So here's the backstory.....
A few weeks ago I ran into an ad on CL for a "pin ball machine" I replied and found that the pictures showed a Pinstar Gamatron.
The guy didn't know anything about the game whatsoever so I decided to take a gamble as it was a rare game and only 40 miles away. I got there and it was under an old parking porch at his shed. He took my offer and we loaded it using his forklift!
It was locked so I drilled them all out and found that it was all complete minus the MPU. I ended up buying a lost world that had a trashed MPU so I looked for another option. I found a fully working Playboy MPU (actually a modded -133) on ebay for half the price of the new built MPU.
It came in but has EEPROMS

Does anyone know if I have to mod it to work with the GAMATRON Daughter?

#2 7 years ago

HBO

Luzur

Pinside member

8y 53,700 1,276 5

I own the Segasa Gamatron version, and thats a completely different board, so sadly i cant help you.

But ask a chap named Chosen_S here on pinside, he have a Pinstar.

#3 7 years ago

MCM

martimagico

Pinside member

Lemoore, CA

7y 40,900 115 6 12

I've been talking to ben on this as well, he has been a huge help but wasn't sure n the MPU question. Me not being familiar with the Bally MPU I would have just bought an alltek.

-1

#4 7 years ago

HBO

Luzur

Pinside member

8y 53,700 1,276 5

OP
Quoted from martimagico:
I've been talking to ben on this as well, he has been a huge help but wasn't sure n the MPU question. Me not being familiar with the Bally MPU I would have just bought an alltek.

Well, i think the MPU on the Pinstars are ordinary Flight 2000's (with different ROM's?), so yo could look for a Flight 2000.

"The Bally/Stern boardset is used - a PinStar daughterboard plugs into the CPU socket. A binary comparison of the software indicates that it is 100% identical to Flight 2000's software."

#5 7 years ago

AMS

barakandl

nvram.weebly.com

12y 132K 10,417

OP
Quoted from martimagico:
So here's the backstory.....
A few weeks ago I ran into an ad on CL for a "pin ball machine" I replied and found that the pictures showed a Pinstar Gamatron.
The guy didn't know anything about the game whatsoever so I decided to take a gamble as it was a rare game and only 40 miles away. I got there and it was under an old parking porch at his shed. He took my offer and we loaded it using his forklift!
It was locked so I drilled them all out and found that it was all complete minus the MPU. I ended up buying a lost world that had a trashed MPU so I looked for another option. I found a fully working Playboy MPU (actually a modded -133) on ebay for half the price of the new built MPU.
It came in but has EEPROMS
Does anyone know if I have to mod it to work with the GAMATRON Daughter?

Yeah sure. Follow the bally -35 instructions for the gamatron conversion. Do you have the ribbon cable that plugs into the CPU socket on the bally MPU? If not you could build one, but it would be a pain.

Another option is to convert your -133 board to stern mpu-200 and then you can use your MPU and a SB-300 sound board (would have to find/make harness, not too bad to make by hand).

#6 7 years ago

MCM

martimagico

Pinside member

Lemoore, CA

7y 40,900 115 6 12

Quoted from barakandl:
Yeah sure. Follow the bally -35 instructions for the gamatron conversion. Do you have the ribbon cable that plugs into the CPU socket on the bally MPU? If not you could build one, but it would be a pain.
Another option is to convert your -133 board to stern mpu-200 and then you can use your MPU and a SB-300 sound board (would have to find/make harness, not too bad to make by hand).

Im thinking that I can follow the directions to convert the -35, but wanst sure if the EEPROM conversion changed anything?

#7 7 years ago

MCM

martimagico

Pinside member

Lemoore, CA

7y 40,900 115 6 12

Quoted from Luzur:
Well, i think the MPU on the Pinstars are ordinary Flight 2000's (with different ROM's?), so yo could look for a Flight 2000.
"The Bally/Stern boardset is used - a PinStar daughterboard plugs into the CPU socket. A binary comparison of the software indicates that it is 100% identical to Flight 2000's software."

The Pinstar Gamatron boardset is the mpu-35 with chips pulled and the daughter board installed. The daughterboard provides the "gamatron / flight 2k" code as well as Stern SB-300 function.I just need to know if there is a difference in the configuration of my -133/-35 EEPROM board from a standard mask prom board that might give me issues. I definitely don't want to blow anything out and end up with 2 useless MPU-200/-35 boards

#8 7 years ago

AMS

barakandl

nvram.weebly.com

12y 132K 10,417

OP
Quoted from martimagico:
The Pinstar Gamatron boardset is the mpu-35 with chips pulled and the daughter board installed. The daughterboard provides the "gamatron / flight 2k" code as well as Stern SB-300 function.I just need to know if there is a difference in the configuration of my -133/-35 EEPROM board from a standard mask prom board that might give me issues. I definitely don't want to blow anything out and end up with 2 useless MPU-200/-35 boards

The code is on one 2764 on the daughter card. You have no ROM (or CMOS RAM) on the MPU when using the daughter card.

Ferro tech NVRAM is not compatible with the daughter card too.

Promoted items from Pinside Marketplace and Pinside Shops!

$ 125.00

Boards

VSU-2 Speech Board - Replacement for VSU-100

Glodstone

Reply

Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.

Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!

Donate to Pinside

Great to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!

This page was printed from https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/need-mpu-help-on-a-gamatron-conversion and we tried optimising it for printing. Some page elements may have been deliberately hidden.

Scan the QR code on the left to jump to the URL this document was printed from.