TECH: *WEIRD* System 11 / System 9 Sound Issue..

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Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

Greetings All,

I have completed the upgrade of my Space Shuttle to running on a System 11
board. I discovered something that wasn't obvious at first, but grabbed me
as a bit off when I was playing the game. The explosion sounds (made up of
sound samples 2 and 6) don't play when the relays enable the flash bulbs as
they should.

If I run a sound test through the coin door test suite, all sounds are
played normally. The weird part is that after exiting test mode, the
explosion sounds start to work again until the machine is powered off. Once
you cycle power, it goes back to the behaviour where all sounds except the
two explosion sounds work fine.

This is bizarre. Clearly something that should be initialized at power-up
isn't get setup properly, and in the course of forcing each sound to play
through the coin door test, everything gets set back to "normal."

I'm apparently not the first person to see this behavior, as Bill Karkula
had an RGP post in February of 2004 titled "TECH: WMS SYS 9 Sound Prob"
that addressed the same issue. Unfortunately, nobody replied to Bill and
when I emailed Bill to ask him the solution all he knew was that he sent his
board out for repair and it came back working.

Can anyone explain what may be going on here? My hypothesis was that I
have a goofy sound RAM and the process of the reset through the coin door
might be setting things straight. I went through the tests while skipping
the sound test to check this, but this didn't help. I reasoned that I'd get
a reset when exiting the test menu in any case which would prove/disprove
the theory. It appears to be important to actually play all sounds in the
sound test in order to get the temporary "working" behaviour.

I suspect this must be something really simple, possibly related to the
fact that I'm running a System 11 board in a System 9 game, but Bill Karkula
had the same problem running a System 9 board in a System 9 game so the
board version would seem to be unrelated as System 9 and System 11 are so
darn close in design.

All suggestions or theories on this are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

>> This is bizarre. Clearly something that should be initialized at power-up
>>isn't get setup properly, and in the course of forcing each sound to play
>>through the coin door test, everything gets set back to "normal."
>>
>> I suspect this must be something really simple, possibly related to the
>>fact that I'm running a System 11 board in a System 9 game, but Bill Karkula
>>had the same problem running a System 9 board in a System 9 game so the
>>board version would seem to be unrelated as System 9 and System 11 are so
>>darn close in design.

Might be a bad or failing 6821 at location U10 or U9. Do you hear all sounds if
you cycle thru the sound test?

>> All suggestions or theories on this are greatly appreciated.

Burn another set of eproms. One of the chips itself might be bad. if you still
have 27256s just duoble the original image for a 27128.


Regards
Frank-Rainer Grahl
(frgrahl@REMOVE.ME.gmx.net)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

"Frank-Rainer Grahl" <frgrahl@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:setenuytzkarg.ikt4mf0.pminews@News.individual.de...
>>> This is bizarre. Clearly something that should be initialized at
>>> power-up
>>>isn't get setup properly, and in the course of forcing each sound to play
>>>through the coin door test, everything gets set back to "normal."
>>>
>>> I suspect this must be something really simple, possibly related to the
>>>fact that I'm running a System 11 board in a System 9 game, but Bill
>>>Karkula
>>>had the same problem running a System 9 board in a System 9 game so the
>>>board version would seem to be unrelated as System 9 and System 11 are so
>>>darn close in design.
>
> Might be a bad or failing 6821 at location U10 or U9. Do you hear all
> sounds if
> you cycle thru the sound test?

Yep. All sounds play (include sounds 2 and 6), and then from that point on
until I power off, the sounds all play normally during game play as well.

For gigles, I actually replaced U10 with a space 6821 since its socketted,
but U9 is still in place since its soldered on the board.

>
>>> All suggestions or theories on this are greatly appreciated.
>
> Burn another set of eproms. One of the chips itself might be bad. if you
> still
> have 27256s just duoble the original image for a 27128.

I thought the same thing. I still had a set of High-Speed sound ROMs that I
hadn't erased, so I gave them a try. Its the same symptom, where if I just
power the board up, no sounds play during the events that cause the flashers
to trigger (clearly, I wouldn't have heard the Space Shuttle "explosions"
with the HS ROMs, but I should have heard whatever corresponds to sounds 2
and 6 on High Speed and instead heard silence).

This is really weird. Somehow memory is addressed differently (or at least
initialized differently) during the coin door tests than while the game is
running. If I can figure out why its different, it should make the cause of
the problem clear...

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

>>> Might be a bad or failing 6821 at location U10 or U9. Do you hear all
>>> sounds if
>>> you cycle thru the sound test?
>>
>>Yep. All sounds play (include sounds 2 and 6), and then from that point on
>>until I power off, the sounds all play normally during game play as well.
>>
>>For gigles, I actually replaced U10 with a space 6821 since its socketted,
>>but U9 is still in place since its soldered on the board.

I can dig out the WMS recoomended jumper settings for the conversion but it sounds
a little like a board issue. U9 is not in a socket normally so someone worked on
it already.

>>This is really weird. Somehow memory is addressed differently (or at least
>>initialized differently) during the coin door tests than while the game is
>>running. If I can figure out why its different, it should make the cause of
>>the problem clear...

The sound roms control U9. So it might be a bad U10. If you have a chance to check
out the board in a System 11 pin with System 11 roms you should do so.

Regards
Frank-Rainer Grahl
(frgrahl@REMOVE.ME.gmx.net)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.pinball (More info?)

"Frank-Rainer Grahl" <frgrahl@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:setenuytzkarg.iku0vz1.pminews@News.individual.de...
>>>
>>>For gigles, I actually replaced U10 with a space 6821 since its
>>>socketted,
>>>but U9 is still in place since its soldered on the board.
>
> I can dig out the WMS recoomended jumper settings for the conversion but
> it sounds
> a little like a board issue. U9 is not in a socket normally so someone
> worked on
> it already.

Yeah, I agree it has previous rework, but I think I wasn't clear on what I
did. Its actually U10 that is in a socket (U9 is not, and I have not
unsoldered it yet). I replaced U10 with another known-good 6821, but
unfortunately the behavior is the same, so if its a PIA its U9. It seems
like a bad PIA is unlikely since it starts to work after going through the
coin door tests, but I'm open to darn near anything at this point.

I would appreciate it if you wouldn't mind digging out the recommended
jumper settings for me...

THANKS!

Scott