I believe the 9.4 was a home only rom. Hence the H?. I think there was a hacked 9.4CH but I'm not sure where you would get it.

I think those home roms are free play only.

Definitely the answer. That's why I bought the 9.4 instead of the 9.4h.

Wasn't the 9.4 version that accepted monies the no-no version not endorsed by the programmer?

John should have them, Thatpinballplace.com

Yeah. It's extremely disrespectful to run this version.

It's why we can't have nice things.

That's what I thought.

I'm running the ColorDMD with Rom version L-4 and it runs perfect.

I am not at all familiar with what is referenced here? What's the history?
I bought my 9.4 from a regular Pinside ROM seller in 2013 - have bought several ROMs from him. At that had the option of 9.4 or 9.4H, just chose the 9.4 to have the option of turning free play off or on.

Ted Estes made the 9.4H software. I think he was the original programmer, he at least worked at WMS. Someone hacked 9.4H to take credits. There was backlash about it in 1999 or whenever 9.4H came out, but in 2016... who cares. Just use whatever version you want.

You probably don't want mute and pause turned on for a coin dropping environment.

Here is the explanation from the programmer himself, Ted Estes

4/16/99

I have been hesitant to jump into the fray here, as I'm really not in the mood
for an argument (or even a "friendly" debate).
Let me start out by stating that I have, in the past, hacked ROMs for pinball
games. I can probably claim to be one of the first persons to have created
a simulator for an arcade hardware system. I was running ROMs from early
Bally and Williams games on a 25MHz 80386 in 1990. (Poor thing could barely
simulate that lowly 1MHz 6800 in real time, too.) On the other hand, I didn't
distribute my hacked ROMs. I did the work purely for my own education and
and amusement. (I don't mean to imply that what I did was any less illegal,
though.)

Anyway, there are so many points to touch on here, I'm not quite sure where
to start. I will try to type slowly and use small words so that the one or
two people who haven't "gotten it" yet may possibly understand.

First, some issues on the legality:

- Copying and distributing ROM images of copyrighted software is a violation
of copyright law.

This is pretty simple. I don't have much else to say about this. One is
allowed to make a backup copy of software for archival purposes in case of
the destruction of the original. One cannot distribute this backup copy
without also distributing the original.

- The license agreement that is included with software downloaded from the
Williams Electronics, Inc., website states, in part, "You may not decompile,
reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to a human-
perceivable form. You may not modify, network, rent, lease, loan, or create
derivative works based upon the Software in whole or in part."

Pretty hard to argue with that. The only place to have received a copy of
Twilight Zone revision 9.4H is from the WMS website, and one must agree to
the license restriction to do so. Getting a copy from somewhere else just
means that the person distributing it violated the agreement, which does
not nullify any portion of the license agreement as it applies to the person
receiving the ROM image.

- The back cover of the Twilight Zone manual reads, in part, "Because this
game is protected by Federal copyright, trademark, and patent laws,
unauthorized game conversion may be illegal under Federal law."

Hard to argue that the hacked ROM isn't an unauthorized game conversion.

Now, the question of why Williams would be concerned about a hacked ROM has
received much discussion. Let me touch on a few of the major issues here:

- The game still says "Williams" on it, whether it has a hacked ROM inside
or not.

The player has no idea that the software running in that Williams game has
a modified ROM. What if it's buggy and the game keeps crashing? What if
someone has put something offensive in it? What if the game just acts
screwy in some way?

Williams puts a lot of effort into developing fun games that will (one would
hope) earn money for the operator and bring entertainment to the player.
Part of that effort is in trying to maintain a consistent level of quality
and a consistent "feel" for both the operator and player. Williams must
retain control of its software for its games in order to accomplish this.

If you don't think this is much of an issue, you are wrong. Witness the
reactions on rec.games.pinball by some people to new games. "I tried
and it's a tilt-monster!" Now, the more knowledgeable players know that
the tilt setting is an adjustable feature -- it is not game specific.
But what about software acting "whacky"? Have you, gentle reader, ever been
confused by a game and wondered if there were rule changes due to a
different software revision, or even just different operator settings?

Another issue is with licensed titles. Williams has entered into an
agreement with the license holder that specifies, in part, how that property
may be presented in the game. Hacking a game ROM that tampers with the
presentation of the licensed property in any way is an unauthorized use
of that license.

- The unwitting operator who installs a hacked ROM may not be aware that the
ROM is not an official Williams release.

This is not as unlikely as one may think. It's one thing to say that a ROM
hacker will distribute a ROM image with the warning "Use at your own risk."
It's quite another in practice. The person updating his/her game may just
see a new version and say "Oh, this is version 9.6. I have 9.2. I should
upgrade." I've heard tales of helpful patrons burning ROM updates and
giving them to an operator who might otherwise not have updated a game on
location. What if that new ROM image has bugs unwittingly introduced by
the hacker, or -- worse -- malicious code intentionally placed there?

This also becomes a support issue. Technical support people at distributors
and at Williams try to do their best at helping debug games over the phone.
One of the first questions is: "What revision of software are you running?"
If the ROM hacker has not been thoughtful enough, or perhaps not
knowledgeable enough, to change the revision number, the operator may be
running a ROM that reports "9.2" but isn't really "9.2". Something in
the program may be mimicking a hardware problem thus greatly complicating
the debug process.

Regarding Home version ROMs:

- My employer, Williams Electronics Games, Inc., is good enough to tolerate
its software developers working on "Home" versions of games.

This work is not encouraged. It is not officially sanctioned. They are
nice enough to let us do it. They could just as easily forbid it. In order
for me to do a Home version of software, I have to use proprietary
information that belongs to Williams. I use inhouse tools that belong to
Williams. It would be perfectly reasonable for them to prohibit the use of
this information and tools by me for any use other than development of new
games and maintenance of old ones. As soon as Home ROMs become too much
of a bother, then I fully expect my employer to institute a policy that
disallows them.

In the past, home ROMs have been distributed through the "friend of a
friend" network. Not a lot of thought was placed on controlling them, nor
considering the ramifications of having them placed on location. Home ROMs
in general are not tested as carefully as production ROMs. Nor are they as
carefully labeled. (For example, more than one version of Twilight Zone
"H-8" has been distributed. Hey, it wasn't an official release, why change
the revision number?)

In order to stem possible problems with Home ROMs, the policy of making them
"Free Play Only" was instituted. This was to prevent the use of these ROMs
on location, to avoid the problems I've outlined above. (Possibly buggy
software; game acting "whacky" or different; etc.)

I offer another real-world example: I made a special version of Twilight
Zone for a friend of mine. His father had had a stroke, and could only use
one arm. I made a version that controlled all the flippers at once from
either flipper button. One selected the option by holding a flipper button
while starting a game. It doesn't take too much imagination to visualize
the head scratching involved in trying to debug a game on location that had
this ROM installed in it. "Darn game flips all the flippers at once. But
only sometimes!"

The "Free Play Only" policy is a perfectly reasonable control on objections
to un-official software revisions. Those individuals with games at home who
desire pay-for-play are welcome to use an official software version.

Regarding the Twilight Zone Home ROM (9.4H) in particular:

- I was motivated enough to spend a significant amount of time making a new,
semi-major software release for the game.

I won't delve into all the details, but if you'd like to read the story of
how this all came about, I invite you to visit http://gameroommagazine.com
and order the February 1999 issue. The cover story is by me and cronicles
the one-year time span of the project. I fixed a bunch of bugs and added a
handful of new features. Through the help of some dedicated beta testers
I went through 4 or 5 revisions of software to finally produce 9.4H.

When I released 9.4H, I intended to followup with a release of a pay-for-
play version of 9.4. It would have had a few of the home-only features
permanently disabled. I decided to let 9.4H percolate a bit before
releasing 9.4, as I didn't want to have other bug reports come in, and have
to further inconvenience those operators conscientious enough to upgrade
their games by a subsequent release of 9.5. As it turns out, 9.4H has a few
minor bugs that were discovered by the people who upgraded. I have been
(slowly) fixing those bugs in anticipation of a 9.5 release.

Regarding the hacked Twilight Zone ROM (9.4BH):

- The changes made in the hacked ROM amounted to a few dozen bytes. Here is a
summary of the changes:

The most significant change is that the "Free Play Only" restriction was
defeated. This allows the operation of the ROM on location. An operator
who does so without also turning off the "Mute & Pause" feature is going to
be in for a surprise.

The hacker was thoughtful enough to change the revision number from 9.4H to
9.4BH. This is handy for being able to tell that this not an official ROM.

The hacked ROM changes the "Door Spots" adjustment. The old settings values
were:
0 - Spot EB panel when EB earned
1 - Spot 10 million panel when skill shot earned (default setting)
2 - Spot Battle the Power panel when Battle the Power earned
3 - Spot Light Gumball panel when GUM-BALL earned
4 - (undocumented) light door knob on first door award

The new settings are:
0 - no panels spotted
1 - Spot EB panel when EB earned
2 - Spot 10 million panel when skill shot earned (default setting)
3 - Spot Battle the Power panel when Battle the Power earned
4 - Spot Light Gumball panel when GUM-BALL earned
5 - (undocumented) light door knob on first door award

The final change was to modify the "1st EX.BALL RAMP" range setting from
4-12 to 4-32. Interestingly, the range for "2nd EX.BALL RAMPS" is 30-70.
Beats me what happens if you set the 2nd one to happen before the first.
I also don't know how that might interact with the auto-EB percentaging
code.

Regarding a few other odds and ends that have been brought up over the last
few days:

- Writing a Home version ROM is in no way comparable to hacking a few bytes
in the ROM.

While the person who hacked 9.4H went to a lot of effort to find the places
to change to make the above modifications, the end result is trivial
compared to the changes I implemented in going from 9.2 to 9.4H. While
anything is possible, I sincerely doubt that anyone would go through the
trouble of trying to implement anything as significant as I did by hacking
on the ROM.

Also note that I introduced lots of bugs along the way. I was working with
source code and a debugger. I wasn't reverse engineering and changing bytes
in the ROM. I was working on source code of which I wrote a significant
portion. Let me repeat my point to drive it home for the one or two of you
who missed it: I introduced bugs.

Anyone who suggests that a ROM hacker can replace a motivated developer
using the tools I had at my disposal has no clue about the work involved.

- "WPC is old news, why not release the source code?" Just because software is
old, doesn't mean it is no longer valuable.

I can hardly fathom the call for releasing the source code to old games
for general consumption. The source code embodies 20 years of knowledge
about embedded systems, coin operated games, and pinball machines. Ever
hear of trade secrets? Do you even comprehend the meaning of "intellectual
property"? A change of hardware, microprocessor, or programming language
doesn't invalidate an algorithm.

Putting that aside, Williams certainly doesn't need dozens of homebrew
software packages running on their hardware in the field. What a PR and
support nightmare!

I fail to see the business sense in this action, no matter how I try to
evaluate it. For example, what if someone reprogrammed an old game in a
way to give it new "legs" on location? How would that help Willliams?
It would only possibly delay that operator's decision to buy new product.

And, finally, my personal feelings on the subject:

I put a lot of conscientious effort in making the Twilight Zone Home ROM. I
fielded suggestions from rec.games.pinball, and implemented quite a few of
them. I took great pains to test and debug the release. I released the
"Free Play Only" software first to avoid problems with someone operating a
game with bugs I may have missed during testing.

Someone took that result of my efforts and disabled the "Free Play Only"
safeguard, implemented another couple of small changes (that I might have
put in myself, had I been asked nicely), and then distributed the result on
the Internet.

What started out as a fun project no longer is. I am saddened.
Ted Estes
Williams Electronics Games, Inc.

Thread is going astray (but interesting info)

I think you should ask the ColorDMD people (they are here on Pinside, try a direct message).

Ultimately my guess is that it PROBABLY works (someone posted they have had success). It's just that ColorDMD doesn't want to support 100 different versions of the TZ code, so they say "this is our official version with compatibility."

I will be updating a newly acquired sample Twilight Zone with the latest available ROMs (yes the original TZ Sample ROMS will be saved). The Game ROM I've got covered but the Sound ROMs have an inconsistency that gives me pause. First of all, I'm assuming that ALL Sound ROMs that begin with "P" mean Prototype and those that begin with "L" are Production? If so, then it looks like the latest TZ Sound ROMs would be L-2. But when I look at the actual file dates, the Sound P-3 file dates are newer than Sound L-2. Hmmm. Perhaps the Sound P-3 newer dates are bogus as it's possible to lose original file dates when files are copied.
So, Sound L-2 would still be the newest? Or?
Thanks for any info.

Twlight Zone ROM List (resized).jpg

Do not use any dates on determining which ROMs are newer.

"P" was not 'Prototype', but 'Preliminary'. Important yet small distinction.

L-2 is newest, but not all chips will be L-2. Only ones marked L-2 are L-2 - that means that other chips were not updated/needed update from the previous release. (Offhand, I believe L2 was only a single-chip upgrade. The other stayed at L-1.)