[HN Gopher] Connecting a 1980s Pinball Machine to the Internet
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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/
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