Monako Merry go round/Weather caster alarm

[JohnS]

Newb here, so please excuse my ignorance of Pachinko terminology.

I bought Drunkenclam's Merry-go-round/Weather caster a while ago.

When I get a "jackpot" where a ball goes into the middle bit and the machine starts playing more tunes and making wins easier, between 1 and 60 seconds later the machine goes into some sort of fault mode where it beeps like crazy and doesn't work any more. It does not fix itself, I have to power cycle.

Any ideas? As it does it with both the merry-go-round game and weather caster game I assume it is not a CPU problem and it is some switch or power problem. Though why a switch would only trigger an alarm during a win I don't know.

I have no manual or circuit diagram...

[Drunkenclam]

Hello John

Sorry to hear you are having a problem. With this age of machine. If you don't keep shooting balls and getting them into the centre features during the jackpot mode, they go in to a error mode as they think something has jammed inside.
Its one thing to check.
It shouldn't be the ball sensor or it wouldn't go into jackpot to begin with.

[hanabi]

Hello

Presume you also have enough balls in the hopper for payouts and it's not running out / too low and sounding an alarm?

but it's more likely what Ian said above and you may need to keep firing that centre feature for the Jackpot / Fever to continue?

I wondered who had snapped up the Merry-Go-Round, always liked the theme of that one

Congrats and Welcome to PachiTalk

[JohnS]

I was testing it with the glass out, just dropping balls into the various holes to se what happened, so I would not have been repetitively winning, so maybe that explains it. I will experiment more tonight.

[JohnS]

It seems to be a combination of things.

I'm definitely falling foul of not winning when it should be difficult not to win. This causes the alarm.
I didn't give it enough credit for working out when you shouldn't have won. This triggers the alarm. I also get alarms here from some balls getting a bit stuck in the jackpot area and winning when you really shouldn't have done.
Turning off mid way through the jackpot and turning back on, it doesn't like balls sitting in the jackpot and you immediately winning. This triggers the alarm.
I have some slightly oversize balls, 7/16" rather than 11mm. These are causing jammming problems.

I've separated the oversize balls and got the merry-go-round all the way through to some sort of total victory song, which required 16 jackpots.

[Drunkenclam]

It seems to be a combination of things.

I'm definitely falling foul of not winning when it should be difficult not to win. This causes the alarm.
I didn't give it enough credit for working out when you shouldn't have won. This triggers the alarm. I also get alarms here from some balls getting a bit stuck in the jackpot area and winning when you really shouldn't have done.

Yes the machine has anti tamper sensors. it detects if a ball has gone into the V pocket and the wings of the centre feature haven't opened yet.

Turning off mid way through the jackpot and turning back on, it doesn't like balls sitting in the jackpot and you immediately winning. This triggers the alarm.
I have some slightly oversize balls, 7/16" rather than 11mm. These are causing jammming problems.

Where did the oversized balls come from? Your existing vintage? I had one of my machines count out the balls before polishing, So they have been through my machines many times Get an oversized ball stuck in the wrong place and it can be a complete nightmare to get to,

I've separated the oversize balls and got the merry-go-round all the way through to some sort of total victory song, which required 16 jackpots.

Thats when it pays out the big balls.