Party Zone is not a system 11 game, it is a early WPC game. Now on to your problem. Since this is an early WPC game it needs an certain PDB installed to be able to read the flipper switches. If you have a later board installed this will not work, as you know by now if this doesn't work you can't install high score names. And isn't this the only reason we play pinball!

Can you post a pic of your PDB so I can see if it the correct version.

Sorry for posting in the sys 11 club. I couldn't find a WPC club and I knew there were a bunch of heavy hitters in here so I gave it a shot. And I think you're right! I reset all the high scores to zero, played a game, no initials! Here is a picture of my PDB.

20230213_125633 (resized).jpg

Check the U7 and U8 on the Power Driver board.
They should show switch 11 (right) and 12 (left) in the switch matrix when you put the game in test mode and press the flipper button.

This a correct PDB for your game. Look at this part of the PDB. Check over the wiring first then check if the opto isolator chips are working.

U7 U8 (resized).png

Here they are....

Pinside_forum_7444016_1 (resized).jpg

Switch 11 and switch 12 register in test mode when I press the flipper button. Test report still says to check flipper buttons. Here is a picture of the relevant section of the PCB in game.

Screenshot_20230305-150515_WhatsApp (resized).jpg

Read this at Pinwiki.

https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php/Williams_WPC#Switch_11_or_Switch_12_Reported_as_Closed_With_All_Switch_Matrix_Connectors_Removed

I read this and performed the test using diode test on my mm and found the following:

Red on pin 1, black on pin 2; U7 .992, U8 .992
Black on pin 5, red on pin 6; U7 .717, U8 .716
Black on pin 4, red on pin 6; U7 .729, U8 .730

Say, pulled my shooter rod housing out on my Police Force because it was dirty and looked like crap. All cleaned up and ready to get back in, but, since I've had the pin, the plunges seem "sticky" at times. Springs seem fine and good. Can you lube these to make them smoother? Never had to in any of my system 11's. Just curious how to make it plunge smoother and more consistent

No lube. Did you use a new sleeve? Sometimes it needs a new shaft as they get worn too.

Yeah new sleeve. I'll just get a new shaft. Thanks!

When I bought my Whirlwind the shooter would “stick” at spots. Disassembled, cleaned the rod with mother’s polish, replaced the sleeve, both springs. Shoots like a dream now.

Huh, maybe try that 1st. Appreciate it

Most sticky shooter rods (on any game) is due to the last person lubricating it.

That seems fine.

Yeah, it's pretty close to what the pinwiki entry you posted had. I also tested the cpu side for continuity at the points in the attached picture and found it at all of them. There was some alkaline leakage on the cpu board that I did my best to clean up. Maybe there is some damage to one of the traces that is causing some resistance, I'm not sure how to figure that out. The weird part is that lane change works fine and song selection works fine. Both of those functions are controlled by the flippers. The only thing that doesn't work is changing high score initials.

Screenshot_20230307-232122_Chrome (resized).jpg

Have you changed the shooter nylon sleeve?

Thought you might like an update on the World System 11 Champs I held a few weeks back.

75 competitors… around 1500 games played on 13x SYS11 titles. The photo below is the qualifying games played on each title.

Only one break down - a rubber snapped on Rollergames. Pretty cool for 35 year old pinball machines!

rd

03A12282-5C85-4DA9-BE94-77ECE364E456 (resized).png

More FYI

Here are the qualifying top scores.

You got 2x goes at your choice of 10 of the 13 machines. Both scores counted.

All pins were tournament settings - 3 balls, no extras - fixed jackpot roms where needed - tight tilts.

I was particularly proud of my 22m Diner score! Built up the Dine Time to 12m … dine time started … booom nailed it first time. Fist pump moment.

rd
86947AEB-8D53-4382-BBCE-F2F55A7A16DF (resized).jpegE84AB6A4-B188-4A8A-BD55-28AE16BD561E (resized).jpeg

So amazing must have been a blast! really excellent line up, but no Taxi?!

Taxi was rotated out this year. Along with Swords of Fury and High speed.

Fresh in for the first time:
Cyclone (fixed 2m jackpot)
Diner (repaired cup scoring rom)
Millionaire (spin shots score points, spinner disabled)

All those roms were custom written for the tournament by a lovely man stateside (hope he’s reading..).

I change up the games every year to keep it fresh.

rd

Does anyone see anything obviously out of place on either of these switch stacks? I’m trying to diagnose switches not working on Fire! (All of the upper stand ups) they are coincidently connected to the lane change switches and as I have already replaced the transistor (which had been replaced before) plus the chip for the switches. I’m now suspecting a high voltage short from the flippers. Before replacing the chip and transistor again, would like some expert eyes to see anything obvious. What would I need to order to completely rebuild the switch stacks? Obviously half of it is a flipper rebuild but as far as the regular lane change switch, is there a switch to order that covers both?

446EEFB1-D8F1-41AF-8715-8487782EB340 (resized).jpeg

A6B91F53-6BBD-48B4-A63F-811C9FEF33CB (resized).jpeg

So the whole of column 3 is out?

Have you checked continuity of the whole wire chain from the end back to the molex pin?

If so - have you done the switch test on the board with the jumper wire? Jumping the pins between rows and Columns while in switch test - that will ascertain if it is your CPU board at fault.

rd

94938BE0-5725-44EF-8CA2-78EC1039A39A (resized).jpeg

I’m surprised to report shorting the pins activated the switches in edge test. I guess that means I have a wiring break

I’m also getting a reading of 008 on diode setting from the right lane change to the pin. I’m stumped as to why nothing in that column is registering without jumping pins. I will note I have to wiggle the probe a lot more to get a reading vs the other columns.
7B799540-8200-4A54-8F4D-7645DCC6FF40 (resized).jpeg

That’s always one of the first things I cross off the list.

Pretty rare to have a board related switch issue on a SYS11 in my experience. Unless someone’s done something pretty stupid. Lol

The fact that the whole column is out would make me follow that green/orange wire all the way from the molex pin on the CPU (check the signal is going through the connector to the pin) to the end of the chain.

Not uncommon for a wire in a harness to have a break in it. Can be intermittent too, touching on and off.

You mention the switch diode … if you think it’s suspect, just replace it … but a bad diode is probably more likely to cause switch matrix chaos rather than taking out a whole column.

rd

I’m gonna have to probably take that wire out of the bundle. This game was a project and the board was toast in multiple spots when I got it. I have replaced the switch transistor for that column. Before I changed it, it was visibly damaged and also looked like it had been changed before. There were also a couple of blown solenoid transistors. Poor wiring on every coil that some idiot had done before. I’ve had it sitting for a while because it had so many issues. I’m getting motivated to get it going again. This is the last issue on the electrical side (as far as I know) I need to pop the fuse back in under the playfield to test the transistor, rewiring of every solenoid I have done. The left ramp up was locked on and blew that solenoid circuit.

Grand liz

20230320_131003 (resized).jpg

What's this repaired cup scoring business? Every rotation as opposed to every other?

Standard cup scoring is:

250k
500
750
1m
Then jumps to 2.5m
2.75
3
Etc

Mine is just 250k per spin to a max of 3.5m.
No more jump.

rd

Great you know someone who can write ROMs. Even with a clean rolling shot to my cup I get a max 3.2mil. I think that is the max anyway?
Got the soren ROM with the hard ramp scoring on but I'm not sure if affects the cup.

There's so much more you could do with Diner

I think bringing down the cup scoring balances it out a lot.

For example - if my guess is right, for your 3.25m that’s 8 spins on OG code. With 250k a spin, that would be 2m. Most Diners don’t get 8 spins anyway, unless everything is set up perfect in every way (switch right, ramp right, cup right etc)

The big points in Diner is a big Dine Time - but that’s not too easy to achieve.

Diner is good because there’s lots of ways to attack the game.

- cup scores
- Multiball
- Dine time
- the grill bonus adds up
- left ramp spamming
- skill shots and their multipliers

rd

I agree it could be seen as overpowered, but the shot has to be perfect to max it out. Plus on our any diner letters you've acrued disappear when multiball ends, to stop that exploit where you can keep starting a multiball over and over if you don't stir the cup.
That means if you get a multiball and don't stir the cup you lose the opportunity, which I think is fun. Sometimes it feels unfair because you'll collect more diner letters in multiball and then lose them when one of the balls drains.

It's tempting to set the diner letters to be unlit at the start of a game so you have to earn that first spin rather than getting it in just two shots.

We took our Diner to the UK OPEN last year and it's had high scores from Europe's best players on it, the top being 24mil, which I finally beat yesterday by only 200k. That was including one 12mil Dine time... It's such an amazing feeling when you nail that shot!

I do wish Diner had more, it feels unfinished with the 3 balls. I can only assume they intended to have a 3 ball Multiball where you lock both balls in the Today's special hole (there's two switches down there), like in games like Black Rose which came a year or two later.

Plus you have the drop targets to serve food, which have inserts lit for the individual drop targets yet you have to drop the entire banks. It feels like it was unfinished or they changed their mind on a lot of Diners ruleset.

I suppose the only thing I'd change on diner is the multiball restart rule. I truly love the game as it is.

System 11 guys:

I've owned a bunch of system 11s and love the era. One of them I haven't, and it's SOF.

I can't say as I've ever played one either. I do like the theme and I love progressive jackpots.

TO those who have a good amount of time on one, and have played a variety of other system 11s, can you give me your input? Kinda wanting to buy one but would love to hear feedback on thoughts of it.

I want it too! Just haven’t found one close yet!

I used to want one until I watched Neil Graf just murder it by hitting the same couple shots over and over again in one of the District 82 tournaments. I think they may have gotten rid of it because of this exploit. It looks cool though, but not cheap.

Needs a software update it's far too easy stock. There is already a tournament ROM that has a fixed jackpot and the right orbit spots a letter instead of the entire avenger level.

I have some old SOF PAPA rom I got years ago.

I don’t remember the right orbit (ramp?) spotting anything …. maybe I’m wrong. Would have to check it out. Does have fixed JP.

You are always going for locks all day on that game.

After 7 years I took it out of SYS11 World Champs because some games would go on for half an hour … skilful players just go MB MB MB MB all day.

I think a good update (here’s one for ya Scott!) would be to have to requalify the locks after the first MB.

Could be by spelling Avenger …

Maybe a certain amount of spinner spins

Or a certain amount of u-turns around the Ogres Alley

Maybe a certain amount of drop targets up the top …

Something like that.

rd

The Papa ROM is only the jackpot. The avenger letter instead of completed on the right shot to the ramp is a later addition.

Thanks guys.

Why aren’t these old games revised? Is the code just hard to write? So many games could be sooooo much cooler with different rule sets.

There's very little money in it. The skill set is elusive. Some of this will change as DickHamill tweaks his system 11 efforts but that requires complete recreation.

There are several modified system 11 roms but they are mostly of the tournament variety vs full rules changes. Two rules changes are pembot and the cats meow for pinbot and bad cats respectively.

And I think, to be honest, some people just expect far too much with code changes.

I’m just looking for a couple of tweaks to make my games good for competitions. I like the games as they came out in 1985-1991! But you can’t have progressive jackpots in a tournament game. They need to go.

You can see in the Søren thread and also that Bad Cats thread - people just come up with outlandish ideas that the OG code can’t possibly be modified to do. Like make a single ball game a Multiball game. For starters, the game doesn’t have the trough switches for more than one ball.

My suggestion - if you want your Bad Cats/Cyclone/etc to have Multiball, just sell it. Move on to a Multiball game.

rd

Has he been working on System 11 stuff? I only see the rewrites for Bally/Stern games.

Agree with this. I really like the base ruleset as they stand on these games, but some quality of life updates like you mention would be nice. Earthshaker needs a rule update to equalize the jackpot and make it re-lightable, I'd love to see Taxi re-use the "special" light show and soundcall for when you get a replay via a high score during a game as opposed to just doing a quick knock. And make the ever elusive 3-way combo on Whirlwind actually worth something!

Well, people would have to add the missing hardware for sure. It really depends on how the modifier does the code - if they're doing patches and shoehorning things in it's very difficult, if they're putting in the time up front to get a fully reassembleable codebase, it would be easier to add.

System 11 has the right amount of depth, simple goals, with maybe some tweaked scoring or hidden stuff like the 3 way combo on WW (which would be trivial to change the value of BTW, score changes are amongst the easiest to pull off as a patch)

I agree that Earthshaker needs a way to do something else after you collect the jackpot. Maybe require you to hit zone 6 first to collect, for a short timed shot.

Without money as motivation, why are the games revisited at all? Making tournament ROMs is a great motivation. I don't play competitively, so I don't care all that much about tournament ROMs. My own primary motivations are i) that I am very opinionated (I don't like shared Jackpots, I don't like ball-3 gimmes, I don't like it when you can score highly on a game without having to use all/most of the available shots, I don't like light bugs, etc. etc.) and ii) that I like to experiment to see what's possible.

Reason ii is why I once explored adding a third ball to a 2-ball game (without adding a trough switch) --- https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/upgrading-a-2-ball-game-to-three-balls-with-software-can-it-be-done. The result: yes, it is possible but the result is clunky because you need a ball-search to handle the case when two balls drain simultaneously during multiball. That's also why you cannot modify Bad Cats to become a non-clunky multiball game without hardware modifications.

The experiment that currently rocks my pinball-coding boat is a patch for the System 11 operating system (rather than for a specific game) with the goal to shrink the amount of space required for the game code of any game. The recent beta code I sent to the testers for my Bad Cats ROM uses an early version of the modified virtual machine. No bugs reported yet.

Might come as a surprise to some … but not everyone is motivated by money.

If money was a goal I would have given up fixing up old pins, running IFPA NZ and hosting big tournaments yeeaaars ago.

I really appreciate the work of Scott, Søren and others who do what they do with the code fixes to help out the scene. I couldn’t run SYS11 WC and my other big comps without those guys doing the great work they do!

rd

I agree it's amusing to see folks chime in with ideas for how to "fix" old ROMs with new features that are well beyond the scope of what can be done by modifying address pointers and tweaking code paths.

The alternative would be to re-write the game rules from scratch on a modern framework and then replace the MPU with a new computer to run them. This would allow unlimited customizations (limited to hardware, don't get me started on folks asking about auto-launchers on Sys11) but of course would only be as accurate as the programmer's ability to replicate the exact timings and conditions of the original code. For example there's a mode I'm writing for Swords of Vengeance that is basically a drop-in of the SoF multiball mode, and as far as rules go it's not actually that complex so it's not unfeasible that anybody could do it for any Sys11 game—but it's new code, so naturally there will always be some folks who wouldn't be satisfied that it doesn't "feel" right.

But keeping the original ROMs and modifying them, I'm amazed that folks like Scott and Søren can do what they do and it's great to be able to bring some_ games to a modern tournament level. Others, though, are just beyond helping.

People have always said this but it’s not entirely true. Yes, you can’t hit another jackpot but you can hit the jackpot shot unlimited to collect the quake trip for 250k points for each shot. Pretty much the same as Whirlwind except the value doesn’t increase by a million with each shot. You can also use the opportunity of being in multi ball to cycle as many balls up the center ramp to build up your miles to get to the end of the road bonus after which each center ramp shot is worth 200k points.

Not only from the Soren end of it (remember how people were complaining about paying the $20) - but more so from the licensing end of it - is it worth whatever royalties Planetary would collect for what could be a potential headache, if a bad bug slips through.

Well, what Idealjoker and others are doing aren't this. It's basically rewriting the code from scratch, within the existing framework. So new things can and are added all the time. I'd be tempted to code a homebrew game from scratch on the system but weebly boardset is way cheaper (and I have several complete bally/stern -35/200 boardsets already). I don't think you really understand a system until you write a game from scratch on it.

The most amusing thing is when some game/feature gets announced, and the request is for something in another game or something completely different.

Other than the quake trip you can do the center ramp thing anyway.... safe shot back to the flippers for 200k. I can see why tournament players go for this. The shot should/could probably be changed to only do it on the fly, with a semi-short timer. (There's already a timer for the 2 miles). For that matter, don't keep giving out the 2 miles "automatically".... earn it with something. You're rewarding already good players for repeating something they're good at already. The quake trip might go with a cascading value - hit zone 6 and it's worth more (since it's 'on the fly'). Hit zone 5, then hit it for more (since it's 'a slow moving accurate shot).... that kind of stuff.

Resetting the miles earned might be a good way to nerf the 200k, but then you have to watch the extra ball awards to not re-award them, and possibly some other ramification I haven't thought through.

I'm excited to hear details of this for sure. I know we were looking at text compressions but what did you end up doing?

I am using SWI to execute a single instruction of a "new" virtual machine, which I call the IVM. The IVM uses the WVM (Sys 11 Pinbol) interpreter as a "plug-in", so all the useful WVM instructions are available in-line (setBits, killThreads, exitThread, etc.). This alone saves tons of space in Bad Cats. In the IVM I reuse some of the WVM opcodes that are not useful as "one shots"; for example, opcode $01 (noOperation in WVM) starts WVM mode. I added new system calls, including display_str16 which you can use both in WVM_mode and as one shots. Finally, I added M6800 extension opcodes, such as PSHX, PULX, AAX, A2BX, etc. I have not yet implemented any string compression but I am pretty sure that I will at some stage. Eventually I would like to make this available to other interested parties.

What I like best about the IVM is that it is "boot-strappable": The first stage is a patch to the original WVM interpreter that adds one-shot capability while making the code 1-byte smaller. Therefore I can add the IVM to a game with zero bytes of free ROM. The space I get with the first stage is sufficient to implement the 2nd, etc.