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As some of you know, I work with coin-op amusement devices. Some time ago, I was managing an arcade. Well, at the time I was fairly new to the technical end of things. I had a pinball that was acting up-- some problem with voltages.
In the stages of diagnostics, I disconnected some wires going to a switch that got pushed when the front door (the one the tokens get put in) closed. I found that that shut down the game entirely, so I put the wires back on.
(In case you care, the switch there is called an interlock switch, and its function is to, when the door is opened, shut off all power to the underside of the playfield that's strong enough to zing you. Kind of important, but hey, that didn't get covered in training. Pinballs in general didn't get a lot of coverage.)
It turns out that I put the wires on wrong. There were four wires: 50 volts to the switch, 50 volts back to the circuit boards, 20 volts to the switch, and 20 volts back to the circuit boards. The different voltages ended up being crossed.
At this point, tt was getting busy, and the game still didn't work, so I shut it off. And forgot about it, until about an hour and a half later, when I finally got through the line of customers and needed to go back to the office.
Smoke was pouring out of the pinball. A lot of smoke. Game goes back off, and gets unplugged this time.
I can't really blame the person that turned the game on. He was just testing to make sure it really didn't work-- enough idiots will screw around in an arcade, and the location of the power switches on pinballs isn't exactly a heavy secret. But for crying out loud, couldn't someone have come up to me and told me a game was on fire?
(As a final note, the game was able to be salvaged. Mostly what I did was melt a couple of large capacitors. Fortunately, they were large enough that as the goop inside dripped out their tops, it missed the rest of the board. Did make a awful, stinky mess in the bottom of the cabinet. But let me tell you... I learned something that day!)
In the stages of diagnostics, I disconnected some wires going to a switch that got pushed when the front door (the one the tokens get put in) closed. I found that that shut down the game entirely, so I put the wires back on.
(In case you care, the switch there is called an interlock switch, and its function is to, when the door is opened, shut off all power to the underside of the playfield that's strong enough to zing you. Kind of important, but hey, that didn't get covered in training. Pinballs in general didn't get a lot of coverage.)
It turns out that I put the wires on wrong. There were four wires: 50 volts to the switch, 50 volts back to the circuit boards, 20 volts to the switch, and 20 volts back to the circuit boards. The different voltages ended up being crossed.
At this point, tt was getting busy, and the game still didn't work, so I shut it off. And forgot about it, until about an hour and a half later, when I finally got through the line of customers and needed to go back to the office.
Smoke was pouring out of the pinball. A lot of smoke. Game goes back off, and gets unplugged this time.
I can't really blame the person that turned the game on. He was just testing to make sure it really didn't work-- enough idiots will screw around in an arcade, and the location of the power switches on pinballs isn't exactly a heavy secret. But for crying out loud, couldn't someone have come up to me and told me a game was on fire?
(As a final note, the game was able to be salvaged. Mostly what I did was melt a couple of large capacitors. Fortunately, they were large enough that as the goop inside dripped out their tops, it missed the rest of the board. Did make a awful, stinky mess in the bottom of the cabinet. But let me tell you... I learned something that day!)
was the only response I got.
Y'all nuts. Man I've never gone that nuts. The worst I've done is shock myself, both DC and AC. If you have a choice, go with AC. Good DC amp makes for creative cussing.
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