TdB Posted March 28, 2015 Posted March 28, 2015 Hi all, I have a mini cabinet with an issue that is bugging me for a long time. setup: AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 3.0GHz 4GB RAMGeForce GTX 550 Ti 1024MBGigabyte 870 A-UD3 Mainboard I-pac 2 The Problem: While pushing the flipperbutton flippers receive a rapid on/off signal and will shoot the ball. The reverse situation happens as well, so not activated by the buttons it will still fire. Funny thing is that the problem appears mostly (but not only) in the right flipper even after switching wires and connection to the i-pac. In the winipac software you can clearly see the button being activated on/off while being pressed. Eliminated causes: OS/software: I checked the issue with XP and W7 - I have the issue on both systems Wiring : I removed all wires from the i-pac and linked one wire from the I-pac directly to the button. Still the same behavior. Button: switched buttons - didn't help Temperature: I added a new more powerful cooler to the CPU - didn't help I don't think temparature is the root cause but a high temperature in the cabinet might make it worse. I stopped overclocking more than a year ago and I haven't had the issue for a year. Unfortunately it re-appeared two months ago that is why I added a new CPU cooler. Probably a waste of money, because it didn't help. I bought the cabinet in 2012 and played 1.5 years without the problem. Possible causes of the issue: - motherboard - PS/2 connection to the i-pac - i-pac - grounding The problem is I have no idea how to proceed further and find the root cause or elimate one of the possible causes. If I can't find it I will probably have to replace all my hardware in my cabinet. So I hope someone here will be able to help me finding the problem - or at least help me eliminate more 'possible causes'.
TdB Posted March 30, 2015 Author Posted March 30, 2015 Did some more testing this weekend. I can pull the main part of the motherboard out of my cabinet. Let it hang out during using the cabinet to check if that would help. As you can see the cabinet is pretty crowded and it gets hot inside. I could play a the whole weekend for hours like that without any stutter. Today after work I could play for an hour and left the cabinet on for four hours and then tried again. Stutter was back. Seems like after a long period of non use and cold it works for quite a while without stutter. I have attached a small movie to show the stutter if my explanation isn't clear enough and a picture to show the inside of the cabinet. flip.mp4.zip
Content Provider gtxjoe Posted March 30, 2015 Content Provider Posted March 30, 2015 Have you tried moving the iPac and any wiring away from all the Power cords to see if it makes a difference.
electricmagma Posted March 31, 2015 Posted March 31, 2015 Any new devices? Wireless mice or keyboards or anything? Any button remapping in VP done recently? Sounds like more than 1 button is mapped to the ipac port on the ipac.
Content Provider Itchigo Posted March 31, 2015 Content Provider Posted March 31, 2015 Are these Direct B2s tables? I have noticed if you setup a table for Direct B2s and forget to put the backglass file in there it has caused this in my machine. Putting the backglass file where it belongs was an immediate fix. Bu this was only on tables missing a backglass, and not all of them.
TdB Posted March 31, 2015 Author Posted March 31, 2015 Have you tried moving the iPac and any wiring away from all the Power cords to see if it makes a difference. As you can see in the picture I already placed the ipac outside the cabinet and even unscrewed it from the bottom. So it now hangs loose to the right side as far away from the wiring as possible.
TdB Posted March 31, 2015 Author Posted March 31, 2015 Any new devices? Wireless mice or keyboards or anything? Any button remapping in VP done recently? Sounds like more than 1 button is mapped to the ipac port on the ipac. No new devices. I did try to remap, but that was not the cause only tried to solve the issue. Already removed all multi-mapping. Did not help..
TdB Posted March 31, 2015 Author Posted March 31, 2015 Are these Direct B2s tables? I have noticed if you setup a table for Direct B2s and forget to put the backglass file in there it has caused this in my machine. Putting the backglass file where it belongs was an immediate fix. Bu this was only on tables missing a backglass, and not all of them. The stutter I filmed was indeed from a Direct B2s table but that is not the only type of table that has the issue. In winipac you can see the button firing without starting VP. I dont think it is a software issue.
electricmagma Posted April 1, 2015 Posted April 1, 2015 Do you have an arduino and a Ledwiz? If so, move one of them to a different usb card
TdB Posted April 1, 2015 Author Posted April 1, 2015 Do you have an arduino and a Ledwiz? If so, move one of them to a different usb card No, I don't have one of those. I think I noticed something interesting, but need some more testing. My cabinet had a couple of playing hours without any issue in the weekend after my cabinet was disconnected from power. After the stutter started again I did shut down the PC but it was still connected - the ipac led was continuesly burning durning this period. A day later I tried to play again and no stutter in the beginning but the issue returned sooner then before. Have to check if I can reproduce this or it was just random behavior.
electricmagma Posted April 2, 2015 Posted April 2, 2015 Is it plugged into a usb 3 port? Try uninstalling your usb 3 drivers if you do. I had to do that with mine . Without the drivers it runs as usb2
zebulon Posted April 2, 2015 Posted April 2, 2015 Most usb ports on newer machines have power at the port in standby and some even have power when the computer is off for charging phones and such. That would be why the ipac stays lit. I'm not sure if the ipac has a physical buffer onboard but if so it may not be clearing it. Disconnecting from the mains would force this clearing while staying plugged in but just in soft off wouldn't if the port remains powered. There might be a toggle in the mainboard bios for disabling the power to the usb bus when in shutdown.
TdB Posted April 2, 2015 Author Posted April 2, 2015 Is it plugged into a usb 3 port? Try uninstalling your usb 3 drivers if you do. I had to do that with mine . Without the drivers it runs as usb2 Nope, it is plugged into the PS/2 port
TdB Posted April 2, 2015 Author Posted April 2, 2015 Most usb ports on newer machines have power at the port in standby and some even have power when the computer is off for charging phones and such. That would be why the ipac stays lit. I'm not sure if the ipac has a physical buffer onboard but if so it may not be clearing it. Disconnecting from the mains would force this clearing while staying plugged in but just in soft off wouldn't if the port remains powered. There might be a toggle in the mainboard bios for disabling the power to the usb bus when in shutdown. All this talk about USB ports made me search for PS/2 issues with the ipac and found this http://www.ultimarc.com/usb_vs_ps2.html and http://www.ultimarc.com/ipacusb.html Maybe it helps to use a PS/2 to USB adaptor (I think I still have one). After a cold boot the cabinet is now stutter free for more than 6 hours. The ipac or its connection is now my main suspect.
TdB Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 I have left my cabinet powered on for the whole night and indeed the stutter is back. Then used the PS/2 to USB adaptor - didn't help. I removed all other USB connected devices (mouse/keyboard). didn't help The PS/2 cable from the ipac is pretty long so I unwinded the cable and also positioned it outside the cabinet (basically the only cable that was still positioned near the power cords (suggestion from gtxjoe)). Didn't help. Some points that might help determining what causes the issue (I appreciate all the comments btw!). - Using the keyboard as input doesn't give any stutter at all. - moving the ipac up/down/back in the cabinet doesn't seem to make a difference. - the stutter got worse after playing around with my cabinet this morning and started to affect more buttons (it was even activating the flippers and nudge without me pushing the buttons). - CPU / Cooler doesn't seem radiate a lot of heat - GPU gets pretty hot I keep the cabinet powered on and the ipac disconnected. I will connect the ipac in a few hours to see if that helped, if not I think I can rule out the ipac and the ipac connection as cause of the stutter.
zebulon Posted April 4, 2015 Posted April 4, 2015 replace the ps/2 cable, probably has a broken shield on it.
TdB Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 Disconnecting the ipac for 2 hours didn't help. replace the ps/2 cable, probably has a broken shield on it. OK, worth a try. The cable is pretty long as well, so I think I might buy a short one (if those are available).
TdB Posted April 4, 2015 Author Posted April 4, 2015 Bought a new ps/2 cable, but the wiring of the cable is probably wrong. Ipac isn't recognized at all with it. Oh well.. I will let the cabinet cool down for a few hours to hopefully be able to play stutter free this evening.
TdB Posted April 8, 2015 Author Posted April 8, 2015 Bought a new ipac-2 USB 2015 version and just installed it. So far so good, no stutter. Will keep the cabinet running for at least 48 hours before I will cry victory.
TdB Posted April 9, 2015 Author Posted April 9, 2015 Stutter returned 10 minutes after my last comment... So ipac or connection is not the cause of the issue.
electricmagma Posted April 12, 2015 Posted April 12, 2015 Try unplugging the ipac and use your keyboard to play. See if it still happens
JamesRIves Posted April 12, 2015 Posted April 12, 2015 Do you happen to use LED lighting for visual effects on your cab? I recently added LED lighting to my cab, and it caused major "stuttering" ... apparently as a result of interference. Had to disconnect the lighting for the time being. Posted a note about this today on the forum. Jim
TdB Posted July 14, 2015 Author Posted July 14, 2015 Try unplugging the ipac and use your keyboard to play. See if it still happens I don't understand the relevancy of this question. I don't have the problem with a keyboard anyway - with the keyboard there is not stutter. It only happens using the ipac / pressing buttons.
TdB Posted July 14, 2015 Author Posted July 14, 2015 Do you happen to use LED lighting for visual effects on your cab? I recently added LED lighting to my cab, and it caused major "stuttering" ... apparently as a result of interference. Had to disconnect the lighting for the time being. Posted a note about this today on the forum. Jim No additional lighting.
TdB Posted July 14, 2015 Author Posted July 14, 2015 I haven't spent another minute on my cab since april, but have gathered some courage to try again. What about replacing my motherboard? Could that be the cause of the stutter? It seems I have tried everything else people suggested. I don't want to spend too much money on this anymore so was thinking about a cheap ASRock N68-VS3 UCC Socket AM3
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