Looking to install a Pin2DMD display in your Data East? You have come to the right place.

Since I have been unable to find a spot with most of the answers I thought I'd document my own journey here.

I'm going to assume you have a Pin2DMD EVO panel in hand, either you had one built or participated in a group buy and its still un-activated and that is where we will start our trip.

1) Hook up a jumper wires to the 12V+ and Ground connector so that the panel will power up. No need to get fancy and use a PC power supply or tap off your pinball machine yet though you can do just that by skipping ahead to the power section. I actually used a spare 12v battery from a computer uninterruptible power supply. You could just as easy walk out to your car and stick some jumper wires on the car battery. With the car off. And mind your polarity.

3) After 3 minutes the display will display a serial number, jot it down.

4) Head to https://pin2dmd.com/installation/ and hit the donation button.

Have your serial number, forum board name and forum board. Fill in the blanks.

5) lucky1 will e-mail you a key.

Additional related info below:

1) You can activate, update firmware and make menu changes with computer software from pin2dmd.com and a USB cable. This isn't covered here since I activated with an SD card and already have the latest firmware.

2) This panel cannot be used with the half height DMD games like Hook, Checkpoint, TMNT and Batman.. When scrolling through options, I saw an option for 128 x 16 display which is due to common software being used.

Not covered here for obvious reasons though if someone wants to try installing on one of those games and post here I'm all for it.

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For the next step you are going to copy that key onto a micro-SD card, Fat or Fat32 formatted. I used a 512mb card that has been kicking around here for years. Don't rename the key, just copy over to the root directory.

Next obtain your color files, VPUniverse for example has some hosted.

https://vpuniverse.com/forums/files/category/102-pin2dmd-colorizations-real-pinball/

So now on your Micro-SD card you should have 3 files- The key file, a pin2dmd.fsq file and pin2dmd.pal file.

Pop the card back in the Micro-SD slot on the back of your panel and power it up. If you did everything correct, the serial number will no longer be displayed after 3 minutes.

While you are at this stage press and hold button one and tap the reset button. When the panel restarts you will now be in the menu. Go through the menu till you get to DEVICE MODE. Select and then flip through till you get to DATA EAST/SEGA. Leave it there and go back to the main menu till you get to save config and exit.

If you did everything right when the display reboots you will just have a blank or white screen after the PIN2DMD logo is displayed, this is normal as there is no input yet.

Please note: Once you mount the display into the frame you can't get the card out. So it's important to get your 3 files on the card and installed before mounting unless you like taking things apart more than necessary.

The next hurdle is mounting the display. Unfortunately the EVO panel is bulky in the front and you will have to space it out away from the clear panel. Toss the steel spacers in your spare parts bin and either make up spacers from nylon ones from your local hardware store or 3d print some.

Someone was kind enough to make up a spacer kit for 3d printing and uploaded the files, which is the route I took.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4553809

Use you spacers to install the EVO display, metal shield and DMD control board. When hooking the DMD control ribbon up to the EVO panel note that PIN1 is where the board is marked "J2" so on the DMD control board the red stripe should be at the number one position and at the EVO board the red stripe should be at the "J2" marking.

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Next hurdle. POWER.

To power the display were going to be running 12 volts for a few reasons. It can accept 5 volts but I'm told this can cause some visual anomalies as the panel wants to see 4.8 volts or so. I think the amp load at 5 volts is upwards of 5 amps which would really stress the power supply.

The EVO board has its own regulator for 12v to 5v operation which is the optimum configuration.

There is a few ways you can go about this, the easy one being to buy this adapter so you can power up with no mods.

https://shop.colordmd.com/data-east-power-adapter/

You could also directly tap into the wiring, which isn't the neatest way to go but its your pin.

I decided to take a path less traveled.

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Addition: Some people also use a 5v or 12v "wall wart" or power brick to drive the display, this would not be my first choice as it complicates things. For the average user the adapter that plugs in the power supply board is the safest and simplest solution.

So a few months back I picked up a Lethal Weapon 3 power supply that had issues... I was going to refurbish it for a spare and little did I know that factory schematic has a few errors.. which when plugged in blows out a surface mount chip and diode on the DMD display.

Most unfortunate.

I was able to repair the display and heaved the LW3 power supply on the self for another day. I got to thinking that since I was running an LED display on Star Wars that I really didn't need a high voltage section.. well the desoldering station got fired up and that was that.

Problem fixed. High voltage section can't malfunction if it isn't there.

So now I have a spare plasma DMD and spare power supply with good high voltage section.

Please note the connector still needs to be plugged in for the "high voltage" section at the power supply board as it carries 5V and ground to the DMD controller.

On my particular setup I'm grounding the EVO display on the ground plane of the board and the 12 V is tapped right off the fat trace linking all the large caps. For safety there is a blade style 3 amp fast blow fuse in the lead running to the display.

On the display end you can use the screw terminals to hook up power or a connector. My panel came with the push on connector and terminals so that is what I went with.

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If you did all that right you should be rewarded with glorious color operation when you start the pin up.

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If the local board does another group buy I might pickup one for LAH.

I inquired.

Prices of some chips have changed radically in the last year so will not even try and guess. I ordered this one a year ago and it took a few months to arrive and been sitting on my bench since.

I reached out and got a note he is working on another batch for mid- January delivery and inquired about price and quantity available.

Already asked for two for myself, LAH hurts my eyes sitting next to Star Wars and I have to do something about that. Jurassic Park would look sweet as well.

No problem.

He stated he had six available, I pretty much said I'd take them off his hands. I can use at least two.

I think the holidays are slowing things down as he is pretty busy, as soon as I hear something..

If you wish to sell units open a for sale ad and support Pinside please.