Hi there,

Nobody ever tried to get a real knocker working in a RFM (or SWEP1) ?

It's common knowledge that a real knocker was foreseen and then cut for price.
There are plenty of unused hardware drivers which could be used, but does anyone know if there is some code written to activate one of those outputs in case of a "special" awarded ?

If not, could it be possible to add the necessary code ?

What could be the best way to implement such a thing ?

Any ideas welcome.

Oh yes, I am sure
These pinballl 2000 have probably the crapiest knocker emulated sound ever made.

It's so bad you could think your speakers were just torn apart. I disabled the "match" and all features that could give a replay, only to not be forced to hear *that* again.

Now, maybe your RFM was already modded by a previous owner to get a real knocker.
In that case, I would be very interested to see how it was implemeneted.
Can you tell me on which output of the driver board (bottom of cabinet) it is connected, and which version of the software is installed (can be found in the information menu) ?

Thanks !

Believe me: Pinball2000 is worse !
BTW, I already installed a real knocker on my STPro

Wasn't this about the modern Stern's ?
I'm looking for something for a Pinball2000 platform, which is different.

Sorry if this seems dumb, but how does this ticket mechanism work ?

Is it simply a device that produce one or more ticket(s) of some sort to the player, according to the settings of the game ?
Going a step further: from the signals I see on the J117 connector, there are:
- A logic signal output (Ticket Drive) -> makes the motor of the ticket dispenser turn
- An input switch used when there are no more tickets available (Tickets Low) -> In my case, this should remain inactive (just have to figure out if this is a logic high or logic low), so that the computer thinks there still are tickets available
- An input switch giving a pulse back to the computer each time one ticket has been physically distributed (Ticket Notch).

Now, if I make a small circuit that fires a knocker (through the needed driver to be able to switch the 50V coil), and gives back a signal on "Ticket Notch", .... yes... this could work indeed!

Thanks RCA1, I'll give this a try, and if I come out with something interesting, I'll post it here so that it could serve the community.

In the meantime, if there are some timing requirements on the signals between Pinball and ticket dispenser that I should be aware of, feel free to post them.

I just found a manual of a specific type of dispenser that can be attached to pinball machines (www.ticketflex.com%2FPDF%2FTF%2520%2520A2%2520Guide.pdf).

Usefull information there in.

The motor drive signal is a logic-low signal coming from a ULN2803 in the pinball.
The logic levels for the two feeback signals (tickets low and ticket notch) are also logic-low.
Timings should not be very critical, I think.

I will breadboard something in the coming days, just as a proof of concept: Just a LED that goes on based on the ticket motor signal, and a "notch" signal that goes back to the pin a fraction of a second later, connected to J8 on the coindoor interface.
A simple 555 (electronicians among the readers will understand) could do the trick...

If this works, the LED simply has to be replaced with a classic 50V mosfet driver to activate a real knocker.

For months, I was wondering how to do this, and never had a clue that the ticket dispenser control could be used....
Once again, thanks RCA1: I owe you one !

What if you could get a good old real knocker sound?

Hmmm well...
I investigated this track about the ticket dispenser.

My RFM is running version 1.5 of software.
I changed the settings to give tickets as awards wherever it is possible.
I hooked up a circuit that emulates the notch signal as a real ticket dispenser would, with a fairly good timing.
I played and met several times one of many conditions to get a ticket, but there never was a signal issued on the motor pin. There was nothing happening on the screen either that would state I won something with the score.
Furthermore, I set the option to get a ticket in case of an extra ball. When I get an EB on play, the screen displays the usual dull animation, but still no signal for the ticket dispenser.
I also tried several country settings (DIP switch on the power driver), including USA, but nothing made it.

Then, I also checked the standard audits, and the "Tickets dispensed" audit value remains at 0. So, this rules out any hardware problem such as bad or missing wiring.

So, I wonder: has anyone ever connected a ticket dispenser to a pinball 2000 ?
Is there some trick to get this work ?
I could hardly believe that is not implemented in software....

Any clue out there ?

I did some more research and hooked my scope to the coin door interface J9 (this is the connector where a ticket dispenser should be installed).

I confirm there's no signal at all coming on the pin that should enable the dispenser's motor.

I then suspected that the "tickets low" signal (sent from the dispenser to the pin) could be a problem also. This signal remains High by default (pull-up resistor on the driver board), and I first thought that it should remain that way to be only driven low by the dispenser's logic in case of no more available tickets, which is the logical and usual way of doing things.
But since it did not work, I took another approach: maybe the pinball uses this signal to determine if a ticket dispenser is installed or not. In that case, the dispenser should take the signal low to let the pinball know it's ready, and so, a high value for this signal would be interpreted as either "no tickets" or "no dispenser attached".
So, I forced this signal to low, aaaannnddd........
Nothing !

I put the score award to a ticket for 5.000.000 pts (which is nothing in RFM) and played some. Nothing ! No signal on that bl00dy motor signal.
On one instance, I got a match at game over (for which I also set the award to "ticket"). The display showed something like "1 credit added" or something likewise, but nothing else.

I must confess I'm running out of options, and would really appreciate if someone, former operator or owner of an RFM ou SWEP1 could show up and confirm (s)he successfully hooked a ticket dispenser to that thing in the past.
Furthermore, if someone with a ticket dispenser could do the test, this would also be very helpful here.

On the other hand, there *are* (I know that for sure) people out there with deep knowledge of the pinball 2000 software. Maybe some source code is also to be found somewhere.
Should anyone got a grip on this, could he have a look to see if the needed code for activation of a ticket dispenser is, indeed, present ?
Because, I'm beginning to suspect that this is rather something missing in the software than a hardware issue...

If I can make this thing work, I would publish here all the schematics and mounting plans so that everyone could build his own real knocker for pinball2000. Would be great, isn't it ?

Many thanks in advance

Further thinking on this....

I think the ticket dispenser is a dead end.
Have to figure out something else.

The next idea that's popping up is based on the following assumption and information:

- The knocker sound clip is stored in one of the two sound ROM's on the daughter card of the PRISM assembly (U109 or U110)
- I don't know how the sound clips are stored in those ROM's (seems to be encoded in some way), and I don't know where (at which adress) it is stored.
- The raw data from the ROM's is used by the on-board DSP, and then, sent out as a serial data stream to the audio DAC on the amp card.
- I cannot use this serial data stream, because I do not know what the DSP does to the signal: what is the impact of the volume setting ? What if another sound clip (voice, music, sound FX) is played simultanously .... I could not be able to recognize the knocker data packets because they could be different from a time to another.

What's left is to "sniff" the adress bus on the sound ROM's.
In a first time, this should be done to try to answer to the "where" question (What is the adress of the sound clip in the ROMs).
Once I have this adress, I then constantly look at the sound adress bus, and if I see that the system accesses the knocker sound clip, I can mute the main amplifier and activate my real knocker instead.

This should work, provided that the knocker sound clip actually exists in the sound ROM's and is not fully software generated.

I can then imagine to insert a PCB between the two Prism cards, and connected to them through the existing headers, without modifying anything.

So here's another call for help:

- If someone has information to confirm that a sound clip exists in the sound ROMs, please let me know.
- If someone knows the adress at which this sound clip is stored, please let me also know.

I already got some emails from people out there, and would like to thank them for their time and suggestions.

Yeah! Thanks, Chris! Hope you'll get an answer!