A totally new lease of life to Bally / Stern Solid State Games - new rules, modes, sounds all possible.

[AlanJ]

A chap called Dick Hamill has written an arduino system that allows you to run your bally or stern solid state games with new game code. The arduino takes over the game instead of the MPU processor and ROM code. He's developing a plug in board - really quite neat.
He and other folk are writing game code, with new rules, new features, adding modes, and ability to add sound and call outs !

Really interesting stuff. (well, it is to me ).

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/replacing-the-m6800-in-a-stern-mpu100-with-an-arduino

 

[DAD]

Very nice.
That's been desirable for a long time

 

[Deleted member 2463]

Shame it’s not MPU200 though.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[AlanJ]

@Neil McRae - it will be soon.......

 

[AlanJ]

I've been through the guys source code for Meteor - looks pretty good. There is an "Operating System" that suits all games, then the game specific code for each game.

 

[Deleted member 2463]

@Neil McRae - it will be soon.......

yeah sorry I saw that now which is great.

 

[8bit-1up]

If modifying code and sound files is something that interests you Alan, I would recommend looking into the LISY MPU boards.

I've been having a lot of fun changing the sound files on my Vector with the LISY35 board.

The cost is roughly £45 or £55 with the extra soundboard if you want to modify the audio files.

All files can be easily modified with a MicroSD.

Here's a link:
https://www.lisy.dev/lisy35.html

 

[8bit-1up]

Here’s a pic of my LISY35 MPU and soundboard together

If you’ve got a dead MPU and soundboard this would be a really cost effective way for someone on a budget to get their machine working.

£55 for a MPU and soundboard is definitely a great price.

 

[AlanJ]

What CPU does it run? Do you have to fart about with installing some software.

 

[8bit-1up]

It runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero, just drag and drop the software onto a microSD card and you’re done

 

[AlanJ]

It runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero, just drag and drop the software onto a microSD card and

i know nothing about them so it’s another learning curve to deal with.

 

[russdx1]

That’s super cool, why swap out the whole board when you can just replace the brain guessing same idea would work on any rom based games? Does it just talk to all the Peripherals directly using the data bus or something?

 

[AlanJ]

it disables the 6800 cpu and just talks to the 3 pin chips that in turn deal with the real world switch inputs and the light and solenoid outputs. it ignores the ram and rom. it’s totally cool the way it works

 

[Pick Holder]

I can see things like this getting made for System 11, WPC etc and become a cheaper alternative to PROC.
You do not need much power to run a pinball (even with a LCD monitor running). Spike II is hardly cutting edge technology.
All for this kind of product.
Of course doing new code with animations and clips will be MUCH harder for WPC etc.