I just need to say. I've have had many pinball machines and for some reason Firepower II is one I never get sick of.

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The eject kick-out is like the micro switch that is used in High Speed.
The out hole switch is also a micro switch that is used in High Speed.

I agree I have 1 and 2..
We play the hell out of both ..

Weare do I find this serial number ?

As they instructed me: in the front, under the coin door, stamped into the wood.

Cool.. I will scope out mine. .

Mine is 426727

Ok, thank you. I'll try to look up High Speed's manual.

Are there good playfield scans available if there are some areas I wish to make some decals for? I've decided to tackle the restore as a project.

I've wanted good scans too....anyone?

I've got a decent set of graphics (playfield and plastics) that I put together for my virtual version of FP2. They are based on a stitched playfield scan. I re-drew them in Illustrator so they are currently vector format but I can convert them if you want to take a look.

You may have to play with some scaling of the decal so they will align with your playfield correctly.

The sample .png I attached is at 72 dpi. I can provide a 300dpi version that will work better for decals.

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Well... yes that is beautiful but I wanted it for Firepower, not Firepower II.

Got a nice scan of that?

Actually yes. My mistake on which machine. I'm sending this from a mobile device. When I get back to my computer I'll upload it for you to take a look at.

Thank you in advance!!

Here you go. I have a much higher resolution file but it is to big to upload here. Adjustments will obviously have to be made to contrast and brightness (among others) to make any generated decals look right on your machines.

If you want the hi-rez file PM me with how best to deliver it.

Best Regards!

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The scan I pulled this from had some problems in the area around the right green lock insert so I had to "fix" it in photo shop.

That is beautiful, thank you. That's going to be very helpful. Do you *have* the 300 dpi one as well?

Has anyone ever looked into installing a headphone jack on a firepower (1 or 2?) I have a friend who is a chiptunes artist so I'm trying to researching getting the audio signal out of my firepower 2 to record so he can make a song with them. I see that headphone jack products exist, but nothing that I can find for games this old.

The ghetto way would be incredibly easy: desolder the two leads from the speaker, and attach them to the two leads of a mono headphone jack. Record your sounds, then reverse the process!

Finally in the club!

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The ghetto way sounds like a great way to fry something. I'm not an expert but I know enough not to plug an amplified signal into a mic jack without research.

Believe it or not, it really is simple and should not hurt anything. Heck, I'll do it and try for you. I've done it lots of times with other audio signals. However, if a real electronics expert wants to chime in, that will do, too!

Look for something called an "attenuating patch cord". Knocks the signal level from speaker down to something more manageable like line level.

so something like this?:

https://www.amazon.com/RadioShack-Shielded-Attenuating-Audio-cable/dp/B001THXU8C

The bad reviews appear to be due to product mislabeling. it has RCA on one end instead of a 1/8th jack. Not a problem since we are splicing one end. So I would splice this directly onto the speaker and then line in to whatever I use to record?

Yeah, the "proper" way is how to take care of it with a resistor, or, better, a variable resistor like this thing can do.

Different topic:
My firepower 2 is treating balls that fail to enter shooter lane (by bouncing off the right wall back into where it ejects from) as drains. Is this normal switch operation? Its incredibly frustrating.

Usually if you do not score it just kicks the ball back out without draining. When it does that do any points score? Possibly a switch is to close and the vibration scores a point and if treats it as a drain. If it does score, see how many points go up and check all the switches that score that amount of points.

For those that asked for copies of my Firepower scan, I am in the process of sending it now. My internet connection is really bad so it will take a while to upload. You should have it later this evening if things don't crash on me.

That went much faster than expected. It should be in the inboxes you provided shortly.

Thank you! Extremely helpful!

It happens when I lock a ball. When it fails to kick out the second ball it drains me. I bent the metal tab and it hasn't failed to kick out since, but id still like to know if this is normal.

Yes Thanks!

Yes, but consider getting the appropriate connectors to hook it to, or clip leads. There are resistors in there somewhere, probably in one of the connectors. If you cut off the wrong connector, you defeat the purpose.

Side note: Phono is the correct term for the RCA plug. And the other end is a 1/8" phone. The reviewer didn't read closely. Phone describes the shape, not the size.

Thanks for the tip. I'll splice in the correct connector and plug in the cable.

There was so much interest in my scans I thought I'd post a good resource for other table scans. It is ...

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=downloads&showcat=18

This is a virtual pinball forum but has a pretty good collection of imagery that could be used for the real thing if used properly.

Hopefully this will help someone.

I successfully added speech to my Firepower 2 tonight! I love it!
In case anyone attempts this in the future...

I used a new speech board from pinballpcb (With original firepower roms):
http://www.pinballpcb.com/SpeechBoard.html
My sound board did not have the 40(?) pin connector but had the mounting holes for it. I asked the guys at pinballpcb if they carried those connectors and they included one with my order.
once I got the connector and speech board installed it didn't work, some research showed I needed to cut the W1 jumper (its actually a 0 ohm resistor)
Then I flipped switch #2 on top of the sound board and that enabled speech. (the one closer to the edge of the board)

Speech FP2 (resized).jpg

Do the sounds and speech make sense during gameplay? I have always toyed with the idea, but never followed through. Can you post a quick video of gamplay?
Mike

Thanks for posting McSquid .

They make enough sense to be worth it.
Says firepower when it starts. Says fire when you complete abcd or fir. Says power if you complete epo or wer. Says you win you destroyed firepower at game over, and says mission accomplished on high score. That's as far as I got. I'll take a video tomorrow

Good job getting the speech working. I added a new speech board awhile back and love it too. The speech does occasionally interrupt other cool sounds but is worth it overall. I posted a video on another thread when it was still set to 5 ball and had a switch it two that needed cleaning. Will wait to see your video, in which you ring the bonus carryover bell on ball 3 and get the extra game over bonus for maximum effect

That's pretty neat that you can do that. I wonder how the game knows to call for those sounds when certain conditions have been met if it was not originally equipped with voice.

Its because they simply reused and edited the code for firepower to make firepower 2. The original callouts for speech were left in because why remove them?

Simplicity at it's best. Why waste money re-editing the code?

Especially since they omitted the speech board to save money anyway.

Cpr playfield all finished. Playfield, plastics, coils, posts, targets, rails, pop bumpers, most light sockets all replaced.
Now comes the nervous part. Maybe I will plug it in.

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Purdy

I can understand the anxiety...I haven't even finished restoring my spare play field, and I'm already nervous about repopulating it!

I shot this video tonight with speech added. I did not hit the extra game over bonus, or light 5x bonus or hit the extra ball ramp shot when lit either. Tough game at times but keeps you coming back for more. Also the speech at game over varies...

What lovely lighting -- what's your secret?
-mof

It has color matched frosted LEDs for the inserts. White frosted LEDs for the GI except I put a blue and white under the slingshot plastics, red under the ABCD lane guides and a couple frosted color changers too. I'm not normally big on LEDs but this one already had a lot of them in place so I finished it up and really like it on this one.