This system definitely puts Stern way ahead of the competition. Being able to match anything feature wise with a simple, inexpensive, reliable system that is easy to manufacture and does not involve miles of wire any more is a huge accomplishment. I love seeing just that tiny little board in the backbox with no shielding and hardly any wiring in the cabinet. All based on proven automotive technology. That cuts costs, of manufacturing and labor by tons while making it more reliable and easier to fix. Designing their own boards from the ground up is also the way to go. Stern can lock in the design and build it as long as they want without dealing with vendor-owned designs for key components. The modular design allows them to drop in multiple LCDs and high tech toys at will. Stern has positioned themselves to keep up on a technology standpoint with any of their new competition, but at a very low price point. So basically they can build the same game at a much lower cost.

In contrast JJP is built around an off the shelf PC in a huge heat producing metal box with tons of flaky connectors, cables and wiring buried where you can't get to it in the bottom of the cabinet. I just had to recently troubleshoot a bad connector in WoZ that would not allow it to even boot on Thanksgiving. I didn't get it fixed for a few head scratching days, but was fortunate to have great tech support from JJP. To me the JJP system is a freakin nightmare and a huge waste of money because of poor design. Its great if it works, but... It has to be expensive to build too for no real added value.

Less components, connectors and heat = more reliable. I do this type of assessment for a living by the way. But you are right, in the end you always have to wait and see.

Not to mention the buzzing sound constantly coming from the speakers that is crosstalk from the poorly designed LED boards.

The more connectors the less reliable. Period. Pinball machines have lots of rattling from shakers and subwoofers not to mention all the solenoids. And yes, I had to re-seat a cable on WoZ to fix a boot problem. Thanks for the tech help though it was top notch.

Yeah because PCs never die. They also change models every year so they will never be quite the same down the road and will completely change form factor within 5-10 years. Desktops are going away fast at this point.

You got me there. Good point. Still the noise of the fans and the whole enclosure and EMI seal and all that crap is not needed to make a pinball machine. Stern is a cleaner, leaner and more elegant design. That is not saying much though.

I get payed pretty well to give opinions just like this on a daily basis. Stern has been working on this system for years and has in no way rushed it to market. It will surely have a few hiccups, but I stand by my statements (edit: predictions) that it will be very reliable and cost effective.

Comes from the speakers. It's loud enough to hear from anywhere in a quiet room. It varies in pitch and loudness in perfect sync with the LED'S in attract node.

Well said Brian. I agree with everything you said, but the above especially rings so true and pertinent to this thread.

Simplicity is king no matter what the application. Anyone who would argue that its better to have a much more complex and expensive system than what is really needed to do the job is simply fooling themselves.

Time out for a minute to go back to the main topic at hand. Being an electronics engineer, the tech side of things is a lot of fun to look at. I always end up working on and fixing these things, so I really appreciate what I am seeing thus far from the new system. It looks simple and easy to work on.

Picture #1: Wow is it small and simple. Just a tiny CPU board and computer power supply in the backbox!! Uses a full size SD card and no hard drive. Yay! Hardly any wires running to the cabinet, just data cables. It also has LEDs right on the CPU board to replace the fluorescent tube in the backbox. This is a double-yay because not only does this eliminate a horrendous "feature" in previous Sterns, they will be able to dim and brighten the lighting in software and provide more evenly dispersed light than the tube provided. Hopefully there will be a "low" setting for gameplay to reduce glare.

Picture #2 and 3: Notice how little wiring is under the playfield? That is because the driver board in the backbox (or hidden in the base of the cabinet) has been replaced by little generic driver boards mounted right on the bottom of the playfield. You can see one of them in the upper left corner of picture #2 above the flipper assembly. You can also make one out in the upper center of picture #3. By mounting them right on the playfield near the coils they control, the wiring is cut to a minimum. I can see in the pictures that the components are clearly good old through hole parts (not surface mount) that can be changed by the average pin tech. Also, these boards are small and simple enough to be cheap. They can be discarded and replaced if they get hacked too bad and it will be feasible to have spares on hand for quick repairs in the field. It also means they can design as many or few coils as you want in a machine and simply add and subtract driver boards. Nice to see the Pros are now fully LEDs with the correct power supply to prevent strobing, ghosting and flickering.

Picture 4: Sorry but this is just cool to look at. I also love the 2-wire ramps in this game. They just look clean.

In the last year I have heard nothing but people bitching for innovation. Its sitting here right in front of our eyes both in system and game design...

OK now back to the bitching, moaning and arguing.

VERGE2015-01-04_08-43-27CES.0.jpg
VERGE2015-01-04_08-42-46CES.0.jpg
VERGE2015-01-04_08-42-17CES.0.jpg
VERGE2015-01-04_07-21-08CES.0.jpg

Not sure if you guys noticed the post I made above with pictures, but the driver transistors in SPIKE are clearly visible and through hole. Those transistors are basically what will need to be replaced the most if anything. If the circuit is properly designed the surface mount LEDs basically will never fail. It isn't the LEDs that were failing in WOZ, it was the piss poor board design...

I just noticed this on Pinball News:

"One interesting point to note is how the flippers now have three cables attached. Previously Stern have used just two wires to provide the power and hold current. Now it appears they are using dual-wound coils like Williams did, which should eliminate the buzz sometimes associated with Stern flippers."

Seriously? What other conclusion is there? There is no driver board in the backbox or cabinet and there are clearly at least two mini driver boards under the playfield with drive transistors that aren't needed for anything but coils. Upper left corner apron area with the clearly visible through hole transistors:

VERGE2015-01-04_08-42-46CES.0.jpg

Thanks. So the one in the Pin is surface mount and you can clearly see the through hole components in the very similar WWE driver board. Case closed:

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-R_ta9QX40aChK6QL6BuLyER85I=/1020x0/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2904068/VERGE2015-01-04_08-42-46CES.0.jpg

No. The switch matrix has never been on the driver board anyway. It has been on the CPU board since the beginning of time. From what I can see the driver board is 8 channels of coil driver and nothing more. The switch matrix is probably at least what it was on SAM (8x10).

That board is a power supply board. It consists of a bridge rectifier and filter section no different in theory or cost than what has been in SAM, Whitestar, WPC95, WPC89, System 11, etc. The cost savings is in moving it closer to the LEDs that it drives and saving on wiring. Hopefully they have learned from experience over the last couple of years and tweaked the design a little to make it more robust. That is part of the theory of rolling out changes in stages as they have over the last 2+ years.

Trade off? The little power supply is for GI lighting and only one is needed. Up until now the GI was AC voltage so this functionality did *not previously exist* on the main driver board. There is nothing really modular, duplicated or distributed about it? It simply is what it is. These standard connectors are cheaper, require less labor and should be more reliable as long as they really are using automotive tech. And yes, there is material saving in less wire too.

The other bright side here is that even the Pros now have DC voltage driving the GI lights which eliminates the long dreaded strobing. They could use ultra cheap, single polarity LEDs in the GI and they will still look smooth as silk.

OK, I see your point and do agree for the most part.

Mine is definitely both fan and speaker noise, though the speaker noise is by far more annoying.

I have some better cabling that I could try for the speaker noise and I will look into replacing the transformer. As someone said above it definitely changes pitch when the colors of the LEDs change and the brighter (white) the color, the louder the sound gets. I hate even working on that mess under the playfield. Even looking at the WOZ video above made me appreciate the elegant design of SAM and SPIKE even more. Tons of bloated hardware installed in a place that is a total pain to work on is not my idea of progress...

Thanks, will do after I get home. Now that this is one of the last LEs made. July 2014.