Total Newbie with a CSS-64-GC

[turbowhiz]

Well now two days into ownership:

a.) The coin mech seems to have conked out; As in it it accepts all coins, but never vends. Now I need to figure that thing out, likely something with the logic board on some level as far as I can tell; Its a 9800A.
b.) Seems like the thermostat is not working right.... So definitely have a problem there too.

Oh well, I guess thats part of the fun!

[tkaz]

One place to check on the coin mech would be the coin counting switches/triggers.  There are three (quarter/dime/nickel) and you can access from the back of the mech after you pull the back cover off.  You can see them on page 5 of the manual here: http://www.coinco.com/index.php/support/downloads/category/19-s75-9800a-s75-9800b?download=56:s75-9800-operation-and-service-manual

Over time those will get out of range, you can bend the wire back up and they should work (if that's the problem)

[turbowhiz]

Mech logic board is the issue I'm thinking... I took it apart, the whole thing I suppose could be toast, the filtering cap has blown up for sure.

Traces are fine on the board, zener diode has clearly been toasty, but nothing else looks bad.

I'll try swapping both the cap and the diode out, not sure if its salvageable or not.

So much for a "working" machine....

[rayg]

I guess it's the seller definition of "Working"  ...when it plugged in it makes noise.

[turbowhiz]

In fairness to the seller the mech was working when I bought it. It just blew up in short order.

A good idea for anyone with old 9800A's mechs they intend to keep power up is to replace those filtering caps, cause I bet there all pretty funky by now. It was a sprague cap and my mech is dated 1977.

I swapped the blown cap and crispy diode, had some minor damage to the trace to the diode I was able to fixup, and ...

Success!! Mech is working fine. Put in my money, its counting fine and my "have a coke" light is back on and I'm able to pull a bottle. Sweet! 

[tkaz]

Nice work!  Saved yourself some $$ and got it up and running again, can't beat that.

[MoonDawg]

       Great job and good to have you on the site.
      Would you be interested in testing and repairing circuit boards if they are repairable?
      I think I could send you a working coinco and half dozen boards.  I'm sure other members have several too.

[turbowhiz]

Well, I don't have loads of time on my hands to fix boards unfortunately; with two young kids around its hard enough to get time to do anything hobby related at all!

However I'll do my best help here.

Replacement of filtering capacitors is simple enough, just unsolder the old one and replace with a new one. Mine had a 220uf 25 Volt capacitor, which is what I replaced it with. They're very cheap, and you can order from an online supplier like Newark. I used Newark P/N 97M3994 .

Note that these parts are polarized though! So they need to go in the right way. The old school cap had a red cap on the top to indicate, but typically they have a band on them that points to the – lead.

I'd encourage anyone using 9800A mechs to replace this part, as sooner or later they're all going to fail with age I'd think.

In my case the Zener diode looked to be toasted too. My mech had a 5W 10V Zener Diode, which also was in bad shape due to the failing capacitor. I replaced it with Newark P/N 29C4640 , but if your mech is working and the zener diode doesn’t look like its been hot (look at the board for burning/smoke) then you should be fine with a capacitor swap alone. The zener diode is also polarized, note the picture.

On another note, I've entirely torn down my machine and I'm going to do some sort of restoration. Its like so many things, at onset I figured I'm just gonna plug this thing in and use it for a while.. And well one thing leads to another, and this needs work and that needs to be cleaned up, and it's totally apart in pieces in my garage now.

I'm not going to go too overboard as it's a mid 60's square top, and I'm going to keep it as original in all ways as can be hence limiting its general resale appeal so I figure so I don't want to be in to it for a whole pile of $. It is the Cavalier craftsman paint scheme of dark brown door/tan sides. Oh and woodgrain, that is most definitely being kept!

I'll keep the group posted on my progress.

[rayg]

 Good repair job!  It's good that most of those components are relativity cheap,  I brought a ton of caps etc off a guy that was getting out of the business.... I use them mostly to fix arcade games. Remember with caps you can go with a high voltage but never a low one.

All Right....Found another fan of the woodgrain