Quoted from markmon:You need the sound eprom. You can't brick your game. "Bricking" is a term that means putting into a damaged and unrepairable state. Hence its a worthless brick.
By the sound EPROM, you mean the "Bootflash O/S 8 Sound EPROM (512K) (Checksum $8F2E)", right? Not the "Sound & Speech ROM Set (U7, U17, U21, U36, U37)", correct?
It is possible to "brick" a computer, phone, tablet, etc., by upgrading the firmware and have something go wrong - like a power outage during the upgrade. Glad to hear it is not an issue with this.
Quoted from markmon:I wouldn't mess with something working perfectly. Some lotr may already be on eprom 8 or whatever.
According to Stern, The OS version can be checked by counting the number of flashes on LED#1 at startup. 8 flashes means OS 8. LOTR was shipped with OS 4. It would be interesting to see what OS those LOTR are running that have not had the random callouts. I checked mine and the LED comes on, then flashes 4 times, so I am on OS 4.
http://sternpinball.com/upload/downloads/sb157.pdf
The Bootflash EPROM is only $9, but why order it if not needed?
Quoted from QuarterGrabber:I followed your instructions on page one but it says you only need to upgrade the sound EPROM if you are hearing random callouts. I wasn't hearing random callouts so I didn't upgrade the sound (I don't know if the previous owner did). Mine works perfect, should I upgrade the sound?
QuarterGrabber, would you mind counting the number of flashes for me? It would be interesting if you have OS 4 but have not had sound issues.