LCD screen garbled, sound and lights stuttering- any ideas

[mistersensation]

Hey all!

First post, I am a new pachislo owner as of this week, imported a KPE machine based on a favorite VG series of mine (Ganbare Goemon). Unfortunately, I'm already having big problems.

Last night was the first time I had the chance to play the machine for any significant length of time. I would say I was playing for about an hour to an hour and a half, and upon refilling the credit to 50, the screen suddenly glitched out and the machine started repeating the same stuttery sound over and over. (Reels, tokens, payouts etc. are still working fine though.) Tried doing a hard reset, unplugging the machine, etc. The screen is still messed up, and the broken sound and lights on the machine are still repeating, no error codes are shown. I was wondering if anyone had encountered anything like this before and/or had some simple solutions to try? I've tried reseating various connections to no avail, and I'm out of my depth with pretty much anything more complicated than that. Any help would be appreciated, I was so excited to try it out and the whole affair has been a huge bummer for me Thanks!

Video of the issue-

Pictures-
20220206_123954.jpg20220206_132123.jpg20220206_132143.jpg

[Moparformances]

sorry i cant help ya.. i would recommend unplugging and reseating every plug connection you can find.

hope we can help ya get it sorted out..

and of course

Welcome to Pachitalk

[Drunkenclam]

Out of interest. Whats your incoming power supply? Any transformers?

[mistersensation]

@Moparformances- That's a good idea, I'll go through and do a comprehensive re-seating pass. And thank you! Seems like you guys have a great little community here that I hope to contribute to

@Drunkenclam- It's a 100v machine (not converted), so I'm using a step-down converter off Amazon plugged into my 120v outlet (I'll just post a pic since I dunno if the forum allows external links.) As someone who's not well-versed in these things, I assumed this would be sufficient, but please let me know if you think I should be using something else, thanks!

converter.JPG

[Drunkenclam]

That stepdown should be fine. If its to low rated. it causes a voltage drop.

Failng that. lets hope its an iffy connection.

Links are fine to genuine sites. There are plenty of links to interesting stuff here

[mistersensation]

Something's definitely iffy, not sure if it's a connection or what. The picture and lights actually go back to normal sometimes, like just now I went through and re-seated all the connections as Moparformances suggested, screen was still messed up but now it was giving me an "EE" error too, I thought I may have accidentally left something loose so I checked the connections again and reset, error was gone but screen still broken, but when I shut the door it somehow fixed itself. It came back on last night too after a reset, but was garbled again this morning so my confidence isn't super high that it's gonna last. The spotty nature of it definitely FEELS like a connection issue, so I'll keep a close eye on it and see if I can narrow it down. If nothing else, I'm hoping there's someone in my area that might be able to take a look at it, there are a couple places that do slot, arcade, pinball repair etc. but I don't know how much of a different beast pachislo is compared to those. I'll post updates if I manage to figure out anything else about it, thanks for the replies guys!

[Drunkenclam]

Could be the cabling to the door. Check cables for pinching or damage. Wiggle the cable (technical term) with the door open and see if it makes it better/worse. Then it's a case of seeing if it is a cable. Then testing each wire individually. Or source/make replacement leads.
I like to try to confirm something is faulty before replacing random parts.

[mistersensation]

Duh... that seems like an obvious solution in retrospect but I didn't think of it, thanks Drunkenclam. Just now I tried messing with a few of the the door cables with it on and lo and behold after wiggling them a bit the problem fixed itself! No obvious pinching going on, and I don't have a multimeter but I can definitely pick one up if the issue is likely to be a bad wire. I'll have to try and confirm that the cable-wiggling is what actually fixed it next time it happens, further wiggling doesn't cause it to happen again so I'm not 100% sure. The issue seems to come back after I haven't used the machine for a while- I can turn it back on for a while after use and it's fine, but so far the first time I turn it on in a given day it's borked again. Already feels much closer to a solution though