I've built a system 1 board. It worked great, minus the long boot time. They ship to the US, but you need to order parts separately. Soldering the surface mount chip was a pain. The main thing to understand is that this is just their hobby project. Documentation is sometimes out of date, the original BoM I got was wrong, etc. No big issues, but it necessitates emailing back and forth which is slow when one party is in Germany.

For the price and flexibility though, it can't really be beat. I ordered two more boards recently, need to assemble them now.

I got one here. The only real issue I've had is that it doesn't work as well as it could with the first type of sound board like was used in Solar Ride; It took some parameter tuning to get the tunes to sound remotely right. It's generally better to use the "sound file" functionality. I would also indicate that it isn't an instant boot process; I'd recommend just using a Pi3 on it just to reduce the boot time. It can use ROM files like you'd use with MAME/Visual Pinball, so it's exactly the original rules, complete with the limited settings. You can access the original diagnostics/memory menu, but you can also, holding the button longer, access a more advanced diagnostics screen accessible via ad-hoc wifi, which means you can test individual lights, switches and coils via a tablet interface, which has been really handy; I did pop bumper adjustments by using the diagnostics to engage the game-over coil so that I could fire the pops without entering the original test mode, and then disengage it again to adjust the switches again.

The real shining feature of the kit over the other replacements is the ability to configure rules with Mission Pinball Framework, although I have had issues with a form of "lag", where it would get gradually slower in responding to switch hits. It doesn't affect single player games currently, but it can affect multiplayer games, and it can be measured in seconds at the end of the game. It's also a "from scratch" sort of deal, I think I'm the first one who got a "flips and plays" config more or less finished, and I do believe that Ralf is now including it with the main distribution as an example.

This was another great feature to me, however I was sad to find that the cheaper Pi Zero just couldn't go fast enough to run mpf. Having to buy a pi3 really adds to the price, and it sounds like even that can barely handle it

Technically the Pi Zero does run fast enough, but it's not pleasant. It works perfectly well if you're just running the ROM file and not bothering with MPF. If you're using MPF, then a Pi3 is what you want to be running, and it's still cheaper than stuffing a real computer in there. At some point, I'll test using the computer I was using for config development (running the Pi in 'slave' mode), and see how well that runs a full game.

Do note that even with all that, you still have to deal with the limitations of System 1... the lack of computer control of the pop bumpers, the lack of being able to tell what the flipper buttons are doing, the real difficulty of trying to add a high score name feature (I figured out how to override the "enter initials" feature so that it just records the high scores), and getting around those by rewiring, you might as well rewire the whole machine for FAST or PROC.

Also built the Sys1 Lisy.
Worked just fine. Gave a feedback on it in the sys1 topic.

Pro:
Price
Reliability
Versatility

Cons:
Don't do it if you're not comfortable with soldering
Takes time to boot

I've got a git repo somewhere with my Genie MPF project if you want to save some setup time

Sounds like your dip switches are wrong if you're trying to boot mame at least. Shouldn't be searching for an IP in game modes (besides mpf slave)

https://github.com/zacaj/genie-mpf

It has custom rules, not the standard ones, but at least the machine/device configs should be useful

Yeah, header extensions are necessary. If I do another LISY, I'll use the extended plugin instead so that it can take a Pi3 without adaptation.

I used a wireless dongle on mine, actually (also original Zero, not W), and it worked fine. You just need to buy a "USB On The Go" hub to connect it.

I think there were some issues with wireless at one point. I found it worked better just doing the adhoc networking and pointing the tablet wireless at it as if it were a network.

Doing the HDMI won't get you much... all you'll see is a command prompt login, it doesn't provide a console on the screen to monitor how things are running, it's basically meant to run "headless" or attached to an external computer like any other USB device, which is how I developed an MPF config for Solar Ride.

There was an issue where you couldn't do an ad hoc network if you had a network to connect to configured, I think that was fixed in 4.10?

Once that was fixed I've had no trouble with a zero w.

Built a lisy80 last week and it's running great in my black hole now.

What's that?

the little 2.54mm / 0.1" spaced jumper shunts. cross over the square header plugs. IDE hard drives used them for master / slave setting.

lifetime supply
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/free-shipping-1000-pcs-2-54mm-Standard-Circuit-Board-Jumper-Cap-Shunts-Short-Circuit-Cap/1884265768.html