WPC Reset Boards

[Vengeance]

I just bought 10 of these:

http://www.kahr.us/

Boards that prevent the reset issues on WPC.

I've got a couple games that are fine when I'm playing by myself but once you turn all the other machines on they begin to have issues.

I wanted 3 or 4 and my buddy wanted 2 as well so I just went with a 10 pack.

If anyone is interested in 1 or 2 of these let me know.

I'll charge exactly what it costs me after shipping and taxes.

PM me if interested.

 

[Menace]

As I've told other people I know in the past, as neat as this PCB is it's a band-aid fix and just recently had a service call on a game that had one of these installed.

The IJ that was at the CPC apparently developed a reset issue at the tourney, so someone installed one of these KAHR reset PCB's into the game. When the owner got the game home it was basically unplayable. It would power up for a minute or two, and then the whole game would crash with a garbled display, all inserts would go out and the GI would pulse slowly. Turn the game off, and back on and it would be fine, but it would crash again quicker and quicker each time you cycled the power.

First thing I did was remove this KAHR pcb, and that solved the issue! Game has been rock solid ever since, and no resets at the owners home even with a large number of other pins in his collection. What I suspect happened is the source power at the CPC was pretty low, and this KAHR pcb had to work overtime to try and keep the voltage in the game stable and stressed some of it's components past their limits which damaged them and the board is no longer stable.

Moral of this story is source power is VERY important when you have a reasonable number of games, and while this KAHR pcb is interesting it is not the end all be all solution to reset issues. If you have lots of games on the same circuit, or other heavy load items, best practice is fix the source by running less games on each circuit and make sure your game's power supply section is working correctly!

My PSA for this week.

D

 

[Vengeance]

No I get it. it's a band aid not a fix.

I rebuilt the entire reset section on my CFTBL and was still having reset issues for some reason, threw this in and problems went away.

But I know whatever underlying issue is still there just beyond my capacity to troubleshoot. I assume the same will be true of my BSD and Wh20. Short of inviting you and 30 other people to my place to put my electrical system under load I don't know how you would diagnose a reset issue that is so intermittent.

 

[bstock]

I would imagine that there would be voltage issues on the board even without heavy load on your system. The intermittent drop in source power is just the final straw in the camel story. Trouble shooting with all your games running would be unnecessary.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Malibu-SS]

I use these as well on a few of my games.Like Vengeance,my games work great when a few games are on,but when I have all my games turned on for a party ,they reset,these boards work perfect for my situation

 

[Menace]

For those of you having reset issues when you have all your games on and running, how many games are you guys running on a single circuit would be my first question? And are you 100% sure the circuit your games are running on is free and clear of any other loads? With you guys having issues when all your games are on and running, that to me points to a source voltage issue. Either too many games or too many other loads WITH the games on each circuit. (or a lower than optimal source power voltage)

As for games like Adam's Creech, this isn't the first time I've heard of that game having the issue you state. If the game has any mod's, the stock power supply sometimes can't keep up and the KAHR board is the only effefctive solution and in that case the PCB shouldn't really be overcoming the stock power supply shortfall by very much and would likely be fine. But if the game has a serious power supply problem, and / or bad source power issues, the KAHR pcb is going to have to work overtime to try and keep things stable which is not a good thing and in my case I've seen that PCB fail as a result.

D

 

[Vengeance]

I know I only have 2 - 3 games running on a 15 amp circuit as I had them redo my entire basement and put in all new breakers, each outlet is on it's own 15 amp breaker.

BSD and Wh20 have 0 problems by themselves.

But once I get ALL the games going shit starts going wrong.

 

[Menace]

I would start taking voltage measurements at the A/C outlets in your game area once "shit starts going wrong" just to see where your source voltage is measuring at. (hell I'd be checking the outlets in the whole house to be honest) If your whole house voltage is dropping low when the games are on, that's crazy...

If it's dropping that low across the board, these KAHR pcb's will do the trick but you could end up with the same issue as my IJ client if they are working overtime to keep things stable.

D

 

[Chris Bardon]

You could also try pulling those games onto a different circuit and see what happens. You could also try measuring while the other games on that circuit are running-maybe if you run the burn-in test on them to generate load? Not sure if that's going to be at a lower draw or not.

 

[Vengeance]

Got this in yesterday with no Tax (WOOOO!)

So for 10 of them my card got charged $343.27, that is shipping and everything.

Divided by 10 give us 34.327 so I'll round it up and say these are $35 each.

So about $10 in savings for anyone that wants one.

9 of the 10 are spoken for so I have 1 left if anyone wants it.

 

[Dbeeson]

I will take the board if it isn't already spoken for. They are excellent in a pinch, as they are designed to use only the 12 volt section of the power supply. In some cases, they don't work, specifically with a flaky LM7812 or the 12v cap out of spec on the driver board. It is indeed a bandaid solution, but is certainly a good one. I wouldn't fret about it ruining anything on the mpu, as the watchdog circuit is still intact. I myself have seen the Kahr board fail, with the weirdness described in another post, but it was due to the 12v electrolytic on the driver board. Nevertheless, it's better to deal with bad connectors, bridge/caps and finally the 5v regulator, but in a pinch these boards are excellent.

 

[cdnpinballer]

Sent a PM yesterday morning....