This is an alternative Piggyback board for Gottlieb System 80B machines and is meant as a plug-and-play fix on System 80B MPUs that have daughterboard issues that are causing the machine to lock-up or reset intermittently (or in some cases, stop working altogether unless you press on the daughterboard).

gottliebsys80_piggydeux_(resized).jpg

What's This For?
As many people are aware, the Gottlieb System 80B boards used a piggyback / daughter board that was soldered directly to the MPU. Over time, the solder joints fail and this causes the machine to freeze up, reset during use (due to vibration and/or expansion/contraction of cold solder joints) or the game may not even start up at all. Many times those issues are entirely the fault of the piggyback board and it's solder connections. You can't just heat up the solder connections to fix the problem either, since the solder connections that often fail are the ones that are inaccessible on the back of a original daughter board. This means having to remove the board entirely, which is not an easy task without the right equipment and technique. Often people that attempt a repair end up pulling up traces or solder pads and it gets messy very quick. Or in worst cases, an otherwise good board gets so badly damaged that it's nearly unusable.

How About A Different Solution.. That's Also Plug-And-Play?
Instead of attempting to repair the original daughterboard, you can leave that in place. The PIGGY DEUX plugs into the TC1 socket at the top of a System 80B MPU. So you simply have to remove the 2764 EPROM from the original daughterboard, insert into the PIGGY DEUX, then plug the PIGGY DEUX into the MPU board [and optionally make connections to the reset board if you wish]. That's it, a quick and easy plug-and-play solution that doesn't involve soldering or hours spent attempting to remove the original daughterboard for replacement/repair. Not only will you save time, but may also save yourself the hassle of destroying traces or pads on your MPU board that didn't have to be touched.

Current Status
Boards are now available via the website & eBay!

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Pinitech - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
http://www.pinitech.com

Haha.. I do appreciate the support. I figure if it's versatile enough to be used as both a testing tool & as a quick-fix then it stands a good chance of selling at least a dozen or two right off the bat. I keep trying to gauge some new ideas via Pinside to help set some sense of direction. I'd like to at least know I can sell enough to pay for components/materials that would need to be ordered in bulk. Currently have money tied up into materials for too many other products that is taking a while to recoup, so trying to be a little smarter about sales expectations on new ideas

It seems though that if it's not a product for the newest machines or doesn't have LEDs, then it doesn't get many responses (or sales).. which then dooms it to getting lost in the sea of threads. I'll have to try some LED mod/product sometime to see if that theory holds true

Yeah I'm a bit surprised as well. I've lowered expectations of products for older machines quite a bit over the last year, but am actually even a bit surprised here with this one despite those lowered expectations. It could change if it was a product available NOW, but maybe it doesn't.

Time to channel more of my creativity & energy into other avenues outside of pinball products I think. Just not finding the pinball products I've created thus far really clicking with people and it's not sustainable in its current format, so think I'll need to step away from the development side of things at least for a bit. There's a huge amount of luck involved in product creation and some of it can be steered a bit by choice of product or timing, but to some extent it's just unplanned "dumb luck" throwing something together and having it take off. Dumb luck has not been on my side lol

IRQ is tough because it occurs so quickly, it would just show as a solidly lit LED. Additional circuitry would be needed to detect highs & lows of the signal and output the slower pulse -- and there's only so much room on the board with its current size. It'd be on the list of nice-to-haves for the Universal Tester board though, if that were to remain a separate design.

I've offered some things as kits..but if the market's not there for a product to begin with it's usually not much better as a kit. You get a few more sales because anyone held back by price point will purchase the kit, but it takes longer to recoup the upfront costs that way too. Kind of a sideways step.

The downside to creating products is you're *really* hoping for something you invested a lot of time and energy into to take off rather quickly. If it doesn't happen on the first product, no big deal..second, third.. okay...but it's when you're into the double digits that it starts looking like it's time to move on or at least devote more of that energy elsewhere. You're picking the wrong product, your timing isn't right, price isn't cheap enough or .. dumb luck just isn't on your side. I'd be okay chalking it up to "pinball products are very niche" aside from seeing some similar test equipment or quick-fix solutions take off on these forums. The good news is, I'm getting into some large house projects and can take a break for a bit to save myself any further mental anguish

Finally got some 0805 leds and resistors, a bit tiny, holy crap! Had to solder them with tweezers, but leds for power & reset on the prototype board look nice

Look Ma, no eprom in the original Piggy Back board!

piggydeux1.jpg
piggydeux2.jpg

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"

Hi Steve, the Universal Tester mentioned here -- http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/interest-check-gottlieb-universal-tester-leon-design is a separate design. Sorry for any confusion to you or anyone else. I know I pointed the threads to one another and was toying with the idea of incorporating the Universal Tester functionality into this PiggyDEUX board.

Sys 80 Universal Tester -- this uses Leon's 2732 eprom and blinks an LED connected to address A6. Pretty much the same circuit that Leon had on his website, a few small tweaks and shrunk down to a small board that fits into the TC1 connector. With any of the test eproms (Leon's or otherwise) you would want to use this at the bench or unplug all the harnesses except the power harness at A1-J1 -- otherwise tests will cause odd things to happen if used inside a game without harnesses disconnected, especially the PIAs pulsing signals at the end of the test (coils, etc would pulse on and off). This is meant for testing at the bench, with Leon's test eprom and possibly this guy's test eprom if he continues making it available by request -- http://tinyurl.com/ktwbzw4

PiggyDEUX - This is a separate design & is an alternative to replacing a faulty Piggy Back / daughter board on the System 80B MPUs. The idea is that the original daughter board often develops bad solder joints and needs to be removed and replaced or at least resoldered. Due to how they soldered it on there, it's a real PITA to replace without something like a Hakko 808 desoldering gun.. not for novices! The PiggyDEUX would allow you to take the eprom out of the original daughter board, place it into the PiggyDEUX and then connect it to the TC1 connector. It will have pinouts & components to allow the reset board to remain connected. No removal of the original daughter board needs to happen. Plug-and-Play fix to daughter board issues. My hope is this saves more System 80 boards from getting hacked to death by people attempting to replace the original daughter board to get their machines up and running.

I hope that helps explain the two. I was thinking about adding the A6 led to the PiggyDEUX and having a shunt/jumper to enable the LED. Still not sure if I'll be doing that or just keep them separate designs. The PiggyDEUX at this point is just in prototype stage and I haven't made it available yet to anyone, just doing some testing on my Gottlieb Gold Wings & checking what the interest there is on this thread.

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"

Just an update -- made some minor tweaks to this board that were needed and it's now going to use a couple of smd transistors instead of a logic chip since most of the gates were unused on the 7404.

At this time I haven't made this board available to anyone. I'm the only tester so far Time has just been limited, but I do plan on playing around with this design some more, possibly with a couple more revisions fit in-between other board orders & hopefully will have some working prototypes I can send out to a few interested parties at a later date. I like the option here of using this as a quick test for whether a piggy back is at fault or even leaving it in the machine as a fix, so it's still on my radar!

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

Project Update:

Finally had time to assemble the latest prototype that replaces the 7404 with some discrete components. Looks like there's an issue with that design, so I'll be trying to sort that out when time permits. Beyond that, I'm now using a handful of 0805 smd parts to save on board space since there's not a ton of room and board size is *somewhat* determined by clearances in the backbox. The 0805 parts *can* be hand soldered, but that'd probably get old after a while. So something else I need to figure out is how to keep the build time and materials reasonable so I can keep the final cost reasonable. May be looking at some alternative methods for doing smd parts in low-volume numbers if the demand is there for this one.

I continue seeing people mention having piggyback issues on RGP and Pinside.. not like it's an epidemic, but it seems to be a fairly common problem and I still think this would be a great solution for home users or even the repair guys to be able to offer. Just some alternative to desoldering that horrid Piggyback since even with proper tools it can be a bit of a challenge and it's pretty much guaranteed you're going to rip traces without any experience or proper tools.

Will update again when I sort out the issues with the latest prototype.

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

Trying something new I just added a "Wait List" for projects at the PINITECH Lab page I've been meaning to create some more excitement on projects & also have a way to gauge what kind of interest there is *BEFORE* I place orders for materials or in some cases, even continue working on a design.. since if there's not much interest it may not be worth developing more than just the board(s) I need.

So if you're interested in this project, head on over to http://www.pinitech.com/lab.php and get on the wait list! Just need a name and email! Hopefully the clobbered-together HTML/CSS stuff works, but if not you're welcome to send a PM with what you're interested in.

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

Thanks for the interest! Haven't had a chance to get back to it, been finishing up putting a deck on my house -- that has consumed most of my time in the last few months (really much of this year!) Just been fitting in pinball projects when I can.

Should be able to get back to this in December & I'm currently targeting to have something available early-2016. Will update the latest status over at http://www.pinitech.com/lab.php

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

What browser are you using? Seemed fine for me with Firefox & Chrome on Android. I'll look into getting this a bit more cross-compatible.. using some clobbered together HTML5 stuff and I'm sure there will be issues with some browsers at the moment. Thanks of course for the feedback on that!

lol -- yeah some workplaces have really old versions

Not in production yet, but if you want you can signup on the waitlist over @ http://www.pinitech.com/lab.php Any projects that people sign up for the waitlist on will get higher priority, so if you want to see a project happen, just need a name and email -- won't use that info for anything but creating unique ids in the database & possibly at some point notifying individuals that signed up when a project is completed.

I plan on getting back to the PIGGYDEUX project over the winter.. hoping to have some time in December but if not should find some time in January.

Thanks for the interest!!

2nd Prototype is working with discrete components. I'm hoping to get these in a board order in February and should then have them available sometime around March/April time-frame. I'll probably send out a round for testing to those interested, with some type of discount factored in -- so they can be tested on more than just the GOLD WINGS I have.

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

Cool! I'll be doing another board order soon -- and I'm hoping to have some of those available for testing (at discounted prices) in early-to-mid March. Might send 6-12x out that way and as long as they get good feedback I'll then post them officially for sale.

Thanks for the interest!! Sorry for the wait

Ok, I keep saying it's coming.. but with any luck I'll be getting about 50x boards in for this in a few weeks and as long as it tests fine, I'll have some ready to send out to interested people @ a discount to help with getting it field-tested. Then I can make it officially available after that.

Some updates to the PCB including a little piggy I drew in CAD Lengthened the board on the left so it's easier to grip to remove. And hopefully a working smaller-footprint circuit for signals the eprom needs. Also decided to have the EPROM oriented the other way, it actually routes nicer & the main advantage is being able to use a regular open frame socket (since the one side of the 40-pin header will sit under the socket) .. as opposed to using SIP socket strips on it.

piggydeux_(resized).jpg

Waitlist @ http://www.pinitech.com/lab.php

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http://www.pinitech.com - "Pinball Inspired Technology"
Kits, upgrades and test equipment for pinball machines

PCB order went in. Fingers crossed

Not *entirely* a different project I'd actually thought about doing an additional PCB for a RESET board that plugged into the headers I left on this PIGGYDEUX board. No harness needed then & if I can use mostly SMD on it, should keep the footprint much smaller than the original. I think keeping the RESET board in there is a good idea which is why I left the headers there.. there's then the option to tie the old RESET board in if it's working -- or it's a place that a new piggyback RESET board could easily plug into. RESET DUEX! lol.

Looks like I'll actually be able to get some of these out for beta testing! Just got the boards in yesterday and the new revision booted right up. Just have to look at the signals on the scope a bit and if they check out, then I'll get half a dozen or so assembled and ready to send out to interested parties.

Beta test info to follow soon..

piggy1_(resized).jpg

piggy2_(resized).jpg