Picked up a Bootleg?? Joust Cabinet

[cdjump]

Interesting the photo is on a plane.

Those windows look way too big for a plane. Maybe a train, or a bus.

 

[64B1T]

The picture of the blitter board shows a date of July 15th 87. Meaning it was developed in 87, also in European date format. Interesting the photo is on a plane. I wonder if that huge book is the design document for the board.

It's from when Christian Gingras visited Williams in 1987. Larry DeMar gave him the prototype. Story is here. Reference is in Part 2.

 

[HudsonArcade]

It's also bonkers that if this thing does turn out to be a bootleg, that means someone completely reverse engineered the special chips in the 80s, and then that was kept under wraps for 40 years...

Far more likely that the "prototype" in the other pic is the prototype, and the board you have was used for software development / field testing.

It'd take a fair amount of time/expense to have the blitter ASIC made, and they'd have to spin new ROM boards to use them.

 

[SynaMax]

Christian Gingras has an amazing story on discovering the Enforcer bug in Robotron; I knew about his work from the Robotron codebase, but I never actually got to read the whole story until now, thanks for sharing that @64B1T ! And thanks @Lon for including his picture on your Joust site.



Here is Christian visiting Williams in '87 with Jarvis and Pfutz.

 

[64B1T]

The plot thickens.

Got a response on FB saying that he (the commenter) knew an OP who "converted dozens of Defenders like this" using "legit Williams marquees & CP overlays"

 

[Totally80sMan]

The plot thickens.

Got a response on FB saying that he (the commenter) knew an OP who "converted dozens of Defenders like this" using "legit Williams marquees & CP overlays"

see guys.. even in 1987 people were bastardizing & converting Williams games. How dare they do that to a Defender? I kid I kid.
Nice game, enjoy it just the way it is, it's different

 

[64B1T]

see guys.. even in 1987 people were bastardizing & converting Williams games. How dare they do that to a Defender? I kid I kid.
Nice game, enjoy it just the way it is, it's different

He had said that the OP he knew had done this "within two weeks" of Joust's release. I find that very hard, borderline impossible to believe given the development requirements of the blitter... Would have taken much longer to do that.

Anyway I haven't gotten any response yet on my request for more info. Could be a wild goose.

 

[Totally80sMan]

He had said that the OP he knew had done this "within two weeks" of Joust's release. I find that very hard, borderline impossible to believe given the development requirements of the blitter... Would have taken much longer to do that.

Anyway I haven't gotten any response yet on my request for more info. Could be a wild goose.

Agreed, to make these changes to the pcb at that time? would've taken a lot of know how and the quality of the control panel where it looks seamless like that, looks like there was more effort put in than claiming, that's why I think it's cool, it's professionally done for that time for sure.

Bunch of showoffs, wish I could take a time machine over there with a few @jrok 's in hand, blown their minds

 

[braedel]

He had said that the OP he knew had done this "within two weeks" of Joust's release. I find that very hard, borderline impossible to believe given the development requirements of the blitter... Would have taken much longer to do that.

Anyway I haven't gotten any response yet on my request for more info. Could be a wild goose.

I would have expected a lot more Stargate cabs to be modified since they'd only need the DMA board and some EPROM's if these were a bootleg thing. If they could have provided an easy upgrade path to Joust from Defender/Stargate for a few hundred bucks, they would have sold a ton of them I'd expect.

Seems like evidence pointing in three directions

• Williams used for hardware development (software guys may have not even been aware)
• Used by VSLi when developing/testing the DMA/Blitter/SC1 (work done in California at their facility in San Jose)
• Third party 'Bootleg' reverse-engineering (USA/UK/Korea?)

Would be great to find someone with first-hand knowledge.

~Brad

 

[HudsonArcade]

I think I caused some orientation confusion. I was referring to the top connector as the one closest to the edge/how it is installed in the cabinet. So of the two similar (possibly exactly the same?) pinouts, only one (the middle one) is used, connecting to the ROM board). Perhaps this was a spot to hook up a logic analyzer?

Did some tracing from what could be seen in your pics, and I can verify that the connector closest to the edge does appear to match the Defender pinout (with additions for /WINHU, /WINHL, etc), and the other two connectors are wired for Joust/Robotron.

 

[braedel]

Did some tracing from what could be seen in your pics, and I can verify that the connector closest to the edge does appear to match the Defender pinout (with additions for /WINHU, /WINHL, etc), and the other two connectors are wired for Joust/Robotron.


View attachment 781124

That makes sense! The set I have is running on a Stargate MPU and his is on a Defender MPU.

Stargate MPU - DMA/Blitter Board - Stargate ROM board

 

[64B1T]

I would have expected a lot more Stargate cabs to be modified since they'd only need the DMA board and some EPROM's if these were a bootleg thing. If they could have provided an easy upgrade path to Joust from Defender/Stargate for a few hundred bucks, they would have sold a ton of them I'd expect.

That's what I'd think too... Stargate is a great cab, where are all the conversions? Should even be able to accept other whole Williams control panels unlike Defender...

Seems like evidence pointing in three directions

• Williams used for hardware development (software guys may have not even been aware)
• Used by VSLi when developing/testing the DMA/Blitter/SC1 (work done in California at their facility in San Jose)
• Third party 'Bootleg' reverse-engineering (USA/UK/Korea?

Option four as seemingly implied by mecha: this is some monstrosity the VidKidz has a hand in outside of Williams.

Would be great to find someone with first-hand knowledge.

Has anyone asked Larry DeMar if he knows anything about these? I read in the Robotron Prototype Cabaret thread that he was responsible for most of the wiring hacks on *those* boards and had "done most of the wiring in the lab."

Did some tracing from what could be seen in your pics, and I can verify that the connector closest to the edge does appear to match the Defender pinout (with additions for /WINHU, /WINHL, etc), and the other two connectors are wired for Joust/Robotron.


View attachment 781124

So whoever did this was aiming to make this board compatible with both Defender and Stargate. So they would've had to have had both boards in hand to do this. So the question again becomes "For what purpose?"

If it was pure R&D, wouldn't have it made more sense to pick one standard and run with it, and since Stargate is closer to Robotron/Joust (if not directly compatible) why not run with that, like what @braedel's set appears to be? Not like Williams was planning on making more defender boards. It was all in on the next generation.

Interesting that among (now) public posts, there seems to be three of these hacked defender MPUs, and three blitter boards, but this is the only one where they're together. Implies there must be some more, right?

 

[SalParadise]

It's from when Christian Gingras visited Williams in 1987. Larry DeMar gave him the prototype. Story is here. Reference is in Part 2.

That story is amazing. It's an amazing read. Thanks for posting it. Genius level stuff here. I have so much more respect for the minds that made Robotron and what is happening in that game when you play it. Man, these things still amaze me 40 years later. They are still a wonder to the human mind. Art really. Not just a game, but real art.

 

[CharlieG]

If it was pure R&D, wouldn't have it made more sense to pick one standard and run with it

R&D goes through lots of iterations. Picking a single thing to run with is more of a Product thing!

 

[HudsonArcade]

It's from when Christian Gingras visited Williams in 1987. Larry DeMar gave him the prototype. Story is here. Reference is in Part 2.

Interesting read, but there's a lot of incorrect technical information in there.

The visible display resolution on that hardware is 292 pixels, not 320.

 

[Smashville]

This is a fascinating find and great thread, @64B1T. I was researching a Williams issue and came across an old thread from @72gto with @gamefixer in which a complete Joust, apparently converted from Stargate no. 550851, shows up with the same blitter board:

Williams Joust Playing Blind

As mentioned in a previous thread (same machine, different issue) we have added a 1982 Williams Joust Machine. We dragged it home two days ago and after a lot of trial and error it is now beginning to show signs of life. Now when powered on the segmented LED shows "0" with no error codes as...

forums.arcade-museum.com

So here's a wrap-up. Hopefully Matt/Gamefixer is lurking around here and can clean up my own comments with accurate and coherent helpful information for masses who might come across this thread later.

As noted in the beginning of this thread, when powered on at self test there were no errors showing on the segmented LED data display. The game had sound and appeared to play blind. However, there was no display appearing on the monitor at all except when a hard reset was done at the upper left corner of the RAM board. At that point I could force it to display an image like the first pic below. I couldn't tell if it was it a board problem, the dreaded data cable, the monitor, or all the above.

Gamefixer found the first issue. (I'd be curious if anyone had a good explanation). The ROM board in the cabinet was loaded with the twelve roms specifically marked "Joust" from the factory. Big problem though. The ROM board literally had no place for the two special Williams chips. I'm not saying they were missing -- I mean there was literally no spot on the board for it. See, Second pic. To my untrained eye it appears to me that that ROM board is completely original with nothing evidencing from the solder on the back that anything was added or modified.

Upon receiving my boards, Gamefixer sent me a pic comparing a known good Joust ROM board (center) with my specimen (left) and, for comparison, a Williams Defender ROM board (right). Clearly this looks more like the Defender Rom set -- but with all Joust ROM chips on it. (In case anyone has ever seen something like this before, there was an extra board provided in the purchase of the cab that looks to be a Williams board. Perhaps it did all the logic the special chips did?) In any event I fail to understand how the game could coin up blind and show no errors as it was when the two Special Chips were not there.

There did not appear to be any solution to that puzzle so Gamefixer gave me a very reasonable deal on a replacement ROM board he had laying around somewhere. For hardly more than the price of the parts, he did the lithium battery conversion and the conversion to the newer 4164 RAM to run on +5. With the ROM board swapped out and the mods done, everything was working on Gamefixer's bench better than new. Problem solved and now, for certain, no further display issue could be attributed to the boards.

Once, I got everything back I threw it back in the cabinet. I received the same garbled display. See, Pic 1. (Very much like the pics in #11 above. Now we definitely had a monitor problem. I'm no monitor expert, but the image you see in the pic is exactly what you'd see on the screen in person, meaning specifically there was no rolling or movement on the screen at all with still images. I futzed around with L351 and turned it more than two full turns and suddenly got a correct display and reasonable picture. (Gamefixer previously called that one too earlier in this thread, with some modest change of a half to full turn in either direction I assumed I was on the wrong path of the decision tree. Instead, it turn's out I just didn't go far enough to make the difference. With a reasonably good display and working boards, it's now worthy of dragging in the house. (Here in Ohio it's colder than a witch's something so it hasn't been thoroughly cleaned, etc. just yet until it gets inside). (I still have a couple of other small issues related to a elevated voltage thing, and some monitor display stuff I want more info on, but I'll see if it's in any other threads and will post separately with that question if necessary).

Lastly, a point of honorable mention. Gamefixer is a good dude and so far as I can tell is extremely knowledgable. As noted above, he tested everything and gave me a more than far price on the missing hardware I needed and couldn't just buy online. His work was fast, thorough and more than reasonably priced. I tried not to contact him much figuring I'd learn what I needed to know when I needed to know it -- but if I did send a PM or email he'd be back to me faster than my kids. Even with the time involved in sourcing parts, I still got my stuff back within a little over a week. I was impressed. All said and done, when I figure out this rep points stuff, he's deserving of something there too. (I never would have figured out that part of my ROM board was literally not there).

Hey Gamefixer, did I miss anything on the boards that should be further noted?

 

[64B1T]

This is a fascinating find and great thread, @64B1T. I was researching a Williams issue and came across an old thread from @72gto with @gamefixer in which a complete Joust, apparently converted from Stargate no. 550851, shows up with the same blitter board:

Williams Joust Playing Blind

As mentioned in a previous thread (same machine, different issue) we have added a 1982 Williams Joust Machine. We dragged it home two days ago and after a lot of trial and error it is now beginning to show signs of life. Now when powered on the segmented LED shows "0" with no error codes as...

forums.arcade-museum.com

That's really cool too! So it has the same Blitter, but uses production Stargate hardware.. Interesting that @braedel's set uses a custom ROM board like mine does, but this stargate-based set seems to use a regular production ROM board. I wonder why. I guess they're totally compatible though. I think this setup should be able to run Robotron too, based on robotron-2084.co.uk having a partial set with Robotron ROMs on the custom ROM board. Whoever hacked up this blitter must have been very clever and very fast.

I guess we all learned something here. Joust/Robotron weren't bootleg proof, and some madman actually did it!

Cool to know more of these actually are out there though. Would love to have seen what the "kit" looked like, and where it came from exactly. I'll probably not end up keeping this one, as I'm pretty certain of its Bootleg provenance now, cool as it is. The regular Joust fits better in my lineup!

 

[HudsonArcade]

That's really cool too! So it has the same Blitter, but uses production Stargate hardware.. Interesting that @braedel's set uses a custom ROM board like mine does, but this stargate-based set seems to use a regular production ROM board. I wonder why. I guess they're totally compatible though.

Defender conversions would need the new bootleg ROM board yours has -- wouldn't surprise me if that ROM board and the defender CPU hacks started out as "just" a defender to stargate upgrade.

IF you're upgrading Stargate to Joust / Robotron, you only need to add the blitters -- the original Stargate ROM board is otherwise compatible.

It looks like the bootleg ROM is a 1:1 copy of Stargate.

 

[64B1T]

Defender conversions would need the new bootleg ROM board yours has -- wouldn't surprise me if that ROM board and the defender CPU hacks started out as "just" a defender to stargate upgrade.

IF you're upgrading Stargate to Joust / Robotron, you only need to add the blitters -- the original Stargate ROM board is otherwise compatible.

It looks like the bootleg ROM is a 1:1 copy of Stargate.

That's my suspicion too, and was when I thought it was a proto also.

This hack started out as defender -> Stargate, and then went from Stargate to joust.

At the very least, whatever product was created here had its roots as a defender to Stargate upgrade kit. It's possible whatever bootlegger was running these was later concurrently selling defender -> Stargate, Stargate -> Robo/Joust, and defender straight to Robo/Joust kits combining the two elements, and explaining the third port on the blitter board as you'd shown previously.

 

[HudsonArcade]

The piece that's missing is a converter to make a stargate (or bootleg) ROM board plug into a defender CPU without the the blitter board.