I have version 3.4. Did not know there was a 3.5.

Sound problems

Turbo sounds: Those cool sounds that come from the slings and pops.

1) My turbo sounds come and go depending on whether I hit some particular switch, or not. I like the turbo sounds and wish they were on 100%.

2) Inlane switch behavior: With a fresh ball on the play field, and the first pass through both of my inlanes, the inlanes will not will not register a sound. On the next pass through an inlane the sound registers correctly and will continue for each inlane pass thereafter. After the Ball 1 drains, the same behavior returns for ball 2 and then Ball 3.

I do not know if any scores are being registered when my inlanes are silent.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Food for thought: Data East machine code, I do not know about Robo Cop,
---- is programed rather odd. The game has mini sub routines all over the place...
---- The switches could be in one "mode" then it would have to delete that mode
---- and insert another "mode" for a new condition... rather than have one table
---- too lookup for a switch subroutine... then test conditions on that switch closer
---- program subroutine, and execution what ever needs to be done.

I think so.

Try starting a game and manually trigger a pop, an inlane, one of the three upper roll overs or one of the rebound switches on the left side under the ED unit. Rotate through them and see what happens and watch the score. On mine the sounds once started will keep making the sound (tap the inlane 6 times, no sound the first 2 or 3 taps for example) till I hit one of the other switches and then the inlane will stop sounding till it is triggered a 2 or 3 times again.

OK. Someone who might understand about something that is hard to describe. I'll pull the glass and start manually operating the switches. I'll need a couple of days.
---------------------------------

Also, mine has one other issue. Sometimes during heated and fast gameplay like multi-ball, if I make the ramp shot or a spinner shot all my feature lights freeze. Nothing else is affected. The game still plays and all switches work but ALL of the lights freeze. After several seconds the lights will return to normal.

The light freezing happens on mine too. I think it must be a common thing.
Question. When the pop bumpers power the ball into the random award generating hole (firing right from the left hand pop bumper) the sound on mine does not operate (the display scrolls randomly with no sound, sometimes maybe I hear the swooshing sound very quietly in the background) but it works every time the ball goes into the hole via the right side tunnel. Does this happen on yours?

Also I find that the various sounds over take each other depending on what is happening on the playfield. A classic one in when it could be saying 'I'll buy that for a dollar' and then the ball goes up the spinner channel and cuts the vocal into a machine gun effect regardless of which part of the sentence is being spoken.

Could you send me the link to your remedy for the stop at the random generator hole please.

I have not had any light freezing, just the sound issue. I'll upload a video tonight, what version MPU software are you running? I have 3.5, confirmed on boot up and on hand written decal.

This weekend I think I'm going to swap sound boards between Phantom of the Opera and Robocop, they should interchange and see if the problem follows the rom or boardset from pin to pin.

See post # 291

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/robocop-club-if-you-own-one-or-use-to/page/6

It has failed me only one time. Instead of the impact absorbing foam in the link, you might be able to use a piece of heavy felt to achieve some damping action. The reason I had to make the relocation is the foam was not performing all that well.

Mine boots as Robocop 4.0. What could that mean?

European, perhaps?

Just a revision that has not been uploaded to IPBD is all. Usually done for bug fixes or in the case of LW3 DE had to rename some stuff due to being sued by Williams. They renamed multi-ball to tri-ball for example due to lawsuit.

I plan on reading the Robocop 3.5V chips and uploading to the guys at IPDB. I'm not aware of a list of revisions for various DE pins, be nice if someone had that information.

Do you have a chip burner to read the 4.0 program chips?

Will I find the OS on the chip?

That ball stop mod looks great. If I get tired of it bumping the ball out I will do it. I can live with it for now though. Looks like a days work.

No I don't have a chip burner. I am old and rickety and still living in the olden days . I don't think I will ever own a chip burner sorry.

I don't know.

It took about 2.5 hours. And part of that was figuring out what needed done. I play Robocop a lot. As noted earlier, it has only failed me once. When I hammer the ball in there it stays put.

Notes from tonight's tomfoolery..

Swapped sound boards from POTO and Robocop. Volume levels for voices are very different between the two. I suspect some difference in resistors, this has been noted before on another DE title. I tried the POTO board and its roms in Robocop which was very odd and then swapped roms. Robocop sound board worked flawless in POTO. The POTO board exhibited the same issues as the Robocop board when installed in Robocop.

To recap: Slingshots, in lanes, flippers, poppers, upper roll overs and rebound switches will randomly not play their sound effect the first one or two strikes of the switch but the MPU is seeing the switch hit as the score goes up and/or will trigger lamp effect. After a switch strike or two, will start playing sound effect normally. Will stop again if other switches are hit and repeats behavior.

MPU software is A3.5, sound roms verified as good, sound boards swapped, sound cable swapped with no change.

Youtube video and time when no sound effect occurs after switch strike.

21 seconds, yellow lane rollover
51 seconds, rebound bumper
1:01 upper lane roll overs
1:13 first flipper activation
1:32 upper roll over
1:40 upper roll overs
2:06 rebound bumper
2:37 lower pop bumper
2:40 left sling
3:00 upper roll overs
3:30, you can see me press the red lane switch several times before the sound effect is fired.

My next step is to try MPU version A2.9 as it is available on IPBD. Perhaps a bug was introduced which may have been fixed with a later software revision. Maybe this is something ChadH could take a look at, resident DE software guru! The only other thing I can think of is there is something funky with the PIA that handles the sound calls but would wager that a long shot. All voice and music call outs work fine.

Ironically after I put the glass on and played a game or two the issue got notably worse, was fairly mild during filming. Flippers stopped making effects for awhile, inlanes acted up a few times too.

20200508_190338 (resized).jpg20200508_190400 (resized).jpg

All of the sounds are good on mine. The 209 lights do not sound on the first ball down (unless you hit the skill shot lane) but everytime after that there is a little 'ring'. There is no problem with the police siren on the inlanes or the pop bumper side rubber or the pops.
I took a pic of the chips which I think are A3.0 (original?). Maybe your idea of using the A2.9 might be a good call.

AO3.0 (resized).jpg

Thank you for checking! I just have to find a spare 27C512 so I can get started.

Today's update:

Tried 2.9 and 3.4 today with no change in behavior, 2.9 actually had a reboot while playing. Borrowed the sound ribbon cable from Time Machine and no change in behavior.

I'm down to it is either a code issue or something wrong with MPU. Read the chips for 3.5 and will upload to IPBD later today.

Sounds

From top to bottom.

My 2-0-9 inlane rollovers always sound off.

To the left of the left pop is a switch that is dead for 3 presses. On the 4th press it starts sounding like a drum. I don't know what it is supposed to do other than make noise.

IMG_3553 (resized).JPG

Sometimes the pops will use the turbo sounds on the first hit. Sometimes the turbo sounds only come after the 3rd hit.

The standup targets all seem to be working fine.

My left sling usually needs two hits to start using the turbo sounds. I have discovered that my right sling is out of commission and it will not make any turbo sounds at all.

Both of my inlane switches are inconsistent. Sometimes they will not make any sound on the first rollover. On the 2nd rollover they sound off. But they are not consistent. Sometimes they will sound off on the first rollover. But mostly they will not.

Flippers do not seem to pick up the turbo sounds until the 3rd flip.

Sounds like you have the same issue; I'm going to try something different after work and burn Time Machine roms to the MPU. In theory the game should work and fire sound effects. To be safe I'll disconnect the controlled solenoids. This should eliminate the MPU software as a potential issue.

Ok so I fibbed being up earlier than usual downloaded some roms files and ambled out to the garage.

Started with Phantom of the Opera roms for a few reasons; the next pin produced right after Robocop so perhaps fewer incompatibilities and I have one so the software a known quantity. Time Machine was out as it had a different alphanumeric display setup.

Burned the POTO roms, installed, disconnected the two coil drive connectors and fired it up. Perfecto!

And.. I can say the problem is with the Robocop software. Every single switch "effect" that I have identified as being a problem vanished with the POTO software. Sound effects fired off every single time without fail.

So, does anyone have a Robocop A-4.0 rom set they can upload to be tried out? I'll touch base with ChadH and let him know what I found.

The rom library from Stern as Robocop as
B5-A34
C5-A34

I have on file now 2.9, 3.0, 3.4 and 3.5. One poster here states they have 4.0.

3.5 was on my machine when I purchased it.

My Robocop boots as A4.0 on boot up but I don't have a chip reader or know how to use one. Sorry.

a4.0 (resized).jpg

If you wish, could you PM me your location? If you are near and willing I could stop by with a laptop and reading device to get the chip info. I did talk to ChadH about the issue, he is willing to work on the Robocop code but not high up on his priority list at the moment.

I got to the ball stop today and it looks quite easy to move but I thought that I would try a foam pad first. It has certainly improved greatly but I am after a 99% stop so I am going to move it tomorrow. The only thing that worries me is that I don't really want to modify the metal stop itself. Is this essential?

I first tried with just adding the anti-bounce foam. It still bounced out. So I had to get radical. The metal stop is just a piece of soft metal then bends without too much force. If you don't want to bend it, try to find a piece of metal at the hardware store and make your own.

IMO, the metal needs to be bent forward in an effort to throw the ball down when the ball hits the metal. However, you could leave yours bent as it is and see what happens. Also, you are going to have to drill two new holes in a new location for the metal stop to work. If it still does not work then you will need to bend it and probably have to drill two more new holes to make it work.

All you have to do to bend it is lay it down of a section of sidewalk and lightly tap it with a hammer---it is that soft. If you have a bench vise that is even better; Just give it a squeeze.

I had my 2nd bounce out failure this morning. I waxed the play field and loaded 3 smooth shiny news balls. And a fast pin got way faster. Before I made this mod is was getting bounce outs 95% of the time.

I will tell you one thing you can do and not have to mod anything. You can get a Rottendog FLP-023 flipper board. I found out when I installed the RD board that it was just a smidge less on power. Just enough that all my airballs went away and the bounce outs also went away. The tradeoff was more than half of my ramp shots failed; There was just not quite enough of the power that I require.

Using the FLP-023 galvanized me into action to get my DE flipper board fixed.

I cannot tell you what to do. But these are your options.

Thanks I appreciate the advice. I am going to adapt it and see what happens. To be honest mine works quite well as it is. I will keep you updated.

I forgot about this issue that cropped up a few weeks ago. Every once in awhile, not often, but every once in awhile, I can have any one of the perps under arrest and the light lit up at the door of the ramp. I make the ramp shot but it gets rejected and kicked back out on the first time the. On the 2nd time, the ram shot will be accepted. It happened to me to day is the only reason I remembered it.

I have even thought about taking a piece of wood and cut it in some sort of fashion and see if that would work for a ball stop. I would think wood would absorb and deflect impact. I may go ahead and try that just for grins.

Something new to try, very interesting!

So last we left off, Robocop has POTO MPU roms installed so I can test the switches. When I hit the switches regardless of speed between locations, a sound effect always goes off. With the Robocop MPU roms, several switches will "drop out" sound effects but the MPU is still seeing the switches as the score goes up, lights fire, etc.

Chad suggested instead of proceeding switch to switch rapidly during testing trying waiting 5 seconds between pressing the switches. To my surprise, the sound effects worked perfect every single time. When you rapidly rotate through them like when you are playing a game they drop out again.

Try cycling through your switches with a 3-4 second delay between locations and report back, I think ChadH is onto something.

Also ChadH thinks the problem is in the sound code, please note what revision is on your sound chips. The decals are all gone on mine =(

If you want some fun... and you have a POTO pinball...
Like I posted above #552 with the funky program...
Play a game of POTO... and in game over mode
Take the glass off and spin the spinner.
For those who don't know... even tho the game is
in game over mode the spinner switch mode is in game play.

Once my Turbo sounds are going they do not stop.

Glass off and hand manipulating the switches:

1) The pops have to be pressed twice. On the third press, the turbo sounds come on and stay on for as long as I want to keep pressing the pop skirts.

2) The inlanes are silent on the first press (notice the pops come on on the 3rd press). On the 2nd press, the inlane sound comes on and stays on no matter how often and how fast I keep pressing.

3) One press of an outline, and the pops and inlanes lose the Turbo sounds.

4) An outhole drain cancels the Turbo sounds.

5) With the turbo sounds on, I start manipulating the 2-0-9 rollovers up top. These 3 switches rotate to which one is the active switch. With pops playing the Turbo Sounds, two of inactive the rollovers will do nothing. The active rollover will cancel the turbo sounds and it take two hits on a pop for the turbo sounds to come back on.

That is all I have for now.

Try this- go back and forth between the upper rebound to the left of the pops and the right inlane.

If I rapidly go back and forth between the two I can pretty much have the sound fail every single time. If I wait 4-5 seconds between hits the sound is there every time. LMK if you see the same thing.

So looking at my def it seems as though allot of hits on the top edge. Wonder if that should be bent up? If it hits that edge will bounce right out. Thoughts?

A8C893A9-257C-45D3-96B1-77B39FC126CF (resized).jpeg

I misread what you said. What I have is the rebound rubber/switch located just beside ED- 209 and to the left of the upper left pop. If I press on the rebound switch, it is silent on 3 presses. On press #4, it will start sounding like drum. A cool drum sound. However, when I press on any pop skirt the pops will sound of immediately and also cancel out the drum sound on the rebound switch. As a result, when the ball bounces off the left pop, it cancels the rebound and I never never ever hear that drum sound during game play.

This is Robocop thread. What is a def? Where on the play field is your ball stop located? Can you pull your camera back and take a longer range picture so we can see the area you are talking about.?

Thanks.

Hah. I know where am.. at least as of now. That’s the deflector for the upper right saucer. The one that was discussed a bunch needing the foam or being bent because the ball bounces out 9/10 times
I was holding it out of the machine .. that’s a rug in in the background
It looks the ball was consistently hitting the top of the deflector vs the back.

I think to fix the eject hop out is to cut out the back wall and set the
stop bracket back a bit. Williams would cut a trough for their system 11
games... The worst game to have constant pop out is IJ.
I tried putting an arched hook on the top part of the stop bracket
along with a rubber baking as a sort of shock absorber to the
assembly. Newer games use a VUK style mechanism.

3 Questions.
I have been trying to manufacture a '3. Uphold The Law' decal to replace the damaged one that I removed when I repaired the burnt out insert.
I have been ink jet printing both self adhesive white matte paper which looks okay but is not waterproof and transparency but the printer does not print light grey on transparent sheet and this comes out as virtually no colour when I background it with the dark blue and when put it onto the existing dark blue of the insert the wording disappears.
Question 1. Would a laser printer create the grey I need on a transparency?
Question 2. It's a long shot but does anyone have a scaled scan of the actual decal? Otherwise it is trial and error for size of text and I am already frustrated with it as I have searched far and wide for the typeface/font.
Question 3. Are these decals available anywhere? I think this question has already been answered by the fact I have not been able to find any in the last eight months.

I have been wondering, after more than a small amount of research online, why there were (supposedly) only 1500 Robocops produced? The normal production run for licensed movie or tv show pins is between 7,000 and 11,000 and sometimes more than 20,000.
It just seems such a small amount. I don't know how the movie performed in the USA but it was massive in Europe.
Could it be that it was something to do with Data East buying, selling or merging the company at the time of its' manufacture or could the company have backed away from the high financial implications of licensed manufacturing.
I am curious because the only downside I find about the low production number is that it is virtually impossible to have the opportunity to restore mine to new.

I'm trying to come up with a A-B-A testing so that ChadH can track the results. So far on mine hitting the top left rebound-right inlane-left rebound can duplicate the problem fairly consistently which is what ChadH needs to eventually look at the code.

Irritated enough by this issue I purchased another Robocop sound board just to lay hands on the factory labeled sound roms.

Sorry. I could tell anything with your pic.

If I am looking at it correctly, it looks like your ball is going airborne and hitting that stop before it ever lands in the saucer. I am having trouble visualizing this.

10 months ago I stripped the lower part of my play field to scan this area for someone. It was a bit of work to make this happen.

I emailed my scans but never heard back from the guy until 10 months later. Now he needs the scans and I cannot find them.

I can make these scans again----someday. I have too much other stuff going right now to do this again. Maybe later.

That seems like a lot of work. I wonder why it took 10 months for the guy to need them (and then lose them, oh dear) but, then again, if he was doing a full refurb. For both of you to misplace them is a small catastrophe. I'm sure that they will turn up. If they do I would really appreciate the '3. UPHOLD THE LAW' scan as Robocop is the only pin I have at the moment. I am sure that you have checked your pinside pm files?

No reason to be sorry. When i looked back at the pic it’s a shitty pic. Also looks like Pinbot background.
Somehow the ball is hitting the top edge of the deflector, as you said, and not the back. I am thinking if I bend that upper part up, maybe it will allow the ball to hit the back of the deflector. Will be trial and error.

Hello everyone. Has anyone had to replace the LED's in Ed 209? One of mine wasn't working. I did have some red led's I'd bought for Williams WPC boards. I put them in and they did work but once I mounted them they don't seem to get too bright. Just wondering if anyone has replaced those and if so with what? Also has anyone had any luck finding the A4.0 code for Robocop? I'd love to try it out and see what the differences are.

I was the one who cottonm4 sent the pictures to. Sorry I had thought I lost them but I didn't. We were moving last year during that and I had to move many many games out of my basement. And Robocop was no exception but the problem with Robocop was it was all taken apart already and I had the parts everywhere. Anyway here are the pictures he sent me. If anyone needs them just PM me your email and I'll send it off to you.

Robocop (resized).png

Robocop2 (resized).png

Hipster, send Bay 70 a PM. He'll help you out.

Thanks for that I have pm'd Bay78. Thanks cottomm4.