New METPros are coming off the line starting this week.

I as well added a MetPro this past weekend fresh off the assembly line. It seems the stern sticker guy was having a bad day when mine was built...

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When this happens, is it auto launching? Do the inserts light up correctly for a super skill shot?

Does there exist a version of the Met manual other than the one currently on Stern's site? What is available currently is a crappy B/W scan versus the nice source PDFs the rest of the games have.

I have been confused by blown piston counts myself. I did a glass off test and what I found was that hitting the piston target (not just the rollover switch) at the dead-end channel awards 1 blown piston regardless of the number of pop bumper inserts lit (or flashing). This means zero lit = 1 blown piston as well as 3 lit = 1 blown piston. I can't figure out any purpose of the pop bumper completion inserts. They might be adding to the point bonus when a blown piston is added. I would have to check again. Also, it does not matter if the target is hit directly or with a combo.

Correct. Doing nothing more than triggering the target at the end of the fuel lane 10 times lights an EB.

EDIT: To be explicit, I tested on a Pro w/ v1.7 code. Perhaps the Prem code was forked off and behaves differently?

Double nope back at you Try for yourself and you will see this is not how it works on current code.

You can test by replacing the entire song and see if it changes the match background.

I took a quick buzz through the sound files and I am pretty sure the match riffs are their own sound clips. I found the before ball plunge looping riffs. It sounds like half of the ball match S&D is at 0x380 and 0x524.

Great! Thanks for sharing.

On a side note, there were quite a few horse sounds and some animation. Are these coding in the game somewhere or maybe an abandoned Four Horsemen mode?

Same experience for me. Factory Stern balls magnetized pretty quickly. Replaced with Ball Barron shiny chrome. Those magnetized on short order. Caused all kinds of problems. I even managed to get *all four* stuck in the graveyard trying to collect the super on the MB. I had to pull the glass to get them dislodged. That sucked.

I recently replaced with Ball Barron carbon core and have not had any problems after a hundred or so plays.

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Yep that is exactly what it was; running coffin MB, then started graveyard. First ball was captured on the magnet for the super. Second ball gently rolled up and got stuck. I held balls three and four and shot each at full strength one from the left, one from the right and neither could knock them loose. I was really dialed in on the graveyard shot that game for all the good it did me. No amount of shaking or swearing could release the magnetic death grip.

Would recommend spending some time on the premium before making your decision. I find the pro plays faster and is more enjoyable. Yes the hammer is neat, but for me the novelty wore off quickly. I don't like how big and visually obtrusive it is. In addition, from what I have read in this forum it is not without it's mechanical problems. Total Light Show makes up for half of the difference as far as I am concerned. The colored GI is awesome. The spinners are not important to me, but can be added to a point. I do like the rising cross and am working on adding that as well.

Happy to be your doppelganger I say GBPrem and STPrem....what say you?

The hammer for me is an interruption and visual hindrance. On the pro, ricochet off the captive ball into the snake is a shot that I find enjoyable. Skip off the captive to the left ramp is fun too although I am comfortable enough to say this is never on purpose.

Check the optical tx and rx boards to see if there are any breaks or fraying of the wires soldered to the boards. I had this specific failure on my KISS, but I am not sure if they use the same boards. If yours is making a marginal connection it could explain why the pops or scoop action trips the reading of the switch.

You do get 2 for 1 if you hit the coffin after an inlane rollover.

Also not mentioned for lighting all three inserts is doing it via skillshot. When you hold the left flipper and light all shots for the skill shot bonus, one of them will have the inserts strobing. If you hit that skill shot not only do you get the bonus, the inserts continue to strobe and then you collect as already described.

And while on the subject, there is also another special skillshot. Hitting the piston target as the skillshot immediately lights the 2x piston insert.

I had the same observation. I think it's the coffin on auto giving them at 10, 30 and 60.

Combo EB is still at 20. It was the champion score that dropped to 10.

The Blown Piston EB still seems nearly impossible on default settings. It takes a minimum of 5 fuel lane hits in addition to a lot of time spent in the pops. I changed the piston inserts to stay lit between balls and at least that feels obtainable.

The CUI mode completion sounds are great. You can hear the two new additions in the service menu -> game specific settings -> #56. Nice to have new snake callouts. What a great surprise code update. Made my KISS and GB super bummed though.

I bought a rising cross parts kit from Marco and was planning on adding it to my TLS install. What I was told by redshift was that there was some kind of hardware redesign that he needed to implement. That was a few months ago. I have since decided to create my own standalone rising cross mod (not requiring total light show) and have a working prototype. I should have it done by the end of the year.

Anybody interested can PM me directly. Also if anybody is looking to buy a Stern rising cross kit (https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/511-7471-00) can also PM me.

PM'd for files Thanks!

Or, the cross itself if you enter CIU with all the drops down. They do not reset.

Got to my first EOTL. Despite the panic induced flailing and not knowing WTF was going on, I was able to collect the final jackpot. Is that essentially finishing the mode?

Thanks! I ended up 926M but there was a lot more to be had. The EOTL cash out was something like 384M alone.

Certainly easier than before. However it is still 20 for combos. Also coffin will still auto adjust up from 10, albeit, very slowly. On my EOTL game I got my first ever piston EB at 15 and somehow managed to get it again at 40. Before the update, I don't think I ever had more than 3 blown pistons in an entire game.

It's not random anymore with 1.80. It's the same as the lit shot before you plunge.

Has it always been that once you reach EOTL, that song is added to the new game song selection?

Yep! I guess I missed this little tidbit in the 1.80 release notes.

- "The End Of The Line" song is now selectable at the start of the game
if the player has made it to "The End Of The Line" (the 5th Crank It Up
mode).

This is a nice little reward.

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Not quite. The lit inserts do carry from ball to ball. You can change the inserts from solid to flashing by 10 more hits on each pop bumper, however you can only collect one blown piston per insert, solid or flashing. If all three are flashing you get 2x points, but again no more additional blown pistons; 3 max per piston shot. It's at a minimum 5 piston shots for an EB and that is after spending a ton of time in the bumpers.

Right!


- If all piston lights are blinking and the fuel lane target is hit then the score value is doubled.


Is it possible you reached the maximum EB # during the game? I *think* it's 5 by default. I am pretty sure this happened to me on my EOTL game. I lit and collected an extra ball (got the snake animation) but the shoot again inserts did not light.

Also I am going to double check the coffin behavior you mentioned. I don't think it is supposed to work the way you describe.

Yes. Pro is default to not hold the ball. Prem/Le is the opposite.

Something odd is going on with the coffin lock rules on my pro. The way the locks are supposed to work during the other MBs is that you can continue to collect lock counts up and only to the next lock level, but not progress further. Meaning, if you are currently working on lock two, you can keep working toward the next 10 hits to light the lock, but once it is lit, no more hits will count. Only after the current MB is complete can you collect the lock. This is the way it has worked for me both pre and post 1.80 update.

Now, for reasons I can't explain, the behavior has changed. I am now able to collect locks while in grave/sparky/snake MB. This has happened twice now. The last time, I actually started coffin MB while in sparky (not the other way around). There was another member a couple pages back that reported a slightly different locking weirdness. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/metallica-owners-thread/page/306#post-4748269 At the time of that post, I took the glass off just to double check my understanding of the expected behavior on 1.80 in case I missed some kind of change. I also dug around in the rules options and didn't see anything related.

I am curious if anybody has else seen this new behavior.

My guess is that there is a new 1.80 bug that corrupts the RAM in a specific way. Fun fact about SAM; when the RAM is corrupted, neither a full reset, nor a code reflash is likely to clear it out. In those cases, the only way to clear it is to power it down and pull the coin battery. However, the residual voltage left on the chip keeps the memory alive for DAYS. If you find yourself in this situation, the solution is to short the VCC pin on RAM chip to ground using a couple test clips (with power and battery removed of course).

I know this because the first total light show board that I added was faulty and would corrupt the RAM on the first power on. The game would behave really wacky. In one case all switches reported to being faulty. Every single one of them, even though they would pass individual tests. After replacing the CPU board, it would seemingly play fine, but in the middle of a game, the score would start freaking out (flashing random numbers) and then jump to some ridiculous score, like 61B or something. It took quite a while for me to figure out what the problem was because pulling power and the battery did not change the behavior. When I checked voltage on the chip, I was surprised to find that it stayed above the min storage voltage (2.3v IIRC) after 3 days on the bench.

This is correct. I think it's 2x whatever the regular super skillshot value is. One thing I am not sure of, if you soft plunge with the left flipper set, do you get more points by landing on the selected rollover without manually switching the lit lane?

I do like the catch and grave shot, but my favorite is the full orbit dead bounce off the left flipper and immediate hit off the right flipper into the right ramp (not sure the fancy pinball term for this kind of shot). I can consistently hit this shot 90% of the time, but strangely enough I cannot get the bounce direct into the scoop.

Don't forget skill shot #4 into the piston target which auto lights the 2x shot.

Maybe a flaky launch lane switch?

Sounds to me like balls are magnetized and getting hung up in the trough.

Is it possible that you had completed them all and started Seek and Destroy? That will clear out the lit lanes.

Was this right after ending the MB? Could have been sparky jackpot still lit in the short grace period after MB concluded.

That turned out awesome! Glad you made good use of the parts. I am finally progressing on my standalone Pro rising cross mod as well. Although, it isn't nearly as shiny My first prototype is now functional for both the mechanical and the controlling circuitry. Next step is to move the circuit off the breadboard and get make up some PCBs. I'll start a new thread with some videos when the next rev is done.

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After several months of this project sitting on the shelf, I finally have a fully functioning prototype of my MetPro rising cross mod. It is a few 3D printed parts, a servo, and a control board. It's plug and play as far as connecting to the target opto board and the cross LED. It needs a few tweaks and a lot of play testing before it's done, but I was excited to share a video of it in action.

You are both right. On 1.80 it changed. From the release notes;

- Changed default cross hits from 2 to 1.

I am on 1.80 code, but the video starts on the 2nd MB of the game that's why it shows taking two hits. I also show it starting on the 3rd MB to demonstrate that the logic understands the different starting scenarios. It should work correctly regardless of the game settings or variances in code version.

Moved to a dedicated mod thread;
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/met-pro-rising-cross-mod#post-5520763

In general this is right, but is not correct for the drop target optos on Met. The sensor board uses proximity sensors that do work on reflection back to the receive sensor that is on the same chip package as the transmitter.

My suggesting would be first to put the game in switch test, raise the PF, and with the targets up, put your finger over one of the sensor spots and make sure things are reading correctly. Once you confirm that, you can start playing with the targets to see what it will take to trigger. My guess is that maybe they don't have the right fin for this specific game. Can you compare them side by side?

If it is because of the translucent material, then I would try with a white blocker of some kind, not black. Try some white-out, white paint, white paper glued on, maybe some tin foil? Also make sure the blocking fin is as close as possible to wear the sensors are reading.

Yep, easy to test. The sensor board attaches to the drop assembly with a plastic mount. On that mount, there are three round cylinders that surround the proximity sensors and extend through the metal target bracket to isolate the sensor's reading. As I mentioned, you can put the game in switch test and just cover these holes to check if it is reading. If it is too much of a pain to do that, it's two easy screws to remove the sensor board and cover the sensors with your fingers directly.

The only bummer is that the sensor parts themselves are obsolete. I found this out the hard way when working on my rising cross circuit and I killed on of them. I was hoping to replace components on the board, but the sensors are unique, obsolete and way out of stock. Board replacements are still available, but I don't think they can make any more of them without a circuit redesign.

With strange behavior (starting multiball with the ball in the shooter lane) I think there is a fair chance that your SRAM is corrupted. If this is the issue, you will need to pull the power, pull the backup coin battery and connect a jumper from the vcc pin of the SRAM chip to ground and wait a few hours. The measured voltage at the VCC pin has to drop below 2.2v before the memory is cleared out. And yes, sorry to say you will lose all saved settings and high scores.

I posted a little bit about my experience here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/metallica-owners-thread/page/314#post-4825543

https://www.discogs.com/Metallica-Whiskey-In-The-Jar/release/1172090

Fairly sure this is corrupted RAM. If so, good news, it's an easy fix. You have to pull the power, the coin battery and use some small clips to short the power and ground legs on the SRAM chip. Leave that sit for an hour or two and it should be enough to drain off the stored capacitive charge enough to erase the part. If you need help figuring out where to clip, I can get some pictures in a day or so.

Ok here you go. The SRAM is the Cyprus chip. Clip to the opposite corners as shown in the picture. If you do not have microclips, these probably will work; https://www.amazon.com/Yohii-Temperature-Silicone-Electronics-Testing/dp/B07DRJ7Y87/ref=sr_1_14

You didn't need to short anything to corrupt the memory. I ran into this with a bad total light show board. It took a long time to figure out what was going on. I have a theory how this could happen, but don't really want to type it out..haha. The important point is that the SRAM on SAM boards keep their memory without power and battery backup for an impressively long period of time (days? weeks? I gave up waiting).
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I had my setup with the board out the game and on the bench. I think at minimum you will want to pull all of the power plugs that go to the board. Also take a voltage reading between those two pins. You want to see it less than 2.0v.

dupe

Even better. Glad you got it figured out.

Yeah it's best if you can get all but one complete, but it's hard to keep it that way. I always seem to complete that last one by accident during a multiball.

With a little practice, I have gotten pretty decent at putting it into the scoop with a lazy backhand (or at least that's what I call it). From a cradle on the right flipper, give it a quick tap so that it rolls back up the inline a little. Then with the flipper still up, let it roll back up the bat. Once it makes it about 2/3 of the way back up the flipper, give it another quick tap and it should have just enough oomph to lob into the scoop. The ball will have very little speed, so a miss is reasonably safe to get control back unless the right sling gets to it.

But of course, in the heat a game I usually forget this trick and just try to hit the scoop on the fly from the left flipper. After about 4 misses I end up eating the ball

This remind me, I designed one of these too. I am also willing to share stl if there is interest. I figured everybody else was just buying the pinmonk gaskets and I was the only cheapskate

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It came with the game. Were these not originally made with wood speaker panels (black) and then re-run with the metal panel with the decal (same as Met)?

Back to Metallica content....

Shout out to Fezmid for the tip on the discounted premium tanslite. The blemish that made it a "second" is absolutely invisible. Here is a pic showing both for comparison and if you look really close, you won't see my colorDMD spacer because it's black and there is no bleed through

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Available here
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4738004

For my design, PM me directly pls. The Thingiverse file carries a creative commons license that restricts alteration and print for resale.

Would it be a reasonable compromise to just attenuate all of the callouts? Do the parental settings also beep out song swears as well?

Also magnetized balls can do weird things to the game while they hang up in the trough.

Off-Topic: It is important to review the specific license allowances for models on thingiverse (and elsewhere for that matter). This one in particular is listed as non-commercial, so would be an infringement for a print house. This isn't the right thread to discuss these kind of issues, but you need keep these things in mind. Suggestion to Dee-Bow is to make a friend with somebody that has a printer (like your once a house move truck friend!), or get in touch with the designer to see if you can work something out.

1) Yep that is a difference between the two.
2) Does not work with latest game code.
3) Properly working, it should launch out the shooter lane easily. I don't think power is your problem. I would start by checking to see if the ball is hitting anything in the shooter lane. If it is launching clean, then actuate the launcher manually and check the solenoid and mechanism to see if anything is loose or binding.

Maybe related to the factory LED model change over?

Fair chance you have magnetized balls that are hanging up in the trough.

Keep in mind, the LCD can be set to display dots the same as the LED version. For me, some games look better in that cartoonie style (TSPP, MET, LOTR) some look best in dots (GB). LCD gives more options including brightness.

Yep. Just very slow to start dolling them out. I had my game at the NWPAS this passed weekend and wanted to use the show as another opportunity to stress test the design. I haven't unpacked since yesterday's teardown, but I will give it a good inspection to confirm it made it through ok.

No, this is the nature of this game. The songs do not play start to finish continuously.

What's different about this game is that the songs can start, stop and loop at various points of the track. I think it's a cool way to make it seem there are more titles than there really are. It helps that the songs are pretty long so it's easier to slice them up. Even though you pick the song at the start and are stuck with it the entire game, the changes during various modes and MBs keeps it from being repetitive IMO.

To add a little more:
1) the mode/MB song associations can be changed in the system menu.
2) Once you reach End of the Line, that song is then added as an additional song choice at the beginning of all future games.

Image is looks great. Who's the artist?

It's coil #7 that corresponds to Q7. Interestingly enough in the Metallica manual that I have, #7 shows blank.
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Spiderman VE manual to the rescue for quality SAM board info!
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