PinMame can now communicate with a REAL pinball!

[Reg]

Hi,

Now,  PinMame can communicate with a REAL pinball!

I'm Regis, I have worked with Brado426 for this project.

This project have been created because the pinball of brado426 was continuously breaking. So he decided to use PinMame and to try to find a way to hook up his PC and PinMame to his Real Pinball through the printer parallel port . I have helped him to create a cheap electronic circuit board
that can do the interface between the PC and the Real Pinball!.

You can see the details here:

http://membres.lycos.fr/regismalt/

thanks

Regis

[Edgedamage]

It was just a matter of time. Now they have to work on driving the displays. And driving the input board for a dot matrix display should prove to be a cool project.

[Edgedamage]

Whoops forgot to say nice work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mr.Curmudgeon]

This is so complex that I don't even know what it means?  

[Xiaou2]

 wow! : )   This is truely an awesome step.  I hope the final results will be made into a purchaseable nearly 'dummy-proof' unit.

 Also hope that this process will be made in a way to incorportate force feedback, shaker motors, motorized simulator chair units...ect.

  Imagine the custom 'New' pinball machines (and other mechanical games!)  that can be built using a simular programming / communication method...  ^_^

 Keep up the great work  ^_^

[Reg]

Hi, thanks for your comments ...

I have tried to give a bit more details of what this thing does in our WebPage.

Basically a guy was too tired to fix all the time his real pinball.

So he have taugth that by using a program named PinMame (it a program that simulate pinball hardware in a regular PC), he can replace the faulty pinball electronics and instead rely on a PC to make the broken pinball work like a new one.

The problem was PinMame is not made to communicate to a real pinball, it is just simulating one in your Pc, so there are the concepts of virtual lamps, virtual display, and virtual solenoids.

So this guy have modified PinMame, so no it can now talk not to vitual device but infact talk to REAL Lamps, REAL Solenoils through the parallel printer port.

The electronics is there to permit the PC to talk to a REAL pinball.

Note this electronic shematics can be simplified... we have found a single IC that can replace 8 transistors to drive the lamps.

thanks

Regis

This is so complex that I don't even know what it means?  

[Lilwolf]

btw...

http://www.allteksystems.com/

sells a board to do this already.  But its around 200 bucks... but a little more plug - n - play...

[Reg]

Hi,

This card (http://www.allteksystems.com/) only replace the MPU.

The project that we are doing me and Brado426 is more bigger.

PinMame emulate most pinball, so in theory we can interface a PC to any pinball.


To illustrate, if you find a pinball like this one, at a very very cheap price,
like this person have found this pinball for just $35!:

http://www.beercade.com/pinball/strikesspares/strikesspares.htm


As you can see most of the eletronics of this pinball are missing...

But with our project this pinball can work like it have all the electronics
that are currently missing.

Beause PinMame can emulate all those electronics,
and because PinMame can communicate directly to a pinball with our cheap
interface, this pinball will work like a new for a very very low cost.

thanks

Regis

btw...

http://www.allteksystems.com/

sells a board to do this already.  But its around 200 bucks... but a little more plug - n - play...

[Dartful Dodger]

...is more bigger.

"more bigger" and using "smelt" for a past tense of smell, are my girl friend's most bigger pet peeves.  So I say them whenever I can.

I figured you'd all want to know that.

 

[Reg]

Sorry,

Bbut I'm a french speaking person...

so I try to be as much precise that I can.

thanks anyway for your input.

Reg

...is more bigger.

"more bigger" and using "smelt" for a past tense of smell, are my girl friend's most bigger pet peeves.  So I say them whenever I can.

I figured you'd all want to know that.

 

[hulkster]

Sorry,

Bbut I'm a french speaking person...

so I try to be as much precise that I can.

thanks anyway for your input.

Reg

no way!  you could never tell!!!

[Reg]

Hi,

After reading your comments, I have readjusted the whole webpage and also the explanations contained in this page.

thanks

Regis

This is so complex that I don't even know what it means?  

[crsdawg]

very nice work and thanks for sharing. this is the sort of thing that is going to put a bunch of interest back into pinball especially the old games that are a bit shallow in terms of gameplay.