Good find! If that were my burnt power supply, I'd install the better one you found and chuck the burn one in the scrap pile in case I wanted to salvage some component from it, but otherwise, it's trash.

Still have 7 back-up (replacement) SSD disk drives pre-loaded with 1.02 software. $45 shipped to US. If your computer won't boot, just take the plexi cover off (4 screws) take 1 screw out of the drive and swap them out. I probably won't make any more at this point since I sold all the extra computers I had.

4 left

Anyone know the pinout of the individual leds for Alien? I would like to try and build a test rig. Soldering them is definitely a PITA

I found them relatively easy to solder after making a solder rig out of a foam pad, specifically a harbor freight carpet slider. Used that to hold the pins and then set the led on them and soldered away.

To test, I just swapped them into the single lamp base green bord on the left of the playfield (unscrewed it from the bottom of the PF). You can swap them out to test while the game is on.

61FE3E5C-C71F-42C3-9A2B-53C52B9B6B8C (resized).jpeg

I thought about using foam, but didn't want to get any residue on the pins from the heat. Currently using a wood block. Sold the game, so I don't have an easy test rig...

Still have 2 facehuggers left at 55 each and 2 set of 4 sling lamp boards 35 each set. Down to 4 preloaded 1.02 alien SSD replacement drives at $40 each.

facehuggers sold
1 set of sling lamps left
2 preloaded ssd drives for alien left

only 1 ssd left

everything is sold

Anyone have any face huggers / leds / io boards or any other parts?

https://www.free-play.se/search/alien

PinBackpacker probably has IO boards for sale here in the states too

But maybe its cheaper to order in Europe ... I bought from him and everything was finde but I payd nearly 100 Euro more than later on in Sweden.

Digging through my stuff and found a set of beacons I had ordered with the quiet belt drive. 12V rotating beacons. $30 gets my money back and I'll pay the shipping.

Sold

My Full Throttle that's been working fine for the six months or so that I've had it has just quit booting up. I did nothing to prompt this, it just failed to boot one day. I get an error on the playfield display that says "ERROR: Failed to Install Updates!". It was already running v1.41 code when I got it, so I've never tried to do an update. Anyone have any suggestions on where to start? Should I just make a new SDCard image and try that first?

Thanks in advance for the help,
Dave

P.S. Happy New Year!

Well I tried to make a new SD card for my Full Throttle using the zip file I downloaded, but it didn't work. Anyone have an image that's been tested and works?

Thanks. That looks similar to what's on my USB thumb drive. I believe what I need is a good ISO image of the SD card that's in the Utilite.

I tried updating the files on the USB drive and rebooting, but I still got the same error. So I suspect either my SD card image is corrupted, or the Utilite may have a problem.

Managed to get a new sd card image to boot, but then it had other problems. It seemed like IO boards weren't working right. I started updating the code on the IO boards. Several went OK then on one of them, the machine locked up during the update. Now that IO board is not detected at all. Does anyone know how to restore an IO board with corrupt code? Does anyone have a replacement IO board?

If anyone wants to get on the list for a new/replacement computer for alien (drop right in includes memory and ssd loaded with software), let me know. I'd like to get another 4 people to make the order so I can turn them for $375 each again.

Scott

I'd be in if it worked on Full Throttle

maybe we can figure that one out as well...

I would also be in if we can get it working on Full Throttle.

Does anyone know if you can replace a version 1.3 IO board with version 1.4B?

I would also be in if it will work on Full Throttle.

Count me in for one of those as well, please

Me too please. Utilites can be made to boot from USB, TFTP, SSD, etc but a pain in the foot.

PinChatt, re your I/O board there is an avrdude.conf baked into the the FT Yocto image. It has references only to to the PIC32MX795F512, which is the heart of these boards, so perhaps PICKit 3.5 would help to read the state of the polyfuses, or wipe the PIC32 and stick fresh code on, although I would think there are avrdude logs to be found. You can login to the Utilite by plugging in a USB keyboard or SSH. User is root with no password.

Another theory is a busted FTDI231x USB-I/O chip, I'm looking at PIC32 hex now and it shows USB VBUS offloaded to the this little chip. You can easily test it with with software available on FTDIchip site and connecting the the USB cable from the I/O to your laptop but the board will need power from the game.

Put me on the list.

Got enough people to get parts ordered

shaneo, thanks for the tips. I figured there was some way to reload the firmware on the IO board outside of the machine. I was hoping to find someone who has already done this that can help walk me through it. If I'm able to do it, I'll post some instructions to help out other people that are trying to keep the Heighway pinballs working.

Still waiting to hear if anyone has replaced version 1.3 IO boards with the 1.4B version. Has anyone tried this on a Full Throttle?

So this is a backup in case the original goes bad at some point? Has that been a problem with FT?

I have no idea on ft, just had people ask if someone could make some to have as spares

AFAIK, no one at the company ever tested FT with the new computer. But it worked for me without any issues. In fact since I didn't have an ALIEN for the longest time, many of the generic code changes were actually tested on my FT before being ported to ALIEN.

I believe when we finally released 1.0, the FT code was stripped out of the ALIEN image. A new ALIEN-style package for FT was created and never released. I'll bring this up to the current ownership and see what they think about releasing this. The Utilite-style update packages won't work for sure on the new CPU.

Any info about the new/old hardware will help me see if I can source a replacement spare for FT.

Scott

bcd, do you happen to know if the version 1.4B IO boards will work in FT that originally had version 1.3 boards?

Can't say for sure. They are code compatible, but I'm not sure what the hardware differences are. I suspect some of the changes were made due to the higher power requirements on ALIEN. I haven't tried it.

Thanks. Do you know anything about loading firmware onto the IO boards using a PC? I've got one board that I believe has corrupted firmware. The game froze while updating the IO board. After restarting, that IO board is blinking the amber WARN LED and is no longer recognized by the game.

Be careful messing with these IO boards. I killed the bootloader on one of mine when messing with it on the weekend and have the warn led also, however when I open a term to the Utilite and run Avrdude, it sees the board, and when I connect the PicKit and read, the IO's info led blinks so all seems OK, and all that's needed is a new bootloader via programmer.U

IO updates definitely invoke Avrdude. The update package installer freewpc_1.41-r0_armel.deb contains "Reopening %s %s -C %s -p32MX795F512L -cstk500v2 -P %s -b %u 2>&1 avrdude /etc/avrdude.conf dude %s cmdline %s .
The programmer in /etc/avrdude.conf is hardly likely to work but I'm not sure where the override is, or if it's just using avrftdi or nix gpio. If the bootloader is shot this doesn't matter anyhow and it needs to be erased and re-progg'd.

Where's Romain when you need him?

Be aware .100 pin holes on the boards near the 4 way dip switch do not connect to the PIC32's MCLR, nor do the data and clock pins.

I'll get to my board on the weekend and accurately document the procedure.

shaneo,

Thanks for the info. I'm confident that together we can get a handle on these IO boards and put some documentation up that will help others in the same boat.

I'm approaching this with the boards out of the machine powered by a bench power supply. You only need to supply 5 volts to work with the PIC. Right now I only have the version 1.3 boards from my FT.

I've ordered the PicKit 3 but while I was waiting I started looking into this a little more.

Are you sure the 0.1" header does not connect to the ICSP pins on the PIC32? I traced it visually last night and convinced myself that they do. There are actually 2 sets of clock and data pins (PGECx and PGEDx) on this version of PIC32. I didn't trace the /MCLR pin all the way back to the chip, but it did tie to a resistor under the reset button. It sure looks like the pinout matches the PicKit pinout to me.

If you are not using the header pins, how did you connect the PicKit? Did you solder wires on the board?

What boot loader code are you using?

My plan was to attempt to read the code from a working board then flash a copy of it to the non-working board. Of course that all depends on the code protection bit not being set. The backup plan was to try and find the code in the Yocto image. Maybe you've found it already?

If you connect a working board to a PC by USB and power it externally
, you can use a serial terminal to interact with the board. Baud rate is 115200. I've found a few commands the board will respond to and echo back information. The board that is flashing the WARN LED does not respond at all (at least to the few commands that I know of).

You said running Avrdude on the Utilite that you could see the board with a flashing WARN LED? That surprised me, but that also is a good sign that there may be a way to recover a board in that state while it's still in the game.

I'll post more soon.

PinChatt, the ICSP pins do indeed connect to 25&26 on the PIC. My bad.
I haven't figured a bootloader yet, but connected the Pickit this morn however MPLAB IPE saw the Pickit but said no 3.3V on VDD & VSS.
Can you share your term cmds please? I'll take another look tonight.

Can now get MPE IPE to see VDD & VSS with dip switch 1 on, however "unable to read device ID". Will set logging to "finest" and retest.

With dip switch 2 off, ICSP pin 1 - pic pin 13 (/MCLR) is 50K ohm, switch on it's 1.8K ohm. Forget to check voltages.

shaneo, Nice work! I'm still waiting for my PicKit. I haven't had time yet this week to work on it any more. The two commands I remember off the top of my head are RST and VER. RST will reset the board and VER will echo back version info. I was going to experiment and see if I could discover other commands. There should be some commands to fire coils and to set the LED light outputs. There should also be some way to read the switch inputs.

If we can look at the firmware file with a hex editor, it's likely that we can see some of the ASCII text of the command and response structure.

Were you able to find the IO board firmware file in the Yocto image? It must be contained in there somewhere.

Can't seem to get the Pickit doing what I want it to.
Board on bench, 5V applied, dip switch 1 on, have nice 3.3V on VDD, /MCLR is low.
Drive /MCLR high breifly via dip switch 2, when low again send cmd to enter prog mode, drive high again and not in prog mode.
Can't see anything in the .hex. It's compiled .c.
Just looked at some routines from "the other game", it also uses avrdude to talk/update IO's. Does however use STKv2 as prog. Will try with it's .conf

No ... thank you !! :neener:Good to know that this is possible !!

building computers today for alien...

IMG_0063 (resized).JPG

Have 2 more pre-loaded ssd replacement drives for alien - if your ssd goes out, just take out one screw and drop the replacement in. $40 + shipping

Scott

shaneo, Great work! I'm glad you were able to figure out a way to recover the IO board. I finally did get my Pickit, but haven't had a chance to use it yet. Since you came up with a way to do this from Windows, I think I'll try your method first. At some point, I will try the Pickit at some point because I think it would be good to have another method. This would also be the only way to recover a corrupted bootloader. If I manage to get it to work, I'll post info on how I did it.

The .hex file is of course compiled, but the serial command interface almost certainly uses string constants to parse commands and for responses. Since these are data, they should be in the .hex file. Depending on the byte packing, they may not be immediately obvious, but the data should still be there. Looking at the file with a hex editor that shows the ASCII should reveal some hints at the serial command interface.

shaneo, Did you build avrdude 5.1 for Windows from source, or did you find a place to download the binaries? A quick search didn't turn up what I was looking for. I see that SourceForge has a WinAVR suite that is Windows executables, but the version numbering is different (may be for the suite, I don't know what version of avrdude would be included.)

What's the reason for using the .conf file from a different version? Is the specific PIC32 support just missing from the avrdude 5.1 Windows .conf file?

Last but not least, where did you grab the latest release version that contains the hpio.hex file?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm just trying to reproduce what you've done so I can recover my board.

Thanks!

OK done with this build - I have 4 replacement computers for alien complete with memory and pre-loaded ssd - drop in replacement. 3 were spoken for, but if they don't follow up, they will be available. So, short story - 1 computer available now.

Also have a total of 5 pre-loaded ssds - drop in replacements if yours goes toast. Pre-loaded with 1.02 software ready to go.

Scott