Bally / Sente SAC-1B - Chicken Shift, rknucklez, Schusler ,ThumB & Sente experts HELP

[GunSmoke Guy]

Bally / Sente SAC-1B - Chicken Shift, rknucklez, Schusler ,ThumB & Sente experts HELP

A long time ago on location I distinctly remember playing chicken shift... For several years I've been casually looking for parts for chicken shift whelp I finally just bought a Bally Sente Sac1-B cabinet. I bought the cab from another KLOVer that will be used for my Chicken Shift (My favorite Sente game). Currently the Sac1-b cab has a different sente title inside. Unfortunately although not that desirable the game chicken shift / parts are rather rare... Ive been looking specifically for Chicken Shift parts for a long time and haven't really been able to track them down. As a side note if you have parts for it please PM me... I'm going to essentially need to recreate one. With that being said I've read that some protection exists on the rom cartridges ? Or perhaps it doesn't ? I do know Ritchie Knucklez used to have ballysente.com as a website and he's supposedly a sente guru and has successfully been able to recreate a chicken shift. I've seen a few of his youtube channel videos about some of his rare cool sente stuff. I sent him (Ritchie Knucklez as well as ThumB a PM and to no avail I haven't received a PM back.. I just know they are rather fairly familiar with the specifics of what's needed for this game to get it going. Any other expert bally / sente people can help ?

Also as a side note, I know a SAC-1A (Deluxe / fridge / metal / wood / plastic big cabs whatever you want to call it...) Are those control panels the same for a SAC-1A / SAC-1B? Are the interchangeable ?

What's involved in creating a Chicken Shift Cartridge ? I already took the liberty of having Steph at hobbyroms burn & send me all the required 14 eproms which is what he said he burned Ritchie. What donor sente cartridge can I use, along with what process is involved ? I know it's been done before hopefully someone is able to assist me.

As for the artwork, another member who has one in the same sac1-b cab said they would get me scans of the original marquee / control panel (technically the control panel was already vectorized which I have the file, I would just like to see the accuracy based on the scan).

Those that don't know the generic Sente Sac1b cabinet looks like this:

Are you a bally / sente expert ? Can anyone assist me in getting my chicken shift in the right direction ?

 

[Tornadoboy]

Why is it all the best Sente games, Chicken Shift, Rescue Raider, Snacks N Jaxson and Snake Pit are so damn rare and the crappiest so common?

For that reason I'm also very much interested in the answer to whether/how Sente cards can be converted. I remember a while ago a KLOVer was claiming it's just a straight ROM swap and there's no protection, but I have trouble believing that. There's PAL chips on both the main board and ROM cards, so obviously those serve some kind of purpose and would be ideal for providing game specific codes, and also there are many different designs of the cards with different chips and processors on them, so clearly they're not generic and interchangable.

For example, see the attached pics of a Street Football and Mini Golf cards:

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

Why is it all the best Sente games, Chicken Shift, Rescue Raider, Snacks N Jaxson and Snake Pit are so damn rare and the crappiest so common?

For that reason I'm also very much interested in the answer to whether/how Sente cards can be converted. I remember a while ago a KLOVer was claiming it's just a straight ROM swap and there's no protection, but I have trouble believing that.

Exactly... I know it can be done, someone care to chime in ? I already got my chicken shift Eproms waiting ! paging Ritchie Knucklez

 

[MikeyDee]

Re: Control Panels

The inserts can be interchanged between the 2 main cabinet types, but the actual control panels cannot. So, if your cabinet came with a CP, you can unscrew the insert and replace it with the Chicken Shift insert.

Also: The bezels cannot be exchanged either, due to the cabinet differences.

 

[Alpha1]

Will pay $100 +shipping for a working Snake Pit conversion cart. Someone HELP!

 

[Schusler]

Sorry for the late response...

I know the carts can be done (I'm not entirely sure on how to do it), but my understanding that certains games carts can only be converted to certain games. It's not like you can take a Trivial Pursuit cart and convert it to Snake Pit. Now which game carts can be converted to what games? I'm not sure... I think it may be on the archives on here....

I think the reproduction route is the only way to go. I know those Sente marquees are cheap and flimsy and the panels themselves are usually worn down to metal (really noticeable on trackball games). Your using the "wooden" cab so it's just that glass bezel w/ the Sente logo outlined in green.

Have you got the panel controls replicated or have a idea? That would probably the hardest part of your restoration....

I would contact ThumB on here for the cart scenario, not sure if Richie is a regular on here too much anymore....

 

[Schusler]

Why is it all the best Sente games, Chicken Shift, Rescue Raider, Snacks N Jaxson and Snake Pit are so damn rare and the crappiest so common?

That's a good question and not one I fully know the answer too.

My thinking is Snake Pit kinda bombed for them profit-wise. Hence, that's why there is so few.

Now the others, I get the feeling these were kinda of clunkers for them too (sad to say). It really seems only the sport titles did really well for them in the cashbox, maybe the trivia games as well?

I know Hat Trick was a huge earner for them bitd....

 

[Schusler]

Will pay $100 +shipping for a working Snake Pit conversion cart. Someone HELP!

I'm surprised one of these made it across the pond. Did you have it shipped personally?

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

Re: Control Panels

The inserts can be interchanged between the 2 main cabinet types, but the actual control panels cannot. So, if your cabinet came with a CP, you can unscrew the insert and replace it with the Chicken Shift insert.

Also: The bezels cannot be exchanged either, due to the cabinet differences.

Good to know, Thanks... Not really worried about the bezel being that it currently has one.

Sorry for the late response...

Have you got the panel controls replicated or have a idea? That would probably the hardest part of your restoration....

I would contact ThumB on here for the cart scenario, not sure if Richie is a regular on here too much anymore....

OK well I know I'm certainly not going to find a Chicken Shift control panel, I'll need to borrow another sente panel, & just have Rich at TOG print me the adhesive cpo, perhaps use plexi on the top to cover it. Luckily the CPO for chicken shift has been already vectorized, but I'm still waiting on another member to send me in a scan so I can compare it and have Rich print. He also has the marquee so hopefully that gets taken care of. I tried reaching ThumB, to no avail.

I know Hat Trick was a huge earner for them bitd....

That's the cab I'll be getting it's currently a complete supposedly playing blind "Hat Trick". Personally I'm not a hockey fan, but my friends are and were shocked that I bought a hockey game told them I wanted to turn it into a chicken shift they were like whaaaaa ? I might end up keeping the Hat Trick kit / might add other kits into my collection. But for right now my focus is chicken shift.

I'm surprised one of these made it across the pond. Did you have it shipped personally?

I think he was saying how he wanted it... " Originally Posted by Alpha1 View Post
Will pay $100 +shipping for a working Snake Pit conversion cart. Someone HELP!"

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

Making some progress / so to speak... Having my Sac-1b cabinet delivered Friday...

Thankfully ThumB (One of the Sente Guru's) did contact me today, and informed me that Steph at hobbyroms burned the set for me the wrong way :-( what a waste of money that was...unless he's able to reuse reburn them. I would guess these can be erased and reused ? Perhaps burn a different game or maybe just have a second set on hand. It shouldn't be 14 Eproms... I figured as much only because I noticed most games were 7-9 eproms etc..

According to ThumB the roms need to be "Stacked". ThumB sent me a link to a picture of his cartridge:

and only showed 7 eproms on the cartridge. ThumB also said that the games sound rom needs to be changed... game will play without it but either won't have any audio or be the wrong audio.

Some wrong eggs sent from steph:

 

[Tornadoboy]

What strikes me is that it looks like the same ROM card as Mini Golf, one of the easiest ones to find!

I'd love to see pics of the other rare ones like Snake Pit, Stompin etc to see if those are possible too with any of the common ones?

BTW the Sente control panel inserts are basically just a rectangle piece of sheet metal, so you probably could have local metal shop just cut you a new one from scratch for not too much and you can drill all the holes yourself, then apply an overlay.

 

[Tornadoboy]

Bump for an interesting discussion.

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

ThumB said the sound board essentially only has one eprom, and more importantly explains essentially how to reproduce the rare game cartridges as far as the process of what needs to be done:

"As far as stacking roms, when you dump a rom in MAME, there might be 2 roms on one chip that are stacked (IE: 2 128K roms on a 256K chip). When its dumped it recognizes them as two separate roms. It's a simple task that you do to merge them back together in order to burn them back on an eprom. Heres an example of snacks N Jaxson merge.


Merging ROMS

1. Get the roms together. The only ones that we are concerned with

are the following. I have grouped them into how they are merged.

rom-ab0.u9a +

rom-ab1.u8a = rom-ab01.u8a

rom-ab2.u7a +

rom-ab3.u6a = rom-ab23.u7a

rom-ab4.u5a +

rom-ab5.u4a = rom-ab45.u6a

rom-cd.u3a + rom-ef.u1a = rom-cdef.u1a

rom-gr0.u9b +

rom-gr1.u8b = rom-gr01.u6b

rom-gr2.u7b +

rom-gr3.u6b = rom-gr23.u5b

rom-gr4.u5b +

2. Put them in a folder somewhere because they are merged at the

command line.

rom-gr5.u4b = rom-gr45.u4b

3. Merge the roms by the copy /b command so the first example is

Copy /b rom-ab0.u9a+rom-ab1.u8a rom-ab01.u8a

Continue until done."

Hope that helps others in the future!

 

[Tornadoboy]

Stompin would be a fun one to try to recreate, the schematics for the stomp pad seem fairly straight forward without any exotic electronic parts, so one should be able to make a control panel version of it using buttons instead of foot pads, it would end up being alot like those whack-a-mole games like Mole Attack.

Now there's an idea for a multi-game cab being as they use the same 9-switch grid for controls, build Stompin and Mole Attack into the same cab!

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

So now I'm left with some confusion wish Ritchie Knucklez will chime in... But I emailed Steph about the wrong roms according to ThumB etc.. and basically Steph at hobbyroms has no problem taking them back and reburning the merged ones for free and would even cross ship BUT he said.. "Ritchie K. had the full board with 14 eproms" which I'm stumped.. for one I thought the 1 eprom for sound/audio goes right onto the sound board.

As a sidenote this was delivered today with my wonderboy project looming in the background:

I'm not sure if it already exists, but I'll scan in the "Hat Trick" stuff. Still waiting on another KLOVer to hopefully scan me the chicken shift artwork (specifically the c.s. marquee I know the control panel was already vectorized I'm just not sure about it's accuracy).

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

I thought this was interesting, many photo's I've seen of the cartridges all had those holes on them to pull them out easily this is the first one that I've seen that doesn't have em'... Does seem complete and all original. I'm guessing this one left the factory as a Hat Trick.

Other photo's some arcade PR0N of my unrestored freshly delivered Sac1-b:

 

[steph]

I'm late to the party, so I'll add what I know.

Ritchie Knuckles asked me for eproms for all the "rare" Sente game
(Snake Pit, Chicken Shift, Snack's N Jaxson, etc... ) and all of them has 14 eproms
( 13 games roms + 1 Sound rom ).

This is also what the MAME files show

http://www.solvalou.com/subpage/arcade_roms/C/cshift

I was told the eprom swap worked for him.

I don't know how the 14 eproms map to his games.

---

The cart and eprom images sent to me by GunsmokeGuy are apparently not
the same setup as Ritchie.

Is it possible that there are two cart configurations ?

I'll try to dig up Ritchie's contact info and e-mail him directly.


Steph

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

Thanks, I still never plugged any of the 14 Eproms Steph burned me yet. Just waiting for some more clarification.

Side note literally just a few minutes ago not sure if it even exists doubt it... but I took the liberty of scanning in at least the "Hat Trick" marquee for anyone that wants to vector it or needs it...

PM me if you want a Hat Trick Marquee scan... At some point I suppose I can also scan in the CPO if anyone needs it... I wouldn't mind having a cleaned up Hat Trick art although I intend on predominantly keeping this a Chicken Shift I do have hockey friends that would appreciate it. Not sure if these scans / artwork exist. At some point I think I'll end up going to a metal fabrication place and having them cut some blanks.

I'm begging Gregafree please take the time to scan me the chicken shift marquee! Your probably the only one left with it in the world.. But, If anyone has an original / or scan of the c.s. marquee hit me up! (**Greg is in the process of moving.. so hopefully soon he will hook me up with the scans)

I did plug in Hat Trick tonight... and it was playing blind which is a good sign, although I knew that because it was advertised that way... but at least It gave me hope just to hear some Sente sounds. Speaking of which the game has great audio 2x JBL Speakers.

 

[Tornadoboy]

With some cleaning that Hat Trick CP looks near perfect, so getting a good scan will probably makes some other people's days as the artwork on Sente games is notorious for wearing off, especially on trackball games. In fact you may want to clear coat it once you've cleaned it up to help preserve it, again it's probably not as volunerable as a CP with a trackball, but obviously given the track record they did something wrong with how they painted them.

 

[GunSmoke Guy]

With some cleaning that Hat Trick CP looks near perfect, so getting a good scan will probably makes some other people's days as the artwork on Sente games is notorious for wearing off, especially on trackball games. In fact you may want to clear coat it once you've cleaned it up to help preserve it, again it's probably not as volunerable as a CP with a trackball, but obviously given the track record they did something wrong with how they painted them.

It's certainly by no means perfect but a great candidate to scan. Don't worry I intend to do so. I'd like to have a few other games to play; does any one have other kits for sale I posted a WTB thread for other sente stuff lemme know. Hopefully Ritchie Knucklez can chime in as to the rom placement for chicken shift.