(Topic ID: 212424)
Linked Games
Kings of Steel
Bally, 1984
Topic Gallery
Allentown, PA
We tried using the old power supply from the original Kings of Steel. My other Bally game broke so we decided to use that power supply board over there.
So the question came into, should I spend the money to buy a new power supply board or replace the power supplies with solid state supplies.
Since we were still having power issues, we decided to swap the power supplies completely out.
The flippers still were locking on. The ultimately problem is we didn't have the 12,5, and 48v on a common ground. Without the common ground all coils were locked on.
We ran an extra ground line from the 48v supply to the - line on the 12 and 5v supplies and this fixed the issue.
Here is an article on this if anyone else runs into the same issue:
http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/latest/hardware/voltages_and_power/voltages_and_power.html#common-ground
Quoted from MythMaker:The flippers still were locking on. The ultimately problem is we didn't have the 12,5, and 48v on a common ground. Without the common ground all coils were locked on.
We ran an extra ground line from the 48v supply to the - line on the 12 and 5v supplies and this fixed the issue.
Here is an article on this if anyone else runs into the same issue:
http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/latest/hardware/voltages_and_power/voltages_and_power.html#common-ground
Unfortunately this is a common problem along new users. We took this as an opportunity to add warnings to all coil related pages in the docs (i.e. http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/dev/hardware/multimorphic/drivers.html).
Jan
1 week later
We were having some problems getting MPF to work, so in the meantime we started planning out the next wiring looms.
2019-02-01 18.53.09 (resized).jpg
With 2 PD-16s we get 4 banks of 8 outputs. Each flipper takes 2 outputs, and we have technically four in the game (two lower, one upper and one gate diverter)
2019-02-01 18.53.11 (resized).jpg
It was important we plan out our wiring looms to make sure we account for every coil. We also have a drop target bank with individual reset coils that takes almost a whole loom by itself (1 for reset, 6 coils for drop target down)
After having an impossible time trying to install MPF on an older computer, my F*'it brain said lets just pick up a new computer to load this thing on.
2019-02-01 18.56.27 (resized).jpg
Here is the current setup, using a mini-pc wired up to the head.
2019-02-01 18.56.52 (resized).jpg
The nice part about this PC is technically it is small enough that we could re-load it with linux and put it in the cabinet when we are done developing as well.
Hard to see in the pic, but that black box by the monitor is the new PC.
And success! Finally we had MPF up and running and got the game flipping!
Now while most of you would post a first flips video after you got the bugs out, I figured I would post our REAL first flips video:
Notice without using EOS switches, the default power to the flippers is not enough to get a full flip. Later on we adjusted the flipper power and got them to work correctly.
We need more room on the playfield to mount the SW-16 boards and PD-LED boards that will be used in the game.
So we built some riser boards out of some left over plywood and some angle brackets
Next thing to tackle was the drop target bank wiring. I wanted to try to re-use the old connector so it was easy enough to remove the drop target mech in the future.
This semi-worked. I was able to use the connector for the solenoids and one bank of switches, however had to put the second bank of switches on its own sw-16 header.
2019-02-09 17.17.29 (resized).jpg
This is the connector that runs to the PD-16 bank and one of the SW-16 headers.
2019-02-09 17.17.32 (resized).jpg
I ended up using pretty much an entire SW-16 dedicated to this drop target mech. There are 6 switches for the drop targets and 5 switches for the targets behind the drop targets.
The next step is to get the switches working... This part is really exciting, because after the switches are working the game really comes to life!
First step is to run power to all of our boards (SW-16, PD-LED, and Optos).
Here is an opto power board that we used from Pinball Life, we have two of these in the game. One to power our trough and scoop optos and one to power our upper gate optos.
Now it is time to get ALL the switches wired up. This is a very time consuming process for sure.
I also removed all the diodes from the equation as they are not needed for SW-16 boards.
Here you can see one of our SW-16 headers. The wires here are much thinner 22-gauge wires.
2019-02-14 20.26.53 (resized).jpg
And here is an overview of some of the switch wiring. You can see the trough wiring and shooter lane switch that we put in.
Next it was time to tackle the drop target assembly itself. Unfortunately all the switches needed to be re-wired because the theory of operation was different.
Originally it was column and row wiring, which meant they used the same wiring for the rows and just strobes different grounds (columns). Since now we are using dedicated switches, each of them needed to be re-wired.
We needed to add loop optos so we could open and close the top gates and award loop shots. Otherwise we had no way to detect a ball going around the loop.
We choose optos because the lanes were a bit wider than a standard switch would accommodate. Plus we had the drop target mech in the way as well.
Here is the left loop opto being installed..
2019-02-28 19.46.45 (resized).jpg
And here is a view from behind the rail...
2019-02-28 20.34.14 (resized).jpg
These are tricky to get working right, and of course one of the wires was backwards by accident, so that had to be adjusted as well.
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