Fred,

You make some great points here. I actually work with several companies in the pinball industry designing everything from lower level OS/game framework code to higher level business applications that help them be successful. I understand Rick wanting to test the waters for "code updates" after the success seen by the DE Star Wars updates and Cactus Canyon. It makes sense to see who is interested because its actually a decent sized undertaking from the engineering side.

First you have to decide how you'll tackle these code updates. Do you do 2.0 versions (like Cactus Canyon), or do you modify the ROM image? Anyone who has actually had to deal with the APPLE system that ran pretty much every WPC title will tell you that, while it was great for working in 6809ASM, its a far cry from modern technology, and there is a bit of a learning curve. However the macros in the framework do make it bearable (Thanks Larry and Ted!).

Then actually getting the build chain running on a modern computer is a bit more extensive. WMS mostly used NT based systems back in the day along with several DOS tools for DMD animations.

The engineering side of it was really quite cool for the time, and it was a lot of fun working with these tools when I had the chance to tinker with them.

Being the geek that I am, I really hope that more people step up to the plate. We've got some really really smart pinhead engineers out there who often times create and contribute back to the community. In fact, much of the internet itself runs on open source software that came from community contributions similar to the ones we've seen in pinball.

I'll be watching these developments closely!

Indeed, the major wild card has always been duplicating the compilation environment (where you take the assembly and compile it down into a ROM image). WMS thankfully used an off the shelf 6800 compiler. Rick has stated that he'd managed to get one running, so thats a great thing.

If you want to get a good idea for how the original source code looked, take a look at some 6809 assembly code Compared to intel assembly, its a breeze. However, compared to higher level languages, it can read like Swahili. Its the APPLE macros that really gave the language its power, and thankfully the engineers were really really good at documenting the system a while back, so anything is possible

I remember modding the TAFG ROM to remove a some of the Cousin It Hideout awards to make the game play a bit more fair. I had to do it in hex, and it was a pain, but boy was it fun once it worked!