Star Wars Squadrons is Awesome

Last month, I shared with you my thoughts on the state of VR. Since that post, two important things have happened in that gaming space.

First, at Facebook Connect 7 Facebook unveiled the Oculus Quest 2, announced they were doing away with Oculus Rift S & Oculus Go and the Quest 2 becomes their unified new strategy for VR.

Secondly, Star Wars Squadrons was released.

…and it is awesome.

To say I’ve wanted this experience in a bad way is an understatement. I’m the fool that attempted to build a home-made Star Wars Battle Pod and have since come close on a number of occasions to buy the real thing from auctions.

Me, to Wife:

”Look, honey, we can fortify it and use it as a storm shelter; See wasn’t as stupid of a purchase as it looks!”

This game being announced is a large part of why I’ve given VR renewed attention.

I had pre-ordered the game for PS4 (VR) and on the PC through Steam. Gamestop in Daphne, apparently sold my PS4 copy to someone else. (What … exactly.. does preorder.. mean, then?)

…However, I’ve gotten a couple hours of play in with Steam VR and the Oculus Quest between what has been an unusually hectic October of adulting, this far.

PC Version w/ SteamVR

For the PC version, I’m playing with SteamVR, Oculus Quest & Oculus Link. I’m using an xBox One controller. The Oculus-Steam interplay can sometimes feel kludgy and the SteamVR version is a little buggy. Go ahead and update Steam, Oculus (if playing via an Oculus device) and NVidia graphics drivers. Those updates will be essential; not just for performance but for essential gameplay.

There is a bug in the Steam VR version where the EA login dialog in illegibly small.
There is a bug in the Steam VR version where the cutscenes render incorrectly in VR.

- In order to work around both bugs, start the game in (non-VR) mode to login. Once logged in, go to Settings-> Display and change the Display from Full Screen to Borderless. For some reason this 2D monitor setting impacts the cutscene zoom when playing in VR.

Playstation VR Impressions

Will post some of my PSVR impressions shortly. My Local Gamestop, which I’ve tried to support despite the inconvenience in doing so; they did me dirty.

I’ll have some PSVR impressions soon… But… seriously: don’t take my word for it. Google “Star Wars Squadrons Review”; It is easily poised for game of the year buzz already.

Sally

A Hurricane Conga Line?

It seems like no matter where you live, mother nature has some regionally specific badness that can be thrown at you. Earthquakes & Wildfires out west, Finger-of-God Tornadoes in the Midwest, blizzards in the North East; in the south we get Hurricanes. Compared to the others, really Hurricanes on paper don’t seem quite so bad. They don’t get a couple days notice on West for earthquakes and Blizzards can last for days. Hurricane landfall models are usually pretty good.

Not really, so much with Sally, though. Sally’s track flummoxed forecasting models as it stalled to a creeping 2 MPH.

Gettin’ Crazy w/ the Cheese Whiz

Had to get creative with that spray foam stuff during the storm as water started to intrude in wild places.

Further creative spray foam engineering, I made a spray foam boot in 40 MPH winds to mitigate a downspout blowout.

Cleanup

Driven Water literally pushed through the mortar into the basement.

I spend most of the 2-4 am hours of the storm sponging water into buckets with thick towels.. I dumped about 40 gallons of water this way.

Amazingly the only real game room casualty was some Wii and xBox 360 discs and manuals got damp. Pictures here is the pile stacked around arcade with multiple fans blowing on it.

Two and a half weeks later..

The sounds of chainsaws and machinery have filled the air for about 3 weeks and things are starting to improve. Power is restored to (most) places.

My chainsaws are cleaned w/ new chains, drained & back on the shelf until the next time they are called into duty, hopefully not anytime very soon.

The coastal areas towards Gulf Shores, Orange Beach & Pensacola will be rebuilding for the next year. I’ve heard stories of people swimming out of the remnants of their homes & larger charter boats pulling their moorings and ending up miles inland.

For us…

Internet has been spotty; Mediacom advertises that 95% of their customers have been restored.

(They lie.)

So, we’ve been living that hotspot life off and on while they work on it. I have, fortunately, been able to get some work done but the hotspot hasn’t left me with an abundance of hobby-time.

Remember how, like… this is a Hobby blog about Arcades & Pinball? I’d planned to take some time in September and October playing around with retro consoles, playing with the Bitkit and checking out MISTer FPGA boards.

2020, I guess.

..and there are more storms in the Gulf…

Going Virtual, The State of VR (dis)UNION

The other day, my son was playing Rec Room on PSVR when I heard a high pitched youth voice crackle through the den speakers “Man, I wouldn’t ban you, you are my BEST FRIEND!” Let me be clear, I have no idea who he was playing with but I guarantee it wasn’t someone he actually has met IRL.

As my kids try out Virtual School, I found myself wishing Virtual School operated a little closer to what was described in Ready Player One (the book). The kids get settled in a place with comfortable temperature and stable power and pull on their school-issue headsets. From here they are jacked into an instance of an educational planetoid: Ludus, where the main character attends OASIS Public School #1873. Their avatars are seated together in a virtual classroom. The teachers aren’t bound by physical limits and can transport the classroom to approximations of ancient battlefields or star-maps of far-away galaxies for study. The kids inhabiting these avatars have at their disposal a compendium of human knowledge and entertainment. Ironically, a world-class education that in their society does nothing for providing opportunities for advancement.

Okay, so maybe that last part is a little too real.

Instead of Über-engaging and mind-expanding lessons pinball’ing through space and time our kids lessons are more mundane. Link-lists of assignments with supported material coming from a disjointed cluster of sources from old-school publishers using technologies like PDF and browser-based Flash. (Which will soon be disabled.) Their classrooms are more like the Brady-Bunch tile screen that have become a hallmark of Pandemic 2020 than the shared virtual experience outlined in Ernest Cline’s vision for virtual education in the future.

Plenty Of: 401 Unauthorized - Please login again
and
Not Enough: Neo-Goonies adventures with virtual classmates after class.

At least the fully-dystopian collapse of society as depicted in Ready Player One hasn’t come to pass. Yet. (2020!)

If you are reading this, odds are you are in my target demographic of “nostalgia nerd” and I thought it might be fruitful to take a few minutes to look at where we are in terms of Virtual Reality.

First, some terminology.

Virtual Reality (VR) - Headsets, technologies & experiences that put the player into a virtual environment. Think: Lawnmower Man but not necessarily with the seizure inducing fractals.

Augmented Reality (AR) - Handheld displays, headsets, technologies that present a virtual objects into a real environment. A simple smartphone example would be Pokemon Go!, a simple standalone example might be the Terminator HUD or Google Glass. A more complex example is Microsoft HoloLens.

Augmented Reality

It seems like Augmented Reality is a technology in search of a problem to solve. Mostly you see AR being used from a smartphone for gaming (Pokemon Go!) or novel uses around use-cases like “will this dresser look good in my bedroom?” where they digitally paint and object with spacial awareness into your camera view.

Google Glass used AR (of sorts) to give you a personal Heads Up Display but at the expense of turning everyone into cybernet photographers. Many people on the other end of that head-mounted camera found it off-putting. Glass-holes became a term to describe it.

Apple has plans to dip into AR and maybe even VR hardware later this year or early next year if patents and rumors are to be believed.

Microsoft’s HoloLens might have been one of the most ambitious visions for a future inclusive of AR technologies

But mostly, AR is relegated to the “a neat idea” without a ton of practical implementation. I’m sure somewhere there may be high-tech rocket engineers collaborating in real-time with their engineer counterparts across the globe via a shared AR experience but mostly, to date, AR’s greatest contribution has been towards solving problems for VR.

Virtual Reality

The explosion of VR in the last 8 years was partly driven by improvements in spacial sensor tech used in smartphones. Gyroscopes, accelerometers and inexpensive imaging sensors used in smartphones were the breakthrough components to solve the VR Head tracking problem. The basic principle of modern VR is that you could strap a cellphone to your face with blinders on the corners and two lenses. Head tracking maps your head movements into look-controls on the display. The effect is that as you look around the VR image changes 1:1 with your head movement. The ability to naturally look around gives you the feeling of immersion.

The major players in VR right now are Oculus, HTC Vive & PSVR.
(plus a bunch of cardboard and plastic phone-based things I’ll discuss in a minute)

HTC VIVE

For awhile the HTC VIVE had a solid head start for serious VR experiences and gaming. The VIVE headsets require a VR-ready gaming PC though they offer some choices for wireless connectivity. Most VIVE editions handle tracking through the use of triangulation towers in the room, which makes setup and portability take longer than other VR headsets. (Though, the Cosmos now supports the “multiple cameras on your faceplate” method for headtracking similar to Oculus. )

The headsets and controllers are on the top end of the market but they also hold up incredibly well. Several commercial-use VR lounges that I’ve been to use VIVE Hardware. For games and VR Experiences VIVE owners are mostly going to stick with SteamVR library games, I believe VALVE even had a hand in developing their tracking technology.

Vive Cosmos By The Numbers
Dual 3.4” diagonal display
1440 x 1700 pixels per eye (2880 x 1700 pixels combined) @ 90hz
110° field of view
Price: $699 / $899

PSVR

When Sony launched PSVR, I’ll admit that I was skeptical. I think flashbacks of the letdown in expectations that were set by Nintendo Virtual Boy Commercials back in the 1990’s may have colored by expectations in crimson.

Never fear Console-based VR Enthusiasts, the PSVR is a pretty solid value and includes a nice game list. Most multi-platform games will come to Steam or Oculus before PSVR but that also means you aren’t actively testing out beta software for the game developer by the time it lands on your console.

For head tracking, the PSVR uses a single camera mounted on or near your TV and clever lights that help the camera to calculate head position and controller locations.

I appreciate that the PS4 has enough horsepower to drive the PSVR and the primary HDMI at the same time. This makes possible some party / social VR gaming with games like Beat Saber.

That way, your friends will know what you look like when you walk through a spider-web.

There are two revisions (currently) of the PSVR headset. They look more or less the same but the newer Rev moves the On / Off & Volume controls from a pack on the cords to the headset itself. It was a quiet but useful improvement; makes the cables less prone to tangle. Sony claims that you will be able to use PSVR with the PS5, though it may require an adapter. I’d be surprised if they didn’t eventually make a PS5-specific upgraded version of the headset.

The resolution is lower on the PSVR than you might get from a PC-Driven headset but not to the point of being detrimental on most games. The PSVR headset padding (Forehead & Head Strap) are made of a very soft foam-rubber. I’ve found the original pads aren’t resilient to light cleaning. We tend to lysol and wipe down the pads between players. They also aren’t resilient to buzz-cut haircuts on the head strap. Being a bald guy, I’ve noticed a 2-day head stubble will act like sandpaper to that foam rubber. Sony doesn’t have a great solution for replacing these pads, either. It can be done but I had to call them… on the phone… like a savage.

GAMES

You get PSVR games at the Playstation Store, alongside other Playstation games.

Star Wars: Battlefront (I) included a free add-on VR Mission that was absolutely incredible. Star Tours at Disney World level of Incredible. Unfortunately, they only ever created the one mission. Even with the single mission being able to fly an X-Wing in VR was worth the price of admission to PSVR, for me anyway. Remember, I built the dome thing so I’m slightly obsessed with this concept.

Star Wars: Squadrons, releasing October 2nd, 2020 might finally answer the need for more space battles in VR.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare wasn’t a great game IMO but it didn’t include the Jackal Assault VR Experience, another single-mission space-based battle sim.

SuperHot VR is a neat take on a Matrix-y bullet-time gun and fist game. It is cartoony but still visceral at times. Parents, be warmed though: One portion of the game encourages the player to shoot themselves in the virtual head to show their allegiance and escape the simulation.

Beat Saber came late to PSVR but they took the time to get it right. The PSVR is especially good at Beat Saber b/c the motion controllers feel like light-saber hilts, because most PS4s are hooked to a thumping home audio system and b/c the two-screen experience makes it a good party experience.

Other PSVR games of note include Pistol Whip, Thumper, Rec Room, Vacation Simulator, Job Simulator, Battle Wake, Ace Combat 7, Arizona Sunshine, Everybody’s Golf VR, Vader Immortal. The Sony PSVR catalog has grown nicely over the last few years.

PSVR By The Numbers
Single 5.7” panel
960 x 1080 pixels per eye (1920 x 1080 combined) switchable between 120hz & 90hz
~100° field of view
Price: $349

Oculus Rift

Oculus was acquired in 2014 by Facebook. I think it is called Facebook Labs now? At any rate, I have complicated and mixed emotions regarding Facebook but I’m pretty clear-eyed where John Carmack is concerned. As a developer, I see him as a legend and some of his work and philosophy resonates with me.

My first experience with Oculus was in 2013, I tried to use a DK1 (Oculus Dev Kit) with a Drone for FPV (First-Person-View) Controls. At the time, my experience was that the amount of time it took to process the dual FPV camera feeds into a single VR-Ready video stream was too high to be applicable to fast-pace flight. Such a lag slows down effective reaction time too much. I was impressed with the build quality of the DK1 but promptly passed it on to someone that to could it more … appropriately.

Late last year, I started looking at VR solutions that might be compatible with one of the PC gaming platforms like Steam. I really didn’t want to install light towers or position cubes in the room. I was also hesitant to go with something that might require me to build out a full gaming PC. I didn’t want to get pulled into “Daaaaaaaddddd, the VR PC is asking for updates again, what do I do?” family tech-support tasks. Even though it doesn’t natively support Steam, I was seeing a decent cadence of games porting to Oculus Quest. The largest appeal being the Oculus Quest doesn’t require an external PC in order to operate.

Oculus Quest & Sony WH-1000XM3’s

Out of the box, I was impressed with the build-quality of the Oculus Quest. The materials seem to be a good bit more resilient and modular than those of the PSVR. It is a lot like the build-quality of the Vive, actually. It seems as though a light-cleaning with alcohol wipes or lysol between players or a stubbly head won’t destroy the straps.

As mentioned earlier, the Oculus Quest is unique in that it doesn’t require connections of any kind, to anything. It is fully wireless which is incredibly freeing. Understand though the trade off of being fully wireless is there is more weight in the headset for battery and phone-like internals.

SETUP

Head tracking on the Oculus quest moves the (4!) cameras to the headset itself. Four of them provide what is called an inside-out head tracking experience. No light or position towers, everything is right inside the headset. The brilliance of this is that you can take the headset into any room and play. The headset detects when you are in a new room and keeps track of play areas that you define. It is really quite ingenious. While wearing the headset, it detects that you are in a new room and the display shows you a Terminator-vision Augmented Reality view of the room. You use the controller to draw a boundary and set the floor height and the Oculus saves these as room profiles it calls Guardians.

It seems like a lot of thought went into the UI here (and throughout) to make the Oculus Quest a very intuitive experience. The blend of AR and VR for boundary-keeping and notifying a player of objects in the boundary is very good and sensitivity is configurable for those trying to play in a tight space.

SOUND

The Oculus Quest differentiates itself in the sound department. It includes a set of speakers that directionally fire sound into your ear holes. The effect is sort of like when you take off over the ear headphones and wear them around your neck but keep playing the music. It is good enough for casual play but no so loud to be distracting to everyone in your household. The Quest also has headphone jacks for in ear or over the ear headphones. It supports bluetooth audio as well but the experience is laggy.


GAMES

You get Oculus Quest games via the Oculus Store. Some of the same popular titles as the PSVR, including Beat Saber, Rec Room, SuperHot and Job Simulator.

Oculus gained an exclusive upfront deal on Vader Immortal before it came to the PSVR in May 2020.

I enjoy playing Pistol Whip, a techno-music scored John Wick conveyor-belt shooting gallery.

With bowling alley’s being shut down I’ve found Premium Bowling to be good fun. It has decent hook physics and supports a pretty neat multiplayer experience.

VR EXPERIENCES

The Quest has a solid offering of VR Experiences through a variety of curated sources (Youtube 360, Amazon and many others) which makes it an incredible value for exploration entertainment. Whether you want to see the perspective of the rear seat of a Blue Angel or float down an a River passage on the Amazon, Fly above the ground on a WingSuit or check out a new rollercoaster; there is a lot to do and see.

Parents Note: Most things on the internet only takes a few clicks to find Porn. It was important to me that my kids not stumble onto this stuff accidentally. Later, when they go looking for it… well, that is a problem for another time. I’m appreciative that the VR experiences that I’ve seen on the Oculus Quest seem to be pretty well curated. There is language and violence in some instances but nothing overtly pornographic that I’ve stumbled upon.

Be warned though as the Quest opens up for certain web browsers with native WebVR support this may change and bring easier accidental adult discoveries on the platform.

or.. if you are a grown-up looking for that - WebVR is the key technology to allow less-curated content to play on the Oculus Quest.

PEAKING OVER THE WALLS OF THE OCULUS WALLED GARDEN

Oculus released a USB-C based fiber optic cable and supporting software called Oculus Link allowing the Quest to be connected to a VR Ready PC. So you get the capabilities of the original Oculus Rift and Oculus Rift S along with the Quest built in features.
Using an i7-based Dell XPS8930 w/ 32 gb of RAM, a 1tb SSD and GTX 1080 (8gb) video card with the Quest, I’ve been able to play pretty much any SteamVR content that I’ve tried.

VIRTUAL PINBALL
One of the reasons I was looking to expand towards the PC-VR space was to be able to play Pinball in VR. The Oculus Store for Quest has Pinball FX2 in VR, which includes some of FX2’s fantasy tables that are often knockoffs or riffs of popular pinball classics. PinballFX2 is to real pinball what Spinner Hubcaps are to Rims. (There, I said it.) All flash and no substance.

With the full back catalog of Bally / Williams tables on The Pinball Arcade on Steam, I was hoping the introduction of a VR headset would allow me to play those games in VR.

None of that worked. I guess Farsight’s efforts to support VR are limited to the Stern Pinball Arcade. I’ll have to continue to research to find a way to get Bally - Williams tables working with VR. It looks like there may be options with more steps and kludgy freeware but I was hoping for the decent physics in The Pinball Arcade..

finding out my $$$ spend in Bally-Williams tables doesn’t translate to VR..

Using Oculus Link I was able to play Stern Pinball Arcade on the Quest. Stern & Farsight’s joint venture currently offers the following tables:

Ghostbusters
Harley Davidson
High Roller Casino
Last Action Hero
Mustang
Phantom of the Opera
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Starship Troopers
Star Trek

SAMPLE GAMEPLAY

If you have your barf-bag ready, feel free to venture into one of the videos below. These are captures from VR gameplay in Stern Pinball Arcade.

Interestingly enough, 4 months ago I could play AC/DC but it now says the game is no longer available. Their license expired, I believe. No new games have been added in that time. This makes Stern Pinball Arcade feel a little stale.

Stern Pinball Arcade Pros and Cons

Pros
Extremely Good Recreations of Stern Tables
Realistic physics compared to the real thing
Good Leaderboards
Good variety in types of Stern games

Cons
Stern-Only
Clunky Menu
Overly complicated in-app purchase terminology
Many 1-Star Reviews (people reporting issues)
No new tables in awhile (abandonware?)
Sometimes lags

VIRTUAL ARCADE

Continuing with the theme of stretching the Oculus Quest beyond its original limitations, I’ve also seen videos of people managing the Side Load Oculus Arcade (original from the GEAR and GO hardware) onto the Oculus Quest

Even though my VR Arcade and Pinball side-goals with the Quest have had some roadblocks, I’m seriously impressed with the Oculus Quest. It is a well done, integrated and well-designed piece of equipment and related software. The biggest downside I see with the Quest as compared to a VR headset that more naturally connects to your home entertainment setup is that it is generally a solitary experience. We play PSVR at parties, not Oculus.

Oculus Quest By The Numbers
Single OLED ~5.5” panel
1440 x 1600 pixels per eye (2880 x 1600 combined) @ 72hz
~95° field of view
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 8 Core
4 Kryo 280 Gold (ARM Cortex-A73 based) @ 2.45 GHz
4 Kryo 280 Silver (ARM Cortex-A73 based) @ 1.9 GHz
4gb of RAM
64 or 128gb of Storage
Price: $399/ $499

Cardboard & Milk Cartoons Strapped to Your FaCe vs LASERS in YOUR EYE

As alluded to earlier the real breakthrough in VR was the smartphone. Awesome screen, check. Lots of sensors, check. Strap it to your face and sock off your peripheral and you’ve made a VR Goggle. Samsung has some cheap ones made out of plastic, Nintendo has one made out of cardboard. I’ve seen home-brews made from egg crates and milk cartons.

Everywhere you look there is another 2nd or 3rd class-citizen in the VR offering landscape. Ultimately, the thing that will make or break a given VR platform is going to be content. In the beginning of this I talked about Ready Player One; in the book the breakthrough that allowed for the mass adoption of OASIS was the company’s breakthrough retinal-projection technology.

The HTC VIVE was a generational leap over its predecessors and the Oculus Quest is another generational hop in the right direction.
Ultimately, VR is going to look more like the Oculus Quest than the PSVR within the next decade. Wires & dependence on a kludge of loosely connected software running on a nearby computer will give way to smaller, more powerful (and portable) innovations. The software developers will follow these hardware innovators and ultimately only a few clear winners will emerge.

As John Carmack and his son head home to work on Artificial General Intelligence, I hope the team left behind at Oculus continues to innovate and push the envelope, staying clear of Facebook’s tendencies to step in it with Washington, with consumers, with advertisers and with their employees.

Update: Oculus Quest 2

About a week after I posted this, Oculus updated its VR model lineup and introduced the Oculus Quest 2. The Quest 2 will replace the Quest 1 (Quest 1 no longer produced but still supported) and the Oculus Go and Oculus S are both going away in favor of the Quest 2. For a more in-depth look at the Quest 2, here is a review I found very helpful (below).

Blow On It

Remember, blowing into your NES cartridge to fix it? Did it actually work / help?

There are smart people out there that tend to agree: No, it didn’t.

But then again, maybe Robot Chicken has the right of it. Video games are a constant source of joy for us, so maybe a little blow now and then is the least we can do to return the favor..

Whichever side of the blow / no-blow divide you may fall on, the NES Cartridge design is iconic. It is both incredible for its ability to hold up over the decades but also frustrating for the tendency over time of the ZIF socket to require “just re-insert it” - type actions to get a good connection.

A year ago, I bought an EverDrive N8 and picked up a 20” Toshiba CRT TV from a Facebook marketplace listing. I had classic NES gaming on the mind and I’ve been meaning to get back to it. Last year, I also installed a “New” 72 Pin Connector in my NES to alleviate some cartridge loading issues.

Only a month into owning the EverDrive I found myself in a familiar spot. The NES EverDrive would sometimes boot to a solid color screen or certain games would have jumbled intro screens. I did all the things we did when we were kids, blowing on the cartridge, slamming it into the toaster mechanism with varied levels of force and eventually using a Game Genie with it in order to create enough force for the cartridge contacts.

The thing is, the Krikzz forums are pretty clear that you aren’t really supposed to use this thing with a Game Genie, it can create unexpected mapping errors or inconsistent boot situations. The entire point of the EverDrive is that they have better (OEM) voltage consistencies compared to other multi-carts. What impact a Game Genie or other Wedge-card might have, isn’t probably heavily tested.

So, the NES has sat collecting dust once more as It ended up in my “I’ll get to it later” queue.

Then, I flipped on Netflix’s new High Score Mini Series about retro gaming intending for it to be a background watch while I worked on the laptop late one evening. Many reviews have been “nothing new here” but Episode 2, which partly covered the 1990 NES World Championships triggered my desire to get my NES whipped back in shape.

I suppose memories of The Wizard (1989) and my own childhood dreams to play in the Nintendo World Championships. Alas, the nearest cities to me at the time would have been Indianapolis or Cincinnati and the two hour drive and overnight stay would have been more than my parents would have been willing to fork out toward’s their nerdy son’s video game obsession. Probably for the best, based on the scores they put up, I wouldn’t have stood a chance at the national level!

But…I would like to try to arrange for a NES Mock-Championship game night post-COVID…

Motivation Found. Time to fix it!

This time, I found a good discussion about the pros and cons of NES 72-Pin connector repair approaches and from this thread I ended up with two paths forward.

Path one: Go back with a refurbished or NOS original connector. The remade connectors aren’t as good as the original.
Path two: Go with something like BLW, which is a redesign of that entire mechanism and connector.

”GO LEFT” <RETURN>

OEM is Probably Better

Where the 72pin edge connectors are concerned, it turns out the original Nintendo parts are pretty well made, so I decided to go this route, for now. Not picking on the BLW redesign here, I will probably go the BLW route the next time it acts up in order to see how it holds up by comparison. But, it seems that the modern remakes of the original 72 pin edge connector are less-than the OEM in terms of resiliency.

I couldn’t find my original connector though I’m sure I have it somewhere in a box. So, I bought a refurbished OEM connector from a FleaBayer.

It arrived quickly, though I was a little put off that it actually had rust on one of the pins. Refurbished, indeed. YMMV.

Armed with my trusty can of DeOxit, an eraser and Phillips screwdriver, I set to task and replaced the connector again… or again again? again again agin? I’ve honestly lost track of how many times I’ve done this. :)

About 20 minutes of work that could have been achieved faster if I didn’t have OCD screw-handling tendencies and my NES was back in business.

And.. after all this I got to check out the Nintendo World Championship 1990 game, thanks to an EverDrive Update.

Nice to have the option to play it without buying a $$,$$$ collectible cartridge or a $$$ reproduction. There is an an easy hex-edit of the original rom to allow P1 Start to begin the game and Voilà:

How’d I Do?

Turns out, I wouldn’t have been World Championship finals material anyway!

In SMB, I collected the coins leading up to and including the underground pipe, went back up the pipe, then suicided Mario.

You start back at the halfway point near the 9-block. I jump up while the Goombas roll by and hit the upper coin block, then the 9 block quickly before the Koopa can get there, go right, collect a couple coins and then suicide Mario again.

Next life, back to the 9Block and maybe +1 coin for 50. I think I could probably shave 20 seconds off that portion of the time. I cleared Rad Racer, got two Tetrises before running out of time.

Using the strategy of shorting SMB in favor of more time in Tetris, my highest score is 292,745.

Lap 1 = SMB, Lap 2 = Rad Racer, Lap 3 = Tetris

More ICB Improvements

This will be my last post regarding Ice Cold Beer for awhile.

If you are new to this post thread, here is some links to the earlier portions of my journey with this game for context.

Ice Cold Beer (November 2019) - Where I chronicle getting the game in July and working through a myriad of issues to get it playing. The “Happy Ending” was premature, it turns out.

ICB EPROM Shenanigans (July 2020) - In this post, I take an improbably long journey through Murphy’s Law following what ended up being a dead end troubleshooting theory.

ICB Restarts (Conclusion) (August 2020) - In this post, I conclude repairs on the wiring harness and finally have a working PCB.

..and finally this post (the one you are looking at) where I finally get to put in a little detail work on the game and get it to a stable point.

Finally free of frustrating and transient board problems, I spent some time putting some finishing touches on Ice Cold Beer.

Awhile back I ordered new motors and belts from Marco, as well as new motor limit switches from Arcade Parts and Repair.

The closed gearbox design makes a tremendous difference in terms of motor noise from the game. I don’t know where Marco sources these motors but just one note, there was a polarity marker (red dot) near one of the terminals and I found that the polarity was actually reversed from what my machine expected. That tells me these motors, at least were probably used in other games, too.

My original glass has some minor but annoying damage to the art at the bottom near the ball release lever and at the top near the light bulb. I wrapped up the old one in packing material and stowed it away for later and ordered a new one from Phoenix Arcade.

While I waited on the new glass, I spent some time tumbling some of the remaining parts and polishing the ball-bar. For the life of me, I don’t understand the rust / oxidation on this game. Many screw heads were perfectly clean but the portions of the threads that were engaged in wood were rusty. Moisture in the wood? If so, odd that it didn’t seem swollen anywhere.

I installed new felt in the channels (used this stuff) and I polished out the ball bar as much as I could without removing the plating. The ball bar parts are hard to come by. People sell 3D printed copies of the plastics but the brass bar itself seldom becomes available.

Looking better!

It isn’t perfect but definitely coming along nicely.. For me, it is time to take a break from fixing this game and move on to something else for awhile!

ICB Restarts (Conclusion)

In this earlier post, I drove myself partially insane while poorly troubleshooting a consistent restart issue with a new to me ICB PCB board. I went down all sorts of side quests that were adjacent to a (known at the time to possibly be wrong) assumption that the issue was related to ROM / EPROM problems. It seemed logic related, damnit!

While the 2nd PCB was off being worked on and tested, I decided it was prudent to re-do my edge connectors. I noticed occasionally the other PCB would resolve itself based on tension on the edge connectors or that certain problems would come up related to fiddling with the edge connectors.

ICB has three 18/36 edge connectors. I lack the finesse and patient to push each pin out of the edge connector and I planned to re-pin it anyway, so I clipped the old connector and one at a time re-crimped and installed into new connectors. This was tedious / time consuming. I put down a soda flat to catch trimmings and listened to a portion of an audio book in a couple crimp sessions to get the work done.

If this is something you need to do, here are some parts links to save you time..

Gold, leaf pins & AMP Connector:
AMP Leaf Pins
AMP 18/36 Edge Connector

Crimp Tool: Ratcheting Crimp Tool

Another, definitely cheaper and probably faster way to go about it would have been to use an 18/36 solder-based edge connector.
But, this machine had 18/36 gold-leaf populated AMP connectors so that is what I went back with.

Turns out, it was a dip switch.

..

…

yep.

…

(sips Whiskey)

..

a…dip.. switch..

So, apparently a machine that isn’t equipped with a ticket-dispenser will trigger a CPU watchguard restart at the ticket-dispense thresholds.


¯\(°_o)/¯

So, my game actually works now. I only feel Level-8 stupid for spending countless hours down a ROM burning rabbit hole over a problem that ended up being a dip switch setting / game power bug. At least now I know I have solid power, good connectivity and a working PCB. It will be nice to actually get some game play in.. :) John at El Dorado did me a solid by selling me an un-obtanium board in stellar condition and hand-holding me through troubleshooting of this newly discovered “feature” of these Taito boards. If your game reboot consistently after counting bonuses - make sure don’t have a dip switch accidentally enabled related to a ticket dispenser.

Failed GC Attempts..

Since July of last year, the GC spot on my Scared Stiff has been occupied at a 61 million point epic game by the talented Marshall Youngstrom . 61,nnn,nnn is a seriously high score on a 3-ball Scared Stiff. The game was setup from SFGE with open outlanes and factory rules. When I research IFPA and World Championship games involving Scared Stiff, those games rarely exceed 20 million. Even pinside game-scores which are an unverified big fish stories, puts 61.5 million in the top 25.

So… I’ve been practicing and trying all sorts of various techniques, states of mind, strategies to try to beat Marshall’s epic score. I’ve definitely found a strategy that seems like it will work but each time I get close, my head gets in the way towards the last few million and..womp womp womp.. I’ve attempted over 20 times per week for the last 2 months to beat his score. That’s how good he is! :)

Yesterday evening, wanting to test out some new noise cancelling headphones (Sony WH-1000xm3’s are on sale, clearing inventory to make room for the next model), I decided to put on some Jams and give it a shot. I’ve listened to everything from Sean Carroll’s recent book on Quantum Mechanics, favored Soundtrack composers, through favorites from Pink Floyd, trance-y glow party drug high stuff from Enigma, old favorites from Rage Against the Machine and Tool, newer stuff from Eminem and Run the Jewels, classical remixes from Vanessa Mae and even some of the bull-crap my teenager listens to. Last night, it was Public Enemy, Apocalypse 91. Ironically, of all of these varied attempts, I’ve found that deep discussions on weeds-y P-topics like Physics, Philosophies, Public Policy all tend to encourage a flow-like state for doing consistently better.

Ultimately though, on this attempt I missed the opportunity to stretch my 2nd Monster MultiBall across the finish line and I missed the opportunity to ring that final Extra Ball shot to give myself another attempt to earn it traditionally.

Bonus, previous attempt….

ICB EPROM Troubleshooting Shenanigans

Chained, incidental failures and complications.

When you go out to cut the grass but you realize you need to sharpen the blades first. While sharpening the blades, you trip the garage GFI and end up at the hardware store buying breakers and new outlets to totally rewire your garage. Leaving the hardware store you get a flat and realize you loaned your floor-jack out to Tim, down the street. Before you know it, you are coming in after a 16 hour day covered in dirt, grime with cuts on your hands and knees and receipts for $250 worth of receipts in your wallet.

You never did get around to cutting the grass.

My latest adventures in Ice Cold Beer, have spiraled into one of these scenarios. My game PCB is back in the capable hands of Mr. Chris Hibler. He’s busy and might not get to it until sometime around September. Thing is, the PCB has plenty of repairs on it already, plenty of oxidation & hot-cold strains on the board, it may not be salvageable. So I’ve had my ear to the ground for a replacement (better) PCB.

Finally, the heavens opened to reveal a $400 opportunity to get a “tested, with warranty” Ice Cold Beer board from a reputable source. I jumped on it. Seemed a lot for one board but I saw it as a shortcut to finally get my game going.

A couple of weeks later, proverbial Christmas Morning! The new board arrived in the mail. As part of the purchase I was offered the option for the free play rom and said “yeah, that sounds awesome.”

Unfortunately… my game has a different logic error now and that has set me down another chain of failures and complications.

I reached out to the source for the board and he advised that it might be that ROM and that I should do a ROM swap with our loaner PCB to see if it clears it up. Problem is, I don’t have access to any other PCB’s now. But hey, no worries - I have my trusty Pocket Programmer 3.

I got this. :/

At this point in thinking I can foresee two potential EPROM causes for a logic error related to U24 or U23. One would be as simple as a squirrelly hexedit job in the free play rom hack that could be resulting in this reboot. The other, could be stuck bit(s) on the EPROM itself. There are times when you can write to an EPROM and some bits don’t take the new code. Sometimes you can UV-Erase or partially address the buffer around those stuck bits but usually it is a trash-bin situation. Get a new / different chip.

I can also think of a number of non-game-rom related potential causes. A sketchy circuit on one of the scoring digits, a switch problem on the impacted hole, a problem with the controlled-lamp circuit for the next lamp (Hole 7). But for now we are going under the assumption it is game-rom related.

I’m no EPROM expert but I do tend to get excited when I find a use for this $269 tool. I’ve written some pinball sound roms and used it to validate some arcade roms in the 2 and half years that I’ve had it. I came to this particular EPROM programmer by recommendation of The Broken Token Pinball & Arcade Podcast.

The EPROMs in U23 and U24 are Mitsubishi 2764’s. I happened to have a couple similar chips on hand in the parts bin. Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Mitsubishi sillicon, when I can - I try to use EPROMS and ROMS from ST Micro. I find them to be less.. fidgety and bonus points for having the programming voltage etched on them and lower programming voltage requirements. 2764 is a 8x8 (64bit) ROM. It is interchangeable in most applications with 27c64 which is still being manufactured, today.

The stars are lining up…. I have the tools, we have the technology, I have the relative know-how, I have the ROM files - time to go to work!

(DRAMATIC MUSIC SWELL)

WOMP WOMP WOMP

I noticed that the Pocket Programmer software had been updated since I used it last. The update process includes a firmware write to the device, which apparently has failed. Son of a….

However, the pocket programmer is still being recognized by the software (and with the updated firmware version) so I thought I would be clear to proceed. The first problem showed up as I read the buffer from the chip into a file (dumped the rom). That file - was 2k. It should have been 8k.

I then dropped the original ROM into my crappy chinese made UV eraser. After multiple attempts, the Chip wasn’t reading as erased… I ASSUMED this meant my crappy UV eraser was too crappy (it does have a fidgety drawer interlock). Time for better tools, I tell myself..

I find a BK Precision Model 851 EPROM eraser as an open-box deal for $120 off regular price and jump on it.

“MAIL CALL!” - It arrives… and the first time I use it the control knob (which it turns out did not match this device) breaks off.

I will not be beaten by plastic.

So, I designed a better knob and 3d printed it on nearly indestructible nylon.

So, now I can erase the ever-lovin’ crap out of a metric butt-ton EPROMS. Unfortunately, I’m still not able to get a clean programming or erasure cycle out of a couple of these Mitsu 2764’s. After experimenting with some known good 27c64’s and ST Micro 2764a’s, I land on the conclusion that my little Pocket Programmer 3 is indeed Fubar’d.

… and their email is no longer valid. Are we having fun yet?

As one does, I reach out to their support with a well detailed email, offering to pay for replacement or repair assistance..

Just to Recap

So, my ICB PCB has spent more time in the mail or in repair queues than in my game, working. I bought a umm….. replacement PCB w/ a 1 year warranty to act as a shortcut for $400ish. It crashes the game after counting the bonus on hole 6. At suggestion of the PCB repair / warranty holder, I attempted to replace my game rom. The EPROM programmer software bricked my EPROM programmer with a failed firmware update. The half-bricked EPROM programmer in turn has bricked (3) 2764 EPROMS. There was a small UV eraser ordeal. My $269 EPROM programmer is in the mail for a $120 repair job to a company that I’m not even sure is still in business.

If you’ve made it this far, I know what you are probably thinking:

Dude, just get some game ROMS preprogrammed from someone already.

Well…. that IS a good idea. So, that’s why weeks ago before any of this I reached out to my usual trusted source for quality pinball game ROMS. Unfortunately, he thought Ice Cold Beer was a video game. No help there.

Also, ordered 2 ROM sets from a seller on eBay weeks ago. I guess that they are coming to Alabama by way of Shangri-La on the back of a mule. Estimated delivery date is August 11th & no tracking is available.

Asked about ICB Roms, got this back. No help there.

Ice Cold Beer game roms from an eBay source.

All of these ROM/ EPROM shenanigans and there is a definite non-zero chance that the situation that is tripping the WatchDog timer and bouncing the machine is related to power transfer somewhere else on the PCB. Scoring digit circuit, hole flasher, etc..

Next up and because there is apparently no limit on my AMEX when juxtaposed with my impatience, I ordered a GQ-4X because I’m relatively certain it will be weeks (or more) before I hear anything about my PP3. I’m hopeful once it arrives I’ll be able to get the game ROM settled…. but this is 2020…

8/6/2020 Update - The stars sort of aligned on 8/5. The eBay acquired EPROMS, the GQ-4x AND the loaner / test ICB PCB all landed in my lap to help to do some troubleshooting.

Gq-4X FTW

First up a nod to the GQ-4x4. It arrived on time (though shipping to the US from Canada is really expensive right now). Have used both the Pocket Programmer 3 and the GQ-4x4 I have to say I much prefer the GQ-4x. The software on the PP3 is a bit more barebones, minimal and feels like a DOS app that is running in a Window through some compatibility layers. Because, well - it is. I had gotten used to the PP3 software and it was familiar to me having grown up in tech through the DOS/BBS days, Pascal and ASM programming, etc.

But… the GQ-4x software seems to be a bit more Windows-native. It still doesn’t look like a modern app but it will be more familiar to some folks that grew up in the Win95/98/2k Reich. It installed easily and worked immediately, for the most part. It seems like the GQ-4x had a more comprehensive or at least more helpful device list. It has a favorites-list which I think is a nice touch.

One caveat, though.

The GC-4X didn't include the power adapter and even though the documentation implies you don't need it if you are using a powered USB hub - you probably do need it for some chips. Some of these 2764's take 21v for programming. Hard to get that out of a USB hub. 

Specs for that are: 9V output, Center Positive, Anything over 400mah
- (Incidentally it is the same power brick as a Sega Genesis if you have any retro consoles laying around.)

So on one hand I wasted a ton of time on EPROM stuff with this game but on the other hand, I have the capacity to erase the EPROMs for an entire village at one time if the need every arises and I shored up my toolset a bit, so I guess some of this is tuition, right? right..?

Back to the task at hand

Armed with a known good EPROM reader / writer, some known good chips and a loaner PCB I was able to do more troubleshooting and situational inventory. I found that my PP3 was really borked. Many of the chips that didn’t read as erased, were in fact erased and reusable. I got verified Erase-Write cycles out of all but one. I found that of the 2 sets of ROMS I ordered from the eBayer above - one of the sound ROMS arrived blank. The chip was fine, though I was able to restore a sound rom dump for ICB back to it.

More importantly and perhaps depressingly, I was able to determine that my ICB PCB’s hole-6 restart was not related directly to logic in the Free-Play ROM. The 6th hole restart persisted on this board between the factory ROM and the ROMS from the loaner PCB. Further, the loaner PCB let me run through ten holes without a restart. I sent back the ICB PCB for further testing and investigation.
My suspicion is that the U39 WatchDog Timer is tripping following the bonus counter on hole 6. At first I thought it might be related to the playfield display board and voltage required to light an additional digit but watching the video, I didn’t go from 800 to 1200 on hole six, the thousand digit was already lit by hole five. With a little less frustration and clarity, I’m guessing the problem exists in the circuit for hole 7, specifically it is a controlled-lamps power issue… maybe….?

Looking at that schematic, assuming I’m reading it correctly, maybe there is a D7 that could cause. it. But I honestly can barely make this out / don’t remember what it looks like.

Looking at that schematic, I guess it could be U15 or a bad leg (2 or 15) on U15. Could also be C80 or C19, I suppose. The Ferrite Bead wouldn’t be bad I wouldn’t think but maybe a disturbed trace along the way. I’m not seeing a resistor in that schematic but I suspect the blinking action occurs as the result of a 1/4watt resistor paired with one of those caps and maybe a drive transistor somewhere. Hopefully it will be something simple and repeatable and not a “in this cabinet only” sort of bug. At any rate, it is headed back to the hands of a capable professional and I have faith he will find and settle the 6/7 restart.

In the meantime

While I’m board-less I’m going to spend some time redoing the edge connectors with fresh leaf pins, so I can eliminate any edge-to-card connector voltage shenanigans for future problems. I’ve noticed some issues with engagement that seems to change depending on the orientation of the PCB in the cabinet. Might as well eliminate those potential future problems while I wait..