(Topic ID: 50801)

The Simpsons Pinball Party (TSPP) Owners Club..... Members Only!!!

By kwiKimart

10 years ago


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#2787 6 years ago

Sorry for the long reply. Will try to provide some "color" and respond to questions posed here...

The ColorDMD patents (there are three now, each of which went through multiple iterations of reviews by the US patent office) cover a very specific implementation for real-time coloring of monochrome pinball frames... both hardware and method. it does not cover the general idea of colorizing a video frame.

The patents contribute a unique method of masking and hashing pinball video frames in order to recognize the frame using unique static attributes while ignoring dynamically varying content (like player scores). The technique is applied offline in order to create a lookup table of corresponding color information which is then indexed and applied in real-time while the game is playing. The patent goes into extensive detail as to how these operations are performed.

The Pin2DMD founders willfully and knowingly implemented the patent both in the Pin2DMD editor as well as the playback hardware. This is indisputable, as the documentation for the editor and the GUI itself includes the same terminology (hashes and masks) created and used in the patent.

The only point of contention is that since they reside in Germany, and the patents apply to sales/use in the United States, they believe they are justified to copy and use whatever they want without legal recourse. They have also argued that software patents aren't allowed in Germany and expressed their general contempt of the US patent system on the forum and in private emails.

This is a legal argument by the way, and ignores general ethics which is really what should prevail in a small community.

The same group has done this to other projects. They have created and sold knock-offs of PinDMD, the Run-DMD clock, and PinSound. Besides the ColorDMD mehtod of colorization, Pin2DMD also incorporates the work of SmartDMD, and the simple grayscale-to-color mapping used by DMD Extender. There's very little in Pin2DMD that can be classified an innovation as it's all knockoffs or direct implementation of other projects.
...

Regarding claims that competition is needed to breed innovation, I'll point out that the entire ColorDMD system was created in the absence of competition, and that countless innovations to tackle difficult animation sequences and incorporate full motion video, have continued to be introduced on every title in the absence of any real competition.

ColorDMD was borne simply out of the desire to make a contribution to the pinball hobby, and only continues with the support of the community.

We're pinball hobbyists like you. We created something that people seem to enjoy and have continued to invest heavily both in time and financial resources. We continue to enlist the support of other community members and provide compensation for their efforts. We often invest in and support titles that have little demand or return, out of love for the hobby and the platform.

ColorDMD is not "the man".and attempts to "stick it to the man" through willfull infringement by Pin2DMD and others now seeking to do the same have been unwarranted.

#2792 6 years ago
Quoted from ronaldvg:

As I said, as soon as YOUR colorisation could be used in other hardware, that would be very different and unethical to me but that is not the case.

Reusing ColorDMD artwork would be an issue of copyright infringement, which is easier for most people to understand than patent infringement but they're both harmful and may ultimately impact our ability to support and invest in new development.

So here's a recent clip from the DMDMK66 thread in which the organizers of both projects are discussing exactly that:

pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png

This type of behavior (and justifications that enable it) are disheartening, but it's up to the community to decide what it wants to support.

4 years later
#6409 2 years ago
Quoted from briyau15:

I was able to confirm that my display and random images isn’t related to the ColorDMD as I get the same weird text when I put my original display back on. With that being eliminated does anyone know what may be causing the issue? Attached is a screenshot of what should say “Participate in local tournaments”.
When in play the display cycles through random gameplay images but when I hit a shot the correct image displays.
[quoted image]

You have a stuck bit in one of the data lines that goes from the CPU to the Whitestar display board. The text string isn't being received correctly because of the stuck bit.
T (ascii 0x54) is being received as P (ascii 0x50)
E (ascii 0x45) is being received as A (ascii 0x41)
L (ascii 0x4C) is being received as H (ascii 0x48)
..and so on

From this you can deduce that the data bit representing the hexadecimal value 0x04 (DATA[2], I think) is stuck low.

Check the output of the CPU board and input of the Whitestar display board to see if it's toggling. If it's not toggling at the output of the CPU board, the problem is on the CPU board (could be a damaged U201 or cold solder joint at the header).

#6412 2 years ago

A little more explanation...

The CPU communicates with the display board over an 8-bit data bus. If you look at the schematic for the CPU (attached), the data bus comes into the right side of U201. The output (left side of U201) goes directly to the 26-pin ribbon cable header on the CPU board.

The eight wires that are highlighted represent the data bus D[7:0]. The CPU sends bytes over the data bus that are encoded as 8-bit hexadecimal numbers. The ASCII values in the previous email are the codes it sends for text characters. D2 is stuck at zero somewhere between the CPU and the display processor, so the 8-bit hexadecimal numbers are corrupted and received incorrectly.

For example T (ASCII 0x54) sends these data values on each wire
D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0 = 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0

But what was received and displayed was the letter P (ASCII 0x50) which looks like this
D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0 = 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

So the data on D2 appears to be stuck at 0 for all the hexadecimal codes in that text string. P's are displayed properly (because D2=0) but when it tries to send a T (D2 = 1) it gets incorrectly received as a P due to the stuck bit. Instead of PARTICIPATE, the display board received PARPICIPAPA. (The E at the end was similarly received as an A due to the stuck bit.)

If you have a logic probe ($20 on Amazon), you can check to see if the data from D2 (U201, pin 7) and it's corresponding output (U201, pin 6) are toggling or stuck. Then you can continue to chase the connection to the header (CN8, pin 13) and through the ribbon cable to where it's received on the display board. As a general rule, you can just check each of the 8 data bits to make sure they are toggling. If you find one that's stuck you found the problem and just have to trace it back to the point in the chain where it stopped toggling.

You can track it down yourself or send both the CPU and display board to someone like ChrisHibler to find and correct the problem.

Hope this helps.

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