Sammy Aladdin A-Type - "HP" Error

[WindDrake]

Hey guys!

First off, awesome site! Got bit by the Pachislo bug after being given a Sammy Gamera (Red). I'm a regular posted over at the KLOV/VAPS and Arcadecontrols forums, and a seasoned veteran with arcade hardware and electronics in general.

However, this one has me stumped.

Got an Aladdin A-Type today, seems to work, but whenever the unit goes to pay out, I get "HP" on the LED Animation Display.

Full reset clears the error, but it'll never pay out.

Hopper dump switch dumps the hopper.

One thing I noticed is that when the hopper kicks the motor over to send coins, it appears to only turn about half as far as it should before giving the error. By hand, the hopper spins freely (Well, as freely as it can with heavy gearing in the driveline).

Cleaning the hopper and two opto-interrupts in the bottom of the hopper did nothing. I verified my hoppers work in my known-working Gamera.

Also switched power supply boards from my Animal Kingdom to Aladdin, no change.

The blue button near the coin dump key (I don't know the term for this. Reset?) will make the hopper motor do the same half-step. If you press it rapidly, you can get the machine to spit coins irregularly.

Any ideas?

[WindDrake]

Just a quick addition to this.

I noticed that my Sammy Animal Kingdom would dispense 11-13 tokens no matter the payout, then give "HP" as well.

So I swapped in the power supply from my Gamera, to both machines, to test function.

And they work fine.

So it looks like I've got a problem with the power supply. Likely +24v folding back. Going to have to investigate this some.

[WindDrake]

A little more on this for the technically minded among us.

Looked at the 24vDC supply again with the motor switch on, and noticed that there's 12vAC all over the rail. Something is way wrong here. This is with the motor disconnected, so it's not Back-EMF.

My meter says the primary cap on my *CO6 PSU board is ~12800uF, which means this thing is falling out of spec. My ESR Meter (Bob Parker Blue) isn't capable of handling these 50v+ caps, so I can't say for sure if the ESR is out of spec or not, as it shows .01 when checked.

However, my DMM doesn't lie. There's 12vAC riding on the +24vDC at a very nicely stable 120hz. That's AC garbage if I've ever seen it. 80's Atari games are horrible about this when the 10.3vDC Unregulated filter cap (Big Blue) dies.

Going to order some spares and report back on this.

[WindDrake]

Yet more on this.

Funny how when you get excited it's easy to forget the basics.

The reason I was seeing 12vAC riding on the 24vDC to the hopper motor was due to the fact that the power supply internally is arranged to be 36v, and a 2/3 chopper is set up to make 24v, and there's no output cap, so it bounces.

So, I looked into the issue with the misfiring coins first. Decided to swap parts around to see if I could get the issue to change.

Moved my Gamera's PSU Faceplate to one of the other PSU's... And it worked! So I took the misfiring faceplate and moved it to Gamera's PSU. Now it misfired.

I followed the traces around, and realized that Sammy is using the display LED's to block EMF from the motor from coming up the lines.

The bottom most LED was open. I replaced it, and now that power supply functions normally again. I used some generic red LED's with a ~2v forward drop, 20ma source.

So, this tells me the hopper signalling can be blocked by the LED's. Which means if you've got a unit that spits random amounts of coins and fails out with a hopper error, you've likely got a blown LED in your PSU's faceplate.

I'm working on the other one now (only slightly turns the hopper motor). Resoldered every header on the board, as well as the LED connections. We'll see what's up. No dead LED's, sadly. Was hoping for an easy fix.

[WindDrake]

And now we're to the end.

The stuttering hopper ended up being cold solder in the faceplate causing no connection for the "Home" opto. Both problem machines have been fixed.

[hanabi]

That's great news!!

Sorry i'm not too good with the technical stuff, but glad you got them fixed