Cleveland, OH
Are there any videos that shows how to use this? Like a step by step tutorial? This would be helpful to see it in action.
(Topic ID: 272899)
Linked Games
Algar
Williams, 1980-
Alien Poker
Williams, 1980
-
Barracora
Williams, 1981
-
Black Knight
Williams, 1980
-
Blackout
Williams, 1980
-
Contact
Williams, 1978
-
Cosmic Gunfight
Williams, 1982
-
Defender
Williams, 1982
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You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider talonslair.
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1 month later
Just placed my order earlier today for the Pincoder adapter. In less than an hour I received an email with shipping information and a tracking number. Great customer service Pincoder. Thanks!
Looking forward to fixing my locked up board.
2 weeks later
I have a question about the adapter. Since I have the boards out of the machine and on the bench, I can't do the display and switches test. I'm working on a locked up system 7 board. Can I skip over these tests and continue or put them back in the machine and stay in order? I've passed all of the tests up to this point.
Thanks for the reply Pincoder. I have tried swapping the 2 roms on the bench and still get the same results, not booting. I'm positive the chips were in the locations pictured and the game did boot before. I'm leaning towards one or more roms being bad as the leg on the one that is soldered looks iffy. It actually has a soldered leg on the opposite side as well. As for the tests, I will most likely put the boards back in and continue when I get some time. I do remember that I do have power to the displays. I can see a dim light at the bottom of each display.
I did skip ahead and read about the rom tests that would follow. Unfortunately, I don't have a burner to do the tests that require a second EPROM chip to be programmed with a pattern of numbers. Props to your adapter for getting me this far. It has worked great!
Quoted from Astill:yes it is well known williams mislabelled a bunch of system 7 roms.
Thanks. That would explain some things 
Another quick question: for the "interrupts" test, I passed the first test,(hard IRQ), but my board does not have dip switches for the soft IRQ test. What should I do next?
I went ahead to the solenoids test while waiting for my previous question. When I powered up the machine, the left slingshot activated right away. I powered the machine down immediately. Edit: I noticed one of the switches in the left slingshot was making contact. I adjusted this switch and upon powering up the game the left slingshot does not fire.
Ok. Thanks. No dip switches and no COMMAND_ENTER button either.
I went through the other tests. On the "lamps" test, and according to the procedure: "This test starts out in state 04 (shown on CREDITS display) and lamp number 00 (shown on MATCH display, 00=ALL lamps in the matrix)".
Mine starts out at 03 and I can only cycle to 02, 01, and 00 and back to 03. So I get fast blink, slow blink, steady on, and off(not sure of the order). All single lamp tests were good.
For the "solenoid" tests, I can get all solenoids to fire except for any of the flippers. I'm not sure if I have to be on a certain number in the display to do this or not.
I ran the "clear cmos" test successfully. After that I put the rom back in it's place and the machine still doesn't boot.
This machine is a Black Knight LE if that helps.
Quoted from pincoder:Yeah if IC17 is bad it definitely won't boot. You might want to find a replacement EPROM chip, or, since you now have a burner, you could add the contents of the ic17 chip to an empty slot on your Pincoder Adapter and be done with it
If you can't read your ic17 chip at all, you can download the image from here:
http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/Williams/tech/roms.html
I received my burner today. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to check the rom. Been busy lately starting a new job. I'm probably going to order a new chip and program it fresh,(if the old one is bad) and keep the Pincoder Adapter as is. It really is a good tool to have for troubleshooting. I've also had a sound issue where one of the words is garbled during speech. It is weird. When it is a damp day it's garbled. When it is a dry day it's fine. I'm thinking it may be a socket issue but at least now I'll be able to test the sound rom with my burner. I appreciate all of your help with this and am grateful for your contribution to the hobby creating this wonderful tool. Thanks for the link too.
After fighting to get the sticker off, the chip isn't even an eprom. I can't find a listing in my GQ 4x4 for this prom. It is a MOS 5341-09554 4780. On the bottom it says Korea 4863(sorry for the crappy pics). Any advice? Thanks.
IMG_20210130_110150556 (resized).jpgIMG_20210130_110211287 (resized).jpg 1 week later
Small update: I was able to verify check the 2 game roms as they are eproms and they came out ok. I couldn't verify check the 2 flipper roms as they are masked roms and are not listed in the GQ-4x4 database. I was also able to verify check the sound rom and 3 out of 4 speech roms. One of the speech roms has a leg that is broken off,(I think it's still in the socket. The sticker on it says "5T-5002" and the file is "Speech 5.532". So I believe I need two 2532 eproms, one for the speech rom and one for the flipper rom and one 2716 eprom for the other flipper rom, and a few sockets just in case. Correct?
Quoted from pincoder:Correct. You can test those masked roms as 2716 if they are in 2k sockets.
Would it be this one?
4x4 (resized).PNGI received my eproms. I was able to write the 2 flipper roms successfully(1 to the 2532 and 1 to the 2716), but was not able to write the speech to the other 2532. During the write cycle, it goes all the way to 100% and then fails right after during the verify process(screenshot below). I've tried to put the eprom in the eraser for roughly a half an hour. It shows it is blank but I still can't write to it. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Capture (resized).PNGQuoted from pincoder:Some chips have different response times and signal requirements in order to successfully write a byte to an address withing the EPROM. If your programmer has any settings for timings or retry values when writing to the chip, you could try adjusting the values such that the writes are tried more times before giving up, and/or holding the value on the bus longer before it moves on to another address.
As well, as pinball_postal mentioned, you may have to write multiple times before it succeeds for every address on the chip: You should only erase the chip under the UV light *once* - if you change the image you want to write. In other words, erase it only once, and keep writing the same image to the chip multiple times until it gets all the way through.
I do know the older chips are much more sensitive to timings.. I've been writing code for the Pincoder Controller to allow it to write to these old chips and some locations in the chips take many more attempts to write (like 50-100 over a few seconds) before the write to a single location will succeed. Are you noticing the write process appearing to stall and continue before it gets to the verify process?
Thanks for the tips everyone. I'll keep trying to write.
As for the process stalling, I don't see any slow down during the write process. It goes up to 100% at a decent rate(says 12.17 seconds).
Quoted from barakandl:probably just a bad EPROM if you can do other identical chips. Powered USB hub should be good enough as it is for the laptop I use to burn with. It has to boost 5v usb up to 25v for these old chips.
I have not had good luck reusing TMS2532. Even some that are working, I erase them, and then they refuse to take another burn. HN462532 has usually been more reliable to me for what its worth. I go with 2732 whenever possible, but not possible on system 7 mpu without cutting and jumping a few traces.
Thank you. Can you please point to a reliable source for the HN462532? Would appreciate it.
Quoted from barakandl:Funkward Tech is usually a good source for obsolete eproms.
ebay.com link » Hitachi 462532 2532 Hn462532g Uv Eprom 32kbit X 5pcs
Thank you.
1 week later
Quoted from pincoder:Nice work cheddar! Thank you! I've been struggling in my mind for a while on exactly how videos might be done to get the most usefullness out of them, and seeing your videos I think gives people a good idea of what they're looking for.
As far as the target audience goes, the user base is potentially quite wide, from a newcomer to an experienced tech. I think the focus should be geared slightly toward the newcomer.
From the adapter purchases and questions about the adapter thus far, I'm getting the idea that most have a machine or two collecting dust because they've been down for a long time, and they've no idea where to start to get them running again. So perhaps in addition to the bench-style videos you have done, we could create an introductory in-game video that starts from blowing the dust off and taking off the backglass to locating IC17, replacing it with the adapter, etc. This would allow them to be comfortable on what they do have.. a fully connected board, everything in its original place and condition.. Then they would not have to worry about how to re-create a bench power supply, and whether they have it connected properly etc.
We could then go up to 05-displays in the first video, as that is quick and will give them confidence that their machine is fairly healthy. I think the main thread/sequence of videos should be with a fully working machine, so that people know what to expect from each test. Once those videos are done, we could do individual repair videos on what to do if a particular test fails. Since this could be many reasons for some tests these videos would simply talk about what to look for and how to proceed, while showing probable failed parts etc.
What do you cheddar, and everyone else following this thread think? If you're a newcomer, what kinds of questions are you hoping to find answers for in a video? What would the ideal video look like to you? Might as well make a video people end up feeling glad they watched
As far as troubleshooting a dead board (01b-bus, 01c-transceivers) that would be handy, and also require a little more depth, ie: may have to include a seque or two explaining tech details. I think doing a video like this, start to board finish, could very well turn into an entire "episode" that would probably require a lot of editing. Not saying it's a bad idea, I think it's a great idea, just that the final version would have to be shortened properly so that the viewer doesn't get sidelined by the resulting unneccesary details. And it would be fun to make too
I've a friend in town that does miraculous things with video and editing. I'll talk to him and see what the possibilities are.
Thanks again for your videos, I keep straying from them and it's good that you're on it
Again, all, please chime in so we can find out what kind of videos you're actually looking for
After using the adapter to troubleshoot my boards, I believe a series of videos would be great. The videos from Cheddar were helpful as to what to look for for a successful test. But I think if you made some in depth step by step videos, that would really help out new, (and maybe old) troubleshooters. Videos about like what you mentioned and then some: how to orient and where to plug in the adapter, how to set the jumpers, what other connectors should be plugged/unplugged from your boards, what fuses should be removed/added during tests, what a successful/failed test looks like, what to do when a test fails...etc. For me, watching the videos and reading the text file included with the adapter got me pointed in the right direction. Once I was able to understand the 1st test and how it works, I was off and running with the rest of the tests. Your adapter was very useful and helped me get my machine back up and running.
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