Ds games can be coppied by the way infact most console games can be
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The SPIKE System, thoughts?
- Thread starter Sam C
- Start date
Stern have publicly stated before that they are against people using pinballbrowser to modify their games and will do what they need to do to protect their copyright. If they follow through on this, we may see encryption added to the audio/video fies.
Why it would upset Stern if someone modified a game that they legally purchased for their own use is beyond me
Your question is also relevant to why did they add the security chip to Williams WPC-S games? Why do they need to stop people from copying ROM's when the ROM's are no use without the £4K pinball machine?
Back in the days, I can see that it wasnt needed - however with the likes of VP and similar out there i guess i can understand why they now look on it this way.
Of course i dont agree with it, however i can understand why...
Of course i dont agree with it, however i can understand why...
Who cares, it'll be crack and emulated at some point.
Job done.
Job done.
When's SAM going to be cracked then? Now that they are moving to Spike, how long will SAM support remain? And when will we be allowed to freely repair or replace SAM CPU boards without the protection hindering us?
Stern are assholes nuff said lol
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A shame, in their Data East days, they were all about quality and innovation.
DE introduced Stereo sounds to pinball. DE invented solid state flippers, DE were first with the DMD display. DE wiring is tidier than Williams of the same period.
Stern are assholes, it's all about cutting costs, while at the same time charging more and hindering repairers and collectors.
Ouch! Some pretty damning opinions of Stern!
I tend to agree with @abaxas that it'll either be cracked or emulated at some point. Using the Nintendo DS as an example again they thought they made the cartridge uncrackable/uncopyable by adding RSA encryption. So some clever person with an amusing acronym who probably still lived at home and rarely left their bedroom figured out that they didn't need to crack the encryption, they could simply bypass it. By intercepting the boot-up data at the appropriate point they could get past the point where the hardware thought the game cartridge was authentic but then re-directed to run different software altogether from another storage location. The first generation of multi-game pirate cartridges therefore contained a chip from a real authentic, but usually terrible and therefore cheap, DS game.
I tend to agree with @abaxas that it'll either be cracked or emulated at some point. Using the Nintendo DS as an example again they thought they made the cartridge uncrackable/uncopyable by adding RSA encryption. So some clever person with an amusing acronym who probably still lived at home and rarely left their bedroom figured out that they didn't need to crack the encryption, they could simply bypass it. By intercepting the boot-up data at the appropriate point they could get past the point where the hardware thought the game cartridge was authentic but then re-directed to run different software altogether from another storage location. The first generation of multi-game pirate cartridges therefore contained a chip from a real authentic, but usually terrible and therefore cheap, DS game.
There is one problem with the DS analogy
Stern games have a production run usually of between 200 and 5000 games,
The Nintendo DS has sold 155 million units.
Therefore there are several orders of magnitude more people interested in cracking a DS and an astronomically bigger market into which to sell cracked DS carts
Something on a similar scale might be the Capcom CPS2 encryption on arcade videogames of the 90's. It was said for many years that they were uncrackable (and for a very long time they were)
If there is a big enough market to crack something it will happen, but then you have to remember that Stern is the sort of company that will lose their **** if someone cracks SAM and issue cease and desists left right and centre
Stern games have a production run usually of between 200 and 5000 games,
The Nintendo DS has sold 155 million units.
Therefore there are several orders of magnitude more people interested in cracking a DS and an astronomically bigger market into which to sell cracked DS carts
Something on a similar scale might be the Capcom CPS2 encryption on arcade videogames of the 90's. It was said for many years that they were uncrackable (and for a very long time they were)
If there is a big enough market to crack something it will happen, but then you have to remember that Stern is the sort of company that will lose their **** if someone cracks SAM and issue cease and desists left right and centre
Same with netbooting the Naomi (and subsequently being able to run Atomiswave games on it).
You're quite right @lukewells about Nintendo vs. Stern. It was just an example, and as both you and @Paul mentioned, there are others. But all it takes is just a single nutter with zero social life and it could get picked apart. I wonder what the legality would be once Stern no longer sell replacements for the SAM? At the point you'd be buggered if your SAM-based pin broke down.
Id wager there wont be schematics in the new manuals either
Course not! Why promote people to fix the boards.... It would be far better from Stern's Point of view to have "authorised repair agents" who pay them through the node for technical specs/schematics and for being an "authorised repairer", then just letting a bunch of hobbyists repair them...
This is something that irks me about "modern progress". As the devices around us become ever more complex and we become ever more dependent upon them, generally as a society we've become less involved and knowledgeable about their operation and repair. Things around us are turning in little information black boxes - we don't know how the insides work, and more worryingly an awful lot of people don't care
Think back to what driving was like when your Dad or Grandad learnt to drive. Cars had manual chokes; you had to understand why a car had a choke to know how to use it. Driving meant understanding your car and making regular checks and adjustments. Whilst it's great that modern cars don't require you roll up sleeves to adjust the spark gap every time you want to nip to the shops, it's deeply frustrating when you do want to mend them yourself that you can't find spares or instructions. I've just realised this is why Haines Manuals have diversified into topics such as the Raspberry Pi or the Millenium Falcon, because the days when they used to strip down an entire car and document it are long gone!
This is one of the reasons I very much like the "maker" movement and ethos: have a look at Make Magazine. Doing it yourself. Using kit such as the Raspberry Pi or Arduino and sharing that knowledge via open-source platforms.
Think back to what driving was like when your Dad or Grandad learnt to drive. Cars had manual chokes; you had to understand why a car had a choke to know how to use it. Driving meant understanding your car and making regular checks and adjustments. Whilst it's great that modern cars don't require you roll up sleeves to adjust the spark gap every time you want to nip to the shops, it's deeply frustrating when you do want to mend them yourself that you can't find spares or instructions. I've just realised this is why Haines Manuals have diversified into topics such as the Raspberry Pi or the Millenium Falcon, because the days when they used to strip down an entire car and document it are long gone!
This is one of the reasons I very much like the "maker" movement and ethos: have a look at Make Magazine. Doing it yourself. Using kit such as the Raspberry Pi or Arduino and sharing that knowledge via open-source platforms.
As I tend to keep my machines either for many years or indefinitely, it is very unlikely that I am ever going to want to own a modern Stern.
If I buy some cheap tat from China for under a tenner, then yes it is disposable, and when it goes wrong, it likely goes in the bin.
If I was buying a £5k pinball machine that needs to last decades, it must be maintainable by me
I really really wanted a Metallica (It is my favorite themed pin to date and it is actually a brilliant layout) but after taking over maintaining the one at Arcade Club, and finding that a £7K Metallica LE almost needs weekly maintenance, no way do I want one now.
My most modern machine (Elvis) is Whitestar, but sadly its the later Stern Whitestar which has the emulated BSMT2000 section. I need to look into that properly at some point to see if it is using programed parts (I beleive there is an Atmel microcontroller as well as a couple of FPGAs) so it does worry me that if the sound section fails at some point it is going to be a scrap cpu board unless Stern release the code for the microcontroller.
The previous generation Whitestar is almost all off the shelf parts (apart from the 3 CPLD's and the BSMT) The CPLDs are fortunately crackable, the only issue with that one is the short supply of BSMTs
If I buy some cheap tat from China for under a tenner, then yes it is disposable, and when it goes wrong, it likely goes in the bin.
If I was buying a £5k pinball machine that needs to last decades, it must be maintainable by me
I really really wanted a Metallica (It is my favorite themed pin to date and it is actually a brilliant layout) but after taking over maintaining the one at Arcade Club, and finding that a £7K Metallica LE almost needs weekly maintenance, no way do I want one now.
My most modern machine (Elvis) is Whitestar, but sadly its the later Stern Whitestar which has the emulated BSMT2000 section. I need to look into that properly at some point to see if it is using programed parts (I beleive there is an Atmel microcontroller as well as a couple of FPGAs) so it does worry me that if the sound section fails at some point it is going to be a scrap cpu board unless Stern release the code for the microcontroller.
The previous generation Whitestar is almost all off the shelf parts (apart from the 3 CPLD's and the BSMT) The CPLDs are fortunately crackable, the only issue with that one is the short supply of BSMTs
Luke, are you saying that you are unable to fix a Metallica or that it's too unreliable and hence a PITA to own?
We're not really a part of the original equation, are we? Pinballs are intended for commercial use and the ideal plan for the manufacturer is to make money by selling pins for more than they cost to make, and for operators to have more money put into them during their lifetime than it cost to purchase and maintain them. So really, a manufacturer doesn't really give a toss once that box is out the factory door (other than hoping it won't break down during the warranty period). And operators don't give a toss about maintenance, just as long as the game plays enough to keep taking coins. Average working life of a commercial pin? Less than 5 years? 2 or 3 years?
Holy poop, Batman! I just read the Stern warranty!
Ouch... obviously a distributor can offer additional warranty on top but... still
Holy poop, Batman! I just read the Stern warranty!
Ouch... obviously a distributor can offer additional warranty on top but... still
The build quality is terrible (I expected naively that LE's would be of a higher quality than the pros because of the massive price increase)
Lots of solder joins fail under the playfield, connectors fall apart on their own, nothing is screwed together properly, dry solder joints on the LED's etc.
I can fix general maintenance problems along with any driver board related problems, but many parts of the CPU board are un-repairable due to customs and protection.
If you ask Stern to sell you a replacement board they will refuse and try to get you to send it in for repair at a ridiculous rate.
Fortunately the CPU boards at so far fairly reliable, but like anything they do sometimes fail.
Are manufacturers really selling that many pinballs to operators these days though, its not like you see that many on route at least in the UK. Everything I've read leads me to believe that the story isn't really that different elsewhere in the world either, therefore the home market must make up a massive proportion of the market share.
With a lot of modern electronics such as mobile phones I don't expect long life, after 3 or 4 years max I've had my use out of it and it's throw away. The life span on phones used to be a lot less as they become obsolete quickly but I think that has slowed down signficantly now. Pinball machines on the other hand are an expensive purchase that I feel you should expect to be maintainable and enjoy for a long time. It was possible with basically any pinball up to around 2000 when they were designed for operators only, surely with todays market this should be a priority?
Based on the amount manufacturers are charging for a modern machine cost savings shouldn't come into it, its just sheer greed on their part. How much more does it really cost to make a repairable board out of discreet components, £100 per machine if that? Personally thats a price I would be happy to pay in order to ensure its longevity. How about stop releasing machines based on ****ty licenced themes and come out with something original for a change and spend the money saved on the PCBs instead.
Luckily for me very few Stern machines float my boat. Out of all the pins they have made only 3 or 4 interest me at all, roughly 10% of their output. Contrast this with 90s Bally/Williams pins where I'd be happy to own 90% of them. I believe @Judge Dreads said in another thread "Stern pins lack soul," and I make him right. ****ty themes and overpriced cheap construction IMO.
With a lot of modern electronics such as mobile phones I don't expect long life, after 3 or 4 years max I've had my use out of it and it's throw away. The life span on phones used to be a lot less as they become obsolete quickly but I think that has slowed down signficantly now. Pinball machines on the other hand are an expensive purchase that I feel you should expect to be maintainable and enjoy for a long time. It was possible with basically any pinball up to around 2000 when they were designed for operators only, surely with todays market this should be a priority?
Based on the amount manufacturers are charging for a modern machine cost savings shouldn't come into it, its just sheer greed on their part. How much more does it really cost to make a repairable board out of discreet components, £100 per machine if that? Personally thats a price I would be happy to pay in order to ensure its longevity. How about stop releasing machines based on ****ty licenced themes and come out with something original for a change and spend the money saved on the PCBs instead.
Luckily for me very few Stern machines float my boat. Out of all the pins they have made only 3 or 4 interest me at all, roughly 10% of their output. Contrast this with 90s Bally/Williams pins where I'd be happy to own 90% of them. I believe @Judge Dreads said in another thread "Stern pins lack soul," and I make him right. ****ty themes and overpriced cheap construction IMO.
We're not really a part of the original equation, are we? Pinballs are intended for commercial use and the ideal plan for the manufacturer is to make money by selling pins for more than they cost to make, and for operators to have more money put into them during their lifetime than it cost to purchase and maintain them. So really, a manufacturer doesn't really give a toss once that box is out the factory door (other than hoping it won't break down during the warranty period). And operators don't give a toss about maintenance, just as long as the game plays enough to keep taking coins. Average working life of a commercial pin? Less than 5 years? 2 or 3 years?
Holy poop, Batman! I just read the Stern warranty!
Ouch... obviously a distributor can offer additional warranty on top but... still
Entirely true, and something we had to come to term with on the videogame side. The machines are built to have a 2-3 year lifetime and we have to live with that.
However, Stern are always pushing people to go for "Premium" and "LE" models, which are clearly designed for home user buyers and not arcades, so they could not use that argument when they charge you an extra couple of thousand quid for a home collector model and then build it like a commercial product with a 2-3 year life.
That warranty is terrible, 2 months on the boards..... Why is it so low? Do they literally have no confidence in their boards at all?
These sorts of things are a strong argument to buy your new Sterns from Pinball Heaven, as at least you get a better warranty with them
Mmmm, not most console games. DS was hacked wide open but the 3DS hasn't been reliably. The new Xbox One and PS4 consoles have not been compromised at all yet, and even the Xbox 360 and PS3 were a greater challenge to do that on than the original Xbox and PS2 (where it was pretty much Open Season). The console makers have learned how to more effectively protect their games and systems, and frequent online firmware updates in particular have made it pretty difficult to crack them now.
Sorry, slight side track, bit of a video games nerd.
Same here. TRON and STAR TREK are the only boat-floater for me. It's all pie-in-the-sky as I'll never be able to afford any of them anyway but it's great fun having a slag-fest on here about Stern
+1 again. Would be so nice to see some stunning original artwork on a pin instead of bunch of Photoshopped decals.The only recent exception to this was Metallica which did get a bunch of unique art by "Dirty" Donny Gillies.
I think you answered your own question with the comment about how much maintenance you're putting into that Metallica...
