Some of you may have been following the major rewrite and DMD conversion I have been working on for my F14 Tomcat "Second Sortie" project.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/f14-tomcat-second-sortie-information-and-on-going-development

For a number of reasons I've had almost no "me" time for a number of months so that's been slow progress. I've always wanted to do a simpler conversion on my Flight 2000 (keeping the original displays and just extending the software and sounds). The P-ROC won't talk to these early Bally / Stern machines (without a lot of new hardware to interface it), so I never got to look too far into it.

Then lo and behold Jim (applejuice / myPinballs) announces he's working on a custom controller for this kind of vintage.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/mypinballs-custom-pinball-controller-for-ballystern-games

This thread will be for following along with how this project goes. I'm hoping things quieten down and both F14 and F2K get some progress made soon, but F2K will be an easier project as the rules are nowhere near as complex, plus I don't have to think about DMD effects and so on.

So Jim sells this controller as a kit, or ready built. I was in a hurry (my wife is away this weekend) and Jim was going away on vacation and wouldn't have had time to build me a set, so I opted for the kit. So, after unpacking the box I'm ready to start soldering...

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Checking a few components, even with my glasses on I can't read the numbers on that little capacitor....

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After a few hours....

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Now although I've been familiarising myself with the Arduino-based coding framework for this controller, I've not had time yet to start putting together something for Flight 2000. Yet I still want to give the boards a quick run. So I installed them, but only connected up the lamp drivers for the moment.

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I uploaded the code to each of the 3 Arduinos (one acts as a master running the main game code, one handles multi channel sound and the other handles the displays). The game code I uploaded was Jim's example from his High Voltage game (which was a retheme of a Future Spa). That code boots into an attract mode, so I figured if just the lamps were connected at least we can see what happens.

So, power on...... and the displays come up....

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Now they look a little odd. But they were a somewhat hokey even with the original MPU board in, so I probably need to chase down some connector issues. But they're displaying values, which means the display Arduino is doing it's job.

And the lamps?

So that's it for today. Tomorrow I need to look at the sound connections, as F2K has that odd sound / speech board combo and I don't think it'll hook right up. Then I'll take a look at the displays and try to straighten them out.

After that I need to start the coding side - I can't connect up solenoids etc until the code is safe enough to do so...

More to come......

Mine is one of these..... it tests caps, resistors, diodes, transistors. There are a bunch of different ones out there, take your pick

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271957049755

With this setup adding a DMD isn't possible. To be honest, that's why I decided to do it - keeping the original displays makes things easier, and I already have a "hard" project with my F14.

Initially I'm going to code up the game to play the original rules. That way I don't have to think too hard and it'll be a great way to get used to the programming framework.

For the future, I'm thinking around different options with the ball lock. We could speed up game play some by keeping a ball staged in the final ball position at the top of the playfield, so if a ball goes up the left lane to the locks, the staged ball could be kicked out right away to continue the game (assuming you don't want the ball to remain locked).

I'd like to have time for both

2015 has been a pretty terrible year so far. Over the next couple of months I think we'll finally be getting back to normal again, then I'll have some more time (and enthuisiasm) for pinball

I'm planning all new. F2K isn't exactly blessed with a stunning array of sounds, and the speech although good for it's day grates after a while. If I can get the ball lock staging a ball like I want, it'll remove some of the stop/go that it suffers a little from at the moment, lending itself to some fast pace background music.

So, had a little time today to continue checking out my setup. My first test (in the video from the first post above) highlighted that some lamps were not flashing in attract mode. Now I'm still running Jim's code from his High Voltage game, so lamps/coils/switches don't really tie up with F2K, so I adjusted his code a little to include all the lamps. That fixed a few of them, but I was still left with a bunch that weren't working.

Counted the ones that were out. 15. Hmm. These early machines from Bally and Stern have the lamps driven in 4 groups of 15. Got out my trusty logic probe and one of the driver chips was dead in the water. Pulled the board to take a look and realised it must have been a long day when I did all the soldering.

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The whole driver IC was only soldered via 2 pins which I'd done when originally tacking the sockets in place. So I soldered the remaining ones and also fixed a missed pin on the SD card holder. Now all the lamps are running

Display issue was indeed a wiring problem, need to re-pin the connector sometime.

I've now connected all the solenoids, switches and lamps up to the new boards. Speaker connection is a little goofy, but by turning the Stern connector backwards and just mounting it on the end 2 pins of Jims board it connects fine. I had to cut a few cable-ties to release a little extra give in the backbox, but everything is now connected up.

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So with everything connected, I decided to run Jim's High Voltage code as-is, just to see what happens. It's kinda (very) odd, as all the code is wrong for this machine, but it does go into attract mode and play music and some sounds. It's not too smooth as it's getting quite confused as all the coils/lamps/switches/sounds are for a different machine, but that's code not hardware.

So now I need to copy the HV code and start turning it into F2K15 code. But I'm confident that the hardware side is up and running now.

Not a stupid question, my wife asks me the same but normally leaves out the word "fascinating"

I first want to implement the original F2K game rules. Partly because they're already quite good, and partly as a great way to learn the coding framework without needing to think too hard about new rules and things.

After that I want to make some additions.

Multiball is really hard to get, but the reward for getting there isn't great. If you lock a ball during multiball it just sits there, so it's easy for multiball to end without actually have done anything. I'm thinking here of maybe some kind of jackpot shot or combo which can only be scored during multiball.

Having the balls staged in the locks will also make the game flow more quickly - instead of having locked balls in the "walker", they could be moved right across ready to be launched back into play more quickly when needed.

Better sounds and some good background music

I'm sure I'll think of some more as we go!

So I finally managed to get a quiet day for this project and I'm pleased with the progress.

I have all the switches, lamps and coils numbered and mapped properly now and some very basic rules in place. So now I can start a game, hitting the various rollover switches will spot the letters in "BLASTOFF" as they should. I have the right hand drop target bank resetting when all three have been hit, the flippers and jet bumpers and 4 slingshots are responding as they should and scoring a few points. So it's playing a very basic 3 ball game, with ballsave.

Mapping the coils and lamps was a fairly long winded process, not helped by the Stern manual grouping things in a wacky order and having some mistakes in, but now they're squared away we're good.

I'm going to continue working on this as a single ball game at the moment, to continue getting familiar with the framework and fleshing out the easy parts. Once that's done I need to chew on adding code to handle the 3 balls along with the locking mechanism.

So all in all very happy with the way things are going. Thanks to Jim for letting me bounce questions and comments off him during the day! Here's a fairly rubbish video just showing that the game starts up, flippers and slings and BLASTOFF rollovers are working and the game going back into attract mode after the last ball. The eagle eyed among you will see the match number being played out at the end on the display too.

So, after a long pinball-programming absence, got some time to unearth my F2K and spend some more time on it. I've now got the handling of both the bonus and the bonus multiplier dialled in. The right drops increase the multiplier. Also got the initial handling of the BLASTOFF rollovers done, when you've got all of them in place the top left lane lamps strobe. At the moment the game is still single-ball, so if you shoot the ball into the lock lane top left it'll just be walked through and ejected. Jim's new 'readHold' method is great for this as it allows the ball to settle on the switch for a short time before action is taken.

This video shows most of the above, it's a bit rubbish but you get the idea.

Next up will be bedding in of the trough code so that we can make this a multiball game. Also there are a few things on the hardware side (of the machine, not Jim's boards) that need some adjusting. Got a couple of bulbs out and the display connectors need repinning.....

Spent some more time today getting the ball trough code roughed in. In a single ball machine, when the ball drains you know the ball is over. In a game with more than one ball, the ball being over is determined by a combination of how many balls are in the trough along with how many are currently sitting in locks.

So this video shows a first pass at a simple multiball, just to check the basic handling. When you shoot a ball into the top left lane, the ball will be 'walked' over to the right hand lock position. When it arrives there, it waits and then ejects a second ball into the shooter lane. When you launch that second ball and it hits a rollover switch for the first time, the locked ball is ejected and multiball runs. I have the BLASTOFF letters strobing when the game knows multiball is running. After the first ball drains, you can see multiball is over (strobing stops) but the ball does not end. Draining the last ball completes the ball and the bonus count is done.

The multiball and trough logic will be different in the final version, but this proves that the basic idea is sound.

Hi Paul,

readHold probably isn't what you need here. It works the same as read, but only calls the related handler if the switch has been held down for more then 250ms. Gives a ball chance to settle down before being spotted.

Jim is in the process of setting up some channels on 'slack' to start discussing code snippets and other ideas. Once you're setup on there, post away and we'll see what we can do. Or Jim will

I think I might make this a 4 ball game, although maximum in play will still be 3. If I leave a ball staged permanently in the kickout lane that feeds the top lanes, then we can run games with a bit less/stop start. So if you shoot a ball into the lock lane but locks aren't lit yet, then instead of waiting for the ball to walk it's way through the locks and back into play, you could kick one out right away and the re-stage the one that just went up the lane. You could also maintain a multiball for longer too. Hmm.

It's a 3 ball game. I just want to add an extra one (maybe) and keep it staged in the lock to make things run more quickly..

Away from home for Christmas until the New Year, so I'm busy cutting code but can't test any of it beyond checking that it compiles OK. I think I've now got all the original code features done apart from the proper multiball handling which will be my next job.

The way locks are handled and lit is quite complicated, but I've downloaded the F2K table on Pinball Arcade, and using the Pro setting you can control the ball (aka cheating) and it's a great way to work out what the shots/sequences are. I can probably use it to capture all the sounds/speech effects for some more "original" sounding gameplay too, before I work on some new ones.

I've also made a couple of changes to the base code (and mentioned it on our 'slack') to store the high score in nvram on the Arduino, so it's held over between power-ons. We should be able to use this to store a bunch of other settings too, where at the moment they're kinda hard-coded.

Having fun

So, I'm about done, I think the code I have covers about 90% of the original Stern gameplay. The other 10% will be some fettling once I get back home and try running this for the first time. Now I'm going to spend some time commenting the code so it'll be easier for others to see what's going on.