OP

Quoted from slochar:

So, the issue turned out to be a change I'd made to the way the score gets handled directly (as opposed to being queued, which happens in the background when nothing else is going on, even though the routine uses the same score routine) - there was no byte savings in doing it the 'new' way (checking the tilt lamp via the pigs routines vs. just doing it in assembly) - the value of B that the spinner routine was expecting would range randomly. (I'm used to the way williams did it in pinbol, where they always specifically save the values of A and B every trip into and out of their interpreter). It is possible that this bug was in the 9 ball test code as well, although it depends on if there were any "score $<somevalue> followed directly by anything that was expecting the value of B to be the same. Meteor7 didn't have this issue as the score routines were semi-different.
Still have to finish up the skill shot issue (Lane Lamp stays lit on the lane although it puts it on the left side, and spots the next letter correctly, and once you collect blast off the letters B and O start to spot the drop bank in error), and add the knocker code (and a physical knocker, to test....) Once the skill shot issue is fixed I'll ship the beta binary rom off to @coyote to put on his website so people can download it and try it out.
I still have to add in the no-relock during multiball, dips to turn on/off any of these features, and I'd like to add a feature that resets the 5-4-3-2-1 progress once you complete blast off and get 2 balls locked (It was always strange to me that you could get, all systems ready, commence countdown.... and the countdown was at 1 if that's where you had built the drops down to....)
If there's some dips available I'll try and put the right spinner reset to 2000 although I don't think I'll ever personally use this.... and yeah, I have to add in the spinner counters..... but then I might just call it 'done', at that point. (Is anything ever really 'done' though??)

OP

Quoted from slochar:

I would have loved to know the thinking behind some of the choices made in the software - I just found a strange one, I noticed that the spinners (specifically the left one) have a function to not score at certain times.... very odd. Turns out that when you rip the left spinner to lock a ball, while the ball launch is going on, you get NOTHING for the spins! Hey BPfutz, that's a flat out RIPOFF. So, great rip, you can see it count up with the new software, then it pauses with no countup, ball launches, it starts counting again! This could be very significant points when the spinner is lit (500 per lit letter in this mode..... so 4000/spin lost....)
Guess what I'm going to change in the next revision!
Big Game has specific code in it to make sure you get EVERY spin when you rip the left spinner and hit the saucer.... it waits until the spinner is done before processing the saucer.