Arcade Collecting > Pinball
A DIY Pinball Machine
johnmartin:
Well I have given the idea much thought and I decided I may have a go at designing and building my own pin. I am not going to make something that rivals Stern by any means. I simply want more of a modern EM type machine. No multi-ball, no huge jackpots, no mini playfields, etc. Just a simple, albeit more modern playfield.
I am also going to purchase on in the next 6 months or so once I save the money so this will be something to wet my whistle so to speak.
I have the tools to build and design this and I think I have many things figured out but I am a bit stumped on something. Since this machine will be simple in operation scoring should be simple as well. I am hoping to interface the playfield parts to a PC via an I-Pac. What I wold like to be able to do is assign each playfield item (bumpers, drops, etc) a numerical value and when the item is struck or activates it accumulates the score on an LCD PC monitor behind the backglass. I am not sure how I would go about this.
Would PinMAME do this? Or would a more custom program be better? Any ideas on how I should make this work would be appreciated.
John
Chris:
I worked on a similar project once and rapidly discovered that it would be FAR more expensive than buying a real nice pinball machine. Of course I was designing discrete circuits for rules and scoring rather than interfacing to a PC.
PinMAME would only be useful if you were using a rule set from an existing machine, in which case you'd be better off just buying a board and display from that machine. Custom software would be your best bet.
If you can find a pinball that is electronically fairly complete but with no backglass or playfield, that would be a good bet to re-invent into your own machine, especially for late 70's/early 80's solid-state machines that had fairly generic sound effects.
Also, see the thread at http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=23428.0, where this subject was previously discussed.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: Chris on August 14, 2008, 05:11:17 pm ---PinMAME would only be useful if you were using a rule set from an existing machine, in which case you'd be better off just buying a board and display from that machine.
--- End quote ---
That may not be true. Depending on exactly how PinMAME is implemented he may be able to get away with any code that would run on the instruction set of a CPU that PinMAME currently emulates. Depending on whether or not compilers are available for those CPUs, though, and what languages those compilers will handle, this is probably even harder than working off of the ruleset of an existing machine.
In the end I agree that a custom daemon for whatever the physical interface is would be the best bet.
Chris:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on August 14, 2008, 08:22:35 pm ---That may not be true. Depending on exactly how PinMAME is implemented he may be able to get away with any code that would run on the instruction set of a CPU that PinMAME currently emulates. Depending on whether or not compilers are available for those CPUs, though, and what languages those compilers will handle, this is probably even harder than working off of the ruleset of an existing machine.
--- End quote ---
PinMAME wil only execute ROMs for which it knows the checksum, and since it is not open source there is no way to add one.
PinMAME also has an expiration date; every new version bumps the date forward, but it will expire. I think they may have done this specifically to prevent it from being used to drive an actual machine, to cover their legal behinds.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: Chris on August 14, 2008, 08:46:41 pm ---PinMAME wil only execute ROMs for which it knows the checksum, and since it is not open source there is no way to add one.
--- End quote ---
Well that is certainly a showstopper. :-\
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