(Topic ID: 70775)

The Firepower Club

By wiredoug

10 years ago


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  • Latest reply 2 days ago by Eric_Manuel
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#8 10 years ago

Just didnt have the budget for the CPR playfield on mine unfortunately, but still love the game even with a beat up playfield. Not sure if I will go LED or not.

Either way it is going to keep its spot between Stellar Wars and Black Knight.

4 months later
#60 9 years ago

I have a brick bottom too. Really a neat thing to notice if you haven't seen it before.

Reminds me of the kitchen walls when I was a kid.

-Hans

2 weeks later
#118 9 years ago

I did get a couple eprom adapters back as returns recently, due to the occasional compatibility issue. One I'm able to sell, the other I'm going to use to diagnose what that problem is..... got my hands on a CPU board that suffers from the compatibility problem too finally.

I really hope I can nail down whatever Williams did differently, so I can make these things work on all machines.

3 months later
#191 9 years ago

Arcade;

Most games didn't even have the slot in the playfield for those switches. I've heard of some having the wiring, which is also quite uncommon, but never heard of one having the switches fitted by the factory. You probably have a very early production machine, perhaps even a sample game?

8 months later
#311 8 years ago

It takes standard coin mech's, but you need the "T-Bracket" to clip them in place.
Hard to get, I just need to clean up the files a bit and I'll be offering 3D printed ones in ABS in the near future.

-Hans

3 weeks later
#332 8 years ago

I've been getting a number of e-mails lately about my eprom adapter for Firepower. I'm seriously considering another run of them, but need to know if there's enough market. I'm swamped with ideas, but funding for production runs is kinda tight right now.

I need to seriously know how interested you guys would be in another run. I do have the OK from PPS already for the licensing, so that's not an issue.

-Hans

2 weeks later
#349 8 years ago

Ok, that's enough e-mails, PM's, and forum references. I'll be ordering more boards for the EPROM adapters this weekend. Will take a few weeks until I have everything ready to go, but I'll be doing a 2nd run ASAP.

-Hans

#356 8 years ago

Those targets take a huge beating due to the location, so expect a lot of maintenance on them. I've seen them with either the reds or the bullseyes.

Honestly, I wouldn't replace with the original targets. I'd get the newer style with the switch foam, maybe even try one of the PBResource 'enhanced' targets. They carry them pre-made with the red faces, and also sell the bullseye faces separately.

1 week later
#371 8 years ago

Almost every bulb in the game is a #44 incandescent. Except the two #89 flashers. If you do have to replace every bulb (which has me worried) you would need probably 130 of the #44's.

4 months later
#458 8 years ago

Yep. Set audit #18 to zero, which is the 'max credits' setting. This puts it into free play.

2 weeks later
#474 8 years ago

That keychain only came as part of the CPR plastics set

#483 8 years ago
Quoted from browne92:

If someone could get the part and a set of calipers in the same place and get me the measurements I could turn a few.

Honestly. It's not that complex of a part. Just some stainless tubing, sized to pass that screw (#8?), is all you need. Anything more than that and it risks being too wide. The lane guide that sits above it is awfully narrow. I wonder if it might have either been omitted or added at some point, mine didn't have one either. Too many people missing this piece for it to have been lost.

-Han

#488 8 years ago

Foam wasn't original for that era.

1 week later
#498 8 years ago
Quoted from Schwaggs:

Thanks for linking the listing! Never knew Williams made any Firepower playfields with jeweled inserts.... This is the one and only reason I will never have a CPR Firepower PF...

They apparently did a few, but not many, in a later re-run. Caught me off-guard the first time I saw one a couple years ago. There are also some for Flash floating around too that were done with jeweled inserts.

#500 8 years ago
Quoted from Its_me_aj:

Still looking for the 4-5-6 plastic switch cover if anyone has one laying around

There's got to be some floating around somewhere. CPR's plastic set came with a spare pair of them.

3 weeks later
#521 8 years ago

That's on the high end for a very worn firepower. $200-$300 is closer to what they seem to go for.

2 months later
#588 8 years ago
Quoted from 3rdaxis:

12742703_10205846422504246_2149431344765587632_n_(resized).jpg

Bad news for you, unfortunately. You've got System-7 style drop targets. Firepower needs the earlier 'horseshoe slider' style drops. It's probably going to do a number of strange things depending on how it's wired. The slider style has only a momentary signal when the target drops, and a separate series switch that closes when they're all in the down position.

-Hans

4 months later
#772 7 years ago
Quoted from browne92:

Is this something new? I don't recall ever seeing gold plated contacts in a pin before. But then I haven't worked on anything newer than a Williams System 7.

Most Williams solid state switch contacts are gold plated .... they're just assembled backwards about half the time and have wrecked the gold plating.

-Hans

1 month later
#814 7 years ago

Also very easy to pull the playfield, which makes moving the cabinet much easier

1 week later
#853 7 years ago

Man, I really gotta get my Firepower fixed. Nothing big wrong with it, just lots of little things. Unfortunately a fried speech decoder chip is one of them.

-Hans

3 months later
#1048 7 years ago

You know, I need to get off my duff and get my firepower running again.

Anybody know of a reliable source on 55516 chips these days? Have two speech boards missing them.

#1051 7 years ago

Still waiting on my last order from them from 2012 or so. Said they sent it twice.

3 months later
#1293 6 years ago
Quoted from mof:

The new siegecraft system 6 drop wipe boards work like magic. Not one single fail...
-mof

Quoted from Joydivision:

Thanks for the review & vid. previously all I had really heard was it played slower with drops, glad it's not the case. lots of positives compared to stand-ups. The fast ball rebound from the rubber when the target is dropped is great too. I hadn't thought of that. I have the siegecraft boards for mine too, glad to hear they are efficient.

I'm glad they're working well for you guys. I'm going to be ordering another batch of them soon, any suggestions on improvements to the circuit board at all before I do? Since I released the green version boards and started pre-assembling them, things have gone very smooth with these.

-Hans

4 months later
#1566 6 years ago

Yep, that's the shooter lane, pretty standard part of Cliffy's kits.

-Hans

4 months later
#1838 6 years ago
Quoted from La_Porta:

Thanks guys. It appears OEM was aluminum...any reason it was?

That was about the end of the timeframe things were still transitioning, and Williams was always big on substitutions when it was convenient.
Somebody probably found a box of old coils laying around, or they were short on the newer style and used old stock.

1 week later
#1857 6 years ago

And I can’t agree more with the statement about late 70’s/early 80’s Williams “quality”. Machines of that era are riddled with so many inconsistencies, wrong/badly installed parts, poorly made boards, straight from the factory.

Just off the top of my head, the regular issues I can think of.....

Backward leaf switches, inconsistent colors in artwork, Badly printed play fields, mixed up colors on the black/white connectors, 40pin connectors ground down too far, low quality clearcoat, badly sprayed cab stencils, back boxes falling apart, incorrect schematics, Incorrect rom files, low quality parts (scanbe), poorly designed parts (sys 7 G.I. Connector). The list goes on and on.

Great game design and programming. Generally great artwork. Poorly made. Hard to make reproductions when there is so much variety and no way to know what’s correct.

3 weeks later
#1911 6 years ago

I’m seriously considering trading my firepower. I think it’s just cursed. Can’t even tell you how many times I’ve repaired the boards and they keep finding new ways to fail.

That and I really should have a Bally machine here for all the Bally stuff I’ve been selling. My only problem...... I currently only have a sedan to drive.

#1945 6 years ago

IIRC, CPR had a mold made for the hot-dog inserts when they did Space Shuttle, didn't they?

3 months later
#2117 5 years ago

Well, I finally got my lazy ass around to getting my firepower running, again. I give up on the original board set, been over it a bunch of times and it just never stays fixed. I'm convinced there's a bad internal trace near the 40-pin. So it's got a rotten dog set now, which I'm so far quite impressed with the engineering work on it.

Sound is currently out, probably a bad buffer, going by the symptoms. Will order new chips in the next day or two. Also already ordered some LED's from Comet for the inserts. Brighten it up a bit, GI will come later.

However it's playing, and playing nicely, so I'm pretty happy now. Salivating at the rumor of a hardtop being available soon for it. And to think, I came THIIIIIIS close to selling it.

#2119 5 years ago
Quoted from mof:

You have drops in yours, yes? Once you do that, it's never for sale.
-mof

Believe it or not, no, I don't. My other games are drop-target heavy (Black Knight and Stellar Wars). I kept the standups for the variety.

#2121 5 years ago
Quoted from La_Porta:

What are you going to do with those boards?...

The original CPU and Driver? They don't currently work, but I'm going to actively look for somebody to buy them.

-Hans

#2144 5 years ago

Well, back to 90% operational now. Still some funky sound problems, getting incorrect sound call-outs, which testing leads me to believe a faulty PIA.
Also no speech at the moment, but could be same problem.

At least the game plays again, which feels great. Went with some Comet domed LED's as well. Didn't want the super-sparkly look, just a bit more richness to the colors, and these were a great match. Still looks pretty nicely era-appropriate, just a bit 'cleaner'.

-Hans

#2150 5 years ago
Quoted from dzorbas:

I think just about every bulb in my game are frosted LEDs. Looks much nicer than the bare LEDs in my opinion and doesn't blind you!

Completely agree, and the frosted ones look fantastic in my eyes. Just a hair sharper, giving it a hair more modern look, and taking a bit of the old and yellow look away.

Strangely enough, the sounds started working perfectly today all on their own. Dunno if it just needed to warm up or something, I'll have to dig deeper into the issue. But for the first time in a couple years I actually had the entire lineup working flawlessly when we had people over for a BBQ today. Felt great to play a proper game on it, with all the right sounds, and I was in a groove too. Was worried I might actually flip it over a million for the first time.

2 weeks later
#2167 5 years ago

Yeah, IDC was standardized around that time.

10 months later
#2865 4 years ago

The sounds trigger from the CPU/Driver board solenoids 19-24, so yes, a 6 bit signal for all the System 3-6 games using sound boards.

Custom ROM's could re-script the sounds as part of the game ROM. Sound rom determines what the sounds are, game rom determines when they play. I don't know if anybody has cracked the sound rom format at all, though numerous people have worked with the game rom's at this point.

-Hans

#2867 4 years ago

The words are all individual sound call-outs already, or at least most of them are, but I've never mapped the trigger combinations for each individual sound. I don't know if Jess Askey's info is still available online for how to decipher the game rom data. I have hard copies somewhere, but haven't done any of that in a long time. I'd start with earlier titles first if you're going to go down that rabbit-hole, because Firepower is immensely more complex than Gorgar.

I do still have the EPROM adapter, 30 or so left, they're all partially assembled and I dabble once in a while to get around to assembling all of them. Not much demand anymore.

-Hans

#2869 4 years ago

Did you do it via triggering the inputs on the sound board? I never really looked into how the speech is triggered, though I have some knowledge of how they are formed in the binary.

Solenoids are triggered via a hybrid code. Half 6800 assembly and half internal Williams code. The code block basically says "Trigger solenoid X for Y duration". If you've got one of my solenoid testers, you can use that to see which outputs are being triggered. Though in this case a logic analyzer may be a better choice to see actual timings of the different signals. It makes me wonder if it's a patterned sequence and not just single triggers.

-Hans

#2871 4 years ago

You've got me intrigued enough to try and find my notes. Turns out I only have HALF of my original notes, not sure where the rest went. Unfortunately it doesn't include the part that tells me where to find the switch table, which is what I used to use to find a starting point. My code ability isn't great to be honest, and it's probably been 6-7 years since I last looked at this.

My guess is that the basic structure is there still for System 6, but simpler, as there weren't dedicated sound driver PIA's yet, and the RAM/ROM space was much smaller. The software was more evolved for system 7, but it my brain is tingling when I look at the hex with bits of familiarity.

Good thing is most of Jess Askey's stuff is still online.
http://gamearchive.askey.org/Pinball/Manufacturers/Williams/PinBuilder/

1 month later
#2905 4 years ago

I've never needed a non-ghosting bulb on any Williams game. There is a verrrrrrrry slight ghosting on some locations, but honestly you'll have to intentionally look for it and dim the lights in the room to see it.

-Hans

#2907 4 years ago

I'd check the wiring going into the power supply first. Notoriously bad design for the GI, and more than likely you've got a connector or solder joint going bad going into the power supply.

-Hans

3 weeks later
#2940 4 years ago

The strobe and digit locations are used differently between the 6 and 7 digit display versions. You'd end up with everything in wrong places. You need to update to the 7-digit ROM version, and swap the entire display set including the master.

Not sure if there is a way to change to alternate ROM data for the Rottendog board set.

-Hans

1 month later
#3024 4 years ago

Rare bird! You may have a sample/Porto game. Before you start altering things I’d say get some good photos of everything.

As far as I knew none shipped with the stand ups for the drop target game.

What’s the serial number?

Not the first time I’ve seen unique stuff come out of your region. Also seen some photos of Black Knights with different color lock arrows.

#3028 4 years ago
Quoted from the4horse:

I knew it was an early one as it's number 407056 but that's awesome that it might be a little bit special. I wonder what the story was?

Basically, the game was originally designed with drop targets in mind for those 6 main targets. Even shows them with the drop targets on the game flyer. But they proved to be very unreliable, so the design was changed to standup targets before even going into production. Some early games have the notch in place behind the standups, like yours does, and a bunch have the wiring in place for the reset coil. Basically the switch is there to give you 10pts for hitting where the drop target USED to be. However yours is the first I've seen that actually had the target in place behind the rubbers. Like you said, a very early machine. I'd be interested in seeing the underside of the playfield, would be neat to see if there are screw holes from the drop target bank or not.

Black Knight was also designed the same way, with a target behind 3 of the drop target sets. But it was found to be useless, since the targets didn't spend any time in the down position, so the standups likely never shipped. But very early games have the notches in the playfield. Steve Ritchie sure loved his drop targets during the early 80's, that's for sure.

#3029 4 years ago

Another fun fact with the drop target stuff on Firepower, the code actually still supports them completely. A number of people have installed the drop banks and play it that way.

OR.... some people use the drop target solenoid wiring for flash lamps instead. Neat mod that doesn't take much effort at all.

-Hans

1 week later
#3048 4 years ago

My kickout used to always go into the 'Power' targets, never up the orbit.

2 weeks later
#3061 4 years ago

Top right jet bumper is solenoid #19, which is in the special solenoid group, Special #3.

Driven by transistors Q5 and Q6, special solenoid logic driven by IC6 and IC2.
Most likely the transistors, but could also be either two of those logic IC's.

-hans

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