Considering dipping my feet into the EM repro world

HHaase

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Considering dipping my feet into the EM repro world

If I've already harassed you via PM about this, my apologies.

Basically, I've been having fun doing some simple board designs of repair aids for early Williams pinball stuff. I get a kick out of finding unsupported niche markets, and making stuff for them. The EM pinball / arcade world definitely seems to be a niche market, and I'm not aware of anybody making anything for them by way of reproduction boards.

I'm considering doing some of the more simple sound cards, maybe boards for 8-track players, that sort of thing. But I just don't know which ones people really need, as I can't really wrap my head around what machines are out there.

I'd love if somebody could give me a bit of direction on this. Keep in mind that the break-even point is generally somewhere in the 50 unit range, if I want to keep prices reasonable. I could go lower numbers, but prices start to climb pretty fast.

-Hans
 
Tough one; I need a sound board for my Chicago Coin "Shoot Out" - also used in "Coney Island" - but at a minimum run of 50, I doubt you'd find many who need one...

Most of the PCB's in various EM games are pretty specific to that game - maybe a couple at best...

Speaking of 8-track players; if you designed some universal PCB that held a memory card of some sort that contained the digitized version of the 8-track, and the card had some way of switching between the virtual audio tracks on cue from the game in question, I suspect there would be a market for that...

The audio files are already online for many of those games (thanks to Pinball Pal, who also provide replacement 8-track tapes) - see: http://pinballpal.com/products/tapes/ and http://arcadearchive.org/em/sound/ .

I'm not sure if the interface for interacting with an 8 track player is going to be pretty consistent between different models of player or not, so this may be a pipe dream, but if there was ONE thing that would go a long way towards helping out EM gamers, and apply to multiple games, I'd think this would be it.

As for my Shoot Out - after one guy wanted to charge me ~$90 for a used one (the only I've ever come across), I decided to just make one myself. Planning on picking up one of those cheap all-in-one PCB kits (looking at http://www.pcbfx.com/ since I need it for some other projects anyway), and attempting to recreate it from scratch :p Not cheaper, but I'll be able to use the kit for other purposes so it should pay off in the long run...

An example of how the audio works in the case of "Shoot Out" - one channel (IE the left one) contains background music that loops continuously - 4 or 5 different bits of music that the game just loops through over and over. The other channel (IE the right one) contains a looping bit of audio - "Get ready for the big shootout" - that just repeats over and over. You only hear it when the game enables the sound for the right channel via a relay.

In this case, a pretty simple implementation - one channel plays constantly (no need to do any manual switching between tracks), and the other is controlled in a pretty simple fashion by a relay. Such a board in this case need do nothing more than play the respective audio tracks through the respective channels continuously, and the game controls the audio output for the one channel as necessary, and otherwise turns the audio on/off when the game is active/in standby. No special logic to jump around through the "tracks" of the sound file in this case, and it's very possible that other games may work in a similar fashion (?)
 
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That's a tough call about doing upgraded sound systems.

On the one hand, it would be a great improvement to sound quality and long-term reliability. But on the other hand..... it's well beyond my current ability to be totally honest.

I also think that a lot of people may still strongly prefer the original 8-track style system. I'd love to get hold of a couple beat-up Midway units and see what kind of layout could be done.

The board for the shootout / coney island may not be a bad starter. I'll have to see what other games used that same sound board.

-Hans
 
Chicago Coin Sound Board Repro Project.

The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to try and do the sound cards first.

Will start with trying to build up a database of which machines used which boards, and go from there.
 
i think there is a need for it. there are lots of mp3 sound cards out there already, the main issue is how to implement triggering the sounds. i bought a card in kit form, from a guy in germany. it uses computer inputs thru 8 pins to trigger from 256 sounds on a sd memory chip. i dont really know how that works. but by setting a jumper, you can trigger 8 sounds just by grounding one of the 8 pins. the chip came loaded with 256 sounds. i had to trigger a pin, listen, find the sound on the card, and rename my own mp3 with the same file name for that pin to trigger my sound. its not the first 8 of the 256, , its all over the place. it was tedious, but it worked. also, its not two channel. most games need two channel. backround, and trigger. i have a coney island gun game, i dont think it works like the shoot out guy described. the sound card only gives a gunshot sound. it has a tape player for music and spoken sounds. i dont have the orig tape player, so i dont know exactly how the tape worked. a youtube video shows one spoken phrase at the end of the game. i had a 70's midway pitch and bat with an 8 track tape. the player was built by midway, with two independent amps inside. one amp cut in and out thru a relay, when hits were made.the other on all the time, playing a music loop. i put a cassette in, with a relay cutting one speaker in and out.
 
I agree, there is a definite need for this stuff, the real problem from my standpoint is the research and finding a way to tap into the market.

I'm used to dealing with pins that have schematics that are easy to get and boards that are, for the most part, pretty standardized. This is not the case with the older EM games, as the schematics just aren't available in the same manner. If the boards are somewhat standardized..... I have no idea.

I did find a listing of games over on pinrepair, and apparently there were 21 gun games from Chicago Coin that used electronic sound boards, some with 8 track players. That at least gives me a starting point, if I can identify which games had which boards.

Midway apparently only had 4 different 8-track players, depending on the number of channels on them. Should be easy to come up with a single base board design that can be used for all 4 designs. The trick, again, is getting the schematics for all 4 designs, and a donor board for measurements.
 
ive got the coney island schematic if you want it. i think i might have the one from the baseball game too.
 
i have a coney island gun game, i dont think it works like the shoot out guy described. the sound card only gives a gunshot sound. it has a tape player for music and spoken sounds.

Same for Shoot Out - sound board provides the gunshot sound (it's the exact same board), and the tape (which is what I was discussing, and suggesting making a replacement for) provides the background music on one channel, and speech on the other.

For Shoot Out at least, it's a pretty simple implementation - would just need to design some type of hardware-based solution that could load up audio files, and loop them through the left and right channels (they're mono - different audio on each channel), and that's it. I say simple implementation, not simple design ;)

MUCH easier to copy/reproduce the gunshot boards; audio amp, some transistors/cap's/resistors/diodes - not much too them.

I've got the Shoot Out schematic, but the Coney Island schematic is otherwise the same, so either will do.
 
Repro Sound Boards

I know Kevin Keinert made boards for some games. They are very expensive. I collect mostly midway games. Many used 8 track players for sound, but they often have problems. If there was a way to make a plug and play replacement with the ability to just change the sampled sounds, i know a bunch of people that would be interested. 50 units would be tough for a specific machine. Most of the 8 tracks were pretty generic.
 
I know Kevin Keinert made boards for some games. They are very expensive. I collect mostly midway games. Many used 8 track players for sound, but they often have problems. If there was a way to make a plug and play replacement with the ability to just change the sampled sounds, i know a bunch of people that would be interested. 50 units would be tough for a specific machine. Most of the 8 tracks were pretty generic.

Wow - see: http://www.gameroomrepair.com/repair/repair.htm

Specifically, "Solid State Replacements for 8-Track Tapes".

He's already done it, although customized for the one game. He does say he can modify his solution for other games, but the price ($500 to $1200) is just a weeee bit steep :p
 
Wow - see: http://www.gameroomrepair.com/repair/repair.htm

Specifically, "Solid State Replacements for 8-Track Tapes".

He's already done it, although customized for the one game. He does say he can modify his solution for other games, but the price ($500 to $1200) is just a weeee bit steep :p

If he has to custom do each soundset and board layout on a one-off basis, the price isn't too far out of whack for the work he's doing. More doing custom design work than production work in essence.

-Hans
 
Man, info on these old gun games is hard as hell to find on the net.

Going machine by machine, and still not having any luck finding which sound board model was used in which machine.
 
it probably a different board for almost every game. not like pinball, where there were dozens of titles built around a platform. you could probably make a pretty universal board to replace the tape drives. for the triggered sounds, you probably need to see quite a few boards from various games/mfg's , how they are implemented, and try to build something that would interface with most of them without a lot of mod.
 
If you've got the schematics for the guts of the 8-track player, I'd love to get them.

In the meantime, I also snagged the schematics for the sound card in Twin Rifle. It looks like there may be more similarities from generation to generation than I initially thought. I'll keep digging to confirm or deny that statement.

-Hans
 
If you get this project going, I would certainly be interested in something for my Sportsman - I have the gun sounds but never had anything from the 8-track. At one time I picked up some extra parts that included an audio board, not sure if it's the amp from the 8-track or what but if you would like to lay your hands on some original parts let me know and I'll dig them out and would be willing to loan you what I got.
 
If you get this project going, I would certainly be interested in something for my Sportsman - I have the gun sounds but never had anything from the 8-track. At one time I picked up some extra parts that included an audio board, not sure if it's the amp from the 8-track or what but if you would like to lay your hands on some original parts let me know and I'll dig them out and would be willing to loan you what I got.

That would be a huge help, particularly since Sportsman was the 4-channel player. I'd love to borrow the whole 8-track unit to be honest, if you can part with it for a bit.

-Hans
 
Well, the Midway 8-track boards are going to be a bit more complex than I thought, but not tremendously.

Inside the 8-track is only a pre-amp of 1 to 4 channels, depending on the model. The pre-amp chips they used are listed as obsolete in the only catalog I could find them, which was dated 1975.

So, it's going to need a whole new circuit layout. Which means I need to figure out the impedence of the read heads in there. Either that, or the other option would be replacing the tape head at the same time....

Lots to think about with this one.
 
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