troubleshooting

Please use the contact page for help with any difficulties you may be having.

When making service inquiries please provide the machine's serial number, the software version, and the i/o controller software version. All of this information is displayed on the "system information" screen.

When contacting us for service assistance a little bit of information can go a long way towards pinpointing the problem. To say simply that the game "freezes" doesn't convey enough information to know why it's freezing. To help try to determine what is happening at the time that the game stops working check for the various conditions listed below.

BLANK SCREEN

A completely blank screen indicates that no signal is being provided to the LCD panel. On machines with serial numbers lower than approximately RBOWL-00600 the backlight will remain lit in this condition, yielding a slightly bluish-looking blank screen. On later machines the backlight is turned off, leaving a completely black screen. During the first minute or so during boot this is the normal appearance of the display. If it happens after boot it may indicate one of several possible problems:

1. No power is present. If the coin slot lamps are lit, if the bill acceptor is powered, or if the CPU and console fans are spinning this is not the case. A power supply may fail entirely, but it may be shutting down due to an external problem. If an unused power connector or some other component is shorting the power supply will shut down to protect itself. If the fan on the CPU fails, is blocked, or becomes unplugged the CPU will overheat and the motherboard will shut the power supply down to prevent damaging the CPU. Either of these conditions may require that the game be unplugged and plugged back in before the power supply will resume, even after the condition causing the failure is cleared.
2. The DVI cable or power cable to the monitor is disconnected. Check if everything else appears to be working (e.g., drop a coin in to check if a coin drop sound is played).
3. The hard drive is damaged or otherwise invalid. This can prevent the boot process from completing. Try booting with a VGA monitor plugged into the DB-15 connector on the video card and note the messages that appear.
4. The DVI receiver board (inside the monitor) is damaged or unplugged.
5. The LCD panel is damaged or unplugged.
6. The LCD backlight inverter (inside the monitor) is damaged or unplugged.

BLUE SCREEN

A blank blue screen with a white line across the top and an arrow in the middle (above) indicates that the game crashed. This is likely to happen only if a file is missing or damaged on the hard drive. To see if this is the problem, restart the machine and press TEST to enter test mode. Select "diagnostics" then "hard drive test" and see if it detects any problems.

CONTROL PANEL BOARD ERROR SCREEN

The Control Panel Board Error screen (above) will appear if the PC is not communicating properly with the i/o control board. This can happen if the i/o control board is damaged or not connected correctly (either the power connector or the DB-9 serial cable is unplugged). When running correctly the status LED on the i/o control board blinks at a steady 2 Hz rate (1/4 second on, 1/4 second off, repeating endlessly). When the i/o control board resets it blinks rapidly ten times to indicate that it is resetting.