The MMr is nice, I've played a bunch of them and clearcoated them.

But if I had to buy again, I'd get the MM.

I like being able to repair things on location, not have to take boards back to my shop and make another trip.

I have a Metcal hot air rework station for surface mount repairs, but I sure can't take that out to a customer's house or bar to repair their game if a surface mount IC kicks it.

When it comes to pinball, easy to service is cheap to service!

That's funny.

Have you seen how many issues the MMr home users have had already?

In 5 years where will you get a new MPU board if CGC goes under?

Would no replacement boards being available be considered an issue?

-

I mean, I hope the CGC stays in business forever, but much larger, better capitalized companies have gone bankrupt or live on in name only .

MontgomeryWards, Compaq, Wang, Kodak, Schwinn, CircuitCity, Bridgeport, Craftsman....

I saw that, but I bet the plan is to scrape off all the junk brands, and keep the core.

Why did they think they needed to buy Phillips, TEAC, Cakewalk or friggin' CerwinVega ???

What wife is going to let her husband bring a pair of those monster 15" Chinese speakers into the house?

Wife: No.
Man: But honey, I had a pair of CV D9's in my dorm, remember?
Wife: WE don't live in a dorm anymore, remember?

SL15 (resized).jpg

From where?

Remember how long they worked to crack the Capcom instruction set?

The ASIC was fused, so you could not dump the code.

Remember, Capcom is still in business today, and even they could not come up with the source code.

$5,000 was offered to the person who could find a way to dump it, no one ever could.

How are you going to crack those chips?

The days of simple EPROMs are long gone.

Chips for the last few decades are fused, once the data is written, the fuse is **burnt** and now the data can not be read back.

If you could simply get the data off those PIC chips (and PIC chips are really low end devices), then every servo motor controller would be compromised.

If anyone was able to hack a modern day PIC, then no one would pay $418 to upgrade their MMr display, they would just copy the chip and pass it on to everyone.

Obviously, that can't be done......

s-l300 (resized).jpg

PIC chips only rarely go bad; I'd worry more about a board wiping out completely.

Like when your PC power supply toasts your MB and video card.

Some CNC machines run a very specific PC motherboard. All the spares of this board are long gone. The same board is used on industrial embroidery machines too, so 2 industries were both battling for any recycled boards that came up.

The caps on these boards always go, and although it sucks soldering a 7 layer PCB, it's do able at a bench.

But when the power supply smokes those boards, it's game over folks.

The riser card looks for that motherboard. Obviously no one has ever been able to dump the PIC (and it's an older PIC too), to alter the code. The company that created all the BS is long gone from the world.

Metcal M1000

It's not a million dollar one, but I can fix things with it

You are making MY point for me.

Unlike the MMr MPU, we CAN easily reproduce the WPC-A12738 sound card (no impossible to copy PIC chips or ASIC), yet no one makes them.

So if there is not enough demand to reproduce a sound card that fits many thousands of machines, why would you think that anyone would reproduce an MPU that only fits one? (even if you could somehow crack the security chips, which no one has ever been able to do).

....and BTW, you can still get used MM sound boards, I have 2 in my shop right now.

Depending on how they are used, Surface Mount components (SMT) can actually be very robust.

And that's a good thing, because that MMr SMT LED board is $300 !

Through-hole components are best used for high-reliability products that require stronger connections between layers. Whereas SMT components are secured only by solder on the surface of the board, through-hole component leads run through the board, allowing the components to withstand more environmental stress. This is why through-hole technology is commonly used in military and aerospace products that may experience extreme accelerations, collisions, or high temperatures<'blockquote>

http://blog.optimumdesign.com/through-hole-vs-surface-mount

I don't think any circuit board ever became damaged on route from abuse, lol

Boards become damaged because a component failed.

Transistors short out and burn the traces off the board.

Memory chips finally fail after too many cycles.

Electrolytic capacitors hit their 12 year lifespan.

Switching power supplies allow high voltages across the 5v rails.

-

Think of things you own that have burned out:

Your desktop/laptop PC is wiped out by a failed switching power supply.

Your flat screen TV does not turn on because the filter caps have failed.

Your camera memory card now formats to only 1/2 it's original size because the cells have worn/failed.

Your subwoofer only has a loud hum because the caps have leaked.

Your cell phone is caught in an endless bootloop.

None of these things failed because of abuse, they failed because that's what electronic components like to do.

Better now than later

What game do you need it for?

Do you have the ROMs or do I have to burn them for you?

Of course those OEM boards have not been made in almost 25 years.

Rotten Dog was making them for a while as aftermarket boards for $295

There is a certain guy in Australia that has real Williams OEM boards who says he is going to run another batch soon.

These boards are super easy to repair, so if yours goes down, just have it serviced by Rob.