The ipdb.org has put the new opto carrier paper shroud template on the website, that I added text to:

https://www.ipdb.org/files/738/Bally_1992_Doctor_Who_Mini_Playfield_Opto_Bank_Paper_Cover_Template.pdf

So, no more confusion about the paper color I hope.

I just finished building new 5 OPTO LED boards from Victor (aka @dumbass). I also built his OPTO LED testers. Building the wiring and connectors next. This should make trouble shooting all the OPTOs in the game in the future. Plus it was a fun project!

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Those are amazing!

Hello club,

I got a question. When playing a proper game with a highscore and a loop record, my game only allows me to enter the highscore. Is this normal or do i have an outdated code. The thing is me and my friends are so into looping that we really don't care about highscores anymore

What I have experienced with the L2 (latest rom available), that if you get a higher score than is already recorded in the books 5 slots, you will be given an opportunity to add your initials. If you also exceed the loop record or the number of Davros multiballs, a second book will follow and allow you to enter the one slot and it replaces the previous entry.

That is how it has worked for me.

My machine is on L1 code.
Are there any advantages to having L2 code for CPU and Audio?

Yes, you should always try to have the latest code.

Dr. Who Pinball Software Revision Information
U6: Version L-2
Checksum: 4002
Date: November 10, 1992

Changes from revision L-1:
Minor preset adjustment changes for France and Germany.
Autocycle burn-in now fires popper 20 times to prevent early
fatigue, and the mini-playfield will cycle only if coin door
is closed and the playfield glass switch is closed.

The changes are minor and don't really affect me, but because there is a safety improvement to the MP, then it is a necessary upgrade.

I agree.

https://www.pinballrom.com/product-page/doctor-who-cpu

probably dont need the sound roms:

https://www.pinballrom.com/product-page/doctor-who-sound

I was today years old when I found out this existed. If it was in the US I’d be all over it for next to my pin

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I'm making progress refurbishing my Dr Who (just removed the trashed mylar, a lot of cleaning, adding LED's etc). In the process I pulled the Time Expander for the first time today, and found some odd wiring. The 6 pin connector has this black wire that goes no where (I think it has light brown banding). It appears to connect to the pin just right of the missing pin in the molex connector in the first picture. Anyone know what this is supposed to connect to?

There's also this patch job in the second picture where at some point the yellow/green striped wires where soldered together. They are all the same color, but is there any problem with this?

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First congrats on tackling a wiring job on Dr. Who. I am on my second one right now and understand some of your issues. While tackling my first rebuild last year, I did not find a good wiring diagram in the manual for the MPF. So, I documented one for myself. I labeled each connector with a letter and wrote down the colors and amount of wires coming in and out of each connector. I took pictures for you also. Lets tackle the easy one first.

4 Pin Connector (there are two of them).

The first one is a connector to the top plastic cover of the MPF that goes to the lights (red dome and light in front of it).
Blub socket with #94 bulb has 2 wires - Yellow/Green stripe and Red/Gray band.
Bulb socket with #906 bulb has 2 wires - Black/Brown and Red/White strip.
This 4 pin connector attaches to a female connector that has the same wires, but has a two Yellow/Green stripes coming into it, as it daisy chains to the Lock lamps on the MPF wood.

The second 4 pin connector runs from the above wires and connects to the PF harness has the following wires:
Red/Violet band, Red/Gray, Red/Violet stripe and Yellow/Green Stripe.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the hard one. That 6 pin connector with a black/brown wire in your picture. This is the connector to your coils and has 5 wires going to it.
1. Violet/Yellow stripe to right coil
2. Red/White stripe
3. Violet/silver stripe to both coils
4. Violet/Green stripe to left coil
5. Black/Brown stripe

There should be a matching connector on your PF.

Hope this and the pictures help.

Chris
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Bacondaddy in addition that Black wire with brown stripe traces back to connector 125-1 on the power board in the back box.

Trashed, hacked, missing wires, time expander a total piece of crap?

Welcome "Time Lord" lol

Thanks very much for the pics Tophervette . That black/violet one must be my mystery wire -- any idea what it connects to on the MPF? It must be supposed to power something if it traces back to the power board in the back box.

I mis-typed and corrected original post, it is a Black with Brown stripe (probably ground) that starts at 125-1 on the Power Board and goes in the grey harness directly to that 6 pin connector. From the connector under the MPF it connects to that 4 pin connector going to the lights in the top plastic of the MPF. From the 4 pin connector it goes to the flasher socket under the red dome. you can see the same wire in my first picture.

Ah, that makes sense! Pretty much everything was working on the MPF in terms of game function, but I noticed in the testing before I started taking everything apart the flasher was not working. If that's a missing ground connection to the flasher that would do it...

I can't quite tell from that first picture which pin in the four pin connector it's supposed to go to, but when I get home tonight I'll try to make sense of it. Thanks for the pointers!

Don't Blink!

I know how you love to be schooled.

Those Molex housings have pins that are numbered. As the housing is not a straight line it is actually marked on the housing itself. It's VERY hard to see and also VERY hard to capture as a digital image. You need bright light and a magnifying glass if you suffer from presbyopia.

• Molex 0.062" 6-pin male housing.01_molex_0062_6p_m.jpg
• Molex 0.062" 6-pin female housing.02_molex_0062_6p_f.jpg
• Molex 0.062" 4-pin male housing.03_molex_0062_4p_m.jpg
• Molex 0.062" 4-pin male and female housings (side view).04_molex_0062_4p_b.jpg

This is your (wires out-of-focus) image annotated with the pin numbers.

05_dw_mpf_solenoid_6p.jpg

1. VIO-YEL (+50V solenoid power).
2. RED-WHT (+20V flasher power).
3. VIO-YEL (solenoid #4 drive).
4. VIO-GRN (solenoid #5 drive).
5. BLK-BRN (solenoid #17 drive).
6. N/C or key

Guideline rules:

1. Wires are always ordered from higher voltage to lower voltage (conventional current).
2. Wires supplying power are grouped together before drive wires.
3. Wires are always ordered in BRN/RED/ORG/YEL/GRN/BLU/VIO/GRY.
4. N/C or key is not always required because mating of housings is keyed.
5. Housing on harness side is almost (but not) always FEMALE. Housing on assembly side is almost (but not) always MALE.
6. Wire colors usually match on both sides but do NOT have to match. Solid colors may be used on assembly side.
7. Wire gauge on assembly side is almost (but not) always 22AWG.

I love being schooled, esp. by you! LOL.

I put on my triple magnifying headband and looked at the 6 socket connector on the playfield that comes from the main wiring harness, as shown in my blurry, out of focus picture that you numbered. Unfortunately, the old connectors do not have numbers stamped anywhere on them. I looked at several original ones. I agree, the new connectors I have bought do have numbers.

As always, you know stuff, that some of us are just learning.

pres·by·o·pi·a

/ˌprezbēˈōpēə,ˌpresbēˈōpēə/
Learn to pronounce
noun
farsightedness caused by loss of elasticity of the lens of the eye, occurring typically in middle and old age.

schooled twice!

Hmmmmmm…I see what you’re saying. Sorry it was there and I couldn’t help myself. I need to keep my focus.

Where are my damn glasses now. I can't even read this post and I know its about me.

Guess what I'm about to shoehorn in....

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I see some strange looking boards and a couple unfamiliar cables. So it is not a color DMD or a Pinsound+, or a shaker? So what could it be? GI LED boards?

Scorebit. Think insider connected for WPC games.

You are correct sir.

It worked pretty much right out of the box after installing it. Now I'll play around with it and see what all it can do....before I take the entire machine up to the Bank of Pinball and turn it loose.
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That will be fun.

Are there a lot of Doctor Who games running on Scorbit?

Ive been toying with it on my Hobbit and WOZ.

Wait - What??? Scorebit costs $300 plus $40.70 a year subscription for collectors in your home use game? Mind Blown!

How much does it cost?
Scorbit is a SaaS/tiered model with two account types: Operators and Collectors, both of whom pay less per unit with an increased volume of units (volume discounts). Operators pay per machine/per month, and Collectors pay per household/per month. Subscriptions are also tiered based on volume. For current pricing, click here.

Yea, I'd likely not buy one if it was just for my personal machine. But this Who will be moving up to our Bank of Pinball in the near future so it'll be an experiment with offering the new tech on the old machine.

My goal is to have all the tournament games at Pincinnati retrofitted with scorebit at some point. You can grab the scoring and put it on the stream so you always know the scores during a game. When you look up a tournament match online, it not only tells you the game and matchup, but current score as well. Very very cool.

Scorbit. Think insider connected but for hundreds of all solid state, dmd and lcd games (including Spike 2) instead of Stern's paltry 22? 23? game support.

We also have Karl's DTM software integration as well as MatchPlay!

And indeed, Tophervette is correct -- there's a broken connection in this 4 pin molex connector going to the lights at the top of the MPF. Looks like I'll have to either repair this connection or finally learn how to pin and make a new connector. Been meaning to learn how to do that, this is probably a good opportunity. I'll have to pick up some collection of connectors like this.

Thanks for the help!

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Unless the plastic shell is physically broken there is no need to replace that. You just need to replace the bad pins. If you own a pinball machine it is worth investing in a good crimping tool and the pin extractor. The old pin should pop out. Crimp a new pin on the wire and put it back in the shell.

So, I finally was able to try a PinSound Plus board in Dr Who. So far unfortunately it is a bit of a disappointment. The only sound pack that seems to work well is the original one. The rest have the background music but you can barely hear the call outs. I didn't see a setting just to boost those up. Also one sound pack seemed to act erratic. I just ordered a new 16GB USB 3.1 drive and will reload the sound packs one at a time on that one to see if it helps.

This is installed in place of the original sound board with the original speakers and wiring. I had no issues with the original sound board or speakers. Just wanted to try the upgrade for the alternative sound packs to make the game fresh again.

When it was first installed I loaded the latest firmware on the USB stick and let it update to the most recent firmware. Then one at a time put each of the sound packs I wanted to load. I read it could use up to seven so I loaded the ones that looked the best.

Below is the log file from the USB stick. I'm using a 64GB USB 3.1 stick.

-= PinSound Self Diagnosis =-

HARDWARE MODEL
------------------
PLUS

HARDWARE REVISION
------------------
3.8

HPS EXTERNAL VOLUME
------------------
97%

INTERNAL FIRMWARE REVISION
------------------
0084

PACKAGES
------------------
Doctorin_the_Tardis_V1.1
Doctor_Who_13_Doctors_V1.3
Doctor_Who_2JCmix (active)
Doctor_Who_Disco
doctor_who_meets_metal_v1
Doctor_Who_Modern_V1.0
Doctor_Who_Original

PINSOUND FIRMWARE VERSION
------------------
22.04.1

POTENTIOMETERS
------------------
EQ SUB BASS 56%
EQ BASS 46%
EQ MEDIUM 48%
EQ TREBLE 44%
SUB BOOSTER 55%
HEADPHONES STATION GAIN 58%

POWER SUPPLIES
------------------
5V MEASURED: 4825mV (expected range: 4700mV - 5100mV)
[lowest 5V measured: 4755mV / highest 5V measured: 4865mV]

AMPLIFIER VOLTAGE MEASURED: 25253mV (expected range: 11000mV - 30000mV)
[lowest amplifier voltage measured: 24180mV / highest amplification voltage measured: 25710mV]

SERIAL NUMBER
------------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

SYSTEM
------------------
WPC89

USB DEVICES
------------------
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 090c:2000 Silicon Motion, Inc. - Taiwan (formerly Feiya Technology Corp.)

I'm hoping there is a simple explanation or re-doing the sound packs fixes the issue.

try using this drive:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-16GB-Ultra-Flash-Drive/dp/B077Y149DL/ref=sr_1_5

I buy them buy the 5 pack:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Low-Profile-SDCZ430-016G-G46-Everything-Stromboli/dp/B07C4J689T/ref=sr_1_8

There shouldnt be too much editing on the original classic mix and the 13 doctors 1.3 mix, the 13 doctors is normalized pretty good. But I upgraded the speakers to flipper fidelity with separate stereo cable and sub and they have more power.

Some USB sticks work weird and Pinsound is sensitive on the 5v power line, thats why its monitored. Yours might be a hair low but looks within the acceptable range.

Try this boot.wav file by adding to the root of your audio folder:

https://www.pinsound-community.org/index.php?/files/file/382-doctor-who-startup-bootwav/

You can do a simple gain adjustment in the pinsound studio on all the music in a particular orchestration with the global volume control:

https://www.pinsound.org/products/pinsound-studio-pro/

I have :

Doctorin the tardis
13 doctors 1.3
Original classic
Modern mix

Pinballgoddess is a fan of the show and mostly runs the 13 doctors 1.3 mix.

All are running and are very playable but there are volume differences between them and need adjustment as I change them over, but they dont need drastic editing to use them.

My coin door volume is pretty good at 7 or so, but I have EQ'd the pinsound knobs a lot to get it sounding good.

Adding the shaker really modernized my game a lot.

I also upgraded to stereo wires and Flipper Fidelty speakers with Pinsound+. I have no trouble hearing or understanding the callouts. I had trouble with the USB Dongle I tried using at first. I also made the mistake of UNZIPPing the files first. The Pinball machine has to do that unzipping. Some of the sound tracks like Metal/Disco/Rush/Hendrix have whole songs instead of just repeating samples. They take way longer to load initially.

I am also a fan favorite of 13 Doctors, as I can visualize the character saying those things from the show. Thanks for the effort that went into that.

I didn't unzip anything. Just copied over each ZIP file one at a time and let the board extract all the files. I have a new USB stick due tomorrow and will try again.

Yeah, different USB sticks do weird things.

After trying all the different ones I have ( more than a dozen now) I arrives at the little sandisk USB 3.1 high speed one.

Its the best most consistent drive of the bunch and boots flawlessly on my Doctor Who and Funhouse.

But I had my driver boards and CPU re-capped and bulletproofed by Chris Hibler.

My 5v is always really close to 5v or a little over.

I have one of those little SanDisk USB 3.1 thumb drives on the way. Will see if that helps.

Really doubt that any of the other boards would be a factor here. I had rebuilt the original MPU years ago when I got the game and eventually went through and recapped the original sound card. Game has been totally rock solid except for a bad trough switch.

I’ve rebuilt plenty of WPC board sets but my Dr Who has never given me a reason to pull the driver and would be surprised if it is making the PinSound board act up. The only game that did have driver issues was my STTNG but that is running well now. I have a couple spare original clean driver boards that I rebuilt and bulletproofed that I could swap in for a test but will try that if nothing else helps.

Same problem here. None of the sound packs were balanced. Nothing against the guys who created them and I know I could go in the software to edit them. However I'm on a mac and that's not an option unless I load windows. I went ahead and put the original sound board back in my game.

Your voltage seems to be within range, so its probably not too big of an issue.

Maybe another USB stick will help.

I wonder if the sound sets are ok and it is mainly due to the original speakers instead of an upgraded set?

As far as balancing the sounds to make the call outs, etc louder is that done by the Pinsound utility to alter a config file or do each of the sound assets need to be adjusted? May be better to just reduce the volume of the background music and maybe the rest would be ok.

Better speakers are certainly clearer and more powerful, and can give you better separation and deeper bass.

Having discreet subwoofer control helps a lot, instead of just balancing the cab and backbox levels.

I always put them in, but you can only expect so much from the low quality source files.

I find no real difference between "Flipper Fidelity" or Pinball Pro" speakers soundwise. But Flipper fidelity is easier to install and has more of a turn-key solution with simple easy to install wiring and wooden adapters. For a little more money they give you a lot more.

Pinsound cards give you quite a bit of control to make the most out of the sound, for what it is.

Download and install Pinsound studio.

you will see that the game is broken down into 4 sections only.

Its pretty straightforward to adjust an entire section rapidly then let the pinsound card re-initialize it when you reinstall the USB stick into the game.

Individual call outs and sound effects can also be adjusted if needed.

One can spend hours or minutes adjusting the orchestrations.

I spent quite a bit of time on the 12 and 13 doctors mixes to get them normalized and balanced.

there are still a few things to fix but they are ok for now. Its a work in progress.

Found one! I’m joining the club later this month with a pretty nice example with a very nice playfield. Cab is faded. I found a set of decals for the cab that look most true to the original colors, and they claim to be. So we shall see. This will be my next restoration project. Comes with color DMD. I’ll probably powder coat the rails. It has an original moving topper, which I’m not familiar with. Is that an unusual feature? Can’t wait to get started on the Doctor!

Couple pics of ralphwiggum ’s lenticular cards installed. They look good.

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