Bally game system

Supplementary service bulletin books were released, which included service bulletins that detailed any problems or issues with games that were discovered after they were released. System 9 eliminated a huge issue with the earlier system 3 through 7 boardsets - the 40 pin interconnector used between the MPU and Driver boards. Now, all the circuitry of the mpu, driver, and sound boards was contained on one board.

Helper boards were still used for displays, speech, special purposes, and solenoid expansion. Starting with Big Guns, Williams introduced another weak link into their system: the interconnect board.

It was initially designed to disperse the general illumination between the playfield and backbox. The connectors on these boards were prone to overheating and failure just like any previous attempt. At the same time, flash lamp resistor boards were being used. These were created to centralize all of the flash lamp current limiting resistors, and eliminate under playfield flasher driver boards, which had proven themselves problematic.

In addition to the interconnect and the flash lamp resistor board, the auxiliary power driver board made its appearance. The auxiliary power driver board housed all of the high current transistors TIP36Cs , solenoid and flasher fuses including discrete flipper fuses , the AC relay, and the solenoid bridge rectifiers. The auxiliary power driver board did go through some minor changes, but it essentially was the same until the last System 11C game.

Starting with Banzai Run, a more standardized interconnect board was created. This interconnect board merged the general illumination interconnect with the flasher driver board. Both switch and lamp circuits passed through this board, but neither circuit was modified by the board. Later in its existence, 3 opto couplers were used on this board to determine when the flippers and AC relay were activated. The theory is that coils that are seldom fired will be on the A side of the relay, and that flashers will be on the C side of the relay.

Most of the time during gameplay, the C side is active, letting the flashers be driven. System 9 and early System 11 games do share a disadvantage with the earlier boardsets - they still utilize special solenoid circuitry. The main disadvantage with this system is that the solenoids fire continuously as long as their activation switch is closed; a locked on sling or pop will burn out components quickly.

It is recommended to add a 1, 1. Usually just the pops and slings are direct fired coils, however, other coils were designated to the special solenoids. Later System 11 games did not use the direct fire solenoid switches, switches on the switch matrix were used instead. To easily identify games which do not use direct fire solenoid switches, IJ18 on the MPU board will not have a harness connection attached to it. Likewise, the slingshots and pop bumpers will no longer have a set of scoring switches.

One way that System 9 games differ from the previous boardset is that the special solenoids are not controlled by the CPU at all. In other words, the special solenoids are not pulsed during solenoid test, as the physical board architecture does allow for this. The software in system games continued with the same machine architecture from system 6 and 7, except for the special solenoids as mentioned above.

More ram became available, up to 2k, but no game used over bytes. This is likely due to the obsolescence of earlier style ram chips more than any other reason. Additional diagnostics in the form of switch error checking appeared in system 11; any switch not being activated over 30 games 16 games for flipper switches would cause an error flag upon booting up.

The software was able to compensate for broken switches by designating another switch to perform the same function as the broken switch. A few minor modifications to the board may have been made, but it's essentially the same board for the entire 3 game run of Space Shuttle, Sorcerer, and Comet. The picture at left shows an early board that featured two inductors copper wound coils that "smooth" DC power at L1 and L2, adjacent to connector 1J Later revisions of the board used "zero ohm" jumpers instead, presumably to reduce cost.

System 11 games used one of four different revisions of the System 11 MPU. The first version of the System 11 MPU was completely self-contained, able to make game sounds on the board. A simple background sound board was used to add some game sounds. Between the baseline revision of the System 11 MPU and the last revision of the MPU System 11C incrementally more of the sound processing and sound circuitry was removed from the board not stuffed.

None of the System 11 shuffle alley games use a separate sound board. A later revision of this MPU, pictured at right, has an additional jumper W16 located between the 7 segment diagnostic display and the relay, and a 4. The early PCB on the left has a trace routing error to the sound ribbon cable connector. If you use it with a later system 11A sound card you will get no sound because the sound card doesn't get reset properly.

If you wonder why your High Speed doesn't beep when turning it on this one is also the culprit. The picture at left shows six 6. These zeners were left off the factory silkscreen of the board. Later revisions of the System 11 MPU added them to the component side of the board. Their purpose is to protect the special solenoid switch inputs. This mod is purely optional. In reality the diode doesn't help much if you short the switch input with the solenoid voltage. In this case the diode and the are usually damaged and need to be replaced.

Additionally, if the System 11 nothing MPU is used in a System 11A game or later, pins 6 and 7 of the adjacent connector J18 must be tied to the ground plane at the edge of the board. These pins provide the ground for the special solenoids. Without the modification they do not work. Some early System 11A pins might not need the mod. If unsure just check if a cable is connected to pin 6 or 7 in your game. According to a friend it was referred to by the name of 11a instead of 11A by distributors.

Sound amplification is accomplished on the sound board. On early production system 11A boards, the amplifier section was fully stuffed, just like the original System 11 board. Later in the production of System 11A boards, the amplifier section was not stuffed, just like an 11B board. This may cause some sound quality differences as has been noted with EarthShaker. If used in one of the four first System 11 games Alley Cats, High Speed, Grand Lizard, and Road Kings , connector 1J15 and all of the sound amplification components must be added to the board.

It can be used in games prior to 11C, if the sound section is populated. If there is no other choice but to use this board, it is possible. The lamp matrix is made up of two parts - the lamp columns drives and lamp rows returns. However, there are some instances, as shown in the pic to the left, where the predrive transistors for the lamp columns are 2Ns. It is unknown why Williams chose to use these transistors on occasion. At regular intervals, say 1 every msec or so, the microprocessor scans the switch matrix.

This is done by pulling one switch column to ground, then sensing the switch row return state. Each row on which ground is detected means that the switch at the intersection of the column grounded and the detected row ground, is closed.

The writes the column data to the address location occupied by the at U15 on the board. The 74LS mirrors that same data at it's output pins.

The ground is applied to the base of a 2N transistor which had been held high by a 4. This time it reads registers PA0 — PA7. Again, the processor knows which column it drew to ground, and it knows which rows were caused to be pulled to ground via closed switches attached to the column. From this information, the closed switches can be identified.

The switch diode isolates the switch in the matrix. Without this isolation diode, multiple simultaneous switch closures will cause false returns and confuse the processor. A switch diode that is open will always prevent a switch from registering, in the same way that a broken wire or failed open switch would.

One of the new things that he implemented in the board design is a daughterboard that can be mounted to the main MPU, which handles the speech duties. Therefore, the speech board with its sometimes problematic ribbon cable no longer has to be used. However, the sound and speech chip code now has to be combined together on a PROM, which is used at position U The file pad.

It is a 4K Bytes binary file filled with 0xff. Create it using your favorite hex editor, or download the file here: File:Pad. Below is how the code should be concatenated for it to work properly. System 11 controls the sound reset via software. However the speech board was enhanced during the Space Shuttle run.

The later speech board is backward compatible. In addition to the speech board generating speech sounds, it mixes the sound and speech signals via the potentiometer on the speech board.

Up until and including Fire! Starting with some Fire! There was a trace routing error on the original Fire! WMS cut the trace and used a jumper to correct the error. With Big Guns and games after, the solenoid and lamp power power sections were no longer stuffed because they were relocated to the Aux Power board. This later board has the fuses only for display and 5V power.

In a pinch, the unstuffed parts could be installed. This power supply was used from Taxi thru the remainder of the System 11 game production. Note that Taxi used an early revision of the board. The placement of some of the resistors and zener diodes in the HV section of the board is different than later board.

Exercise caution when you do board work. System 11 nothing and System 11A games all used the 50V power supply board as pictured at left. The voltage is smoothed somewhat by a uf electrolytic capacitor.

Be sure to consult the manual for your game for the proper fuse value. Never overfuse a circuit. The interconnect board was essentially designed for ease of manufacturing and assembly. When Williams ultimately settled on using the same unit in all games, give or take some parts here or there , modularity was apparent too. The interconnect board remedied this issue. Although the first four System 11B games, which include Big Guns, Space Station, and Cyclone use some form of an interconnect board, it wasn't until Swords of Fury when the interconnect board was used as a standard for the remaining System 11 games.

The interconnect for Banzai Run shown on the right is completely different from anything else used by any game. The interconnect board used in Swords of Fury uses a different part number, D, compared to later System 11 games that used part number Dx x denotes the game's model number. They are not interchangable. Swords of Fury and Taxi had lane change switches still mounted on the cabinet.

With later games lane change switches were removed and two optocouplers at position U2 and U3 connected to the switch returns were added to the board. The circuit is essentially the same as was used in early WPC games and enabled elimination of problematic physical lane change switches from the game. The early versions of the interconnect board were located on the left side of the backbox and positioned vertically. The more common interconnect boards were located in the backbox positioned horizontally, just below the CPU board.

The later board passes the following circuits:. What differentiates the board from game to game are the resistor values used for the flash lamp power circuits. This is the same master display that is used on all System 6A and System 7 games and is used on most System 9 games. This master display board was introduced during the System 9 run and is mostly found in some of the later Comets that were manufactured. The major difference between this master display board D and the previous master display board C is the D board replaced the card-edge connectors used on the C with pin-type connectors.

Any System 9 machine that is wired with card-edge connectors to use a C master display board can be converted to use a C master display board by re-wiring to use pin-type connectors. The image at right shows "daughter cards" that replace UDN chips, which were beginning to be become expensive and harder to obtain during the production run.

The daughter cards use discrete transistors, much the same way as one version of the older System Master Display Panel did. This pcb actually came out of an early F where they were recycled. Millionaire had it fully populated with additional lamp covers. The mounting brackets for the later D display changed so if you get a replacement for your F first check which one is used in your game.

Taxi and Police Force uses a D master display with J4 ribbon connector stuffed. If it's missing from the game, any other dual 16 digit alphanumeric can be used to make it work with Taxi and Police Force. You would need to add U3 , resistors R10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18 10K and connector J4.

Jumper W1 should be added to connect the two center segments g' and m' on the lower display to form one large center segment g'. Jumper W2 should be added to light the comma on the jackpot display. Remove resistors R54, 56, 57, 60, 62, 64, 65, The removal is these resistors makes the lower display essential a numeric display.

Riverboat Gambler uses a D master display with all ribbon connectors stuffed. If it's missing from the game, any other dual 16 digit alphanumeric can be used to make it work with Riverboat Gambler. This display can also be used in Police Force and Taxi. This relatively simple board was used on Whirlwind only to accommodate 5 additional solenoids flashers or motors. The board logically sits between the System 11 MPU and the sound board, intercepting data normally sent directly to the sound board, and acting on that data only when specific codes are commanded.

The board also relays data not specifically intended for it, on to the sound board. The high current driver board was used on Earthshaker to drive the shaker motor. This board is unique to Space Station. The "blobs" at Q1 and Q2 both 2Ns in the picture at left are clear silicone caulk used to dampen vibration on the board. The earlier design of flash lamp resistor board was mounted under the playfield within in the vicinity of the flash lamp circuit s that were powered by it.

Each board had a maximum of 4 power resistors 2 per flash lamp circuit. The higher resistance resistor is ohm 7 watt, while the lower resistance resistor is 5 ohm 10 watt.

The purpose of the larger value resistor is to keep the flash lamp powered with minimal voltage. This keeps the flash lamp filament "warm", which puts less of a strain on the flash lamp. In turn, it is supposed to extend the life of the flash lamp.

The smaller value resistor is used as a current limiting resistor which allows the solenoid voltage to be supplied to power the flash lamp. By powering the flash lamps with solenoid voltage, it eliminates the need for an additional, dedicated secondary transformer winding.

Note that if LED flash lamps are installed instead of incandescent lamps, the ohm warming resistor must be removed from the circuit. If it's not removed the lamp will remain on, albeit not at full intensity. The flash lamp resistor boards were used on early System 11B games prior to the use of the "standardized" interconnect board. The board is located in a very awkward location.

It is screwed to the back of the lower cabinet. Big Guns, Space Station, and Cyclone all have this board in this location. The resistors on the board "eat current" limit current since the 13V 89 flash lamps are wired to coil voltage about 38VDC. When implementing this board, Williams chose to change the wire colors as the circuit passes through the board. Combined with the generally poor Williams System 11 documentation, this makes it tough to track down problems with non-working flash lamps.

On the plus side, the wire wound cement resistors on the board do not fail often, probably due to the location of the board resistor boards located under the playfield have high resistor failure rates due to heat and vibration. However, they obviously can fail. If there is power at the flash lamp, but grounding the flash lamp transistor does not light the lamp, the associated drive transistor may have failed.

The flash lamp resistor boards were abandoned after Space Station. Flash lamp circuits and resistors became integrated into the "standardized" interconnect board.

This process is commonly referred to as "multiplexing". However, there were sometimes solenoids multiplexed with other solenoids. However, a total of 16 solenoids and flashers A side and C side are driven.

Wires were directly soldered to the circuit board. The board uses a single U-opto to detect the wheel at the "home" position. The MPU implements an "open loop control system" stepping the motor to the desired position while assuming that each step was successful. Early System 11 and 11A games used serial wound coils. These coils only have a single diode on them. Later games starting with F Tomcat used parallel wound coils, which have 2 diodes on them. System 11 games use different parallel wound flipper coils dependent on flipper placement and application.

Below is a chart of the flipper coils used, their wrapper color, and strength. The coin door buttons for system 9 and 11 games are shown at right. The function of the three buttons is from left to right in the picture Starting from attract mode, if the AUMD switch is up, pressing the advance button causes the game to enter audits and adjustments mode.

If the AUMD switch is down, pressing the advance button causes the game to enter diagnostic mode. With the AUMD button in the up position during many of the diagnostic tests, the next step in the test will be automatically entered. For example, display test will display each digit on the display in turn. Coil test will advance through each coil. A particular step of the test may be paused on by pressing the AUMD button down.

The Advance switch moves the diagnostic, audit, or adjustment to the next step or previous step if the AUMD button is down, except in diagnostic mode. When in adjustments mode, the credit button is used to zero, turn off, or turn on features. Note: One of the adjustment settings adjustment 69 on High Speed for example can be used to clear all of the game audits.

At the end of all diagnostic tests, the game will enter audits next, and then adjustments. Just like the previous Williams platforms, the System 9 platform is prone to cracked solder joints on the header pins. Likewise, Williams' board manufacturers had some tendencies to cut the header pins too short on the solder side.

By cutting the pins too short, the cuts partially go through the solder meniscus. Cutting through the solder meniscus makes a solder joint less reliable, and it may prematurely fail over time. To resolve a cracked solder joint issue, the best approach is to completely remove the old solder, and add new solder to the joint.

Due to dirt and contaminants, simply adding solder to the existing joint is not sufficient. If the header pins are cut too short, an attempt to remove the solder and new solder can be made. However, in some instances the only resolution is to replace the header pin connector.

It is recommended to use a high quality replacement header. A design flaw carried over from the earlier systems was the lack of fuses on the two bridge rectifiers used for the solenoid and controlled lamp power. In theory, if either of these bridges short, the main power fuse in the game should blow, but that's not always the case. If the primary power fuse fails to blow, the wiring from the transformer to the bridge becomes the fuse.

The end result is not pretty! On games before Big Guns, interrupt one of the AC input lines and install a fuse holder with an 8 amp fuse installed Williams opted to use an 8A normal blo, while Data East chose to install 8A slo-blo fuses. For Big Guns and games after, an 8A normal blo fuse was added before the controlled lamp bridge.

As for the solenoid bridge, there was a design change with the addition of the auxiliary power driver board. Both bridges were fused with 4A slo-blo fuses. A nice solution for this problem in the Inkochnito Bridge Board. The 12 position "wafer" connector CN1 or J1 for Williams games , can be replaced with currently available parts, shown at left.

The original "wafers" are difficult to find and pricey. Part number for the alternate connector is Molex or If an aftermarket Rottendog WDPC power supply is missing 5v, and other common causes of a missing voltage have been ruled out, then it's likely that the 5v regulator at U has failed. If these voltages are good, proceed. If not, diagnose the problem. Typically fixing this is to replace the board AND the plug connectors.

If replacing the board, always replace the plug connectors. If a fuse blows on this board, it is usually a shorted rectifier. If the voltage is low, it is usually a failed open rectifier. The V DC powers the displays.

Plugs and header pins. Fairly common. This LM Bally E fails with age. C23 dries up and fails with age. Many people just purchase a new board. For those who do not do board work, that is fine. But please do not throw this board out. Sell it to someone who can fix it. If purchasing a new board, expect to crimp new plugs. This is especially important with J3 and J4. This board is exceptionally easy to fix. Or resolder where the header pins meet the board and hope for the best.

It is best to use a ground on the board under test. Once again, Bally did not provide a ground TP test point. The most convenient spot is the - side of the large capacitor C23, but be sure to not short that capacitor.

Or the - lead of C Otherwise, use the ground on the rectifier board. Either the - side of C23, or - of C This should read less than 0. Same as TP3 from the rectifier board, or at most, down 0.

Higher than 5. Close to zero. This is rough measurement of how C23 working. All should be the same as TP1. Less than 0. If higher, replace C If using the old plasma displays, it might be wise to check it. But this could run V and can kill you. See Cautions, above. Note that most try to adjust this downward to to to make the displays last longer. There is a small pot variable resistor to adjust this.

The screwdriver handle must be well insulated. If TP5 is bad, you have a connector plug or header pin on this board or the rectifier board that is bad. If TP1 is bad, your voltage regulator is bad. Replace it. Even better, purchase EzSBC as a replacement. If it is above 5. Do this in a way that you can reinstall this resistor if this does not work. If the high voltage is bad high or low then rebuild the high voltage, put in LED displays and sell your old ones, or get a new board.

See images 3 and 6 above. Uses power supply , but not sound module Instead uses sound module with vocalization module First Bally game with speech. We may start to sell these boards at a later time.

There not cheap, but offer the most compatible board to the original. All made with new parts and chips. They even come with game ROM. Stay tuned to this or our Site News pages. New boards currently on the market have not been added to this page. We are trying to find more sources and more types of new pinball replacement board sets. The general rule for Bally, Stern early Stern board versions only, no sound boards are being manufactured , Data East and Gottlieb pinball games is every board in a pinball machine can now be replaced by a new and improved redesigned circuit board.

The only exception to this rule is no one has been able to remanufacture sound boards because most use custom system specific chips that have not been remanufactured. The exeption is Williams system sound and speech boards. Wiring harness connectors are the only part not replaced by a new replacement pinball circuit board.

No game wiring modifications are needed to use any of these new replacement boards! All boards on this page have the following characteristics: - All boards are newly redesigned reproductions of the original Pinball printed circuit board sets and are not manufactured by the game's OEM. Here is a direct link to ballyalley. The details it does provide, at times, are insufficient and can leave the reader desiring more info. The series will progress towards the presentation of programs with complex graphics and motion.

Programs will also include extensive programming comments. This series is not intended to teach the reader how to create ML programs or program in assembly language. Rather, the series will show how the on-board ROM subroutines can be used to display graphics, move non-blinking graphic patterns around the screen and perform many other tasks. The motherboard ROM executes a power up routine to initialize these screen parameters prior to displaying the system menu.

The parameters are changed or initialized in all ROM cartridges and can be changed any time during execution of a program. The 4 parameters are the color registers, the horizontal color boundary, the border background color and vertical blanking, all of which will be described in the first 3 lessons of this series.

This tutorial covers these topics and includes example programs on how to use them. The hardware allows this data to be hidden from view by setting a vertical blanking line to the desired height. The NM system description, page 90, provides some additional info on vertical blanking. This tutorial explains how to use the Vertical Blank Register using example programs and step-by-step methods to explain how to use the register to work for the programmer.

The best Astrocade ever made is in your head; why not start programming this s console beast?!? He said that Alex Smith, one of the two hosts of the podcast, did an interview with Jamie Fenton.

Kevin sent me an excerpt of the interview. I asked Alex if I could share this information and on May 2 he gave me the okay. I want to make it clear that Alex Smith and Jamie Fenton are the original source of this information. I am passing along the information as it was given to me via Kevin Bunch. Alex is writing a book on the history of videogames. His response surprised me. I guess he spoke with her a couple of weeks ago, possibly in early April, about the hardware side of things.

Kevin went on to say:. Said in total they have 2 hours of conversations about the Astrocade for this. This is just scratching the surface of what they talked about. That was finished so fast that she ended up having to write the demo program anyway. The usage of video memory and the ability to send calls to the hardware for specific graphical uses are why she considered it to be a fairly successful project. But towards the end of the process she soured on the language, feeling it was too slow.

When I spoke to her in , she would not allow me to record conversation. I presume, since he will be covering so much in the book, that the astrocade will be all but a footnote. I do hope, at least, that he brings up that the astrocade was the least expensive computer upon its release to be able to run BASIC.