The hold relay is energised from the moment the machine is turned on. In the home environment, owners bypass the hold relay to eliminate the hum, and the noise it produces. They may have removed the power to the coil and adjusted the leaf switches to be NC (normally closed) - thus bypassing the need for the coil.
Next phase of testing - Test the game in one player only. Adding more players will introduce new issues and add confusion. The player unit on these games is where most of the problems will reside. So you need to test game functionality - or at least having a working 5 ball game - with 1 player only.
If you want to be cheeky - tighten all the switch stacks on the player unit. Make sure the coil and sleeve work correctly. Don't dismantle the player unit YET. It is another stepper unit, but it is a lot more complicated !
All chimes not working ?
It's hard to tell what the reasoning was behind a lot of the issues on this machine, wires cut or ripped off, wires swapped around, mechs taken apart and put back together wrong.
Whoever had this before me was a real clown.
I have gone just about as far as I can for the moment with testing as I am waiting for a replacement jones plug in the mail for the playfield.
So for the moment I have started cleaning the light board and servicing and cleaning the score reels.
I have done a quick service on the player unit and it appears to be working ok for now, I had to do some work on it as it had been partially dismantled and put back together incorrect.
Just tonight I resolved hopefully the last hack where the three coin adjust plugs had been swapped around, for what reason who knows.
No chimes at all currently, I haven't really looked into this yet.
I must say that although a completely different beast to the SS and DMD's I am used to, it is satisfying to see it starting to work, the first time the score reels started up was really good.
These things are a mechanical marvel.
