I thought I'd put together a separate topic to provide status of the development of my replacement Bally Squawk & Talk sound board. I can post here from time to time as I get games completed or need help from others.

Check out https://geeteoh.com/geeteoh/squawktalk.shtml for the latest list of games supported, videos, custom sound sets and how to email me to order one. I've got about 25 of these boards in the hands of S&T machine owners right now. The feedback has been pretty positive.

Right now it only works with Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man, Elektra , and Flash Gordon . I have Eight Ball Deluxe about done and Vector in the works as the 4th and 5th games. packie1 is nearby and is helping me with those games. He also lent me his Flash Gordon! Thanks packie1

Embryon will be the 6th game. I plan to see if rockwell is available to help me get that one finalized.

Centaur sounds have been recorded. And I'll be looking for a person willing to help in the southern Wisconsin or northern/central Illinois area.

The help I need is to test out my board in the actual machine. I need to find the start and end sound commands for the background sounds. This would include finding sounds for ball drain and end of game. I'd also want to see which sound is used in the attract mode so I can make that custom. I then record game play so that I can later test boards on the bench. If things go well, it's only about 2 hours and one trip. Eight Ball Deluxe is needing a new feature where the background sound is turned off or volume reduced when voices play (as an option). For that game, I'm needing a second visit to packie1

The embryon ROMs came in the mail today.

My replacement S&T board now supports EBD and Vector. I tested them out this weekend on packie1 machines. I'll update my website later tonight.

As with my other sound sets, EDB and Vector allow their background sounds to play continuously and not cut out when sounds or voices are played. EDB has an option though. There is a DIP switch setting on my board for MERGE. MERGE OFF will terminate sounds when others start as well as reduce the volume of the background sound to 1/4 of it's current setting when a voice comes in. It is subtle, but it allows the voice callouts to be better heard with the busy background sound. MERGE ON will allow sounds to continue (overlap) and leave the background at set power when voices are played. This option will only be for EDB.

Future work will be with Embryon. I recorded the sounds last night. And I will be going through them this week.

I'm going to be looking at Xenon. I have a customer who was able to put my replacement S&T board in his early Flash Gordon that had the Sounds Plus/Vocalizer board pair. It worked fine. So I suspect I can get Xenon to work too. Lucky for me, packie1 has a Xenon as well. I'll be working on that in the coming weeks.

My replacement Squawk & Talk sound board now works with Embryon . Thank you rockwell for allowing me to test the board on your awesome machine.

Xenon is next. As an option, I am also going to be offering a different shape board which will fit the mounting of the Sounds Plus board in the Xenon and early Flash Gordon machines. The circuit is identical, just the board is a different shape. This will make it much easier to mount my board into these machines.

I'm offering a different board shape of my replacement S&T sound board which fits the early Flash Gordon machines with the Sounds Plus / Vocalizer sound board pair. See my geeteoh.com website under Squawk and Talk to order one for your Flash Gordon. I gave the new board a first try in a Xenon machine last Sunday and it's mostly working! Give me a couple more weeks, and I can offer a version configured for Xenon owners.

https://geeteoh.com/geeteoh/soundsplus.shtml

I finished up the Xenon code. It works great and I'm offering it on my Sounds Plus / Vocalizer shape board as well as the S&T shape board. Most will probably use the Sounds Plus size board. The background tones come in really fast on Xenon. I had to revise the code a bit to handle the speed.

You can define a custom attract sound like many of my S&T games. This overrides the "Try Xenon" voice when a ball is not in play.

You can also define a custom repeating background WAV sound file. Just select sound bank 6. This sound bank will override the stock Xenon background tones used for the background. I will supply an example setup in bank 6 with my board. See (hear) this feature in the video below.

Sounds like an issue with the board. I will send a replacement.

11-23-21 (FOLLOW-UP) I replaced the "distorted" board. The replacement worked fine for the machine owner. I got the "distorted" sound board back for analysis. It was an issue with the MicroSD card. I had some issues with the quality of cheaper MicroSD cards and some not being fast enough. Since then, I have been using higher quality UHS-I Sandisk MicroSD cards.

I have added support to two more Squawk & Talk machines.

I have support now for Centaur/Centaur II machines. This was tricky as I wanted to make sure I included options for the reverb/echo board. I offer three ways to get the reverb/echo. (1) Use the standard "Say It Again" board connected into the J2 connector on my replacement sound board. Same as the stock one. (2) I'm offering a reverb/echo board and harness based on the PT2399 echo chip that also connects into the J2 connector. (3) Sound bank 3 has the a reverb/echo recorded right in the sound files. This way you just by-pass the external reverb/echo board all together. Centaur owners will get my version 5 board which has a physical jumper to send the sound out to the reverb/echo board. (older boards had a solder jumper) So Far, I have three of my Replacement S&T boards in the hands of Centaur owners.

I also have support now for Spectrum machines. This includes all the standard offerings. It has the stock 4 different phrases for the attract sound, including an option to override it with a custom sound. It has the other alternating sounds indicating which color or saucer to shoot for as well as the end game phrases. The board has been tested with success with a Spectrum owner.

I have Fantom in final testing. Medusa, Fireball II, and Rapid Fire are next. The final two will be a ways out - Eight Ball Champ, and Beat the Clock.

Is there anything else cooking? I've started looking at the AS-2518-50 board in the early Bally Star Trek. I actually was working on this before my replacement S&T board design. So far, I figured out how to decode the stock sounds as well as read the solenoids. But we'll leave the future details for a different thread. Thanks again packie1 for lending me yet another of your awesome machines.

Custom Star Trek sound board will hopefully be available towards the end of January.

In other news, Fathom is now available with my replacement Squawk & Talk board. Thanks Snowman .

See my webpage for current prices and machines supported for the Replacement Squawk & Talk board (as well as the Xenon Replacement Sounds Plus/Vocalizer). I'm thinking about raising prices about $20 in January to cover cost increases. The Custom Bally Star Trek Sound Board will be set the same price as the parts are about the same. Replacement Star Trek sound boards with only stock sounds are about half, but people would be purchasing mine for the custom sound options.

https://geeteoh.com/geeteoh/squawktalk.shtml

Medusa is next for my replacement Squawk & Talk board. Snowman has volunteered to help me as he has done with Fathom. Fireball II and Rapid Fire will follow.

The stock S&T FG board progresses through the 17 different backgrounds each time a sound or voice is played. When a sound or voice is commanded, the current background is stopped. Then when the sound or voice is complete, the next background is started. There are a couple of games which do this. For the other games I have recorded a little bit of each of the different backgrounds into one file and loop it. I can do this for FG, but I don't have all the backgrounds recorded. I have to go back and record them. I have my board configured for Medusa right now. It will take me about a month to get that one done so that I can re-record FG backgrounds.

Even with that, mine is not exactly like the original S&T. There are a couple of voices that alternate each time they are called, there are a couple of sounds that do this too - I didn't implement these. The stock board stops the background each time a sound or voice is played. Mine has the background continuously playing without stopping. There are also some small timing differences here and there depending on the sound sequence being played. To get the exact original sounds, I recommend getting your original board rebuilt.

No. I'm concentrating on only a couple of the early Bally sound boards.

I did that for Eight Ball Deluxe with my sound board. But only for the voices. It turns down the volume of the background a bit while playing voices. This is because the callouts where difficult to hear over the background and they are important to the game. Spectrum's callouts are also important, but the background is a lot quieter and you can hear the callouts over the background very well. Some games like Elektra have the background continously playing with the stock S&T board.

Yes. Saw your order for one configured for Flash Gordon. I will get it out today.

Centaur sound bank 4 is the best.

Update: I don't think I mentioned that my Replacement S&T board now supports both Spectrum and Medusa. Here is a video from Snowman for Medusa.

I plan to have Eight Ball Champ out for testing next week. I'm nearly done with that one. I have a Bally owner lined up to test Fireball II after that. I have the Rapid Fire ROM, so that will be coming soon as well. That just leaves the last S&T machine, Beat the Clock.

Try again. I had to make another Pay-Pal button for Medusa. I tried to make too many selections for the Pay-Pal button. Thanks for letting me know.

And... Thanks for testing out the FireBall II support. This game should be available for others to purchase shortly.

Having some issues to iron out. Hopefully it will be ready soon.

Thanks. Sent it out in the mail this morning. Let me know how it works for you.

Thanks for the feedback. Always nice to know the sound board works well for others. I purposely tried to make my manual look like the old Bally machine manual. Even tried to format the text the same. You're the first to comment on that.

Update: My replacement Squawk & Talk sound board now supports Eight Ball Champ, as well as the remaining three games - Fireball II, Beat the Clock, and Rapid Fire.

Check out my website: https://geeteoh.com