(Topic ID: 237259)

Williams Flash doesn't stop after 5 balls played

By uofmer

5 years ago


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Topic Stats

  • 14 posts
  • 5 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 5 years ago by pincoder
  • Topic is favorited by 2 Pinsiders

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    #1 5 years ago

    I checked the NVRAM and set it to 3 or 5 balls. The value is still correct after cycling power (using a NVRAM module), but it keeps kicking out the ball, incrementing the ball in play forever. I don't know what is going on. Other settings in the NVRAM are OK (high score, accounting, max credits etc), except I also can't get the background sound to play (all 5 sound solenoids fire while running diagnostics).

    I have the GREEN ROMS (blown from pinwiki) and have the "adjusted" cheatsheet for the settings so I'm sure I have the right addresses... this is crazy. Could there be something strange with the ROMs?? It plays good, displays are good....

    #2 5 years ago

    With green (system 6) roms the number of balls is adjustment #30, and background sound is adj. #31 (00=off, 01=on).
    Yellow (system 4) roms have the ball count at #31 and background sound at #33.

    It could be possible that you have blown the yellow rom image, so try setting #31 to 03 and #33 to 01.

    #3 5 years ago

    Humm... it's a system 4 MPU. Maybe that's the issue? I'll blow some Yellow ROMs and see how that works too. I think I have tried both locations, but I'll try again tonight. thanks

    #4 5 years ago

    upon further research, I found that the Yellow ROMs were the older bipolar PROMs and not something you can program in the 2716's. Also, I didn't see anything online that would signify any differences in using the GREEN ROMS in either System 4 or System 6 boards. I just retry the settings and see what happens.

    #5 5 years ago

    The audits are different in green rom version and may not match the manual.

    https://www.ipdb.org/files/871/Williams_1979_Flash_Manual_Amendment_WMA486_2_color_coded_ROMs_and_PROMS_undated.pdf

    I believe when the number of balls audit has the wrong value (something besides 03 or 05) you can get the never ending game effect. Probably what is going on.

    For the background sound make sure your sound board has the SOUND1 ROM installed and verify the wiring (and audit settings).

    Another thing you can try is to reset the CMOS memory back to defaults. Open the coin door. MPU command switch 7 on rest off. Push the mpu diag button then push the command entry button and then next boot up should be factoy default settings (power cycle twice to get out of audit mode).

    #6 5 years ago

    thanks - I did the CMOS reset but that didn't change the effect. I have an original ROM in the sound board. I programmed the Sound1 ROM, but I need to mod the board to have it work. Maybe the original ROM I have didn't have the background sound? there wasn't a label on the part. I guess I'll mod the board to use the 2716 SOUND1 ROM and see if that works.

    #7 5 years ago
    Quoted from uofmer:

    thanks - I did the CMOS reset but that didn't change the effect. I have an original ROM in the sound board. I programmed the Sound1 ROM, but I need to mod the board to have it work. Maybe the original ROM I have didn't have the background sound? there wasn't a label on the part. I guess I'll mod the board to use the 2716 SOUND1 ROM and see if that works.

    Perhaps a sound board with an older ROM got swapped in. If you have to change the jumpers, then i am pretty sure you don't have the right ROM installed. As far as I know SOUND1 only came in the "ROM" setup as WMS called it (as opposed to PROM)... basically a 2716 EPROM or a 16K masked ROM that has the same pinout as a 2716 eprom.

    I'd double check the # of balls per game audit value. I am pretty sure a wrong value there can make the never ending game thing happen.

    #8 5 years ago

    double checked the settings for number of balls and background sound. setting 30 to 3 (balls) and 31 to 1 (bkgrn sound) didn't fix anything. Trying them at 31 and 33 also didn't do anything. Ran a memory check from test rom on the nvram and it passed. Did the same for the sound card and all 31 combinations make sounds - I heard the normal background sound and the increasing frequency sound, so I think the sound card PROM is good.

    this is really starting to drive me crazy! I tried 4 player and it sequences to each player, but keeps play after 5 balls. I thought it could be a stuck extra-ball condition, but since it sequences to the next player each time.

    I do have some playfield switches that are not working, but they don't close - they are not stuck closed. (side drains and most of the drop targets) and I don't know how that could impact this issue...

    I wonder if I have some bad ROMs? I'll download another from a different site and see if they all compare...

    #9 5 years ago

    Stuff like this is frustrating isn't it!

    Have you run my RAM and CMOS tests on it? Perhaps one of the memory addresses doesn't hold a value properly. Those tests check the entire address ranges of each chip. Running the RAM tests is essential too, since the Williams ROMS may simply copy the value in the 5101 to an address in RAM and never look at the 5101 again..

    You could also run the edit_cmos ROM and browse through the actual values in the 5101 chip. Since the chip is 4 bits, an 8 bit number is stored in two consecutive addresses. So for example, the GREEN ROMs expect the Number of Balls per game to be stored in the 5101 at absolute addresses 419=0 and 420=5 (in this case 05 balls per game). As you've already noted, YELLOW ROMs have slightly different absolute addresses, as do the other colors of system ROMS.

    When you boot the edit_cmos ROM, Player 1 display shows the absolute address in decimal, and player 4 display shows the value in that address (also in decimal).

    The addresses before and after 419+420 are used for the related functions in the game setup (High score to date, Replay 1 score, Replay 2 score, etc). I haven't mapped out all of the addresses, but with the editor you can at least browse the values and change them beyond what the Williams ROM will let you.

    Mabye that helps you, maybe not, but you can at least use it to examine the contents of the 5101 and maybe make some sense out of it.

    For those who don't know where to get these test ROMS, they are located here: http://pincoder.reversion.ca

    #10 5 years ago

    I ran RAM1 and the CMOS test ROM which all passed. All the values I set in the CMOS via the built in diagnostics work - the values (high scores, max credits etc) all are correct and I can read and write to them successfully.
    I was wondering what addressing scheme they used in the CMOS - I"ll get the edit_cmos ROM blown tomorrow and see what it shows. thanks!

    #11 5 years ago

    What about RAM2? Doesn't system 4 have two RAM chips?

    It would be interesting to map out all the values in the CMOS (and RAM too for that matter). It would be great for debugging their code and learning how it was built. Though the only way to map the RAM though is to put the chips on their own power and keep power to them during a reset/power up cycle and boot an updated edit_cmos ROM. Currently the edit_cmos only maps out the address range of the cmos.

    2 weeks later
    #12 5 years ago

    back in the 80's, when we designed electronics at work, we used a 2kx8 battery backed up SRAM during development. That way we could dump the memory and see what are the variables were when the system crashed. It was pretty cool debugging trick back in the day of 8" floppies and Intel 80xx series processors!

    System 4 MPU just has 2 RAM ICs.

    Made some unintentional progress on my FLASH. I powered it up for the first time in a month or so to run the "edit_cmos" test ROM and when I powered the game, my displays were all blank... crap! digging around, I found the "displays" test rom and tried that and still no luck, but noticed that i bent some pins on the EEPROM. The way the board is mounted, it's impossible to see the left side of the IC due to the door and hinge.. great!.
    Checking the display board, my 5V was only 0.5V. It turned out my ground wire from the power board to the display board was intermittent. Looks to be an issue at the power board molex connector. I fixed that and put the game ROM back in and powered up and all came up good (whew!) and when I started, I got my background sound!!!! I have no idea what caused that to start working... I'll have to start wiggling harnesses and such while it's working and see if I can locate the culprit.

    I started to rebuild the drop targets as they were not being detected. Once that gets done I'll see if I can figure out the unlimited ball issues.

    At least it's warmer now so i can work in my garage/gameroom a bit more comfortable!

    Oh, make it out to the Texas Pinball Festival yesterday - over 400 machines - what a blast! Fun to play the old and new games for the afternoon

    #13 5 years ago
    Quoted from pincoder:

    What about RAM2? Doesn't system 4 have two RAM chips?
    It would be interesting to map out all the values in the CMOS (and RAM too for that matter). It would be great for debugging their code and learning how it was built. Though the only way to map the RAM though is to put the chips on their own power and keep power to them during a reset/power up cycle and boot an updated edit_cmos ROM. Currently the edit_cmos only maps out the address range of the cmos.

    It would be nice to have a full debugger setup in the machine with an external computer to interrupt and debug right there (like Williams did way back when).

    The rest of what you're asking has already been done several times over via pinmame and via recreated source code, although it is very hard to find.

    #14 5 years ago

    Nice to see some progress! Did you ever try the edit_cmos again?

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