Cannot communicate with playfield

[clavigne]

I received my game a couple of weeks ago.  It has been working fine until today.  I'm now getting the message "Cannot communicate with playfield. Please check all connections".  I saw another post about this here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login.  I read Lloyd's suggestion to check the blue cable.  I have unplugged the blue cable and plugged it back in, everything seems fine.  It sounds like other people with this problem needed a new board?  Is there something else I can try?  It seems odd that things would work fine for a couple of weeks and suddenly fail.  I played it last night and it was ok, got the error message first thing when I turned it on today.  Any ideas?

[Lloyd Olson]

Hello

I would reseat both ends of that blue cable. In the backbox and to the big board under the playfield.

If that doesn't do it, please open a ticket on the Support Desk :

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LTG : )

[clavigne]

Thanks for the reply Lloyd.  I actually did try both ends before I posted here so I guess I'll open a ticket.

[clavigne]

Ticket #579 opened.

[clavigne]

I have some more information on this.  There is a red light next to the "watchdog" connector on the controller board in the backbox.  I wasn't sure if this was right or wrong, but I unplugged the watchdog and plugged it back in this afternoon.  When I turned the game back on it started up without error.  I played a few games and everything was fine.  I went to play the game tonight and now I get the error message again about not being able to communicate with the playfield.  I tried re-seating the watchdog connection again but that didn't work.  I also tried running a different ethernet cable thinking maybe I just had a bad cable but that didn't work either.  Does this mean the board in the backbox is just going bad and it was a coincidence that re-seating the watchdog connection fixed it temporarily?  I've attached a picture of the board so you can see where the red light is on.

[Gibo]

We had to replace the main board under the playfield to fix the game you linked to in your first post not the backbox board.