31–40 of 51 posts
Nice work! I'm assuming score rollover is detected so your awesome final score is correct. Also saving game settings of total balls (3 or 5) and extra ball enabled is useful when comparing scores. Anything pinball on HN is a good day :)
At ngrok, we just published a guide to put the ESP32 online that might have helped: https://blog.ngrok.com/posts/putting-the-esp32-microcontroll...
Do you have any plans of open-sourcing or releasing your work here? This stuff is awesome, it would be great to try and apply it to different eras of pinball machines as well.
>While the board was out, I removed the battery holder from the MPU board. The board needs 3x AA batteries to keep the CMOS RAM powered to maintain the high score list while the machine is off. I’d read that these batteries could sometimes leak onto the circuit board, causing substantial damage.
You can also use Lithium primary AA batteries, not to be confused with rechargable lithium-ion cells. They are better than Alkalines in just about every way, including that they do not leak. The only reason Alkalines are so popular is that they are slightly cheaper. In this application, you probably want the best cells possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, friends with the guy from Pinball Basement who makes the System 11 boards. It was actually done by licensing the designs from Williams, so that's cool. They're still quite expensive, but it's great from a preservation perspective.
I was talking about the DumbAss boards: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dumbass-test-and-rep... . Are those the same as Pinbal Basement?
This is very cool. I wonder if niche arcades could make a comeback with something like this. Imagine global competitions between clubs competing for rank, recognition, and reward.
TBH I'm not a fan of comparing scores on different physical machines. Every pin is different. It is still fun to see scoreboards on local machines or to find the really out-there scores some people put up, but it's not like a video game where everyone is on equal footing. To me that is part of the appeal of pinball. It is a local, physical, tangible thing.
This is very cool. I wonder if niche arcades could make a comeback with something like this. Imagine global competitions between clubs competing for rank, recognition, and reward.
TBH I'm not a fan of comparing scores on different physical machines. Every pin is different. It is still fun to see scoreboards on local machines or to find the really out-there scores some people put up, but it's not like a video game where everyone is on equal footing. To me that is part of the appeal of pinball. It is a local, physical, tangible thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH I'm not a fan of comparing scores on different physical machines. Every pin is different. It is still fun to see scoreboards on local machines or to find the really out-there scores some people put up, but it's not like a video game where everyone is on equal footing. To me that is part of the appeal of pinball. It is a local, physical, tangible thing.
To be clear, do you mean different physical machines of the same type?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH I'm not a fan of comparing scores on different physical machines. Every pin is different. It is still fun to see scoreboards on local machines or to find the really out-there scores some people put up, but it's not like a video game where everyone is on equal footing. To me that is part of the appeal of pinball. It is a local, physical, tangible thing.
Heck, even with video games we're not on "equal footing." When I play my little self-contained version of "The Oregon Trail," I am at a disadvantage when I have to hunt for food using those clunky controls. :-)
Cool hack! Thanks for laying out the steps in such detail. One specific comment: >While the board was out, I removed the battery holder from the MPU board. The board needs 3x AA batteries to keep the CMOS RAM powered to maintain the high score list while the machine is off. I’d read that these batteries could sometimes leak onto the circuit board, causing substantial damage. You can also use Lithium primary AA batter…
Another option is to replace the CMOS RAM with NVRAM.