Re: Castlevanie pachinko machine not firing balls
There is a firmware bug in the very early versions of the rev3 card reader emulator dongles which might affect shooter operation on some machines. I don't think this will be your problem, but it's worth ruling it out, as from your username and location I'm guessing that one of your dongles is serial number 1146 (which is the very first production Rev3 unit).
The bug causes the shooter enable voltage generated by the dongle to vary with the credit display brightness, on most machines this isn't a problem, but some Sanyo and Daiichi machines need a more stable voltage and it can cause problems. A solution is to turn up the credit display brightness in the dongles setup mode.
To enter setup mode, hold down both of the card reader buttons on the shooter tray of the pachinko, and power the machine on. You should see the a message scrolling across the credit display with the firmware version information (r3-0, r3-1 have this bug, it's fixed in the r3-11 version). Press the ball loan button to step through the setting until the first digit shows a 'b' (should be the 8th press), press the 'return'/add credit button until this setting changes to 'b-9', you should see the display brightness change as you cycle through the values of this setting. Once set to 'b-9' power the machine off and back on again, and re-check the shooter operation.
