49 replies to this topic

[wiesshund]

You may have to write a new machine translation for those roms?
I know i had to for haunted hotel, because hotel and pecmen are not straight up LTD system 4 controllers
You said that you have discovered that they did not stick to standard on these kind of hybrid machines

[jimmay3]

You may have to write a new machine translation for those roms?
I know i had to for haunted hotel, because hotel and pecmen are not straight up LTD system 4 controllers
You said that you have discovered that they did not stick to standard on these kind of hybrid machines

 
These machines (shuffle alley) are not hybrid, my machine is considered a hybrid because it uses part real and part emulated equipment.  It's just funny how the real issues of the time, actually popped back up in the emulated world years later...
 
From what I've read there was just a lot of resentment in the factories from the apparent takeover of United (Shuffle Alley) by Williams, through a continued long back and forth that spanned some 20-40 years.  Appears Williams wanted to just build these machine with pinball parts, United was more traditional, so some back and forth.  Would love to get some first hand info from someone that worked there during these years.

All input/output charts updated, see early posts...
 
Please note, there are hard to view, unless:
 
***TO VIEW THESE CHARTS IN HI-RES, YOU NEED TO CLICK ON ONE, THEN CLICK ON THE IMAGE THAT COMES UP AGAIN, THEN RIGHT CLICK THE IMAGE AND SELECT LARGE***

Edited by jimmay3, 05 May 2022 - 03:16 PM.

[wiesshund]

 

You may have to write a new machine translation for those roms?
I know i had to for haunted hotel, because hotel and pecmen are not straight up LTD system 4 controllers
You said that you have discovered that they did not stick to standard on these kind of hybrid machines

 
These machines (shuffle alley) are not hybrid, my machine is considered a hybrid because it uses part real and part emulated equipment.  It's just funny how the real issues of the time, actually popped back up in the emulated world years later...
 

 

 

Well, sort of hybrid-ish
williams wanted to use pin controllers, original guys didnt
and someplace in the process, someone didnt want to adhere to the sort of standard input designations.

at least you got them figured out though, at least not as bad as trying to make heads or tails of LTD system 3 boards

[jimmay3]

Pretty much finished up with the project, took a few weeks to decide on final setup of PC and electronics layout.  Decided to cut the back/top cabinet down to fit the monitor, full rebuild from scratch.  This shrunk the cabinet down, but led to moving the transformer and rectifier to bottom of cab back leg.  All wired up, just a few cosmetics left on the back cab middle and bottom sections, may rebuild both, due to particle board construction and some common damage from poor construction of leg base area (most units are cracked).

 

Finished up with 7 tables converted over:  Strike Master (Williams 1991), Alley Cats (Williams 1985), Aristocrat (Williams 1979), Gold Mine (Williams 1987), King Tut (Williams 1979), Strike Zone (Williams 1984) Top Dawg (Williams 1988); all table files are v2.1 (VP9.92) Hybrid Tested using VP9.92 Modified on 11/1/2018 (Rascal and Wildman) and on 4/29/2022 - 5/4/2022 (JimMay3).

 

Final video, SSD installed, should see a significant change in boot up speed and tried to hide most of the windows branding as much as possible:

 

https://youtu.be/_ljY-xGMXdU

 

 

Final Pics:

 

Short Tour Video:

 

https://www.youtube....rts/eXPNs_jH5Uw

 

Edited by jimmay3, 14 February 2023 - 06:43 AM.

[jimmay3]

Ran pretty heavy play time for about 5 months and had my first failure last week.  It appears the fly back diode on one of the pin solenoids had a bad solder joint, thus the 16 Channel 12V Relay Module Board had the corresponding output relay fail, probably from the arcing on the fly back of the coil.  Was able to switch over to one of the spare relays quickly, but was not satisfied with the mechanical relay setup.  The main reason for going hybrid was to eliminate maintenance, having mechanical relays is simply not the choice, so a solid state upgrade was due.

 

Attempted to locate an equivalent level low input driver board with solid state relays (SSR), but could not find any with DC relays to match up to the 50 VDC to fire the pins.  Actually installed two SSR board with AC relays by accident, resulting in the pins only firing once, then the SSR’s were saturated and would not reset until powering the boards down.

 

Last resort was to custom build boards, just like the custom Dual Rectifier, they were based off the original Williams schematics with a few improvements.  The relay board had a nice LED that lit when the LED Wiz output board fired them; this is great for testing and troubleshooting.  Was able to combine this feature with nearly the same original factory driver board design installed in the factory Strike Master.  Built two small separate breadboards with 6 channels each from scratch, this allowed for 9 pins, 1 motor reset, and 1 spare, for a total of 12 channels.  Did note the original factory circuit ran a little hot from over biasing the transistors, so tweaked that a little too.

 

After running the thermal cam over the entire machine, I did notice the custom dual rectifier (based off the original factory specs) is also running a little hot, due to the 1/2 watt resistor specs used by Williams.  Currently waiting on a few 5 watt replacement resistors, this should keep the entire system running better than the factory specs.

 

Below are the two new custom driver boards installed in place of the original 16 channel relay board.  This solid state upgrade should eliminate any near future electronic issues.

 

Rev 3 Boards/Setup:

 

Thermals:

 

Input/Output Boards (LED Wiz boards with the heat sink upgrade)

 

Dual Rectifier (prior to 5 watt resistor upgrade)

 

Pin Solenoid (Coils)

Edited by jimmay3, 14 February 2023 - 07:03 AM.

[jimmay3]

Final upgrade to the driver boards, made some custom 6-channel driver PCB boards at: https://easyeda.com/

 

Much cleaner setup and much easier to build.

 

Hybrid Shuffle Bowling Alley Project - Custom PCB Solid State Driver Board (Rev 4)

 

This is the 4th and final generation update, top has full custom driver boards built based off the Williams factory schematics, bottom is the blank PCB board.  This is a 6 channel board to allow easy repair and replacement.

 

Last part of the project will be to build a PCB board for Proto-Type Dual Rectifier Board which is currently at Rev 3 with the upgraded 5w resistors.

Edited by jimmay3, 14 February 2023 - 07:02 AM.

[joseguia]

Excellent work to all .. this is awesome. I ran across the post looking up Parker Bohn and Raspberry Pi, there are so many of them out there, and ultra-problematic, I have one in pristine condition that refuses to do anything. Between the PC going out, and the power supplys (there are 3 of em) and the hard drive is crap .. etc.. could go on and on .. 

 

Anyhow  - I was thinking of re-wiring one myself to do exactly what you guys have done here. Any chance I can bend your ear as I take this project on?

 

I reverse engineered the source code into assembly, it was written in C for RedHat Linux and the playboard itself is mostly REED magnetic sensors, so Im not even sure where to start to be honest. 

[jimmay3]

The Parker Bohn is full solid state with prox sensors and all good gear, should last a lifetime.

VP s only good for Williams shuffle alley emulation, since the shuffle alleys used the same hardware as the pinball machines, just different ROMs.

I'm sure you could do it all manually like some of the older shuffle alleys tables were converted, but not sure why go through the headaches. The rollover switches on the Parker Bohn are configured diff, may turn into a mess. The only reason to use VP was because the ROMs were already made and compatible with the VP emulator. You already have the software cracked, sounds like you just need better hardware.

No one makes any upgraded hardware for those? Seems like a lot of people tossing them... Do you have a manual or schematic?

Edited by jimmay3, 26 November 2023 - 08:09 PM.

[pinballjail]

there is a manual here, kind of hard to read.

https://www.arcade-m...owlerManual.pdf

[cptdunsal]

Wow! It's interesting how the Hybrid Bowling has advanced. My original machine still works like it's supposed to. Thanks to a lot of help from Rascal. My machine does not have a working pin system so its much less complicated. Moved on to a Hybrid Pitch and Bat. Has a working play field with a scoring back glass, even has running men around the bases Thanks to Rascal's help again. I'm finishing up work on a Hybrid skeeball. Has a working alley and back glass scoring. I found Skeeball softwear games online but im not familiar with the format. If someone would like to do some skeeball games in VP9 for me I'd really appreciate it.