Alright, so I'm going to start off by saying this isnt your normal Congo. This is a Congo I purchased that was put together... The playfield was removed from a working game many many years ago.. The populated playfield was sold along with a Congo conversion kit (security roms, translite, speaker panel etc) Basically the owner of the original conversion kit pulled the populated playfield out of the kit and swapped the one that was inside their working Congo to have a better playfield. fast forward years.. The populated playfield that was removed from the working game is now being installed into a brand new cabinet with an NBA Fastbreak harness to connect everything to the back box. When the game was delivered to me, It had an original CPU that was pulled out of a working "donor" Congo, a brand new Rottendog driver board, and an original AV board also pulled out of the working "donor' Congo. Now, everything was working EXCEPT when you would trigger the left slingshot switch, would also fire the trough eject. I spent hours trying to figure out where the short was, meticulously inspecting every single wire, connector, switch, diode, solenoid in the entire game. I couldn't figure it out. The trough eject fired like it was getting half the power( it could not kick the ball into the shooter lane).. Same with the left sling barely even flinching when activated. Everything else operated the way it should. I then decided to remove the MPU and take a look at the back..
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I find a trace repair in the J206 column spanning from C14 to R70. (same row the slingshot acting up on)

I had been keeping in touch with the seller, and he agreed to allow me to swap the original "donor" Congo MPU with a brand new "untested" Rottendog Mpu, and we made a trade deal where I would give him the original "donor" Congo AV board plus some cash in exchange for a Pinsound plus board, WPC95 harness kit, a WPC89 DMD controller board (Pinsound's harness will allow you to use old dmd boards with their soundboard for 95 as a work around to not having the OG AV board) Pinsound speakers and sub.

*back at the machine, I install the new Rottendog MPU, and the WPC89 DMD controller board alongside the new Pinsound plus board with the appropriate harness from Pinsound. I triple dog check every single connection over and over again just to be absolutely positive everything is where it should be before powering it up. Upon booting it up, I have a DMD displaying, CPU working, and Pinsound also working. Once I skip the "factory settings restored" screen.. The machine goes into attract mode. Finally I close the coindoor which activates the high power for the first time since install and immediately.. all 3 flippers,upper left post, and mystery eject lock on. I was preparing for the worse.. so my finger was on the power switch when I closed the door just incase something like this happened, so it was only locked for .002 miliseconds before shutdown. So now I have different issues... after doing some processes of eliminating everything one by one.. I unhook every thing down to just the Driver board... No matter, what it wants to lock on if connector J119 is plugged in.. I unplugged the connector.. and reconnected everything back... I have a working display.. pinsound.. and game (essentially) but I have no flippers, trough eject, pop bumpers, mystery eject, upper left post, slings, or pops.

Back in switch test... I also realize that I do not have flipper optos, or eos switch closures. I've pulled everything out.. tested Diodes on The driver board with my Fluke 87 DMM... All have a .5 reading. Ive checked every single fuse off the board and found nothing blown. Ive flipped the cpu to driver 3 inch ribbon cable as I saw Chris Hibler's AFM runnin a Congo MPU with a Rottendog WPC95 driver board had its Red strip at the top while connected where as mine was on the bottom since I got the machine... I've read every single post on Pinside about wpc95 rottendogs, Ive searched RGP archives, and even Reddit r/pinball and I'm lost... I need some ideas... tips... Maybe someone has had this before... maybe not. There are so many weird factors in play I know its not going to be straightforward but Im down to try / test / work on anything that may help.

Thank you for reading... And I appreciate any advice here.

Done and done. Everything appears to be in the correct spot. I verified by taking pictures before swapping, referencing many different Congo back box wiring pictures online, and the manual.

Thank you for replying!

Whats next?

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Lol, thanks… All I wanted to do was hang with Amy and beat some grey gorilla ass…. But I’m not there yet I’m going to go sit in the corner and cry while eating my sesame seed cake.

If I disconnect the 3 inch ribbon from either side.. it will not lock on.. if it is connected between both it not only locks on the same coils (J119) but it also blows the main fuse.

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It appears that way unfortunately....

Precisely! I’ve disconnected every connector to the cpu, all switches, power, top ribbons etc. I then swapped the 3 inch ribbon with a known working ribbon cable and as soon as I hit the power, Boom! Coils lock on under j119 and the main fuse blows. So I feel like I’m narrowing down the cpu being the culprit.

Let me go check.. Ill report back in a jiffy!

Found something interesting…

When testing for shorts on the cpus J211 pins… they all tested open.. both sides every pin..

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I moved over to the driver board side which is J102 and tested both sides.

The complete right side set of pins from top to bottom tests open…

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However when moving to the left side pins from the top to bottom, as soon as I touch pin #29 I have a short.. and it continues shorting from 29 down to 13 on the left side only.. all other pins test open.

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Hmmmmmmmm

Oh.. well no shorts there then lol.. Tested open

Think this could be more CPU related vs Driver board at this point?

I did! These issues I’m having now are totally different than that one was having. Now I’m hoping to find someone near me with a WPC95 that will allow me to stick my boards in and see if it has the same issues. I’ve located a few original MPUs untouched.. but definitely don’t want to throw any in until I know for sure what the cause for all of this is first.

Update*

Tired of messing with it.. done everything I can to troubleshoot it with what I have, so I’m swallowing my pride and letting Chris Hibler take over.

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I can’t sit still and do nothing.

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I’m being told the original MPU is working perfectly in another Congo with zero issues… which leads me to believe it’s something on the playfield.

Here’s some oddities I’ve already found:

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I got 4x diodes per Flipper coil…

Sheesh lol.. I’m going to be replacing as much as I can.. I’m redoing every solder point on every lug as these all appear to have been unsoldered and soldered back (badly) at some point..

Almost a shame I don’t have an NOS playfield I could install as I may as well swap it at this point having it all out lol

Nothing else to do while waiting for the boards so might as well rip everything off the playfield and rebuild it all.

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Oh yesss.. I wish they made a protector for the inside curve of the back ramp in front of Amy. The ball hit its soooooo brutally hard I can imagine it breaking someday.

Well got the boards back from Chris… Driver board had a spill of solder on the back that was shorting 2 pins which fixed the low power slingshot / trough popper issue… however… I'm still having issue with all flippers, upper left vanishing post, and mystery kick all locking on as soon as the game boots when connector J119 is plugged in and zero flipper opto buttons, or eos switches registering in test. Chris did not experience this in his AFM, instead he witnessed something weird with switch (36) randomly triggering... but had reset the Asic and could not get it to replicate. I'm also having this weird occurrence with the ramp diverter coil that once it fires during gameplay... it will stay down and you can hear the coil's continuous energize, Eventually it will let up... But then a trigger of the Map kickout will fire the diverter again keeping it energized. Lastly... Every single coil trigger.. (slings, pops, kickout, etc) The flasher behind the grey gorilla fires.. even in test it is an LED flasher.

Since I was waiting on the boards... I went through and replaced every.....single....coil with new... Rebuilt every single mech with new... Quadruple checked every single wire and connection.... all too rule out shorts of any kind... Never found anything other than some sketchy soldering on some coil lugs which I cleaned up. I bought all new ribbon connectors as well. Just last night, I bought a new CPU to just rule out this current one. Also worth mentioning.. I was running Rom revision 1.3 on the old cpu that worked... When I installed the new RD. I had upgraded it to 2.1... I've read on old RGP that some people had issues with upgrading Congo because it would use a certain chip on the board or something that the original 1.3 did not and would kill their flippers and mess with certain coils... I've also ordered an older rom just to rule that out as well.

Can anyone think of anything else to try... what I could be missing here or have overlooked? Ive got a logic probe.. Fluke DMM... every possible IC chip.. every possible IDC connector .100, .156.... diodes, transistors, tip, resisters... everything to repair, replace, or test what is suggested. I appreciate anything.

Pictures below of how everything is connected.

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Interesting read from John Wart wayyy back when... Wonder if this could be another factor as to why Im experiencing the issues I have since I installed the new RD cpu with the 2.1 rom.

"There are at least 3 different WPC-95 MPUs, I've seen examples of 3
different varieties from boards that have come in for repair.

The earliest of WPC-95 CPUs from Congos and Jackbots had a service
bulletin released, #86, that had a trace cut, additional diode and
additional resistor to fix an issue with premature battery drain.

One later revision had 2 electrolytic caps above the ASIC, another only
1. I can dig into my repair notes to see if I wrote down anything else
of interest about them.

Congo didn't support WPC-S until ROM version 2.0, when the routine was
added to detect whether the game had a WPC-S or WPC-95 MPU.

Ted Estes nicely took the time to explain to me how the CPU ROM would
detect which board it was installed in - as a WPC-S game had functions
on the fliptronics board, while the WPC-95 had the functions on the
Driver board.

WPC-95 has more video RAM than WPC does. The CPU tries to read and write
to that video RAM.

If it succeeds, it's a WPC-95 board
If it fails, it's a WPC-S board.

I had an alkaline damaged CPU board come in last year that worked great
with its early 1.3 ROM, but when I upgraded it to the 2.1 release as
part of the repair, the flippers and a couple solenoids stopped working!"

Mornin bump

I’m really hoping so… Going to borrow one this evening Infact from a buddy who has a working Congo and start by swapping the Roms first, then the cpu, and then driver board and see what occurs, but I'm willing to try any other suggestions.

That’s exactly right and exactly what the problem was.

Installed 1.3 rom tonight and everything is back working once again….. except for the audio lol… my audio is cutting in and out every 1 second with 1.3 and Pinsound… I re installed 2.1 and unplugged J119 to keep from locking and audio works perfectly fine… Lol I have no idea…. This was such a victory only to be met with another road block… I’m to the point Congo may not work with the Pinsound system atleast with a Rottendog MPU… I will swap MPUs with a borrowed OG MPU running 1.3 and see if it begins working normally.

Brilliant write up Victor... You are an immense fountain of knowledge... this is such a rare issue being it only affects an already rare (by numbers) game.. Your comment should be cemented incase others want to upgrade their machine to pinsound.

I'm already in contact with Nicolas from Pinsound and he is aware of this issue... hopefully It will be something software wise that they can address to get it working correctly.

Thanks again for the help on this and with everything else!