I think you could reverse engineer the boards if you put the time in and just create your own. The biggest problem is what software is on the microcontroller on the boards. Without that the board is a brick. They will have almost certainly added some sort of read protect so you cant just dump the firmware to clone it. Without the firmware, the schematics / reverse engineering the boards is pointless

SMD repair is not impossible its actually quite easy with the correct tools / knowledge to do it and im not sure how many pinball techs have this? As time moves on im sure more and more will become skilled in this area due to everything is smd these days.

id be surprised if they was more then 2 layers they are not complicated so dont need 4 layers (if they do its lazy routing or emi issues etc...) any one got high res photos of a common node board? (i don't own any spike games)

looks like 2 layer to me nothing there warrants a 4 layer board, the vias most likley pop out on the bottom and are routed some where else.

yeah or just switch layers with vias usually how 2 layer boards are routed zero ohm resister trick is used alot on 1 layer boards

id be pretty pissed if i had to buy a new cpu board for a game with only 143 plays on it!!! thats ridiculous

Did you hear about one of the "geniuses" wanting to replace a whole screen / motherboard because the screen would not turn on. When in fact it was just one tiny bent pin on the screen backlight connector!!! $900 repair for a 5sec fix!! insane.

Yeah there is no such thing a pinball specific components its all just standard off the shelf components used in millions of products, the node boards just use the components in a way to drive coils / lamps / leds / motors etc... You can definitely create clones of the node boards with either schematics (easy way) or just reverse engineering them (hard way) they are not that complex so wouldn't take long. The bit that makes it extremely hard at this point is the microcontroller. How does it talk to the rest of the system? what commands does it receive / send? I assume when the main board boots it checks what node boards it has attached / might even do some sort of security hand shake with them to make sure its a genuine stern board?? (if they don't now they will when people make clones) You cant just clone the board you need the firmware as well which im not sure if you can even copy from a real node board and if you did it would be extremely illegal. The only legal way would be to write the firmware your self and have the node board pretend its a real one. But to do this you need to know the serial protocol or figure it out with a logic analyser / break any encryption they might have / add later on. One interesting note mentioned above is the firmware can update it self via updates from the main firmware image which is pretty cool. Maybe if you write just the boot loader that speaks the stern update protocol language your fake node board would update it self with the real firmware? (ie you don't sell the board with the firmware the pinball installs it for you when it updates the node board hehe) this would be legal i'm pretty sure?

Any way short version of all that crap i just wrote was i definitely think its possible to make clone node boards. Its just figuring out how they communicate with the stern serial bus / overcoming any security stern may have added or may add in future. These boards must be a pretty nice income for stern so i seriously doubt they are gonna give it up easily and certainly will make it hard as possible for people to create there own! (ie no schematics / adding security to the firmware / protocol etc..)

Edit: from memory TimeBandit decoded the spike serial bus for his arduino led driver boards? or was that another pinball control system?

Worst(or best for stern bank account lol) design decision ever mounting bright backbox leds onto the main controller. This would purely be for cost saving (cheaper to build / install) but now like you say one 20p led dies they want you to swap a very expensive board also how much heat are those leds sinking into the pcb? cant be good for it? seperate led boards would of been a far better solution!

You can reverse engineer the boards far easier then that they are not complex and most of the circuitry is just duplicated for each input / output.

But without knowing what firmware is on that chip or how it interacts with the main controller its pointless.

looks like some sort or regular with a in/out smoothing cap and resistors to set voltage. Have you got a close pick of its number?

from what i just read this is great news sounds like those boards are just basic logic no microcontroller involved. Any one can reverse engineer them and create copies

i dont own a spike game but could some one take photos of these various board's? might be far easier to reverse engineer then first thought

well i did say might! just some high res photo's would be helpful.

what is the number on that little square chip? (looks like a microcontroller, 8 legs each side)

that indeed is a little microcontroller who knows what its doing / what firmware it has :/

either stern or nxp (if u order enough of them) will be putting some sort of custom stern bootloader onto those chips. Something we cant get hold of. There does appear to be a programming header on the board as well so you can update the firmware directly.

Indeed, id be worried about selling a repo board with there firmware though as just asking for a lawsuit. Unless the end user some how installs it as technically they own the orignal.

Nothing there is complicated. Its just knowing what that micro does so it can be emulated. Or lifting the firmware off it.

Yeah just basic shift registers easy way to control as many outputs/inputs as you want off just 3 data gpio lines from the micro. Great for chaining together.

The board just receives commands / sends switch data from the RJ45 bus then shifts the data out to the shift registers to set the relevant output drivers. The micro will contain the memory map and all the safety code so coils dont get locked on etc.... I doubt the micro is doing much so could probably just write your own version of the firmware if you new what commands it reads from the RJ45 bus / what it needs to send back (long as there is no nasty encryption)

There is no reason for a micro to fail, if it is failing its being damaged by over voltage or emi (from coils / motors) or something on the board due to bad design. The design should be fixed not just making bits socketed

Yeah firmware should be doing some sort of checksum first before it swaps to the new flash else does not copy it into program memory.

This one has an obvious programming port on the back, im pretty sure it says isp?

SMD is small and cheap to buy/assemble, though hole is expensive buy/assemble, i cant see stern going backwards with there board technology any time soon. They just need to stop ripping people off when it goes wrong and offer replacements for more reasonable prices then no one would have a problem. Also maybe engineer them slightly better so they don't screw up so often

The electronics industry is killing off through hole, you will only find it on high current / components that need extra support like heavy duty connectors etc...

It's far far cheaper to have a pick and place machine populate the boards then mess around with through hole (you can get machines to populate / solder through hole but it's extra process)

wanna keep cost down use as much smd as possible and boards as small as possible. Sadly complete opposite of what you want if your trying to repair