The new stuff looks great. Here's another request to give users an option to turn those extra mode ball savers off in the settings.

This still screams battery issues.
When you pulled the batteries for the second time; did you measure the battery voltages?
I wonder if you have a defective motherboard or prism card which is draining the battery.
I'm not aware of any reason a "pinball" defect would cause the settings to go ape sh1t like that.

Of maybe one of the header pins of your prism board is not connected well to the board? Those headers are not as solid as they look especially when you swap daugtherboards

Prism card issue. The ram on the card that is holds its data by the battery voltage is screwed

Experienced Midnight Madness for the first time last night. Was playing some pins late with my son and on my ball 3, boom, it starts up. Good thing I made sure to have the date/time settings correct. Looking forward to see what you come up with for this very cool game, next.

@applejuice: is there a chance to bring back the original extra ball animation!

Original. extra ball animation:

As you say it aloud, that makes good sense. Naturally, I don't have a spare nor can I find one for sale now that I need.

Is there any interest in continued stock of these Chrome Saucers?
I'll be doing another group buy mid-Sept; but it's unclear if I should order anymore of these.

Anyone need an SMC network card for their RFM? I found a couple in my stash the other night. One is NOS (still in the sealed plastic clamshell) and the other is used (but very clean). $25 shipped each. First to respond gets the NOS one!

What does this do, Matt? Is it just a LAN card for the game? Only had my RFM a few months. It was on 1.0 code when I got it.

Yes, just a LAN card. The P2K machines only support this one particular card (SMC8416).
Primary intent was for connecting to a tournament server (I don't think anyone is running one currently?). But the machine also has a built-in webserver that displays a page with your local high scores. You can also telnet in and remotely control the machine, which is kinda neat.

I’d be interested in them both. I may improve the tournament server stuff from both ends at some point abd maybe restart my server (from 2010) with more divisions now I added extra high score tables

Pretty sure I have a card floating around.
I actually may have considered creating a "script" which would publish the highscore tables to a web server at one point.
That said; I didn't have source for the RFM OS system... so I didn't really want to try an tackle / workaround the system.

I finally got my 6-ball trough installed last night. I have 2.22 running now (going to try to get 2.23 up today).

In any of the multiball modes I could get to in my first games, I didn't see an add-a-ball shot that would get me more than 4 balls. What's the easiest way to "test" 6-ball multiball in a game?

Add a ball goes to max 6, 1 at a time

Midnight madness starts at 6
Mothership starts at 5

A few days ago I acquired a Revenge from Mars prototype. It appears to have left the factory April 1999 and has no serial numbers, has the original CRT, slightly different artwork on the playfield, the modes on the playfield are swapped around, it has the Drain O Beam insert overlays, has one spotlight north of the left martian, but no slingshot spotlights (I’m adding them), yadda, yadda, yadda. No proof, but I was told this was taken home by a Williams engineer who put it in his son’s basement and it’s been there ever since. The machine looks about as good as you will find other than a few minor scuffs and scratches on the cabinet. Stats show 1,300 games played. (Easily 200+ of those are games I played. This game is fun!) Over all, the machine is in pretty amazing condition. The CRT has a very good picture but I do have the brightness and contrast maxed out so I will be installing the Ultimarc video amplifier. I’ve already installed the 2.23 code and have ordered the 6 ball trough. Most of the lamps had been haphazardly changed out for LED’s. I will leave LED bulbs in most of the inserts, but most bulbs above the playfield as well as any below the playfield that are behind pepper’s ghost I will be changing back to incandescents to take advantage of the games dimming feature that LED’s can’t handle. (When will someone come up with a pinball LED bulb that dims?) I’ve only had one issue that I resolved, but it still puzzles me.

Five of the seven flashers weren’t working. I checked the obvious things, bulbs, wiring, power, ground and was resigning myself to pulling out the driver board to start checking transistors, but first I started checking the diodes – one on each lamp socket. I found that all these diodes had been twisted up like a twist tie on on a loaf of bread effectively changing the diodes into nothing more than a piece of wire. (You would think I would have noticed this sooner.) Likely this was done by the seller when adding LED bulbs. I untwisted the diodes including the diode on the flashers that worked. The result was that the flashers that worked Stopped working. Reversing course, I used a jumper to bypass a diode and a flasher started working. It was the same for the other flashers. Apparently, replacing flasher incandescent bulbs with LED’s on this game requires the elimination of the diode and this had been accomplished by twisting them up. Five of the seven simply hadn’t been twisted tight enough. I will be removing all of the flasher diodes since they are no longer perform any function and I don’t care for this twisted makeshift solution. I can always add diodes back if I go back to incandescents. (When I changed my F14-Tomcat to LED I did not have this issue although I did remove the warming resistors.) I searched the forums, but was unable to find if anyone has had this same issue when adding LED bulbs. If you installed LED flashers did you remove the diodes?

I’ve enabled chase ball, but I’ve yet to see it happen. My understanding is that when your ball gets stuck and the machine can’t find it then it will send another ball out that will hopefully hit the stuck ball. I’ve had stuck balls and waited and waited while the machine repeatedly searched for the ball, but it never got around to sending out a chase ball and I end up shaking the machine to dislodge the ball. Am I not waiting long enough?

I do have one ghosting insert. It doesn’t matter what LED I put in there. This is one of the three inserts in front of the left martian. I have some new non ghosting LED’s coming, but I suspect a bad diode here so I will be replacing that.

applejuice’s 2.23 code:

I love it and can’t imagine the amount of work that must have gone into it. It makes a fun game ten times better. I installed the code from a command line on my Windows 10 laptop after connecting the null cable and it went flawlessly. Some weird stuff did happen after that though.

In my first game I did something good and the crowd cheered. Then they cheered again and again. I was getting concerned. Six times they cheered as I continued to play. Then the cheering stopped, things continued as normal and it hasn’t happened again.

The drunk flippers REALLY tick me off! I LOVE the drunk flippers! No matter how much they irritate me, I won’t turn them off. Of course, the most fun is watching other people struggling with them.

I’m late to the game here so maybe you all are already aware of this. I noticed in Happy Hour that after a ball drains it takes about five seconds – after ‘End of Ball Bonus’ finishes counting up the score – before a new ball is kicked into the shooter lane. The delay does not happen if the ball is saved and there is no delay in the other game modes. This only happens in Happy Hour when ‘drunk flippers’ is enabled. Turn ‘drunk flippers’ off – even in the middle of the game – and there is no delay. Is this five second delay an intentional feature of ‘drunk flippers’?

Also, if you decide to restart the game during martian happy hour then you will be stuck with drunk flippers in every mode forever and ever amen. This is easily duplicated any time you press the start button to restart the game during Happy Hour ball 2 or later. I tried going into the menu system and turning drunk flippers off during the game, but they continued to be drunk during that game and following games. The only way to get rid of drunk flippers is to power the machine off and on.

I did experience another flipper issue. Suddenly, I couldn’t hold the right flipper. The left flipper worked just fine. The only setting I could find for ‘no hold’ was in party mode. The setting was off and I’ve never turned it on. I continued playing, the ball drained and the next game mode started, but the flipper still wouldn’t hold. I started an entirely new game and the flipper still wouldn’t hold. I had to power the machine off and on to get the flipper to function properly again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you when the ‘no hold’ started and I’ve been unable to duplicate it.

I like that if I am having a lousy game that I can hold the start button to quit and start a new game. Being new to the RFM club I know this is kind of bold of me, but if I could make a suggestion: Could an option be added that ends the game without starting a new game?

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining about the code. It’s great! I just had the impression that applejuice would like to know if a possible bug is experienced and that he was open to suggestions. I appreciate all the hard work. I ordered your ball trough, left a donation and will donate again when I download 2.24.

Anyway, I really enjoy this machine. It replaced a Jurassic Park Premium that I hated. I couldn’t be happier and I have absolutely no regrets. What those guys pulled off in 1999 was groundbreaking. I’m surprised no one has copied the innovative pinball 2000 format and run with it today. It’s so nice to see information on a screen that you are already staring at rather than having to look up at an LCD screen or DMD on the back box. I find that the all but instantaneous way the images respond to a ball hit to be amazing. The guys who designed this were ahead of their time.

That’s it.
Sorry for the novel.

Thanks, applejuice - this "add a ball" mode - this is with Hypno multiball? I am only finding mention of "add a ball" here in relation to hypno: http://pinball.org/rules/revengefrommars.html (I wish someone who was good at this game would do one for 2.23!).

I see you added "Capture Multiball - Added option for add_a_ball" in 2.10:
http://pinball.org/rules/revengefrommars.html

This is not an option I need to select? I'm not seeing anything in the 2.23 menus for an option mentioning add a ball anywhere. I should just need to enable the 6-ball trough in System Adjustments, right?

If your game plays normally with 6 balls in and the trough upgrade then it’s working. The hardware is auto detected so the system option isn’t actually used

Add a ball updates I added are add a ball features for all multiballs by lighting the 4 bottom Lanes then collecting at sol whilst multiball is running

The rule updates and changed are clearly described in my update log page here for all my versions

https://mypinballs.com/software/rfm/code_updates.jsp

I'm running into an issue with my 6 ball also. When I put 6 balls into the game it kicks out 2 to start the game. I swapped out the opto boards with new 6 ball ones from pinballlife. Checked to make sure all the connections are good. Any idea what else to check?

I would put it into switch test and check the trough optos all work

With so many awesome changes happening to the game with your updated code, do you have any plan to add an option of where a player can easily switch between the final official code and your most recent code changes?

No

Understood. Thank you for the reply!

You can also cheat the system time and reboot then start a game to make midnight madness trigger and start 6 ball multiball.

That’s what I did. Holy hell, 6 ball multiball on this table is slick.

Is this the prototype that was up for sale on eBay?

I almost snagged it, but Mrs. Dash said I can’t have 3 RFM pins or she’s setting up an intervention.

That's the one. I know it was pricey, but considering its history and the shape it was in I didn't mind. The cabinet has a few minor scuffs and scratches that I can easily clean up, but it actually looks worse in the pictures than it does in person and it plays great. The only issue I've had is likely due to it sitting unused for so long. A number of the twist light sockets have had trouble keeping good connections so the bulbs don't light up. I just pull them out, clean the contacts and put them back in and they are fine. The ball trough upgrade and the video amplifier will both be here next week. I haven't looked yet so I hope this has the Wells Gardner CRT rather than the Ducksan. I heard the amplifier install is easier with the Wells Gardner. The important thing is that I enjoy it so much more than the machine it replaced.

Well now I'm curious.... what did it replace?

Thought I'd bump this again applejuice - the Status Report is useless, and when you're trying to explain to someone what shot to hit, it just gets in the way.

"Okay, capture the ball"
"Now aim for that guy... a dangit, well if you could see, there's a martian there"

True, so annoying. Also when you catch a ball on a flipper and wait for an animation target to come in your line of shot (like the moving tank, the moving Martians in the bowling mode or even the Marsian invaders) the status report blocks most of the screen. Never understood why they made it like this.

It replaced a Jurassic Park Premium. I owned it for four months. A beautiful machine, but Stern quality control is lacking. When I unpacked it, I found a number of things under the playfield in the cabinet disconnected. I had to rebuild the T-Rex. My raptor was bent in an odd way limiting his movement. (I would have eventually removed him and fixed him with a heat gun.) On multiple occasions I would be playing and a screw or a nut would roll down the playfield. The first few weeks of ownership I was constantly making adjustments to prevent the balls from getting stuck. I didn't expect perfection, but the amount of work I was having to put into a brand new game was ridiculous. Playing the game, I didn't find it challenging, I found it frustrating. The ball drains more than any other game I've ever played. It's unfortunate as I made a lot of modifications to it.

Um, yeah, Jurassic Park. (I'm done venting.)

I'm really enjoying RFM. Besides the things I listed I am going to replace the power supply fan as it is kind of whiny. While I'm at it I'll replace the CPU fan as well as the computers battery and the prism cards battery. Even though it was hardly played, it's been sitting around ignored for the last 20 years. I just have to figure out which fans to get. I've decided not to play it until I get those fans replaced. I fear it's getting too hot. The only thing I'm irritated about is being unable to get hold of the 3D translite.

I've rarely hear of PSU fan replacement; although it shouldn't be too hard.
I have replaced the CPU fan tho:
http://pinball-mods.com/blogs/?p=750

I pulled the computer out and found the noise is the CPU fan struggling. Ordered a new one. Won't play the game again until that's installed. Don't want to risk overheating.

Mystery modes were extras really but I will take a look at this. Maybe I can change it to only show status whilst the ball is in the shooter lane with a flipper press. No promises though

Now I am officially intrigued by your project. I think I will buy in and make a separate SSD for my Nucore computer to run your version of the software. Maybe a dual-boot system to allow that choice at startup.

Long live RFM, and thank you for your contributions!

So magically when I turned it on this time everything was working fine. Thank you for this awesome code. I also installed a shaker and it's like playing a brand new game.

Hey guys. What are the best settings to make beating the game SUPER EASY? I know you can set it 10 per game and set most of the settings to "ex easy" or "easy". My wife likes to play it but doesn't want to spend an hour or two trying to beat it. And especially not having to start completely over. Basically I want to set it to very casual play so you can play through the whole game within 20 or 30 mins. Can this be done?

You can also reduce the playfield angle. Specifically with RFM I was starting to have long ball times and getting bored with the game. Raised up the back legs 1/4" and the level of difficulty jumped a ton.

Yes the game and modes really lend themselves to shaker integration. When you play a game without it now it really feels like something is missing

Question installing the 6 ball trough upgrade.

I completed my install after going over everything multiple times. I made sure the diodes were properly oriented again and again. I checked wiring again and again. I tested wiring for continuity with no issues. I finally felt I was ready, turned on the game and the shooter cycled through six balls one time. Knowing something was wrong I didn’t bother trying to play a game. I headed for diagnostics and was told there was a short in row three. After some experimentation and eventually leaving the connector off of the transmitter board, I powered up and the short no longer existed so I figured it must be my wiring in one or the other end of that little cable you have to assemble. I spent hours trying to figure out what was going on. It’s still not working and I can’t find anything I’ve done wrong, but I discovered something confusing. It’s looking like my machine is not compatible with the upgrade.

Mypinballs opto board only has 12 pins, but my board has 13 pins - including the key. I’m posting a bad pic to prove that I can count. Am I missing something here or is having a prototype biting me in the ass? Any ideas?

rfm opto (resized).jpg

Here's mine

20200703_154442 (resized).jpg

Yep, production machine. The boards are significantly different than on the prototype. I think I'm out of luck and wasted my money.

If you find out there is no way it will work with your RFM let me know and I would be interested in buying your kit.

I realized that Zee's board is pinned pretty much exactly the opposite of mine other than the key being in a different place and I have an extra pin - r8. I'm going to create my own connector to get everything pinned to the right place (ignoring my r8 and not hacking anything up). If that doesn't work then I'm sure we can work out a deal.

Page 3-16 of the operations manual has the schematic to help you not screw up your adapter harness! Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Believe me, I've poured over it. I created a Frankenstein loom, hooked it all up, went into settings to tell the machine it had six balls and rebooted. It still thinks it has four balls and when I start a game it starts kicking balls out one after the other in a never ending cycle. I put everything back original and all worked fine. I'm taking one more shot. I'll put Frankenstein back in, but I'm going to flip the diodes. As careful as I was, perhaps they are backwards on the prototype - like everything else it seems. I understand non working diodes can cause balls to kick out. Unfortunately, I don't have a prototype manual - only a downloaded production manual. I thought about throwing $100 at a new opto board, but my connector's wiring still wouldn't match up, (and probably the other connectors as well), so I would again have to finagle a workaround which would be an even bigger can of worms. If flipping the diodes doesn't work then embien has a six ball trough kit.

It's still ongoing, but wait 'till you hear my video amplifier experience.

I agree none Shaker fans are wowed by the integration with my RFM
I even made them mode their own

Amazing!!!! Keep updating... forever and ever!!!!

One question... where it should be integrated this "LONDON is back" mode? Just wondering... anyways... it looks fuc**** amazing!

Thanks @applejuice!!!!

Mav

My Ultimarc Video Amplifier Experience

I purchased the amplifier off of eBay thinking I would get it quick. No. It took ten days. While waiting for the amplifier I ran five volts from the computer and fabricated the cable I would need. Considering all the speak about how difficult this would be with a Ducksan I was a little apprehensive, but it was a slam dunk install. I cut the trace on the amplifier to separate the syncs, connected 5 volts, connected the wires to the amplifier as I had researched, powered up and adjusted the picture using the brightness, contrast and the flyback to get it the best I could and I was impressed. The amplifier really does make a huge difference.

The connector I had made was very loose resulting in a poor intermittent connection. I intended to buy a decent one, but since everything worked I felt safe cannibalizing the OEM cable and using that connector. Things still worked, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone and that’s when things went horribly wrong. I remembered reading about removing and jumping R4 to get better blacks. Okay, I can do that – and I did... on the amplifier. {You can laugh at the idiot now.} Too late I realized my mistake. Not R4 on the video amplifier. R4 on the control PCB. Strangely, the amplifier still worked, but I had no blue. (I don’t know if this is due to the damage I did to the amplifier or just my loose connector, but messing with the connector didn’t help.) I had gone ahead and jumped R4 up by the pots (without cutting the resister figuring “the path of least resistance”) and got a very dim colorless screen. Being unable to adjust and improve it, I removed the jump. The more I worked trying to recover blue the worse things got. Now no picture at all. I don’t understand. Adjust brightness, contrast, flyback no help. Figuring I had fried the amplifier I reassembled the original cable and still had no picture. I’m knee deep in it now and am terrified I've fried something important. I’m thinking I’m going to have to buy a new cable except, as we all know, they're impossible to find. Fortunately, I did eventually get the original cable working again and the picture was back the way it was prior to the install attempt.

I still wanted the amplifier and being a glutton for punishment, I ordered a new one – from England this time. I didn’t get it in three days, but the six days it took for DHL to place it in my hands was better than the ten days it took for the first one to get to West Texas from Oklahoma.

While waiting, I lost the battle with the six ball trough upgrade.

When the new video amplifier arrived, I started from scratch by cutting the trace on the amplifier. I reassembled my fabricated cable. Powering up I got a screen that looked like the horizontal hold had gone wild. I verified the trace was fully cut and that everything was connected correctly, but got no change. I pressed down on my fabricated connector and the screen flickered. Time to again cannibalize the OEM connector. Drum roll please… It worked! I adjusted everything trying to get the best picture I could. It could still use some fine tuning, but I have to admit that it is significantly better.

I still can’t leave well enough alone so I jump R4 on the control PCB after first clipping a leg on one end of the resistor this time. Again I have that dim colorless screen. No adjustments I could make would change it. I’ve got to be doing something wrong and I've had enough. I solder the severed resister back together, make some adjustments and leave it at that. You’ve seen photos of the difference this modification makes and they never do it justice so I won’t bother, but the picture is definitely worlds better. Before, the images were transparent. Now they are solid and bright. I would like to get better blacks still, but I’ve had enough of this for now. It’s time for a break from working on the video. Leave well enough alone. Whew!

I made this upgrade much more difficult than it needed to be. Anyone with a Ducksan installing the video amplifier, here is all you need to do.

Cut that trace on the video amplifier.

Open up the computer, tap into 5 volts and solder it to the amplifier exactly as shown in the instructions. (I added a little connector to the power wire near the amplifier so I could easily disconnect it if I needed to rather than having to unsolder it.)

Take a look at the OEM CGA cable where it connects to the monitors main PCB. You will see the red, green and blue wires split and each connects to two pins on the connector. Make your new connector just like this except do not split the red, green and blue. Leave pins 2, 4 and 6 empty.

Wire your new connector as follows:
Red to pin 1
Green to pin 3
Blue to pin 5
White (H\V) to pin 7
Yellow (V) to pin 8
Ground to pins 9 and 10

Connect the wires to the amplifier terminals as follows:
Red to Red
Green to Green
Blue to Blue
Yellow to Sync
Both grounds to ground
White to the remaining terminal

Do this and I guarantee it will work. It worked for me until I tried to make things better.

Now you just start adjusting the picture using the brightness and contrast pots on the control PCB behind the back glass and the flyback’s focus and brightness on the main PCB. Make sure the wires of your new cable aren’t too close to other wires back there as it will cause distortion on the monitor unless you’ve used a shielded cable.

Clipping and jumping R4 on the control PCB didn’t work for me, but then my machine is a prototype and things aren’t always the same as production machines – as in the opto PCB when attempting the 6 ball trough upgrade. If you want to try it I suggest just clipping the middle of one leg of the resistor and then jump it. If it doesn’t work then you can just solder that leg back together as I did.

I’m already working on my next project. The topper. I purchased the $100 topper found on Etsy meant for Arcade1up Attack from Mars. It’s simple, just two pieces of plexiglass, but it looks really good. It’s only back lit with a single white LED strip which is not very exciting so I’m customizing the lighting. This I can do.

It will be an alternative skyline for Martian attack