I have designed an Arduino based pinball controller for use in Williams games from System6 to System11c.

This board will replace all CPU, Power driver and Music/Speech related boards - an interface for hardware extensions is also present.

At the moment this board cannot be used as a pure replacement as it cannot use the original EPROM software, instead it is meant for people who want to program their own games or add some hardware toys. I have therefore programmed some kind of pinball operating system which takes care of the hardware related stuff and offers an API for the game programmer to work with.

The board is quite cheap (well below 100€) and has no special components like FPGAs on it, so it is quite easy to build it by yourself.

There's a catch of course: I don't want to earn money with this project, which means I'm not going to sell boards or anything else to you, so you don't have much choice except of building it by yourself. However I put all the necessary data to my project page at GitHub, together with a lot of information to make it as easy as possible.

https://github.com/AmokSolderer/APC

It's still a lot of work to do the code for a new game and I'm some how fed up with doing it all by myself. Therefore my hope is to establish a small community of people who have fun designing new game rules and who just needed a base to start from.

So, if you are interested in this project, please give me some feedback.

The photo below shows the APC in my Pinbot

APC_Pinbot (resized).JPG

Hmm, mainly because I don't know any System3 or 4 games and just forgot them.

However, after a first glance at the schematics I think you're right and they should work as well.
I see a difference in connector 1J4. Apparently, the System3 and 4 games don't have a pin for the 'Memory Protection' switch and no GND pin. This would require some kind of simple cable adapter.

But I'm a bit confused about the 12V supply of the CPU board. In the schematics of the Flash CPU (System6) pin 9 of 1J2 is labeled with '12V unreg', but in the connector overview (attached below) it is mentioned that this pin has only 'unregulated 5V' (I guess it's a five, the scan is not very good).
In the 'Disco Fever' schematics it is consistent, schematics and connector overview state that there's only 5V unregulated present at this pin, but I wonder how they want to exceed the threshold voltage of the 6.8V zener diode they have there to release the Reset signal as soon as the voltages have risen sufficiently to ensure a stable operation of the 5V regulator.

If you have a System3 and 4 game at hand, could you please measure the voltage at pin 9 of connector 1J2? The APC needs 12V there to supply it's audio amplifier, so it would be good to know whether they're there or not.

Thanks in advance

Flash (resized).png

I found the schematics of a System3 power supply board and it looks like they spared the bridge rectifier, but used only TWO diodes to rectify the 9.3VAC coming from the transformer. That would mean the voltage at pin 9 of 1J2 should be in the range of 6.3VDC (half of System7) which is not enough for the APC.
The easiest way would probably be to just use a cheap 12V power supply and a cable adapter to feed this voltage to 1J2.

That's true, but the goal is to replace the sound card also and to be able to spice up the sound of these old machines a bit.

I found the schematics of a System3 power supply board and it looks like they spared the bridge rectifier, but used only TWO diodes to rectify the 9.3VAC coming from the transformer. That would mean the voltage at pin 9 of 1J2 should be in the range of 6.3VDC (half of System7) which is not enough for the APC.
The easiest way would probably be to just use a cheap 12V power supply and a cable adapter to feed this voltage to 1J2.

That's true, but the goal is to replace the sound card also and to be able to spice up the sound of these old machines a bit.

Just for your information: there is a vivid discussion ongoing in the german pinball forum (also with Jan) about how to add support for PinMame and the Mission Pinball Framework to the APC, which would require a PC (or Raspi) to be connected to the APC via USB.
With PinMame running on the PC it would be possible to use the original Williams EPROM software and MPF would ease the development of homebrew game rules.

Albeit this is mainly a software topic, I'm thinking about adding an analog audio input to the APC. With the audio output of the PC being connected to this, the audio amplifier of the APC could be used to play sounds generated by the PC on the pinball's loudspeakers.

I'll send an update when a decision is reached.

Additionally I'm going to add System 3 and 4 games to the list of supported platforms (under certain preconditions). Thanks to zacaj for pointing this out.

By the way:

This was bullshit of course (never drink beer while replying to technical threads). With 9.3VAC you have an amplitude of more than 13V and if you subtract the threshold voltage of the rectifying diodes you end up slightly above 12V.

That means, if I didn't miss anything the only adaption needed for System 3 and 4 boards to work with the APC is to add a small cable adapter to connector 1J4.

Update:

I have generated a Base Code which should run on all machines with minor modifications and is a good base for own game code.

My next task is to implement an API to control the APC via USB which would enable PinMame and MPF support.

Furthermore I'm not going to add an audio jack to the board. I've tried it out and the signal strength coming from the PC is too weak to get a decent audio quality. To improve it one would have to add more gain to the pre-amplifier which is just used as an active filter at the moment. But if you have to solder anyway you can also add the audio jack by yourself - or spend 5 bucks to buy a cheap amplifier board from china.

That means the board stays like it is and I'm about to get a quote from a german board manufacturer. When we know the price you can still decide whether you want one. Or does anyone know a suitable manufacturer in the US?

And as requested the Gerber files for the Mask and Silk Layers have been added to the Layout section.

The quotes from the PCB manufacturers have arrived. I have received quotes from the german manufacturer IBR/Ringler and from Seeed in China.
One big difference is that IBR charges 75€ for preparation (exposition masks and so on). If the board doesn't change afterwards you can order more without having to pay the preparation fee again, but with the first order you have to pay it. I'd add 5€ to each board to compensate for this. This way I'd be even after 15 boards.

For 5 boards the price at IBR would be for you:

127€ (Boards) + 7€ (shipping) = 134€ : 5 = 27€ (per Board) +5€ (preparation cost contribution) + 10€ (shipment to the US) = 42€

The same for 10 boards:

158€ (Boards) + 7€ (shipping) = 165€ : 10 = 17€ (per Board) +5€ (preparation cost contribution) + 10€ (shipment to the US) = 32€

Seeed doesn't charge any preparation fees, but shipment is more expensive.

5 boards from Seeed:

71€ (Boards) + 34€ (shipping) = 105€ : 5 = 21€ (per Board) + 10€ (shipment to the US) = 31€

10 boards from Seeed:

96€ (Boards) + 45€ (shipping) = 141€ : 10 = 14€ (per Board) + 7€ (shipment to the US) = 24€

Of course, there is a certain risk of a shipment from China getting lost. Additionally every now and then shipments like this are stopped by the german customs, which will add a lot more to the price. Furthermore I did some businness with IBR some years ago and I know they're delivering good quality.
I'd therefore prefer to order from IBR, which would mean a price per board of 42€ (roughly $38) for you if we just order 5 boards.

So please drop a line if you want a board for this price. The more people are interested the cheaper it get's of course.

In the german Forum someone came up with https://jlcpcb.com/
Apparently they charge only 32€ for 5 boards including shipping
Shipping takes a while, but he has ordered from them several times and the boards were of good quality.

For us this would mean that shipping the boards from Germany to the US would cost more than the boards itself, which makes no sense.
Therefore I propose the following: I'm going to order 5 of them for Germany only. Then we check whether the boards are OK and if they are I'd be very grateful if one of you would order 5 for the US. This person would then save the shipping cost and it would probably still be cheaper for the rest of the US guys. Additionally this company probably knows how to ship stuff overseas while minimizing customs trouble.
At the moment I have 3 ordered boards from the US (4 if Pinash confirms his interest), but I think there will be a lot more as soon as some of you have confirmed it to work.

What do you think about this?

Thank you Cheddar, I appreciate that.

I have just placed the order and for some reason they haven't charged the shipping costs, because I just paid $24.
I'll send an update when the boards have arrived.

By the way I'm just implementing the new USB API to control the APC via USB commands. So hopefully we will have PinMame and MPF support soon.

Update:

System11c displays and USB command mode are working.
Next task is to add support for System7 displays as our first machine to try PinMame on will be a Jungle Lord.

Still waiting for the boards.

IMG_0120 (resized).JPG

The boards have arrived and they look great.
Now it's up to you to decide whether you want to order now or wait for the german guys to clean the pipe.

I already implemented an additional minor HW change which makes the use of pre Sys11 displays a bit easier. It's just an additional resistor and a transistor. I still have to change the documentation accordingly, but the design data is up to date.
I got the idea from the discussion in the german forum and it is of course possible that more improvements come up when more people start using the boards.

However, it seems to be much more difficult to get the DIL version of the 74FST3244 devices in the states, so I'm thinking about changing the layout to an SMD footprint.

What do you prefer, should I change the layout or do you want to look for the DIL version? I think the german vendor also ships to the US, but of course it will be more expensive. I used this offer:

ebay.com link: 5x IDT74FST3244P Octal FET Bus Switch IDT
P1020494 (resized).JPG

I gave it a try, but the result always turned out to be quite messy. So I did some research about the replacement of the 74FST3244.
There's one direct replacement 74cbt3244 which seems to be still in production, but not in a DIL package.

The second alternative is the 74BCT760. This is not a direct replacement, since it's not a bus switch but an open collector buffer. Electrically this is IMO the better solution, as it provides a clear separation between the switch matrix and the special switches. This is the kind of device I had in mind when I designed this stage. The bus switch was just a second choice when I couldn't find an open collector buffer.
And even better: the DIL version of this device is available at DigiKey.

Hope this helps.

Hi Mark,

thanks for your Feedback.

I hope we will have first results witch PinMame soon. Luckily there is an expert living nearby who has just built his own APC board and is now going to make PinMame work. Last time we met he was almost able to run my Jungle Lord. Lamps, Coils and Displays were already working - just some issue with the switch numbering prevented us from starting a game.

Jan was also here and we tried to let MPF run the APC via the USB connection. The results were quite promising so I hope to be able to do my new Rollergames rules in MPF.

The main technical discussion ist currently taking place in the german forum, but I'm trying to keep you posted from time to time.

However if you want to join the discussion I could ask the others to move it to Pinside (at least partly).

Frank

If you wrote the german sentence without any help from your wife then you're only lacking german Umlaute on your keyboard to be perfect.
The link to the german forum is:

https://www.flippertreff.de/start/forum/topic/11356-arduino-pinball-controller/

You're welcome to join our discussion.

Frank

The USB interface is still under heavy discussion as we're currently implementing some changes. It's not yet complete, but you can see the latest dev version here:

http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/dev/hardware/lisy/protocol.html#protocol-reference-v0-09-rfc

Basically you could also use the APC alone to control additional HW - there is this 'Hardware extensions interface video' link on my GitHub page which is showing the use of an additional LED Controller and as you suggested, the USB interface could be used also. At a later stage, I might expand my SW to also support stuff like DMDs and so on, but at the moment most people seem to be interested in using MPF. Therefore they need to have an external master PC or Raspi and then it's probably easier to let this device control additional HW also.

In the end it depends on the demand. If some guys are starting to use the APC alone, I'm going to spend more of my time for supporting my own API, but at the moment I'm lucky to have very competent guys working on APC support for MPF and PinMame, so I'm doing my best to keep the pace.

You're welcome. Feel free to participate by pointing out unclear parts or gaps in the documentation for example. This is a work in progress and every helping hand is welcome.

Hi Lance,

ICs and resistor networks look good.

I think you can skip the lines 35 - 37 of your shopping list as they have a 2.54mm pitch and a lock.
The rest seems to be OK, but let's try to sum it up, just to be sure:

P1 -> 1x6 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P2 -> 1x7 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P4 -> 2x18 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P5 -> 1x8 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P6 -> 1x2 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P7 -> 2x3 female pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P8 -> 1x6 female pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P9 -> 1x4 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
P11 -> 2x8 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch
1J8 -> 2x13 male pinheader with 2.54mm pitch

That should be all with a pitch of 2.54mm, the rest has a pitch of 3,96mm.

3 times 1x4 male pinheader with 3.96mm pitch and locking mechanism
20 times 1x9 male pinheader with 3.96mm pitch and locking mechanism
1 times 1x9 male pinheader with 3.96mm pitch and locking mechanism (in the BOM this is still a 9 pin connector but your board will already have the 12 pin)

If you only want to use your board in Sys9 and Sys11 machines (like your Millionaire) you can skip the Sys3 - Sys7 connectors. That means six 9 pin connectors less and the 12 pin I mentioned can still be a 9 pin. You can see it on the board when there is an inner and an outer connector then the inner one is for Sys9/Sys11 and the outer one is for Sys3-Sys6. If there is only one then it is used for both. I'm going to add a table to my documentation to make it more clear.

The 74FST3244 is a real pain in the a*, your eBay link is about the QSOP package which cannot be used. Apparently the DIP version of it is available only in Germany. That's why I'm trying to get rid of it by using a 74BCT760 instead, which is avaiable from Mouser in a DIP package. The problem is that nobody is using it yet so there is a small risk that it's not going to work as expected. Mark is the first to try, so I would like to wait until he has confirmed it to work. I'm afraid it's up to you to decide whether to risk it or wait a bit. Your boards will probably need more than two weeks to arrive anyway.

Hope I didn't make it more confusing.

The BOM is linked in the Wiki on my GitHub Page.
I'm sorry, but I don't sell any boards. I ordered 5 to check my Gerber files and the quality of the manufacturer, but these boards are already gone.
If you order at https://jlcpcb.com/ like I did, the price for 5 boards is below 40€ including shipping, which IMHO is quite a bargain. Of course it would be great if you could offer the remaining 4 boards to others.

Thanks in advance

Frank

By the way, we're using the Molex 26-48-1245 connector (Mouser# 538-26-48-1245). I like this connector as it sells in a length of 24 pins and you can just cut it to the length you need. Additionally the clamping mechanism of these connectors is not that strong which is a big advantage when you want to change a board.

Thanks for your patience. If my documentation would be finished you wouldn't have to ask most of these questions.

This 74BCT760 is for connecting the special solenoid switches to the switch inputs as some kind of 9th row of the switch matrix. That means if things go south with this IC you're going to have switch problems. But I checked the datasheet several times and if I'm not totally blind then this thing will work. Worst thing that could probably happen is that slings and pop bumpers double fire occasionally, but this could then be fixed by changing the value of RR1.

Looks good to me. Don't be surprised when you find pads for an additional transistor and a resistor on your board. This is a new feature for pre Sys11 games so you can just ignore them.

Alas, there's no way for the APC to detect whether lamps, coils and so on are working properly - at least not without a huge effort in terms of circuitry. As Jan already wrote, there are several test modes available, but in the end it's up to the user to judge if everything is OK. However, the self diagnostics we all know from the old original boards couldn't do that either, as their self tests were mainly to check CPU related stuff like memories. This is something we don't need to care about any more, because today all this stuff is integrated in the Arduino.

Yeah, this is a problem, because at the moment you need some hardware and coding skills to use the APC. I wouldn't mind if someone would build the boards and sell them, but at the moment it's probably too early for that.

Wow, that was fast.

Have you seen that there's a step-by-step assembly instruction in the Wiki? Might save some trouble.

If you clone my repository you should get a directory named APC with all the .ino files inside. You have to compile APC.ino, the rest will be included automatically as long as it is in the same directory.
But for assembly step 1 you should start with the Soundcheck anyway. There is a directory APC_Soundcheck on GitHub in DOC/Software which contains two files APC_Soundcheck.ino and Sound.h. In the Arduino IDE the main .ino files has to have the same name as the directory, so open APC_Soundcheck.ino in your Arduino IDE and try to run it.

The picture is already online but not yet published. You can find it on GitHub in my working branch AmokWork -> DOC -> PICS -> APC_Connector.png.

No reason to apologize. It just shows me howto improve my documentation.