I'm now running version 20 and loving it. Thanks to Ben for answering my e-mail about whether I could do a firmware update with the pinheck board only at my desktop rather than at the machine. The answer was no--the pinheck board needs power. My PC desktop is far away from my pin, so I was avoiding lugging it to the basement, but once I did I had no trouble with the firmware update. The AV update was another story. I tried again and again but I kept getting an SFX error message when I put the updated SD card into the game. That's because I was not taking Ben's instructions literally enough. When he says "Copy the contents of the AMH_SD.zip file to your now-blank SD card," he really does mean "the contents of" (i.e., the DMD and SFX folders)--I had been copying the actual (parent) AMH_SD folder, despite the fact that Ben had even included a picture of what the resulting folder would look like. This is what you get when you write clear instructions for a dumb English major who has forgotten how to read. Thankfully, once I copied things correctly, all was well.

Before this, I had been considering going into the code to see if I could hyphenate "ghost locating" (in GLIR), but after this initially alarming experience I think maybe I'll just pretend the hyphen is there . . .

Is it ok to update to version 20 from version 18? I would be skipping 19 and I was not sure if this may cause some issues?

Anyone know or maybe Ben can let me know.

Thank you

These two quotes from Ben's update page lead me to believe that yes it's okay to update from 18 to 20:

" . . . newly shipped games with version 16 or higher can be programmed automatically."

" . . . The app locates your game and checks to see if there’s a newer version of software online. . . . If there is, you’re asked to click OK to begin the update procedure."

Good luck! The ball save feature options in v 20 really make it worth it, IMHO.

Great...Thank you both. Going to try and get updated tonight.

Was able to get updated to v20 tonight.

Anyone have issues with seeing all the final scores after playing a multi player game?

Game will cycle through all the high scores but will not show the final scores from the multi player game.

I played it at the PPO and hitting the flipper button to return to the previous scores wasn't working. I think it showed the scores in the cycle though but I don't remember.

Hitting the flipper button just starts the slide show for scores - you can't just hit the button 5 times to see them all - you have to just hit once and watch. I can't remember which, but it's only one button that does this as the other brings back the score from the game last played.

I finally got a chance to load up V20. I must say, this code is the smoothest feeling for game play so far. Audio is immensely improved.

Terrific job!!!!! Thanks Ben!!!!!!!!!

I have used the flipper button to try & locate final scores after a multi player game and also let the game cycle on its own and I do not get final scores to show up after the game is over.
On a single player game the final score will show up as the game cycles through the high scores.
Ben, any ideas? Anybody else having this issue on multi player games?

That's what I mean though, the button that brings back to the last game played wasn't doing so.

Thanks Ben.. Now every time I see this post pop up, I get the Altered Beast music stuck in my head. POWER UP!

Ok...Thank you.
I tried it with Tournament on and neither button when pushed will show the last scores at the end of a multi player game. Also, without pushing any buttons when the game ends and allowing it to cycle it will not show scores. So, I have tried it with tourney on, tourney off and I am unable to see final scores at the end of any multi player game.
Only way I am able to see a final score at the end of a game is allowing it to cycle through at the end of a one player game. Any multi player game will not allow for final scores to be seen.

Anybody else having this issue on v20?

Did a 4-player free play "dummy game" using V 20, and all 4 scores showed up, both in a cycle after the 5 high scores and upon tapping the right flipper.v20 4player.JPG

Wow...thank you joeschall. Doesn't sound like everyone has this issue.

Not sure why I am unable to view any final scores in a multi player game.

OK Ben, thanks....I will try updating the SD card when I get a chance.

I'm very grateful for this SD card approach. I'm in the process of making an SD card with a "family" version of the audio by excluding some of the saucier callouts that might just confuse or prematurely educate some of the kiddies who play my machines occasionally. This way I can just switch in the "family SD" when the kids are playing. Of course, a family version of the Rob Zombie game won't be possible, starting with his oft-used middle name . . .

So I have had my game a week, and I have about 150 games on it. On two separate occasions I have activated what appears to be an unlimited ball save by stacking hellavator multiball with a mode running, and I'm not sure exactly what else. I plan to take the glass off this week and dive into figuring it out a bit more but has anyone else experienced something similar? -Tommy

Finally decided to upgrade tonight, and I'm getting a weird error. Using a surface tablet, windows 8.1. It sees the com port, installs the software, that all looks fine. When I try and run the pinheck tool though it crashes and deletes itself, lol, and I get a message something along the lines of 'access is denied'. I've actually done interfacing with other boards through FTDI chips on this tablet, so that shouldn't be the issue. Not sure what else to try other than a different computer.

Do you plan on putting a ball search into the code? If you are playing a game and the ball gets stuck somewhere, it will never search for the ball.
If you turn the game on and there aren't 4 balls in the trough, it never fires the coils to look for a stuck ball and it doesn't know how to play with 3.

The game does have a ball search during play.

It sure does, but it's anemic at best. I think thats an area which could probably be improved by someone willing to dig in to the code a bit. The coils need to go off at max strength and for more than one time. The ball search also needs to start upon game start up and I don't think it does now.

Do I recall correctly that you had a switch wired backwards and it's now fixed?

If you don't mind answering...

Overall what kind of grade would you give AMH as far as routeability? I know when we had ours we really wondered how much it would need to be babysat in an arcade setting. Just curious what you're finding.

Is there a way to program the ball search to start when pressing and holding the start button? or if not then what about by holding the left flipper button and start button at the same time?

That way if you see the ball go somewhere and not come out you can manually start ball search before the game decides to finally start looking for it?

Switch was wired correctly. Haven't gone through the test if the column yet to check the rest. Wondering if it was that switch but stuck possibly too. Hasbt repeated since week 1.

JeffF,

I thought I'd give you my opinion on this issue, now that I've put 350 games on my AMH. Out of a 10, I think I'd rate AMH at a 6 in relation to routeability. If code improvements are made so that ball searches start sooner and coils kick harder, I'd bump it up to a 7 or 8. The primary reason for my rating is ball sticks--the common one at the pop bumper I was able to fix with extra larger rubbers, but sticks are still possible on the hellevator ramp, behind the hellevator, in the hellevator/scoop trough, and on top of the plastics around the ghost and pop bumper area. I also agree that if the code could accommodate a missing ball and still start play it could improve routeability. I've had a ball disappear a few times, and found it up inside the apron. If stuck balls are visible then at least players might see them and be able to report the problem or play on with one less ball if Ben can accommodate via code, but if the stuck balls are invisible and the ball search takes a long time, then a player might just walk away from the machine and not realize the ball has been freed.

I should also note that an endless ball search isn't desirable either, in that a ball might be stuck in a place where it would never be found by an automatic search, and I sure wouldn't want an unattended machine to be left on while in an endless search.

The other reason I probably couldn't give a 9 to AMH is the ruleset itself. It's damn hard, and with modes such as the Doctor Ghost draining the ball on a second fail, I think casual players might be frustrated and confused enough not to keep coming back.

Finally, I should note for the record that on my routed machines, for example, I had as many or more ball sticks on NGG (so I'd have to rate it no higher than a 7 or 8 as well), while on World Challenge Soccer (Gottlieb, routed now for a year) I have never had a single ball stick, but it's not a popular enough title for me to give it above an 8.

I may eventually route AMH at a pizza shop right across the street from my house--where I could check on it regularly--but I'll wait to see what emerges with further code improvements and see how it operates after a few thousand HUO plays. Still loving the machine every day.

Thanks Joe! Glad to hear you are enjoying it still!

I solved the sticks behind the hellevator with a little trimming of the metal bracket, but I've not seen trough sticks.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/amh-club-a-spooky-start/page/3#post-2440513

There's only 2 places I ever get a ball stuck. One is to the left of the bottom pop, which happens regularly. The other is behind the ghost toy, which is rare. I have never had it stuck in the trough, scoop or hellevator.

Two ball sticks in pops for me. One crazy air ball on a plastic far left side the other day. That it for me.

Thanks for this reminder. My wife is getting me a dremel for my birthday next month, so I plan to look into trimming the bracket.

The sticks I have in the trough itself are rare, and they're cleared with the ball search. I'd just like the ball search to start much faster. I haven't counted yet, but I feel like it takes 30 seconds or so to start. I may be wrong.

If no one more qualified wants to work on redoing the ball search (e.g. Ben?, Fawzma?, someone who programs for a living?) I'll look into it sometime soon. I have one fix down and implemented, maybe I can stumble into another one.

Finally got around to taking a video of the scoring bonus bug I mentioned before. I am including 2 videos. A normal one and a zoomed in one so you can see the detail better.

You will notice that after drain the score is 1,310,000.
The area progress bonus is 120,330.
All other bonuses are 0.
The total bonus displays zero -- always somewhat strange too that is stays on the DMD in front of the 'eyes' graphic.

Even though the display is wrong. It still added the bonus. You will see the score on the next ball as 1,430,000.

Normal Size

Zoomed DMD

Rather than a bug I would chalk it up to paranormal activity.

Just trying to prove paranormal activity is real.... unless it's not.

Just had the same issue pop up but it doesn't always have to say 0 for the bonus. This time no video (foolish me to turn it off) but it displayed one of the early bonus values for all bonuses and the total -- but still was added methinks.

Argh, having major issues here...

Followed instructions, downloaded the required files. When I first ran the Pinheck tool, I got the message, "Could not find a Pinheck Board. Please check USB connection."

Checked Device Manager, the device was there, but no drivers. Ok, I followed the link on Ben's page and downloaded the drivers. I installed the drivers, but it was weird -- it took a couple of tries. I can't remember what the pop up dialogue said, but eventually, it did install, and I could see that the device was now under PORTS>USB Serial Port (COM3).

I ran the Pinheck tool again, and now the board could be seen. I clicked the "Auto Detect and Program" button, and it seemed to be running fine. Ran through until it got to verifying. Then I get a popup that the verify failed and to try Manual Firmware Update. Despite that, I clicked the "Auto Detect" and now I get the message "Could not find a Pinheck Board. Please check USB connection." again.

I try unplugging and replugging in the USB cable, I try restarting my computer, I check again to see that the device is listed in Device manager. No luck. So, I go ahead and do the Manual Firmware Update.

When I click on the the "Auto Detect Port" button, I get a"No Pinheck Board is connected to any port" message, but COM3 is listed under the pull down Port menu. I select it anyway. I find the AMH_V020.hex file and select it with the "Select Hex File" button. I click Manually Update Game, and it seems to run. It finishes, but I don't see that the game has reset.

I turn off the pin, wait ten seconds, turn it on again. The DMD still says Code version 17, and it's now stuck on that screen. Won't go further. The pin has no sounds, and I'm not sure what to do next.

I was running this on Windows 7. Admittedly, I was using a MacBook, but I was running Windows 7 through Boot Camp, so for all intensive purposes, I'm using a PC (not emulated).

Any ideas what I can do? Thanks for any help here.

Trying again with an actual PC (though I don't think that was the problem). Had issues installing drivers (went through device manager, right click to install drivers, kept getting "Windows was unable to install your FT232R USB ART" -- yes, the files were extracted not still compressed). Finally googled "FTDI drivers" and downloaded drivers. Installed them finally, and now when I am connected to the Pinheck board, it is listed in device manager under Ports rather than Other Devices.

Ok, restart computer, everything disconnected from each other and start process all over -- turn on pin, turn on computer, then plug USB in. Laptop recognizes the connection, but when I run the Pinheck tool, it says "Could not find a Pinheck board. Check USB connection."

Pin still stuck on boot screen, no sounds or anything on DMD.

Maybe the firmware is now corrupted? How do I restore firmware to original state?

I'm running Windows 7 on a IBM Thinkpad laptop. Argh!

That sucks man.

We have had a hard time getting ours updated as well (not near the issues you are having). I wish there was a easier way to get an update on the game. I do not understand computers very well but my better half does and she has had problems trying to get an update put into the game. Hopefully Ben can make things easier at some point.

It's been a while since I tried it, but my early attempts to update the game with a laptop running Windows 7 were a mess. I finally borrowed another laptop that was running Windows 8 and I got the update to work on the first shot, no driver installations or anything. I have used this laptop for every update since, because I don't want to mess with it any more.

Betelgeuse,

Thanks for this suggestion... I think I have a Windows 8 laptop at work, will try that. Hope I haven't hopelessly corrupted the firmware.

Welp, tried the Windows 8 route. Though it was a lot easier to get the computer to recognize the board -- Windows 8 automatically configured the "device" when I plugged in the USB cord -- the board still isn't seen by the Pinheck tool. Guess I'm going to have to resort to emailing Ben...

Just curios.. what side are you plugging the usb cable in? Game code goes on the left side.. AV code goes on the right side.

Yes, I'm plugging the USB cable on the left side, near the ghost logo.

Ok, if anyone else runs into this issue, David Fawcett (the person doing the code for RZSSS) patiently guided me through trouble shooting and fixing my issue. He was awesome, so a big shout out to him!

First, don't use a Mac even if it is running Windows natively using Boot Camp to update your code. Still not sure if this was an issue at the very beginning or not as we still had major issues using Windows laptops, but just remove this variable.

Second, I had issues with installing the drivers using the instructions on Ben's site. I would advise installing the drivers this way: Go to the FTDI chip site -- here's a link...

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

download the drivers here. Yes, you want the VCP drivers. Install via the installer included in the downloaded folder (there are two versions included -- one for 64 bit systems, the other for 32 bit systems).

Once the drivers are installed, note what port your board connects to (can find this under Windows Device Manager). It happened to be COM4 for me. In Device Manager, under "Ports", it will say "USB Serial Port (COM#)" with COM# being the port.

On Ben's site, I interpreted the instructions as update the code first then format and put the new AV files on the SD card. Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but I went ahead and formatted the card, replaced the AV files with the new ones. Putting this in the machine got the machine to recognize the new AV files and reboot, but it still wouldn't play.

So, finally, and maybe this was the critical step, David had me turn off the machine, take out the SD card, turn the pin back on, connect the USB cable, run the PinHeck tool. The Autoupdate wouldn't work, so we moved to Manual Update. Select the appropriate port, and select the updated AMH HEX file (which I had downloaded from Ben's site and put on my computer). This finally got the code to update correctly. Turned off my pin, waited a couple of seconds, turned pin back on, and finally -- version 20 code!

Hope this post helps some other poor soul out there, and again, thanks so much to David for all his help!

no problem, I wasn't going to bed till you could play some AMH goodness lol

One other thing to point out about this situation, turns out this is one of the earlier machines that still had v10 on it if that tells you anything.

Good stuff tu71586 thanks. I'll save this for when my machine comes in September.