Category: Bally/Midway
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Possible Bug in Bally Pinball Firmware?
I am seeing something across multiple classic Bally pins that makes me think it is an actual bug in the firmware. It has to do with the LATCH signals for the displays. Specifically the Credit/Match/Ball (CMB) display.
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Alltek Ultimate Solenoid Driver Board with only the +43 VDC LED lit
So I have a stand-alone Mata Hari headboard that is used for testing purposes. I previously had a Alltek Ultimate Solenoid Driver Board (USDB) in it that was powering an Alltek MPU board. That USDB was pulled because it was needed for another purpose and I later received a new USDB as a replacement. However,…
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Replacing Bad Customs’ Sockets on Galaga
Had a Galaga that was reporting false ROM errors and had glitching that made me think that the three CPUs were uncoordinated. For example: Game would sometimes play but would have no sound, would play glitchy sounds, or get stuck on sounds Game would have odd graphics-related issues during its startup or sometimes during play…
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Galaga Board with Enhancement Pack not Booting
I finally got around to working on a Galaga board for AM and I got it up and running and was leaving it on for a 24-hour test when it crapped out showing a error on ROM 39 (which does not exist). This eventually degraded into a state where it did not display any errors…
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Pac-Man With Strange RAM Issue
So I was working on a Pac board for a friend that was dying at boot with symptoms of bad VRAM. I swapped out all of the RAMs only to have the problem persist.
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+43 Volt Error on a Alltek Systems Replacement MPU Board
So I was helping another collector in the area try to get a Bally Star Trek Pinball running. It had a Alltek MPU replacement board it in that would start to boot but then stop with 5 diagnostic flashes which indicate a problem with the +43v supply. However, when metered at the test point, the…
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Galaga/Bosconian RAM Tip
Galaga uses 4-bit RAMs. This means that in order to handle 8-bit data, it needs to group RAMs in sets of 2 – one for the lower 4 bits, and the other for the higher 4 bits. When Galaga detects a RAM error during the self-test, it does not show the location of the failed…
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Dead Gorf
So I found a dead Gorf on Craigslist. It was an older ad, but was still available when I inquired. Dude I picked it up from had done some pretty impressive restorations on some other games. Anyway – it was dead alright. Shows a blank screen that looked overly blue due to how the monitor…
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Cook Race (bootleg Burgertime)
Some sprites are missing, but still in the game. For example, when you throw the Pepper, it is not drawn on the screen, but it still stuns the bad guys. One or two of the bad guys are also invisible, so Peter Pepper can effectively get killed by nothing! Game does not draw garbage where…
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Galaxian – “Dead”
Purchased described as “dead”. Started by creating a JAMMA adapter (I hate creating adapters, it is tedious work). Well, the description was correct – she is dead alright: screen has static garbage and required some tweaking to sync correctly on my test bench monitor. Watchdog is barking, disabling it has no effect on the screen’s…