Picked up a firepower 2 at pintastic! Joining this club. I fell in love with the sounds these make and I love the gameplay. This is going to be the "old one" in my collection perhaps permanently. (Only have room for 3 or 4) I personally liked FP2 more than 1 (I know im the weird one) but it saved me some $. I wish the ramp and orbit shots were somehow swapped (orbit being far left and ramp to the right if that) but everything else is great.

FB_IMG_1499661465555 (resized).jpg

Yup thats me. You were playing the bally star trek that was also owned by the guy I bought this from? Haha yea we blew the fuse when he was showing me inside the cab. He didnt notice there was a ball in the lock when he lifted it and it got jammed in there. The fuse blew when the game couldnt kick it out afterwards.

Not sure. I'll check when I'm off work. Is there any advantage to having an early model of this game? For example like how the first 100 rollergames had diamond plate clearcoat and the rest did not?

The southern NH pinball club brought the FP and you are right. Bad shape, prone to issues all weekend including tilting for no reason! I payed $900 for FP2 it and I feel like it was a steal. I feel like the FP and the FP2 should have had their prices swapped! (and the FP still wouldnt have sold.) No huge plans yet. If it earns a permanent spot in my tiny collection (3-4) then It will likely receive a full restore including clearcoat but it doesn't need one right now. I'll be bulletproofing the electronics but thats all i have planned for now

Its gonna be a while. Im in europe on my honeymoon for two weeks. Only had time to drop it in its lineup spot. Couldnt set it up

I cant verify this is the correct part right now, but it should set you on the right track

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/C-900901

High speed is great. The getaway is basicly HS with a a gimmick and its one of my favorites. HS has the better playfield but im a sucker for good code/dmd

Thanks!

Yuuup definitely read that wrong. Thanks for correcting me

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

So I got this cable and spliced in into the speaker but I get nothing from the line in. Do I need to remove the speaker from the setup and plug the attenuating cord directly into the source from the board? I currently just have an RCA jack soldered to the speaker terminals

Nevermind. I got it working. I tossed out the cheap attenuating cord, set the volume to minimum, made a RCA to sound board header plug and hooked it straight to the line in with an RCA to 1/8 jack cord. I used a cheap USB sound card to record to isolate my expensive laptop from this ghetto attempt but it worked. I adjusted the volume to be slightly less that minimum so it was audible yet not maxed out and did a proof of concept recording. Worked like a charm.

Bonus: using the "listen to this device" checkbox in windows sound recording options allows the pin to play its sounds in real time through a computer. This could allow for a pin to be hooked up to a high end home theater that it happened to be in the same room as or something else like that without having to buy an expensive kit or board.

Bright red looks better.

No love for Firepower 2?

I just booted my firepower II up after moving last month. When I did, magic smoke started coming out if the pinitech NVRAM module I had installed. Any idea what could have cause this? No other obvious damage, when it first booted it seemed fine. Burned up after about 30 seconds of being on.

Doesn't work. The NVRAM module is very burned up. sorry if that wasn't clear.

So no one is making repro backglasses? My firepower 2 back glass flaked a ton during my move. Anyone have any high res scans of back glass art?

Check your volume pot. If it happens for a bit when you turn it you need a new one.

Has anyone attempted mylar removal on a firepower 2? Mine has full lower play field mylar, and its bubbling on the bonus inserts leading to erratic ball behaviour that affects gameplay. I'd like to remove the mylar and clearcoat it, but I've heard paint likes to come up a lot on older Williams games. I've seen the pictures of firepower 1 mylar removal posted here. Wondering if that 3 years made any difference. I had no issues doing a 1990 rollergames.

If no one buys this by the end of pintastic for restoration purposes then ill toss you some $ and use it as a wall hanger.

Do NOT do this. You should never overfuse a circuit especially one that is acting suspect like yours. This could cause permanent damage to your game. If you don't have the proper 1.25A fuse, you can temporarily use a lower rated one (like 1A) without risk. But a 2.5 A fuse is not safe to use here.

I wish there was custom code being written for FP2... or that I had any idea how to do it myself

If they were just rebuild I'd suspect the EOS isn't gapped properly as oppose to it being bad. You always need to adjust new EOS switches after a rebuild. If that doesn't work, make sure the solder connections to the coil are thick and solid with no fraying wires. If the wire can't get the full current to the coil you get weak flippers and sometimes blown fuses.

There has been a FP backglass on craigslist in MA for months now for $50. Maybe try there?

I believe there are some nice playfield scans posted in this thread on an earlier page.

I'll be there

nah, I'm leaving that one at home. I need another year with it at least I'm bringing my star wars pro hoping someone looking for a NIB wants to save a few hundred $

I wish firepower 2 got enough love to have fancy custom roms with missions.