pay out balls & everything, but no spinning of the reel or anything like that. She winked or blinked every so often, however.

Unplugged it again & let it chill out for a while (days), plugged it back in, and it was back to normal, with the reel ready to spin. (lost my fever!! FTW!!)

I hoped it was a once-off event, but then I got the fever again today, and was raking in the balls, and then out of nowhere the error clown showed up again. Erg!!! This time when I unplugged it & plugged it back in it came right up to the reels, so I didn't get stuck at 'sanyo girl', but again, the fever was lost.


So whats up with this deal? Is there some chip in the machine that's getting hot? It's like a flaky graphics card or CPU with bad cooling kinda.. it really is irksome that it's happened two out of the three times I got the fever. (the first fever I had balls jam up & didn't get to really play)

The only thing I noticed (that i consider) abnormal, is the transformer that powers the machine gets pretty warm, I would say hot/uncomfortable to the touch after an hour or so being plugged in.. maybe it's a voltage drop or dip when it's in the fever and making noise and stuff? maybe it tries to open the 'tulip' or the 'shoot flap' via a solenoid, and there's not enough power from the transformer? I'm kinda grasping at straws here... I would really expect the transformer to burn up before it caused a significant voltage drop, so... Also it runs on straight AC, so I can't add a capacitor or anything to smooth out the power supply..

Attached are the pics of the screen.

Any help is appriciated!

B

PS. The 'shoot flap' did open once, briefly for me when I got the 2nd fever, but it closed again real fast, and then the machine crashed shortly thereafter.. what opens the flap? (besides the solenoid..) is there any way to tell? I did find that a ball in the upper 'rotating hole' during fever mode will cause the tulip to open for a while (or some number of shots?), thus allowing you to make major ball-money. Also all the lights except the one in the upper left 'spinner' appear to come on. Still no idea why... but the yellow one below it does come on during fever.

[compirate]

what amps is the transformer? needs 4 minimum usually, most power drawn during bonus. Somewhere on the back it should say what the max draw is (in 'VA').

That Japanese is merely saying "Error" (エラー発生)

Also, not sure about this game, but a ball has to go into a certain part of the big bonus door for the bonus to continue, a holdover from older times. Some games will error if this doesn't happen (it assumes something is wrong with the shooter).

[MrGneiss]

Sorry I can't help with the error...

Since yours is a kenrimono it most likely means along with matching numbers you usually need to get balls in certain places to make other things open..I usually figure out when and where to shoot balls just by playing a lot, but I guess thats kind of hard when your machine doesn't want to work right..

I guess if a bonus door was supposed to be opening but wasn't for some reason it might error because it wasn't getting any balls..


I have a machine (different brand) made around the same time as yours with an underpowered transformer that makes it not work totally right while in a bonus..but I've never gotten an error..

[squib308]

what amps is the transformer? needs 4 minimum usually, most power drawn during bonus. Somewhere on the back it should say what the max draw is (in 'VA').

The transformer's nameplate/sticker says 5 amps at 24vac, which should be a little under 125 watts/VA. On the back of the machine there's kind of two electronic boxes, the one that you can see IC chips through the 'smoked' plastic says 75 VA on it, so that's roughly 3 A at 24vac. Meaning the transformer should be large enough for the job, according to spec. It's still a small transformer, imho, for 5A at 24vac, but whatever.

I cut the secondary leads (the ones that were crimped to the machines power leads) & hooked up a multimeter, and it was providing 25VAC with no load, and then when I wired up the machine I used an analog multimeter so I could see the needle swing easily, and it didn't budge from ~25vac.. not even when I got the fever after shooting only about another 10 balls in the hole that starts the 'reels' spinning. I saw the flap that uses a solenoid open for a bit, music was playing, then ERROR. crash. but the needle never budged from 25vac one way or the other.

Having a fair amount of experience fixing computers, it feels like a heatsink on a chip problem, or some kind of intermittent heat related issue. Oddly, even without being hooked up to the pachinko machine, the transformer got just as hot as when it had the pachinko machine (load) hooked up to it... Either way, if the transformer was getting too hot, there'd have been smoke or at least a smell, or a thermal fuse cutting everything off at once. Suspecting the IC chips & whatever else is in that case, I hooked up a 12 volt (dc) 60mm computer case fan right over the air vents on that case, with some double sided sticky foam tape. I don't know that the problem is fixed, but my girlfriend did get the fever after I did that, and it was a 'L' fever (which is like half the number of rounds, whatever that means..'L'esser maybe), and she was able to play through the entire thing without any crashes. !! So I'll call this one 'fixedish', unless it happens again. I wish I had a 24vac fan instead of the 12vdc fan, which is hooked up to a different transformer, so it uses up another electrical outlet... but I'll get one later if this proves to work, I suppose.

FWIW, I also went to the sanyo japan / pachinko site, and they have an online 'museum' where you can look at the older machines they produced, including mine. I used google translate while there to translate the site, and got the 'directions' or play-guide, whatever you call it, that is supposed to tell me about the fevers and what to do to get things to happen...

Well, japanese language must be hard for google to do, because I'm not sure I'm any more informed about how the game is supposed to proceed than I was before - some of the steps (the letters refer to different things on the playfield that were labeled on a picture) "Gate operation (A) Through the digital LCD (B) Start the Left, right, stops in order to change the pattern. (4 memory)" "When you hit a jackpot, a role usually electric. (D) The second release of 5.9. (D) Ball game that finished in the stationary system (E) The only one stop." "(D) Stationary position 2.0 seconds after completion of work release (E) Release the ball game if it was stationary and then moves to the right." "Is a stationary ball game was released. V zone (F) occurs through the right." "V zone (F) Upon passing through the display number of round design decision (C) The fluctuating number o round (winners Large mouth (H) The maximum number of release) are determined Part time H -> 16 L ->8" "occurrence of three starts in the mouth right (G) If you won a large prize mouth (H) (tulip) Release 9.5 seconds (10 count) For L, 8 rounds if H 16 rounds" err..

Well, I figured out the tulip does open when you are on the fever, and then you get a ball into the 'rotating hole', once it actually goes down the hole and isn't just sitting there waiting to fall in. Then you get tons of balls, since it's easy to get them into the tulip, which closes at some point (maybe 9.5 seconds? or 5.9?), but you're still in the fever and can do it again. The flap seems to open sometimes of its own volition during fever, dunno about it yet.

Then there's some sort of ... story? or on the sanyo site 'action' display on the screen, and it looks like you're supposed to get balls in the holes and maybe that fills up the 1-9 displayed at the bottom, and when you do, you go to a different 'location' (on the screen, like a different city or whatever), and start filling up the 1-9 there. Why this is a good thing, I dunno, but it seems like a good idea. Not sure how you'd get more balls than you already get during the fever, I suppose it'd be possible if the flap opened, too. Also I'm not sure why you get the L vs. H fever modes, but I read on some other similar machine's instructions, something about the color of the background when the numbers spin, or possibly if they're 3-3-3 or 7-7-7. This machine doesn't pay off very much or that frequently until you get the fever mode, at least in my very limited experience (my other pachinko machine is a vintage nishijin), but when you get the fever, it pays off LOTS and LOTS of balls. LOTS.

Also I noticed that the holes on the left side of the playfield give you 13 balls, and the one or two on the right only give off 6, unless you're in fever mode, and then the ones on the right, at least the tulip, pays off 13, too. Anyway, thanks for listening, and if anyone else has a sanyo machine that's this era, which is to say 1993-1995 (this exact machine, fantasy, is from 1994), and reads this, hopefully gets a better picture of what's going on. And hopefully the fan does the trick, and I don't get anymore error messages. b