here's what the brinks looks like.

brinks chip (resized).jpg

Sounds like I may also be able to test this in a Farfalla soon..... if my current PM string works out

Just got the tracking number for that other NVRAM, and I have a new coil on the way too.
So I'll report back once I get them installed.

Working on a Pinball Champ for a friend. I’m at a loss - I played this game a month ago, then It stopped booting up. I’ve rebuilt nearly all of the connectors, and it now boots reliably. However, when I try to start a game, sound and speech is garbled/static if it works at all. Nothing scores, PF acts like it’s in test, with coils firing in sequence. The only thing that responds correctly are the flippers. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to load a video of this behavior.

Voltage off the power supply is as follows:
TP1 162
TP2 13.9
TP3 5.98
TP4 5.2
TP5 39.6
TP6 -5.2

Not perfect, but geez, this thing acts like it’s possessed.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated!!

ribbon cable is responsible for speech. Did you try flipping it around, or swapping it with the one between the CPU and driver board? Just to see if it changes anything.

Coming back with an NVRAM report. Installed a 2nd NVRAM, which puts them in both locations IC4 and IC5.
The weirdness appears to have disappeared. No more locked coils, any everything seems to be functioning normally again.
Still an early report here, I want to do more of a burn-in test, but looking good so far.

-Hans

Played for a couple hours. Many power cycles. No hiccups to report with the NVRAM in both locations.
No recurrence of the locked coils I was having. This includes the right react flipper, lower left pop bumper, and bike motor, which were all the most common ones giving me problems.

Looks like Zaccaria games just need to replace both locations.

-Hans

Hi Hans,

I use NVRAM on Zaccaria G2 machines since long time now.
Those nvram are my own production and I never had locking coils so this sounds really strange to me.

I only replaced IC4 even if I have produced my own dual NVRAM module to replace IC4 and IC5 together.

So I'm not sure about the obligation to replace both CMOS.

Gianfri

So fellow pinsiders, i've put my Earth Wind and Fire on legs and i am in the process of bringing it back from the dead.

Current status: Gen 1

- Replaced all fuse holders
- Replaced Caps on Soundboard and PSU Board
- Replaced BR P3

I've checked the voltages all good apart from the 5.3vdc (TP2), its reading around 4.2 - 4.3v which i am guessing is due to the diode dropping it down 0.7v.

Any ideas?

Picking one up tomorrow, read somewhere about not folding the head doe due to the neon tube can anyone confirm?
So just remove the head seems logical?

The heads do indeed fold down. The trick is a spring loaded latch on the right side of the cabinet neck. Looks like a little black knob, just make sure the head bolts are removed and pull the latch out and it’ll fold right down.

Lots of damaged necks from people not knowing. Took me and my brother a while to figure out when we picked up his first Zac about 15 years ago.

Inner backglass also has a latch on it, similar to lamp boards from most other manufacturers. Make sure that is latched.

Anybody want to do some durability testing on some PETG 3D printed flipper bats?
Took a few tries to get the 3D model where I wanted but I think it's ready for more open testing.
I currently only have red filament on hand.

-Hans

Hello!

I have a Farfalla, Spooky and Pinball Champ 82. All games are currently located at the Flip Out London Pinball Club, so if you get the chance pop in and give them a go!

The club might enjoy my post in the “what did you bring home today” thread.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/what-machine-did-you-bring-home-today-post-your-pictures/page/254#post-5097507

Yep...... jealous for sure. I've put Spooky on my wishlist but definitely not in my price range right now.

I'm about 90% done bringing my Devil Riders back to life finally. Plays just fine, and have some more LED's on the way to finish up the changeover. Though I have found out that 4 of the 5 display glasses are bad on mine. I checked all the solder joints, ohmed out the transistors and resistors, swapped them around all sorts of ways. It's just the obvious problem that I only have a single good display.

Not surprised or upset about this though. I've actually got protoype boards for LED displays sitting here. Lots of work to go before I think they're ready to install, the first version has numerous dimensional issues. Not sure how far down that particular rabbit hole I'm going to travel.

I'm also finding that the 2nd NVRAM doesn't QUITE solve the locked coils issue. I'm still getting my knocker coil firing on startup occasionally. I may still go back to standard RAM and a remote battery.

-Hans

Sounds like you need to get support for zaccaria games in your bench testing display =P

In all seriousness though do you know how far off that might be? I actually ordered some LED displays today so that I could get to bench testing some boards. Not that big of a deal since I know they will wind up in a game eventually.

play_pinball also didn't have any luck using pinitech nvram in both slots. It works *most* of the time now but sometimes still has an issue. I've got someone sending me a couple prototype nvram for zaccaria games that uses 1 chip to replace both IC4 and IC5 so we'll see how that goes.

Backup cap onboard not remote battery would be cheap and easy to install and last Forever

Getting Zaccaria support for stuff is why I bought this game

Now that the game is up and running I’m going to get hold of my code guy.

Anybody have an original style flipper shaft they can spare? Mine has a pair of Bally flippers on the lowers, and I want to give my 3D printed ones some more durability testing. But I only have one flipper shaft.

-Hans

Dear Zaccaria lovers,

I just wanted to confirm that the new Zaccaria MPU for G1 machines is finally available.

This MPU has the same concept as the G2 MPU, it comes with an internal flash rom including all the game ROMs.
On top of the standard ROMs we have also included the FREE PLAY ROMs which are selectable with an additional dip switch.

The main difference with the G2 MPU is the support for the original EPROMs which has been removed, we considered that it is unlikely to use the original EPROMs which are very difficult to burn when they are all present in the internal flash.

here you find a picture of the final product:

Zac1B1110-evo_1 (resized).jpg

Some of the features:

Modern components easy to find on the market;
Embedded flash rom with all the original game roms;
Possibility to select original or Free Play game roms;
One board can be used on all the G1 Zaccaria pinball machines without the need of replacing the eproms;
Easily select the game rom using a dip switch;
All socketed ICs for easy diagnostic and repair;
Status LEDs for quick diagnostic;
Headers on the original position in order to guarantee fully compatibility with original cabling;

We are currently testing them on some customers' machines before having them available on the website but I already wanted to introduce it to you.

I'll try to post a video later

Gianfri

_________________________________________
Pinball Solutions
www.pinballsolutions.eu
LED displays for Zaccaria, Bally/Stern, Williams/Data East and much more... visit our website.

The board is looking very nice! What about the power en playfield connectors? Are these compatible with the originals or do you need to replace these?

/\/\arco

Hi Marco,

All compatible as indicated in the features list.

No changes or hacking needed to install it.

Amazing work! You have just saved a bunch of generation 1 machines. Well done!

Working with my code developer on adding the Zaccaria to my bench displays.
The more I look into how these displays work, the more I really am appreciating the hardware design that Zaccaria did.
To help him out I did a writeup on the theory of operation for the displays, and I think I'll upload that to Pinwiki at some point.

I don't know yet anything on timeline, or if it will even work properly yet.
Still quite early in the process but it IS in process.

The good news though is that because Zaccaria was so consistent in their design, if/when the bench displays are done they'll cover all the gen1 and gen2 machines.

-Hans

even works with locomotion which needed special mods to the board in order to work?

Of course.
It works on all G1 models including Locomotion.

There is a jumper to move in order to have it compatible with it.

Hi Hans, I really don't get what you're are talking about.
Probably because I have already developed the LED displays for Zaccaria machines 4 years ago therefore to me all looks straight forward.

What do you mean with bench displays?

He has a "universal bench display" which is an a board with a single OLED display. On it you will see the 4 player's scores as well as the match/credit/highscore display. Currently only supports Williams System 3-7 boards.

I actually bought one of the first ones made before I realized I only had a single game it would work with. I was hoping he'd get zaccaria support at some time but thought that it wouldn't be till way later. Surprisingly it seems like that's next up. Looks like I'll be needing to ship my board back to him.

Much clear now, thanks

Devil Riders question ...

Can you disable the “extra time” at the end of the game?

I plan to put the game on location and that is really confusing ... ideally I would like it to be off.

rd

Yes. Setting #31 set to 00 turns off the extra time, set it to 01 to turn on the extra time.

-Hans

New video of my second Spooky up and running, finally!

Super awesome!

Thanks buddy.

rd

Thanks for sharing. Great to see how these play, not much footage out there.

It looks great thanks for taking a video! Someday I hope to play one!

****

I wonder if Dave Gersic's free play rom work with this 0 or perhaps the MPU takes care of free play?

i thought he has a jumper to use all the free play roms.

All roms are stored on the MPU, original and David's FREE PLAY.

The MPU has 4 switches for the GAME SELECTION and a fifth one for NORMAL or FREE PLAY

We made it easy and straight forward

You could print the original white flipper bats too. They look like Gottlieb's, but don't have the shoe, so they are much lighter.

OK, now that gianfri has finally released the Generation 1 MPU, are there any other remanufactured boards for Generation 1 that are on the market? The power board (or is it the solenoid board?) for my Space Shuttle looks like a mess, with an extra small board bolted on to it (?) so I'd be in the market for that as well. With both of those, I should be ready to gt my project to go!

I'm all for doing small boards, it's right in my wheelhouse. I know there's a chase light board and a 'settings' board, if I can get a sample of those I can make 'em for sure.

My guess is that Gianfri's next board would be a gen1 driver board..... so I won't look at doing that one.

But I've made a strategic decision to not do power supplies due to risk, especially high voltage stuff.

White would be no-problem at all. I just need to give the current process/design/material a good testing to make sure they'll survive. If I knew they would be durable enough, I could have them on my website for sale tonight in any color you wanted.

But the upper flippers on Devil Riders aren't exactly hard hitting. So I still need one more flipper shaft to install a lower pair in my game and give them a good thrashing. Haven't found any yet for sale.

-Hans

Do you know what games have special boards? I have most of the more common gen 2 games.

Looks like just a few of the Gen1 games had special boards from what I can see. A chase lamp board in locomotion, and an inline switch settings board for the first few games. I don't see any for Gen2 that I can find, except the sound daughterboard used in spooky.

IIRC there was a couple simple boards in the EM games too.

-Hans

Well I can definitely get you anything you'd need for the sound daughter board for spooky but there probably isn't much demand there.

No, and probably outside my ability right now anyway. Sounds boards get weird with signal paths and things like that. More art than anything else to get them to sound right.

-Hans

Here I am.
I'll be very direct and honest:
The only boards that may justify investment with some market interest are the MPUs and in the second position the Power boards. (IMHO)

The driver boards are generally easy to repair and extremely complex to assemble so the production cost is quite high compared to the MPU but we decided to produce them anyway even if the market is really really low.
G1 driver is not yet produced.

Power board is tricky, yes, it works with 180V so very good for popcorns

Sound boards are a big nightmare, they are all different, too many products for few machines, it could be a real economical suicide to start producing them, some of them use components which do not exist anymore and have no equivalent.
I don't expect big market either, how many sound boards can be sold and, considering the complexity of those boards, how much would you pay for it?

Last detail:
We are running so many projects in parallel that I cannot say when the new products will be available.

The small board you're talking about is the power failure circuit, it's a new development from Zaccaria which was initially bolted on the old versions of the power board, then integrated on the PCB of the new power boards used on Earth, Wind, Fire or Locomotion.
It's an original upgrade from Zaccaria

In G2 power boards the same power failure circuit is embedded in the all logic while in the G1 machines was used through the small additional setting board which plugs in the the MPU and which Hans was talking about.

Gianfri

Let's welcome Miss Farfalla in my collection

20190802_155023 (resized).jpg

20190802_152100 (resized).jpg

It was almost 3 years I was looking for it.
Today is the day, I went to see it and took it in my car with no hesitation.

Back glass is in good conditions, playfield glass is not original, it has tons of small problems but shouldn't be complicated to get it back in shape.