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Splice losing power – why?
Question from Jes: Hi, I have a tacky Midway 12-in-1 that was working like a champ, until the ‘move left’ went out. I opened up the machine and found a cut in the ribbon cable on the wire for the left move control and spliced the wire. It worked great…then stopped working. I spliced it a different way, and it worked…then stopped working. You can see the pattern here. Every new splice works temporarily, but then fails. I don’t understand why that would happen. I posted a YouTube video of the first repair, if you’re willing to have a look. I’ve redone the splice several ways, but every time it only works temporarily. Can you help? Thank you, Jes
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLnzWDt-30
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: Jes,
Splicing into wires should work fine assuming everything is connected properly. You might try checking the continuity with a multimeter (with the game turned off) once you have spliced into the wires and again after it stops working. This should let you know if it’s the voltage that’s dropping or if you have an actual connection issues in your ribbon cable. Of course, you should be able to run a dedicated wire for the player 1 left switch if you can’t get the splices into the ribbon cable to work.
Also, you always have the option to replace the ribbon cable entirely with a new one. It should not be too hard to find a replacement. Looks like it’s a 15 pin according to the documentation I’ve found online. You could always buy a 20 pin or use an old computer IDE cable and remove the wires that you don’t need. This might be a better option if you don’t want to use an individual wire for that one connection.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
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