Space Shuttle

drjones

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I bought my first pin a little over a week ago - Space Shuttle. I picked it up at auction, felt like the price was pretty good so I jumped. It's not perfect and has a fair amount of wear on the playfield. Gameplay seems right on though, everything tests fine and I haven't noticed any oddities. There are some problems not related to gameplay, though, and I have some general questions - thanks in advance for any help

- Glow effect behind shuttle engines (backglass): should the engines "glow" all the time or only when entering certain game modes, e.g. multiball? I seem to remember the engine flames flickering ALL the time but could be wrong

- Speech: After reseating the roms on the voice board, I got speech working in-game. However, when running the sound diagnostics it only tests the CPU generated sounds. The manual seems to indicate that it'll cycle through the speech sounds as well, but all I get are the CPU sounds. Not a huge deal since they seem to work fine in-game, but being able to test them would be nice.

- Display: My display is hosed and I thought if I post what's going on some folks may have some ideas on where to start looking. My digit displays work, but display a bunch of garbage. When running display diagnostics, only one display (player 4) will cycle through all numbers, the other displays will show things like '1111111' '2211222' '3222222', etc. And in-game, it seems like the displays are only cable of displaying 0's and 2's. The displays themselves don't SEEM to be the issue - hooking player 1 into player 4 turns player 4's output into junk. I've checked all the connections, no broken pins or anything like that. Haven't looked at the bottom of the display driver board yet but nothing on top looks cracked or corroded. This is my first foray into troubleshooting anything of this nature, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Worst case it looks like replacement boards (assuming that's the issue) run about $75.
 
Congrats. Space Shuttle is a FUN game. I wish I could've kept mine.

I thought the engine lights in the back glass were glowing/flickering all the time in-game. I believe it also flickered during the blackout portion of attract mode (so coool). I think it flashed brighter during multiball and other events.

I encountered the same thing during the speech tests on mine. As with yours, everything worked fine in game, so I didn't bother further with it. If I had to guess, there's a switch or something somewhere to test the rest of the sounds.

A video of the displays would be great to really understand the problem. It sounds more like the issue is on the MPU rather than the display boards. Repairing or replacing that board is around $200, I think.
 
Thanks gibbous - it IS a fun game - my engine lights only flicker when going into multiball, or when I'm on ball #3. They don't flicker in game or during blackout mode (which WOULD be cool). So the lights work, obviously something that's supposed to be keeping them on in-game isn't working.

Good to know I'm not the only one with the speech issue. You're right there's probably some switch or configuration somewhere that moves through the other speech sets.

I'll get a video up today of what the displays are doing, hopefully someone will have some ideas.
 
It's been awhile since I had a Space Shuttle, but I thought the shuttle exhaust lights only flashed at certain times. Now, they flashed a lot....just not non-stop.

Are you sure all speech is working? Space Shuttle produces twelve words: one, two, three, four, airlock, liftoff, abort, open, close, pilot, ready, and the screaming voice.

Your display issue has the potential to get tricky. If I'm understanding correctly, player 4 display is the only one working properly. That means player 4 display board is good, player 4's ribbon cable is good, the display board is getting a good signal from the display driver board, and the display driver board is getting a good signal from the MPU board. Now comes the tedious part....disconnect all display boards, and test each one in the player 4 position. Do not have any other display boards plugged in. Display glass can short in such a way the it can send corrupt signals to a good board....causing it to seem bad. If any display boards come up with issues in the player 4 position, you've got bad glass (or a cracked header at the display board). Next, test each ribbon cable in the player 4 position with a working display board. Any issues?...bad ribbon cable. Next, with a known good display board and a known good ribbon cable.....test in the other player positions. If you have any issues here, it's the actual display driver board or the MPU board. If you're missing entire digits or a segment, it probably an associated driver chip on the display driver board. If it's counting out of sequence, that's probably decoder chips.....but it's possible to go all the way back to the MPU board and it's PIA chips (or associated logic). These can be a pain to track down.

Edward
 
Edward - thanks for the reply. Saw that you're in Louisville; I'm in southern Indiana, about 30 minutes northwest.

As for the speech I've heard every word in-game except abort, not sure how to induce that one.

I'm going to go down in the basement and try the things you mention. Player 4 is the only one that will cycle through all digits in the display test, the others do all sorts of whacky stuff. The coin/ball in play display cycles through as well, but only even numbers, and in play it always shows 26 as the number of coins, though I think it does show the correct ball #.
 
Ok went down and messed around for awhile.

Here's what I found:

First - player 4 doesn't work 100% normally as I originally thought, but player 4 and 3 are the closest to normal. Running through the display test with only player 4 plugged in I get:

0,000,000
1,001,000
2,222,222
3,223,222
4,444,444
5,445,444
6,666,666
7,667,666
8,888,888
9,889,888

Moving the ribbon cable around to each of the player displays gives me the same results - so the actual glass yields consistent results from display to display.

Now, moving the ribbon cable from P4 to P3 on the board, I get the same results. Using P2 and P1 I get:

0000000
0,000,000
2222222
2,222,222
0000000
0,000,000
2222222
2,222,222
0000000
0,000,000

Running the test on the coin/ball counter I get:

00 00
22 22
44 00
66 22
88 00

Results seem to be the same independent of display and ribbon cable.

And re: the shuttle lights - there are 7 lights that comprise the exhaust flames. 3 lights that are the same in size as the other lights in the backbox and four larger lights. The light sockets on these are similar to those at the bottom of the panel used for 'Game Over' etc, and I guess that's because they flash. Of these 7 lights, only two "work" (2 of the larger bulbs). I moved them around, and it's not the bulbs but sockets or something downline that's not working, because all 7 lights work when moved into working positions.
 

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Edward - thanks for the reply. Saw that you're in Louisville; I'm in southern Indiana, about 30 minutes northwest.

As for the speech I've heard every word in-game except abort, not sure how to induce that one.

I'm going to go down in the basement and try the things you mention. Player 4 is the only one that will cycle through all digits in the display test, the others do all sorts of whacky stuff. The coin/ball in play display cycles through as well, but only even numbers, and in play it always shows 26 as the number of coins, though I think it does show the correct ball #.

When you have the two side balls locked for multi-ball, "Abort" is heard when the ball goes up the ramp and under the shuttle....but doesn't make it all the way to the top of the ramp to hit the target. There's a switch under the shuttle, above the ramp. When the ball "trips" this switch, the game gets ready for multi-ball. The ball save between the flippers pops up. If you don't go all the way to the top of the ramp and hit the target, you don't get multi-ball. The ball rolls back down the ramp...tripping the switch under the shuttle again. The game pronounces "abort", the pop up save starts to flash, and you've got precious seconds to save your ball before the pop up disappears, back into the playfield. All of this is from memory.....so this information might be totally wrong:).

If someone put the game into free play while it had 26 credits stored.....I'm pretty sure the 26 will stay there, until you go into the memory and change it. Basically, if any credits are on the machine, and you switch it to free play......that credit number will stay in the credit window.

Edward
 
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Ok went down and messed around for awhile.

Here's what I found:

First - player 4 doesn't work 100% normally as I originally thought, but player 4 and 3 are the closest to normal. Running through the display test with only player 4 plugged in I get:

0,000,000
1,001,000
2,222,222
3,223,222
4,444,444
5,445,444
6,666,666
7,667,666
8,888,888
9,889,888

Moving the ribbon cable around to each of the player displays gives me the same results - so the actual glass yields consistent results from display to display.

Now, moving the ribbon cable from P4 to P3 on the board, I get the same results. Using P2 and P1 I get:

0000000
0,000,000
2222222
2,222,222
0000000
0,000,000
2222222
2,222,222
0000000
0,000,000

Running the test on the coin/ball counter I get:

00 00
22 22
44 00
66 22
88 00

Results seem to be the same independent of display and ribbon cable.

This doesn't look like it's going to be much fun. I'd start at the decoders on the display driver board.

Edward
 
When you have the two side balls locked for multi-ball, "Abort" is heard when the ball goes up the ramp and under the shuttle....but doesn't make it all the way to the top of the ramp to hit the target. There's a switch under the shuttle, above the ramp. When the ball "trips" this switch, the game gets ready for multi-ball. The ball save between the flippers pops up. If you don't go all the way to the top of the ramp and hit the target, you don't get multi-ball. The ball rolls back down the ramp...tripping the switch under the shuttle again. The game pronounces "abort", the pop up save starts to flash, and you've got precious seconds to save your ball before the pop up disappears, back into the playfield. All of this is from memory.....so this information might be totally wrong:).

Sounds about right. This really is a cool game. For the sounds, I finally got the onboard sound test to work using the CPU test switch. It cycled through all the CPU and speech sounds successfully.

This doesn't look like it's going to be much fun. I'd start at the decoders on the display driver board.

Edward

Agreed =) This is my first time doing this so I'll apologize in advance for sounding like a complete ignoramus in future posts - I guess I'll start by checking the voltages on the resistors either side of the decoders?

And, shuttle exhaust lights part III - I can confirm that the shuttle lamps should glow/flicker at all times. I reseated every illumination connection I could find, and while I can't say which one did it exactly (I think IJ7 maybe?) the 3 smaller lamps now flicker in game and in attract mode. The 4 larger lamps flash when triggered by some event like multiball.
 
I love my Space Shuttle pin, it's probably my favorite pin. As far as the engines they only glow at certain times in gameplay and demo mode.
 
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