Quoted from knockerlover:This means that once we get a run of PCB's that we should be able to load this hex code back onto the new boards, and hopefully successfully duplicate them.
Rad! Nice stuff
(Topic ID: 216450)
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Alien (Heighway Pinball)
Heighway Pinball, 2017
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A few people have asked about the lock fuses (security settings) being set on these boards.. Best I can tell, they aren't locked. For anyone trying this in the future (or for myself when I forget how it was done)
avrdude -c usbasp -p atmega328p -U lock:r:Lockbyte:h
creates a file called lockbyte that contains only "0x3f" Using the fuse calculator at http://eleccelerator.com/fusecalc/fusecalc.php?chip=atmega328p this shows that only Bit 6 and Bit 7 are set w/ this hex code. Which according to the datasheet, don't do anything.
Also, the below command will pull the whole flash memory including the bootloader.. and likely this will be what is used as the image on replica boards.
avrdude -c usbasp -p atmega328p -Uflash:r:flash.bin:r
Now.. we wait on the first draft jaw motor board drawings to come back.. and then try to get a proto shop to do a small batch for us. which will lead to a trial and error design phase which hopefully will be short given the simplicity of these boards.
A couple of unknowns about them that we're making educated guesses on. Surface mount capacitors aren't labeled, and is a common problem. I dont want to risk destroying our only good board set in order to desolder these components to try and run them through a capacitance meter which likely would be wrong anyway. With some help of a few others we've decided to try:
10uf capacitors that seem to be used for noise reduction on the power supply's
0.1uf capacitors for C5 on the jaw board which appear to be a bypass cap
hopefully the capacitors are close enough and have enough tolerance that it wont matter
Below is a couple of shots of the usb microsope, assisting in reading the SMD (surface mounted) components.
Image uploaded from iOS (1) (resized).jpg
image (resized).png
Houston, TX
Toronto, ON
What boggles my mind is that the person (people?) who designed these boards doesn't just chime in and provide details. Heighway is dead, why not help the effort?
It's not like these are some long obsolete design, the company was a going concern less than six months ago.
Quoted from jwilson:What boggles my mind is that the person (people?) who designed these boards doesn't just chime in and provide details. Heighway is dead, why not help the effort?
It's not like these are some long obsolete design, the company was a going concern less than six months ago.
It would be nice.. but if I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t want anything to do with this game.
Quoted from knockerlover:It would be nice.. but if I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t want anything to do with this game.
Glad you chimed in cause I wondered if you were part of the team, and now know otherwise. Wishing you mucho success with making a better i/o board and hoping ella está buena. Planning to be a future customer of a set of four. 
I don’t have any intention of selling a product from this, don’t want to mess with any legal/IP issues. I will make available everything I have learned so that others may hopefully keep their game running, or get their prototypes up to production levels.
Napier
The Xeno board looks like a very simple board. I could not see any ESD protection on signals from switches to the AVR chip, but maybe they are hidden behind the connectors. A pinball is a high noise environment with all the coils switching, so you really like to have some protection. If not present would recommencement to add them to your replacement board design.
The ball detecting boards can be very interesting for home build pinballs. Could you make some photo's from these tiny PCBs with your microscope?
Quoted from DDDwingmaster:The Xeno board looks like a very simple board. I could not see any ESD protection on signals from switches to the AVR chip, but maybe they are hidden behind the connectors. A pinball is a high noise environment with all the coils switching, so you really like to have some protection. If not present would recommencement to add them to your replacement board design.
The ball detecting boards can be very interesting for home build pinballs. Could you make some photo's from these tiny PCBs with your microscope?
The later production games had a two board system, one that operates the “tongue” and another that operates the jaw. Sounds like if you have an alien game, you have a single board system, one of the earlier run games just like two of ours.
Which boards do you want pictures of? I’m not sure which one does ball detecting if any.
Quoted from knockerlover:Which boards do you want pictures of? I’m not sure which one does ball detecting if any.
I think he's talking about the inductive switches used for the PF switches.
Quoted from starbase:What a awesome project, hope you get at least 2 up and running.
I want 3 up and running so I can buy 1 
Quoted from billsfanmd:I want 3 up and running so I can buy 1
I was thinking one was needed for backup parts... 
I'm doing some research on the serially addressable SMD LEDs in the production models. It looks like they're WS2812's, and specifically might be model "NeoPixel RGB 5050 LED" and they're mounted on a tiny custom board with 2x 3 pin header connectors. If anyone has any OEM / supplier info, it would be most welcome! Reply or PM me?
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/adafruit-industries-llc/3094/1528-2388-ND/6058485
EDIT: After talking with the supplier I have confirmed that this is the correct PC and where they were purchased from.
The sticker on the newer PC says "www.hpraise.com" I'm fairly certain that it is this one.. w/ 4Gb memory and a 32G mini sata SSD drive installed
I put in a request for 2, so that we can move away from the Zotac computers.
Good find. It is extremely unusual for a PC board to have 4 DVI ports built in and I could not find a replacement after several searches. I would also get a replacement board if I owned any HP game.
Quoted from knockerlover:The sticker on the newer PC says "www.hpraise.com" I'm fairly certain that it is this one.. w/ 4Gb memory installed
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/AMD-A10-Quad-Core-industrial-motherboard_60781335264.html?spm=a2700.8592591.0.0.67e310a9paecj3
I put in a request for 2, so that we can move away from the Zotac computers.
Quoted from knockerlover:EDIT: After talking with the supplier I have confirmed that this is the correct PC and where they were purchased from.
The sticker on the newer PC says "www.hpraise.com" I'm fairly certain that it is this one.. w/ 4Gb memory and a 32G mini sata SSD drive installed
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/AMD-A10-Quad-Core-industrial-motherboard_60781335264.html?spm=a2700.8592591.0.0.67e310a9paecj3
I put in a request for 2, so that we can move away from the Zotac computers.
Knocker, just to clarify, you're saying this is the computer that was used in the production Alien machines? I want to get an extra as well and this one does look very similar to what I have in my pin.
Quoted from swenny:Knocker, just to clarify, you're saying this is the computer that was used in the production Alien machines? I want to get an extra as well and this one does look very similar to what I have in my pin.
Confirmed that this is the computer that was used in the production alien machines. They added a 32GB msata SSD drive, 4GB of RAM, they use the power supply in the game to power it, and also ordered DVI and HDMI cables from this same company.
Can somebody give me a short summary of what this is all about? I missed the ENTIRE thing.
Also, are these games just super prone to breaking and going extinct? Struggling to think why multiple groups of people are restoring 4 games at once each. What's the benefit to doing more than 1? Preservation? Or you need to piece them together to use parts - like 1 good one for every two?
I left when these games were just coming out so this is all super confusing. I snooped around Pinside and got the general idea but there's no big announcement or anything so it's been hard to figure out.
Quoted from Otaku:Can somebody give me a short summary of what this is all about? I missed the ENTIRE thing.
Also, are these games just super prone to breaking and going extinct? Struggling to think why multiple groups of people are restoring 4 games at once each. What's the benefit to doing more than 1? Preservation? Or you need to piece them together to use parts - like 1 good one for every two?
I left when these games were just coming out so this is all super confusing. I snooped around Pinside and got the general idea but there's no big announcement or anything so it's been hard to figure out.
Did you get banned from KLOV? Why come back here...
No need to rehash Heighway, read the threads and figure it out.
Quoted from Otaku:Can somebody give me a short summary of what this is all about? I missed the ENTIRE thing.
Also, are these games just super prone to breaking and going extinct? Struggling to think why multiple groups of people are restoring 4 games at once each. What's the benefit to doing more than 1? Preservation? Or you need to piece them together to use parts - like 1 good one for every two?
I left when these games were just coming out so this is all super confusing. I snooped around Pinside and got the general idea but there's no big announcement or anything so it's been hard to figure out.
www.pinballnews.com
Alien thread here...
Do some of your own homework.
The short summary for this thread as is stated in the opening post
"This thread is first and foremost, a running documentation of all of the technical challenges, discussion, ideas, fixes, part sources, and anything that may help to keep this game going for all to enjoy for as long as possible, as discovered through our process of fixing these games in our posession"
Quoted from knockerlover:Best I can tell, they aren't locked.
Good to see for the current owners; but ... wow; what a dumb move.
Hopefully; you can disassemble the HEX code into a somewhat usable code base so it can be update/improved.
Quoted from Zitt:Good to see for the current owners; but ... wow; what a dumb move.
Hopefully; you can disassemble the HEX code into a somewhat usable code base so it can be update/improved.
Dumb.. or intentional? 
Canberra
Quoted from flynnibus:http://www.pinballnews.com
Alien thread here...
Do some of your own homework.
The short summary for this thread as is stated in the opening post
"This thread is first and foremost, a running documentation of all of the technical challenges, discussion, ideas, fixes, part sources, and anything that may help to keep this game going for all to enjoy for as long as possible, as discovered through our process of fixing these games in our posession"
Yes, but the thread obviously appeared before whatever happened happened and turned from usual troubleshooting of games from any manufacturer into the a desperate scavenge for info and parts from the looks of it.
As I said, the info was so scattered out it's not easy to figure out what's going on - and I've never heard of that site.
Thanks everybody else for the warm welcome back!
Quoted from Otaku:Yes, but the thread obviously appeared before whatever happened happened and turned from usual troubleshooting of games from any manufacturer into the a desperate scavenge for info and parts from the looks of it.
As I said, the info was so scattered out it's not easy to figure out what's going on - and I've never heard of that site.
Thanks everybody else for the warm welcome back!
The acid burn has penetrated two levels.. we need to surround this thread in asbestos..
Can we please just ignore attempts to turn this thread into something it's not? Don't reply, don't comment, downvote if you wish and move on. Everyone will appreciate it later when they're trying to find all the useful information here.
I got word yesterday the ship with my game has docked. I think? I dunno how to read this things, the status is "container on the water". So getting closer to figuring out wtf I'm gonna do with it. Whether I keep it or unload it one way or another whoever owns it will appreciate the work going on here.
I'm still on the hunt for the OEM of the LEDs in the production machines as I'd like to get a run of them produced, if anyone has any info please PM me (or reply here if it's OK to post publicly). Thanks!
Is it true that new code was released? On the other Alien thread it says that it was. Can anyone confirm and if so how do I get it?
Quoted from violinfather:Is it true that new code was released? On the other Alien thread it says that it was. Can anyone confirm and if so how do I get it?
I can confirm the code is real, I think they're trying to figure out how to distribute it. But it's 'official' code, maybe the last real update, I couldn't say.
Yes please. The other Alien thread turned into who is the greatest rock bank that deserves a pinball thread.
So depressing that my owners thread had to turn into this, but I for one am glad these guys are trying to resurrect some alien pins in the wild.
Aurich, I hope you and the others do get your pins. Hopefully the old “they’re on the ship waiting for you” becomes true. Honestly, it is a great looking and playing pin and I would love to talk with other owners eventually if and when they finally get a chance to own and play one.
If the new code is true, can someone post the update and how to download it on this forum or to a Pinside email to me? Thank you in advance!
Airlock Cliffy Installation Instructions.
1.) Using an 11/32 but driver remove the 6 nuts behind the airlock display. You may need to hold the hex post standoff’s underneath with a 1/4” open ended wrench. You can now lift the display and remove it mostly out of the way.
BED40986-278C-460E-AD18-DC9F0BE45A3A (resized).jpeg
2.) Remove the Phillips’s screw, 11/32” nut, and three 1/4” hex standoff’s in order to remove the plastic.
7005E5C9-C6C2-437F-BB7E-8FB3DDD62AFB (resized).jpeg
3.). Remove the three wood screws surrounding the metal ball guide, and remove the guide.
5E78B1AC-F6A0-47C1-BF77-27F12FDEEE06 (resized).jpeg
Optional: Cut to size a small piece of Mylar for the front of the cliffy for extra protection.
7A2BA98B-12E7-4B86-8D4C-68C7DF6C4D23 (resized).jpeg
89122734-1B32-42CA-B1C2-5DFDF2151261 (resized).jpeg
(Now reverse the instructions)
4.). Install the cliffy underneath the metal ball and reinstall with original 3 wood screws.
CB62E530-0CBF-4BAC-ABC1-DF0A9CCB77C7 (resized).jpeg
5.). Replace plastic, hex standoff’s, nut, and screw in original locations.
6.) replace airlock display and secure using original nuts.
1040F044-9CBD-4B54-ACE3-A1199D401B7E (resized).jpeg
Quoted from Ballypinball:The cliffys need to be longer
The spot outside the cliffs is more like a tear... not ball wear. The finish was flaking from the edge wear. Don’t let the visual fool you...
Quoted from Ballypinball:Yes most I have seen the damage is outside the cliffy, will see f he can make some extra long ones
Played mine for a couple months before the Cliffy came out...zero damage. Now that the Cliffy is in place I expect it to remain perfect indefinitely.
Quoted from Ballypinball:Yes most I have seen the damage is outside the cliffy, will see f he can make some extra long ones
Already ahead of you
I asked about two weeks ago and Cliffy made it happen
He is awesome. Should recieve on Tuesday!!
Quoted from billsfanmd:nice. i’ll email him. just ask for alien scoop protector?
Alien Extended Airlock Scoop Protector
PinBackpacker dropped off uniforms for the alien team today..
Quoted from knockerlover:Replacement alibaba playfield displays (innolux q101IRE-LA1 Rev B1) confirmed to work..
great!
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