Concerning the annoying sounds with the new PAL from Pinbits.....I have the same issue. In this post (6 months ago) Pinbits says they found the issue?
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/lotr-shaker-game-wont-shut-up#post-208461
Quoted from PamPinbits:OK, we think that we are at the bottom of this. We designed the PAL to match the way that the Stern PALs work. Turns out that this was the wrong thing to do, as there is a very close timing path in the Stern design (if someone wants technical details, Stern's design latches data just past the rising edge of the strobe, which is unusual as it relies on the data to still be on the bus when the microcoprocessor is no longer responsible for it).
As it happens, this is not much of a problem in practice because there's enough tolerance in the parts to keep everything together.
However, with newer parts, different voltages, temperatures, and software, the microprocessor can beat the design. It looks like the effect of the error is to actually affect other I/O - in this case, it looks like flipper switch hits so you get the messages during attract mode.
The big clue was when I started seeing the same nonsense from a Stern PAL in my test jig, which adds enough load to shift the timing slightly.
Anyhow, we've tweaked the design to properly center the pulses, so there's no further concern about this happening again. We still want to be cautious with the change, but we think that we have a solid design. Thanks to coz6 who tested a couple of probe PALs for us, which helped us to calibrate the problem.
The bottom line is that this is a rare problem, and we'll switch out the PAL for anybody who is having problems, but we do need to get the old ones back.
Is replacing the PAL, hit-or-miss? It seemed to work for coz9. Anyone else try different PALs? What were the results?
Markmon, Did you ever get your sound issues resolved?
Trying to figure out what to do next.
Thanks Guys!