After having the Color DMD in my TZ set to black/white for a while, I decided to update it to the latest firmware and try out the TZ color ROM again. What I am consistently seeing is that the image flickers between color and white. This happens in attract mode (e.g. when the TZ logo against the same background as on the cabinet side art, scrolls off the screen to the left - but note that flickering is not always present when it scrolls to the right), during some (but not all) piano or slot machine animations, and other in-game animations. But the kicker is that presence of flickering does not seem to be limited to animated frames. For instance, when you get the extra ball, the animation ends with a static image of Tina with the words 'extra ball'. Even that static image is flickering between color and white.

I have had this issue since I got the Color DMD, which was in part why I switched it to black/white. I did see another thread on Color DMD flickering issues (here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/flicker-in-color-dmd-on-white-water) mention to reseat the ribbon cables which I did, but that did not seem to have an effect.

Has anyone seen this before? Is there anything else I can do to try to resolve this, or is my only recourse to reconfigure the ColorDMD back to black/white?

I recorded some videos trying to highlight the issue. Here is one from the extra ball animation- note that there is flickering even when there is no animation going on - and that in this case only the red color is flickering (the others are stationary). I have noticed that in other animations, all colors seem to flicker, and/or the flickering does not always occur (e.g. in gumball release animation).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wZBKv6O7XbW4mzFtoODAdiMpIUd2rUeX/view?usp=share_link

slochar I don't think I have another ribbon cable around.

I've had this issue since day #1 that I got the ColorDMD - and did contact their support initially and was told something along the lines of frame matching algorithm doesnt always know how to recognize dynamic frames - which makes sense. I switched it to white only until now, so I had not really done a deep dive into this issue until I thought 'lets run it in color mode for a while'. Ive reached out to support again and see what they suggest to do to troubleshoot the issue.

Good to know that I'm not the only one seeing this problem. Just before the time I purchased the ColorDMD I had replaced the dmd board with an x-pin one, because the stock board had issues with the high voltage circuit (which resulted in a "vertically rolling dmd image"), and unfortunately I don't have another dmd board lying around. I don't see any mention of xpin dmd board incompatibilities mentioned on the ColorDMD website.

I wiggled all the ribbon cables around and it did not seem to affect the problem.

I did some more testing and saw that the "extra ball lit" message is all-white during the stationary part, but flickers with color during the transition part. It does look like there is something off with the dot-generation-timing-and/or-interpretation. I'll see what ColorDMD support will say about this.

ColorDMD support got back to me and identified the issue as being the X-Pin dmd controller board - it is not compatible with ColorDMD as it affects dot timing too much so that the frame recognition algorithm no longer can identify the incoming frame. Mystery solved.

Thanks everyone for all your comments/suggestions!