Posted on August 10th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
Hidden deep within the secret Star Trek: The Next Generation menus is an awesome testing thing that beeps when you press the switches on the playfield.. ok, so it’s really easy to find and has about 4 pages dedicated to it in the menu.. anyway.. the switch matrix is a square grid of about 64 switches (actually I think it’s a bit more) and one column of those switches isn’t working.
I’ve been over the playfield and tested all the cables and everything there seems ok, so I decided that one of the chips on the CPU board near the switch matrix must have been fried.
It’s a ULN2803A if that means anything to you?! It’s kinda small and black and it’s got legs.. like a spider.. only spiders don’t like it when you solder them into pinball machines and run high voltages through them.. also they don’t have silver legs.. but other than that.. extremely spider like 😉
Rachel is awesome and she drove down to Maplin while I was at work and picked up the chip for me! Yeah Rachel!!
When I got home I desoldered the old chip, but I just couldn’t get it off the board and ended up cutting it’s legs off (spiders definatly wouldn’t like that) and some how managed to stab myself with the legs of the chip right under my thumbnail! (ow!) .. but after I rinsed off all the blood, I powered on the machine and now the switch matrix column that was bust works! 🙂