Vertical lines on the display (on a Getaway, a bar every 8 columns), wrong sounds, coils or lamps not working, or several beeps from the sound board at power-on.
Strange game behaviour from ribbon cables
Cause: A dirty or damaged ribbon cable; an open wire loses a data bit. The four-connector cable linking CPU, Fliptronics, sound and display controller is damaged most, and the sound-to-display link goes brittle in the hot backbox.
Checks
- Inspect the ribbons where they enter the connectors for tears.
Fix
- Reseat the ribbons (they are gold plated, unlike the Molex connectors, which should not be reseated as a fix).
- Replace a damaged ribbon cable.
Systems
Games
Related tips
- No display and the flippers lock on at power-up: reseat the ribbon cables
- Every coil and flasher locks on after reassembly: aux driver ribbon cable reversed
- Several solenoids and a lamp group dead: reseat the CPU-to-driver ribbon
- Kicker dead in coil test plus a lamp row and column out: reseat the CPU to driver ribbon
- Several coils on one supply line dead at once: broken daisy-chain power wire
- Reseat the ribbon cables before chasing odd behavior
- DMD shows a few dots and a coil fuse blows after reseating boards: ribbon off one row
- Flippers dead and switches flaky: bad contact on the CPU to driver ribbon
Source: Repairing Williams/Bally WPC Pinball Games from 1990 to 1999, Part Three, Clay Harrell (pinrepair.com)