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Oliver Kaegi's Pinball Construction Kit for Bally-35 and Bally-17 MPUs

Nedreud

Nedreud

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Has anyone dabbled with the "pck-bally" Pinball Construction Kit by Oliver Kaegi (okaegi)?

http://www.pinball4you.ch/okaegi/pro_pck.html

I recently taught myself assembly language for the Commodore 64 so now this toolkit for the 6800 CPU makes a whole lot more sense! I got the included sample custom ROM for Mata Hari up and running in PinMAME within 10 minutes.

You know where I'm going with this, of course... custom ROMs for my Bally VECTOR, GOLD BALL and PARAGON machines.

And can anyone recommend a "cheap" programmer for 2732/2532 EPROMS?

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GQ-4X V4 is the current "go-to" programmer i believe. Have one - no real issues to report. Nice and easy - Plug chip in, select type in software, load image, burn image...
 
@stoptap, just noticed you're a fellow VECTOR owner too! Hello :wave:

GQ-4X looks, and probably is, fabulous. Lots of options etc.. but £100-125 price tag a bit beyond my current budget.

The TL866 (http://autoelectric.cn/TL866_main.html) is only £31 delivered from UK seller on eBay. This video review rates it favourably:


The TOP853 also another budget option...
 
Nedreud said:
@stoptap, just noticed you're a fellow VECTOR owner too! Hello :wave:

GQ-4X looks, and probably is, fabulous. Lots of options etc.. but £100-125 price tag a bit beyond my current budget.

The TL866 (http://autoelectric.cn/TL866_main.html) is only £31 delivered from UK seller on eBay. This video review rates it favourably:


The TOP853 also another budget option...
Click to expand...
I am a Vector owner mate. Great game.
I am very interested in your progress on this as the game has loads of potential for rule tweaks.
 
Different EPROMs require difference voltages when writing data to them. Generally, the older they are, the higher the voltage. That is, as technology progressed the write voltages got lower. I have read that some of these USB-based programmers have trouble with some older EPROMs (most noticeably the 2732s which can be used in the old Bally -35 MPU) and that a work around is to repeat writing the data again and again up to 10 times. I've never done it before so only know as much as I've briefly read online, although I have a fair amount of experience with newer devices such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino.
 
That is one plus for the Willem programmer. You can power it with a 12v supply so it can deliver the oomph required for older chips.
 
stoptap said:
That is one plus for the Willem programmer. You can power it with a 12v supply so it can deliver the oomph required for older chips.
Click to expand...
Swings and roundabout, eh? I've read the USB powered programmers can have issues with higher voltage chips as they have to DC-DC step the 5 V supply to the required 21 or 25 V, and there's only 500mA current on a standard USB port (although most PC USB ports can be increased to 1 A via software). With a 12 V external supply the Willem isn't likely to have those issues but like you said earlier they're an absolute **** to setup!
 
Nedreud said:
Swings and roundabout, eh? I've read the USB powered programmers can have issues with higher voltage chips as they have to DC-DC step the 5 V supply to the required 21 or 25 V, and there's only 500mA current on a standard USB port (although most PC USB ports can be increased to 1 A via software). With a 12 V external supply the Willem isn't likely to have those issues but like you said earlier they're an absolute **** to setup!
Click to expand...
The Willem does have its strengths. Once it is set up right it is very, very good. I was recently trying to program an 8meg EPROM and despite having the settings bang on I kept getting failures. It wasn't until I faffed around with the write speed that I was able to get a successful burn.
 
Finally got around to playing with the TOP853 programmer I found on eBay back in August. Firstly, may I just remind everyone that I'm a software engineer who started his career building custom servers and was (still is, I suppose) a Microsoft Certified Windows Deployment specialist back in the 95/NT/98/2000/ME/XP/2K3 era. I class myself as "extremely competent" ;) when it comes to software on Windows. But... under no ****ing circumstances that I could arrange could I get the TopWin software installed under Windows 7 64-bit and recognise or even load the USB driver to detect the TOP853 hardware. There are simply not enough days left in my life for this sh*t. Spin on...

A quick rummage at the back of the understairs cupboard however revealed my trusty old Dell C640 laptop running a copy of 32-bit Windows XP. Amazingly I remembered the password and was greeted with a warm welcome reminding me that support for XP ended on April 8, 2014.

This time the software installed without a glitch and did loads of extra stuff arsing around installing signed and unsigned USB drivers. Plug in the TOP853 and start the TopWin6 software. All tickety-boo!

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First test is to pop in an old masked ROM and see if I can read the data off. I've got a chip marked E-781-05 U4, which is the sound ROM from a Bally FUTURE SPA. After a little Googling I think it's a 2716 and select this as the chip type: 2716-25V. It reads the data off no problem and I save it as a BIN file. I also note the checksum, which is
7D01, the same as several online resources. I then download the ROMs from IPDB and compare the U4 file from there to the one I've just saved. Identical! Excellent! It's working!

It's at this point that I work out what the different is between EPROMs and EEPROMs, and realised that I either need some new blank chips or a UV eraser :rolleyes: but I'm one step closer to my own custom ROMs!
 
Next step, ordered some EPROMs, ST M2732A-2F1 21V FAST. I went for exactly the same chips as @myPinballs supplied my GOLD BALL customs ROMs on as I assume Jim would only use quality stuff ;)

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And I also ordered a UV EPROM Eraser!

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If you want to write new rules and games for old Bally games come into the 21st century and use my custom controller board sets. You can take advantage of 'new' things like c++, led lamps and wav files :)
 
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