notANON

The MA-55 was used in Panthera, Spiderman, Circus, CounterForce, StarRace, James Bond 007, Time Line, Force II, Pink Panther, and the export versions of Volcano, Black Hole, Devil’s Dare, and Eclipse.

This code works as-is on the cheap Alterra Cyclone II dev boards available on eBay for $20 or so.  Hook up a PS/2 keyboard to it and you can trigger the sounds with it.  Disable/remove the PS/2 code and this should plug straight in to one of the real machines listed above.

https://github.com/FPGA-Code/Gottlieb-MA-55

Here’s the sound board used in Williams System 3 and System 4 pins from the late 70s to early 80s. It’s simpler than the System 6/7 board but similar architecture, 6802 CPU(similar to 6800) with 128 bytes of RAM, 2K ROM and a 6820 PIA driving a DAC. Curiously the ROMs for every game using this board seem to be identical so it seems they used the same sounds in all of the pins of this era.  Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising since it’s right on the tail of the electromechanical chime era.

The top level file is set up for an Altera Cyclone II mini development board available on eBay for less than $20.  There is a PS/2 interface to control the sounds which can easily be removed if you are going to attempt to use it in a real machine.  This has not been tested in a real machine yet.

Here is the code, it’s a little messy but it will be cleaned up eventually if time permits:

https://github.com/FPGA-Code/Sys4-snd

This is a Bally AS-2518-51 sound board, the predecessor of the Squawk & Talk implemented in an FPGA.  This is set up with the ROM for the 1978 pinball Nitro Ground Shaker but other ROMs are available. http://ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=1682&picno=37007

Some general info about the hardware http://zerocharactersleft.blogspot.com/2014/07/retro-pinball-reverse-engineering-bally.html
This one is interesting because it uses a AY-3-8910 sound synthesis chip to generate all the sounds rather than driving a DAC directly from the PIA. It’s got a bit of a different sound as a result.

It has not been tested in an actual pinball.  Currently it is set up to plug in a PS/2 Keyboard that will allow you to trigger all of the sounds.  Some keys are repeats, others are blank, it was just a quick hack.  The PS/2 hack is in the top level file and easy to remove which would theoretically allow you to wire this up in a real pinball.

The target board for this is the very economical Altera Cyclone II dev board.  They are all over eBay for less than $20.

Here is the code:

https://github.com/FPGA-Code/AS-2518-51_snd