[HN Gopher] Connecting a 1980s Pinball Machine to the Internet ___________________________________________________________________ Connecting a 1980s Pinball Machine to the Internet Author : elipsitz Score : 88 points Date : 2023-02-22 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (eli.lipsitz.net) (TXT) w3m dump (eli.lipsitz.net) | iceflinger wrote: | Do you have any plans of open-sourcing or releasing your work | here? This stuff is awesome, it would be great to try and apply | it to different eras of pinball machines as well. | elipsitz wrote: | Yeah, definitely if people are interested. Let me clean up the | repo a little bit first :) | | It's probably hard to directly apply this to other machines, | but the interposer board idea would make it easy to take the | same hardware and use it on any MC6808-based machine. | 808nrlnd303 wrote: | I am a pinhead! Actually on my way to a tournament right now. | So yaaas please more info on this : ). Is the. Openpinball | framework involved in this? | elipsitz wrote: | Nope, I actually hadn't even heard of Open Pinball before. | Looks cool though! | | It'd be nice if there were an open standard for pinball | machines talking to score servers. For this project I had | to do everything custom. If people started putting ESP32s | on their pinball controllers there might be some actual | demand for something like that. | sfbrian wrote: | We actually have an open API for anybody that wants to | contribute live score data. https://wiki.scorbit.io/ Give | me a ping at brian [at] scorbit . io and I can hook you | up with a license and a dev token. | relwin wrote: | Nice work! I'm assuming score rollover is detected so your | awesome final score is correct. Also saving game settings of | total balls (3 or 5) and extra ball enabled is useful when | comparing scores. | | Anything pinball on HN is a good day :) | tannercollin wrote: | Amazing, we are currently doing something very similar at our | makerspace on a 1987 Road Kings pinball machine. | | We first replaced the original RAM chip with a IDT 7132 SA100P | dual-port RAM that sits on a breadboard: | | https://pic.t0.vc/WPUO.jpg | | The other port is accessed by an ATmega 1284 to the left of it. | Its code responds to simple serial commands and can read and | write to the RAM. | | An ESP32 talks to the ATmega over UART and frequently asks it to | dump 16 bytes at 0x00A0 to tell the game state and player number, | and 0x0100 to get the four player scores. When it detects a new | game, it offers the player a chance to scan their RFID member | card and keeps track of their score: | | https://pic.t0.vc/UQYK.jpg | | After the game is complete, any players who have scanned in get | their scores uploaded to our member portal where we can sort them | by personal best: | | https://pic.t0.vc/MZGY.png | | We found there were sometimes read collisions and the ATmega | would block the pinball machine from writing to RAM which would | cause crashes or odd behavior. The latest version uses two RAM | chips, one acting as a shadow copy -- similar to yours. | | Eventually we'll make a PCB for it and open source everything. | Currently only half the code (the ESP32) is on Github: | https://github.com/Protospace/pinballwizard | Rolpa wrote: | Can this be used on any System 11 game? And can it be used to | read the current state of the alphanumeric display? | tannercollin wrote: | Yes, it should. As long as you can figure out the correct | memory addresses to look at, you can tell the ATmega to send | you the data. | elipsitz wrote: | Awesome! I really like the idea of scanning an RFID card to | identify players. | vikingerik wrote: | Modern pinball machines already do this (not RFID, it's an | optical reader for a QR code), implemented by the major | manufacturer Stern Pinball. They have internet connectivity | to log scores and achievements and tournament challenges and | leaderboards. It adds a pretty cool dimension to the pinball | scene. | blockwriter wrote: | Damn, this is amazing. I took up a lot of hobby electronics using | Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and Pico Ws during the pandemic. I stopped | short of custom PCBs or reviewing circuit schematics, but this | makes me want to search out a basic project that would require | doing so. | jvanvleet wrote: | It just floors me that today you can order up a custom PCB for a | few dollars if you are willing to wait a few weeks. What a world. | soupfordummies wrote: | The pinball community as a whole has been doing really cool | things like this for years. Custom soundtracks for older games | and now more recently we're seeing total rewrites of the | rules/coding flashed onto chips or new PCBs like this. Super | cool stuff. | mulmen wrote: | I have a "reset board" for WPC games that is many years old | at this point. It piggybacks on the power connector from the | power board to the system board and steps down the | unregulated 12v supply to power the 5v rail, bypassing the | power board's 5v which can become unreliable as voltage | regulators age and fail, triggering a watchdog on the system | board that causes a reset. It is a plug-in mod that is | reversible (I actually do not currently use it). | | Also you can buy new boardsets for System 11 machines in both | kit and complete form. They are electrically identical to the | Williams parts but use modern components. They even come on | red PCBs like the Williams development boards. | pathartl wrote: | Yep, friends with the guy from Pinball Basement who makes | the System 11 boards. It was actually done by licensing the | designs from Williams, so that's cool. They're still quite | expensive, but it's great from a preservation perspective. | mulmen wrote: | I was talking about the DumbAss boards: | https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dumbass-test-and- | rep.... Are those the same as Pinbal Basement? | TehCorwiz wrote: | JLPCB and a few others offer 2-4 day service as well. The scene | exploded a couple years back and it keeps growing. | daveslash wrote: | I started off as an EE in college ~20 yrs ago before | switching to CS. I did some circuit board design work (never | fab) as part of my coursework, but haven't touched it since. | I have some baseline familiarity. I think we used pSpice and | Cadence, which (at the time) still had a lot of Win 3.1 era | MFC UI elements. I'd like to jump back into it for hobby | reasons. Any recommendations on modern low-budget software- | tooling? | elipsitz wrote: | KiCad is excellent and open source. There's a recent post | about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34769574 | divingdragon wrote: | You can try KiCad. | MayeulC wrote: | > Cadence, which (at the time) still had a lot of Win 3.1 | era MFC UI elements | | I'm not sure how it appeared on windows, but cadence is the | kind of software with an extremely long history. I'm pretty | sure even recent releases have code that date back to the | 70s. | | As far as I know, it has always targeted UNIX, then X11, | using raw XLIB for drawing? X11 forwarding still seems to | be the preferred option for using it. | | Anyway, try kicad, which is free and open, it has made | great strides recently. You can also look at the gEDA | suite, though it may be a bit rough. Commercially, I've | also used Eagle and Proteus. LTSpice still is a pretty good | no-$ option for simulations (though kicad integrates some | barebones SPICE simulator now). | TehCorwiz wrote: | I'm a tinkerer and software dev, so my use is very basic. | | https://www.kicad.org/ is free and open-source It is mature | and useful, has a vibrant active community, and is | progressing at a healthy pace. It competes with the paid | options, but might have rough edges comparatively speaking. | I recommend starting here. I've only ever used this. | | There is also Eagle PCB which is now an Autodesk product. | It requires a Fusion360 subscription but I don't know if | the free version qualifies. It's a professional tool. | | Those are the only two I really hear about from the | communities I lurk. But I know there are about a dozen or | so currently that range from simple to professional. | shove wrote: | I interfaced an ESP8266 with the switch matrix to do much less | impressive things on more modern pins so I'm kindof blown away. | It's tricky piggybacking the signal lines and I feel a little | better hearing I wasn't the only one who got it 99% working and | started wondering if maybe my microcontroller was underpowered | for the job. | soupfordummies wrote: | Next level awesome stuff! | | It's like Stern Insider hacked into older games. Amazing! | | Do you think this could be transferred and applied to other | System 7 games? | elipsitz wrote: | Thanks! Yeah, it would work on any System 7 game, as long as | you're willing to solder in the 2x20 connector to the MPU. All | of the memory locations should be exactly the same. | shanebellone wrote: | This is very cool. | | I wonder if niche arcades could make a comeback with something | like this. Imagine global competitions between clubs competing | for rank, recognition, and reward. | mulmen wrote: | TBH I'm not a fan of comparing scores on different physical | machines. Every pin is different. It is still fun to see | scoreboards on local machines or to find the really out-there | scores some people put up, but it's not like a video game where | everyone is on equal footing. | | To me that is part of the appeal of pinball. It is a local, | physical, tangible thing. | vikingerik wrote: | They already have, for pinball in particular. Stern Pinball | implemented a connectivity system for new machines (it reads | your QR code), and there are many arcade locations that use | that to track and display scores and achievements and | leaderboards. Most mid-sized cities in the US now have at least | one brewery or arcade with this running now. It's mostly | particular to each location, but some organizers use it for | global competitions as well. | | https://insider.sternpinball.com/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-22 23:00 UTC)