On my Twilight zone about half the time I skill shot the ball into the rocket it bounces out. It does not ever launch it just hits the ball Guide and falls out. It is nothing to do with the adjustable ball Guide because I set it right in the middle of the hitchhiker under the mini playfield. Does any one have any tips of how to fix it?

It does this on mine all the time and on every other pin I’ve played on. It’s been mentioned somewhere on here by someone that “fixed” the problem but got mixed reactions on why would he would care that much. Because the ball falling out to your right flipper is safer than sending it into the bumpers for a possible drain.

had the same issue. Added a very thin rubber sheet (maybe something like a bike tire inner tube works?) to the adjustable ball guide and got rid of that issue...

See this fix. It solves the issue.
https://www.retroblast.com/articles/modzone_3.html#Bounce

I tried doing this but all that happens is the ball actually gets stuck there instead. I'm 100% using the same type of post and rubber ring as in that image. I experimented just partially screwing a mini rubber as pictured into the playfield, using the screw that you remove from that guide to fit the post, but it looks very strange and I have an OCD about weird hacks.

The ball drops out of mine onto the flipper probably 50% of the time I'd say.

Hadn't thought of trying to dampen the ball hitting the adjustable ball guide by using some rubber or something, that's pretty ingenuous!

Do you have a sound board at all? Was your game missing this when you got it? Now I'm intrigued

Oh. Okay then. Then Pinsound is wrong. Recorded wrong, modified afterwards, whatever.

My game was missing a LOT... including all the boards. So no I unfortunately don't have a sound board. Guess I'll load up some different rom versions in VP and see if I can find a way to record it.

Can anyone who has the old (correct) jackpot sound on their game confirm their sound rom versions?

I have plugged a few romsets into VP and L-1 through L-4 all have the correct sound. I managed to get a good recording through VP, but unfortunately I've hit a dead end. Pinsound uses sound effects the same way the game does, and what I have actually recorded is a whole bunch of them layered over each other. As far as I can tell the jackpot sound itself is comprised of 2 SFX and a voice clip; The build up, the crashes (the part that's wrong) and "jackpot" voice, some of which is layered over music as well. Unfortunately I believe this would be impossible to fix without going down the rabbit hole of extracting SFX from sound roms (which after briefly looking over the edge of the hole I have decided is over my head)

So unless someone wants to extract "1117896962-jackpot_score_pt_2_" from an L-1 through L-4 sound rom for me, It looks like I'll just be slightly annoyed every time I score a jackpot.

Try it in PinMame, and not any front-end. When I was playing a PinMame of the game, I got the real sound.
Also - the versions you list (L1-L4) wouldn't have ANY effect on the sound played - the sound would be stored in the S* chips. There was only P1, P3, L1, and L2 of the Sound ROMs. The difference between L1 and L2 was simply a volumne fix of a couple call-outs.

The ROM has no idea what "11178969..." is.. Sounds are simply indexed by memory address from the sound ROMs. I do not know what ROMs you got through the VP ROMsets, but you can tell what version your game is running by hitting the Test, and then looking at the screen. It will fill you in on ROM Revision, OS Level, and Sound Rom Revision.

I use this post https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/530-5004-01 it works with no issues for me since I installed it in the existing 1/4" screw hole right above the hole, the upper one ( I think it holds the metal guide as I recall). I tried the standard post with the rubber ring(even the very small one) and it would get stuck. You can try it with the post you have the small ring on...just remove the ring...once you see how you like it....order the smooth one...same difference really, I just think its more appropriate.

Well my regular 250 play interval clean/wax/new balls turned into adding a subway clean/wax then full flipper rebuilds then under ramp and mini playfield clean/wax then a gumball internal cleaning all in an effort to stop or at least delay ball trails that were forming pretty quickly.

TZ has been out off commission for a month but starting to go back together...hoping to not have to do all that again for a long time.

Will be installing Twister mini playfield switch kit along the way.

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If you're interested, mine does the first sound you remember (with the "sparkling" sound), and I cannot remember if visual pinball did it. Mine has game rom L-5 and sound ROMs P-3. I think that also the game rom can influence the sound, as I think the jackpot sound is made by different sound board calls. If memory serves me right, I had some problem with the flat between CPU and sound board, and I heard totally random the first part of the jackpot sequence (not the part after the explosion). I will investigate with pinmame

I think the Main Mutltiball Jackpot and Powerball Multiball Jackpot use the same sound in the pin, but that is another thing to keep in mind. When you get secondary jackpots, are those the same sounds or more intense?

If I'm following.. Pinball arcade has funny jackpot sounds and likely someone stripped the sound files from there or found the files stripped from there and used them for one of the pinsound orchestrations?

I played the videos several times but am not sure I hear the difference. I guess the normal sound is higher pitched and the funny sound is similar but lower pitched??

The normal sound has a sort of ring to it in the blasts where as the pinball arcade and pinsound just have a boom. Its not necessarily worse, but when you played it enough as a kid it just sounds wrong.

I understand now why the roms i tried made no difference. They are romsets and the underlying sound chip roms are the same. Thanks Coyote for clearing that up. I no longer see a reason other than curiosity to find out where the altered sound effect came from. I care way more about getting a recording of the correct sound, so since all these roms are playing the correct sound in VP I wont be investigating here any further. I'll just be focused on ripping.

I found a program called M1 that supposedly was made to play sound directly off of old sound roms. I was able to get the windows version running, and Twilight Zone 9.2 is on the supported rom list, however when I hit play I hear nothing and cant control the player so I guess I haven't got it setup right or something. I haven't quite given up yet as for whatever reason having this silly sound effect right is important to me.

I think that perhaps the correct sounds are already in the Pinsound package, but just not being played. I think that originally the 4-5 booms in the end of the jackpot jingle are 2 or more different sounds played at once. And perhaps the Pinsound board and the arcade version only plays one of the sounds.

As far as i can tell, i think that if you mix the 1117896962-jackpot_score_pt_2_ sound from the original TZ Pinsound archive with the boom sound, you would be a lot closer? And ofcourse you would then have to overwrite the existing boom sound with the new mixed/combined sound in the package (correct folder).

So in short i dont think you have to rip anything, but do some fiddling with the existing sounds.

I will check later, this really intrigued me. Yesterday I just couldn't do it after work, I'll do today

It is indeed several sounds played over each other, but I need the original isolated boom to mix/layer it. when you record the game, its playing too many things at once to get the proper recording. The problem is not the editing, but sourcing a pure version of the original boom to mix in. The boom sound is actually only a single boom, not the 4-5 we hear. The game is what handles the looping.

It probably is in the Pinsound folders - you should be able to go into the "SFX" or "Single" folder and play each file from the subfolders to find it

I did. "1117896962-jackpot_score_pt_2_" is the sound in pinsound folder. That doesnt help with sourcing the original recording to replace it with.

I followed a guide I found on youtube about import raw rom data into audacity with some success. I was able to listen to maybe a third of the sound effects, unfortunately the jackpot sound was not one of them. The rest were screechy garbage. I believe the ones I was able to hear were "samples" (hard to make a car horn with a synth chip) The rest were instrument instructions so they play as nonsense. Going to need to at least do some emulation to get the rest to play right.

all searching says M1 or BridgeM1 is the right tool for this job (especially since TZ is on their official supported rom list) but I havent had any luck getting it to produce any sound

I've made some interesting progress.

So, as you may have guessed, there are two sounds layered to make the Jackpot sound. Those are in two codes.

7a 0d (7a is a bank switch command)
and
f8

now, in my video you can see the difference between just the first sound called and the other with both sound called in togheter. My guess is that some audio cards misses the second sound, and the right (as the request by the CPU on the bus) sound is the one with the crashes. I've tested all ROM from P-4 to 9.4H, and all call this sequence. I've tested also with the Powerball, and I'm noticing that my real pinball when I get the jackpot with the powerball yells "Powerball" and then "Jackpot!". I've discovered that if you have the L-4 or the L-5, then you have this feature I think is neat Is in the code that transit in the bus between CPU and sound board. This is somewhat missing in 9.2 and 9.4H

Jackpot sound difference

L4 Powerball Jackpot Sound

You hear a third because some sound are called via 2 byte and some with 4 byte. The ones called via 4 byte are in the "second bank", and need to be prefixed by 7a. For example, 7a 0d should give the first layer of jackpot sound. See my post for more info

Wow looks like you nailed it there! Can you dump that second jackpot sound? or both? Using that I could mix it into what I currently have and produce correct sound

EDIT: Nevermind I figured out how to use the sound command menu in pinmame (which i did not previously know existed)

That powerball callout is neat!

Here are the Wav file. Please keep in mind that Pinmame emulation don't recond the cleanest of the files

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=20693145007693380307

While I was able to use pinmame to record my own Wav I had a problem with the two sound effects playing at the same time not being in sync. Your Wav does not seem to have that problem so I guess thats fixed. for me the second sound effect would be delayed even when entered on the same command line. If I switched the order to F87a0d the delay would switch as well. Did you have this issue and if so how did you solve it? I suppose its not important. I'm dropping that wav into pinsound right now to test.

That worked pretty well. Its not perfect, but it does not induce the distracting feeling of wrongness.

Thanks Alby87 for the .wav that was better than the one I could generate and to everyone who took part in this oddly specific little discussion.

M1 does work - I have used that to pull sounds from Monster Bash, but it is NOT intuitive.

I am so fascinated by this whole thing, I’m sure it’s happened before, but I’ve not heard of a sound being replaced like this

So to explain the root issue which I discovered while screwing with pinmame:
The jackpot sound effect is actually 3 separate sound effects: The build up, and TWO sound effects that combine (play over each other at the same time) for the second half/crashes. The pinsound and pinball arcade use the SFX at address F8, but they do NOT layer the other half over it (SFX 7a0d) The sound effect was never changed, it was just HALF ripped a few times.

EDIT: In addition, it is important that these two sound effects be played at the same time ON THE CHIP as they interact with each other and produce a unique sound that cannot be achieved by simply playing both sound effects at once in an audio editing software or platform like pinsound.

Can you get Twilight zone to work? I couldn't. Id be interested to know what you did differently that it works for you if so. according to the list M1 supports TZ 9.2

I’ll try it this wknd

Looking for a trough proximity switch that is reliable (not the Pin Point POS).

Recommend this one http://tanglestech.com/Twilight-Zone--Trough-Proximity-Eddy-Sensor--Replaces-A-16534-and-A-16528-Switch-26_p_36.html

I replaced a plastic near the gumbal machine and the new one was slightly different including hole locations being slightly off. The old plastic and most of the rest of the plastics have a hand written "-SP" at the end of the part numbers. Are all machine like this? Any significance for the SP?
20191004_193643 (resized).jpg

Edit: Never mind, should have searched before posting, found the answer in the forum (is the manufacturer's initial)

I'm down to my last couple problems with my TZ restoration, which is saying a lot considering where I started. My pop bumper lamps are all significantly different brightnesses. The one in front is bright as expected, the one on the right is dim but passable, and the one on the left is VERY dim. Ive quadruple checked the wiring, all connectors and boards are new and wiggling them has no effect. wiggling lamps, wires, diodes, etc also all have no effect. As far as I can tell these are the only lamps I'm having this issue with. The lamps behave normally in that they are off when expected and on when expected without ghosting. Only the brightness is a problem. I am running an LED OCD board, but the problem is still there if I plug directly into the driver board bypassing the OCD.

Any troubleshooting advice?

Only other issue at this point is the occasional false positive powerball mode on the subway sensor, but Ive read that this can be caused by not enough incline of the game (mine is still on the shop table with only a 2x4 providing some very floaty gameplay testing.)

Have you swapped the bulbs around just to test those?

OCD LED is only for the insert lamps only. Should have nothing to do with GI lamps. Have you tried a different bulb? I would try another led or even an incandescent bulb. Maybe the one led bulb is bad. I would also check to see if the lamp socket is corroded or funky.

Pops are controlled, not GI.

Get out a laptop and cable and you can increase the brightness of the insert strings. Don't go over 80% or so for most lamps, but you can increase the pops if necessary. Most likely it's not the board though; you may want to try cleaning the lamp contacts (Occam's razor!) and try replacing the LEDs in teh pops. DO NOT use incandescents in the game, LEDOCD is not going to be able to handle them

Bah, forgot some important information.

They are pop bumpers discs from comet pinball :
https://www.cometpinball.com/products/pop-bumper-discs

And they are hard wired in (no sockets.) Wiring has been checked.

Good suggestions.

No incandescents in the game. All LED
I was going to try and fix it with the LED OCD software but when it was happening without it plugged in I figured I'd be masking a different problem.

On my twilight Zone I have a 3 slot coin door. The coin door mech closest to the lock gets stuck on the lock down reciviver yellow lever when the lever is flipped in the open position and you close the coin door. Is their any way to stop it from getting stuck because every time it happens I have to lift the playfield and fiddle the lock down reciver lever out of the coin slots. Is my coin door the wrong one does this happen to two slot coin doors? Is this normal on Williams WPC games?

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games?Happens to mine too. I usually flip the yellow level to normal after I remove the bar, so I don't forgot to not close the coin door.

Why did you hard wire them?

Those pop lights have a little screw adjustment on them. It’s probably turned down on yours

A 3 slot coin door on WPC games is common for European games or maybe not original to a domestic game. In order to avoid the issue, you need to get used to sliding the lever to the right when you remove the lock bar if you intend to close the coin door with lock bar off.

Huh... I had no idea those had adjustment pots. I'll check that!

I hardwire them because I use clear pop bumper bodies to take advantage of the white LEDs on the underside of those discs. The connectors block light, are ugly, and dont really fit inside the pop bumper anyway without them being crammed in.

Interesting! take a few photos, that sounds awesome

Is it just me or do others feel my pain? Lifting the playfield on my TZ is challenging. It’s doable but takes some effort. I think it is just because it is a wide body and there is so much stuff mounted on the playfield. The playfield also likes to bind along the sides on the way up and down. For that reason I would never consider using art blades on this title. I always cringe when I use the playfield prop stick. Seems like it is being stressed to the limit. It is very rare that i can get the playfield to locked into place on the first try.