My space Invaders custom rebuild

[poppo]

I had posted this before the forum took a dump a while back. If there is any interest, I will re-document what I did. The short version is I had a Space Invaders pinball machine that had a playfield that was beyond restoration. So I basically just refinished it as a custom machine. I changed the graphics etc, to just give it a general space theme. I did the 7 digit mod and a few other things. Here is the end result.

[Tilt]

Looks good.  I really like the infinity lights in the backbox.  Those machine must have got a lot of play in their days as most playfields were pretty worn out.  K+ for sharing.

[poppo]

I sort of made the mistake of not taking more before photos. But here is one of a similar condition playfied (maybe even better).

To be honest, I only bought the game because it was really cheap and most of it worked. I always thought he playfield was too 'busy'. In any case you can see it's worn down to the wood in the center areas. The one I bought was even worse and someone had tried to hand paint, which just made it even worse.



I was trying to think of a way to make my own reproduction playfied and printed some images. You can see just how faded the playfield was. Here I had already started to sand things down.

[Tilt]

Yep, that's what most I've seen have looked like too.  It would be difficult to fix because like you said, it's a busy playfield.  The gloss black on yours look good from what I can see in the photos.

[poppo]

The gloss black on yours look good from what I can see in the photos.

Actually, it's a medium blue. Here is a picture of after I painted it and put in new inserts. I had to make custom decals since none were available at that time (they are now). Then I gave it a dozen coats of urathane which gives it the gloss finish. There is no artwork on the playfield, but with all of the targets and other things, it seems to give it a good balance.



Here is a close-up of the red invader targets. It should show the color a little better. I even had to make the little invader decals. I also made all new plastics and then used a space poster that I put under it for the graphics as seen in the first pictures.

[poppo]

I found info and modified ROMS on the Internet to give it 7 digits (getting 999,999 is really pretty easy). So I replaced all of the displays with 7 digit LED units and built the mod board. Only one is needed for all of the displays.

[StatFreak]

I remember when you started this project.
How do you like the game, now that you've had a few years to play it?

[poppo]

I remember when you started this project.
How do you like the game, now that you've had a few years to play it?

I play it all of the time. Since then I finally got around to rebuilding the power supply. I was afraid to touch it for a long time since it had a lot of the connector wires moved and wired right to the power supply board and was a real rat's nest. I've also replaced some of the main boards with the newer aftermarket ones. I'm now toying with using LEDs for lighting some areas, but I am having mixed results. The back-box infinity display will stay with incandescent lights. I just don't think LEDs would look right. Other than that, it is still pretty much the same. I was going to replace some of the playfield leaf switches with microswitches when they went bad, but I have not had any fail yet.

Oh, remember the ultimate update? The retractable refreshment holder. 

[StatFreak]

All you need is a very long straw and you're set. 
I think that the back box looks great just as it is, and since the entire machine was a project and not a restoration, I agree with your choice to upgrade the electronics.
The stark black playfield kind of grows on me the more I look at it, especially with the multi-colored lights in the center area to give it some punch. It's definitely different from the typical visual frenzy of most commercial pinball designs.

Did you ever end up buying any other pins?

[poppo]

Did you ever end up buying any other pins?

No. But with what I sunk into this one I probaby could have bought a few more. 

[StatFreak]

Did you ever end up buying any other pins?

No. But with what I sunk into this one I probaby could have bought a few more.  

  

[2Moons]

Hello All
You might want to see what some led's can do for space invaders.
I have used these led's and they bring a hole new look to an old machine.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/dFgjXq0wvpA&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/dFgjXq0wvpA&rel=0</a>

[poppo]

Hello All
You might want to see what some led's can do for space invaders.

There are so many different LEDs out there, I have been experimenting with them. I mainly have them behind the glass and in the pop bumpers. Those pop bumpers take a beating and regular lamps don't last very long. I still have not found any that I really like for GI lighting. I ordered some 'soft white' ones from Bay Area Amusements and while they looked good, the first one I was testing lasted about 30 seconds before it flickered a few times and that was it. It was dead. I tried a second one in the switched lighting this time and it too lasted about 30 seconds. I'm waiting for a reply from BAA to see what they have to say. Luckily I did not order too many.

[stayouttadabunker]

That's a cool idea with the retractable cup holder!
My subaru has one of those...sort of.
I'm going to the auto junkyard tomorrow!
Gotta check out some dashboard options! lol

[StatFreak]

I smell a Bunkerized™ S2000 remote controlled retractable cup holder and coffee/beer dispenser in our near future.  

"Taking the slot back to its roots." Put in a coin, pull the handle, and get some brew (hopefully not plum flavored.  )


Bunker, I gave you a K+ to get you closer to the big 700 club. You only need one more.

[poppo]

Just to show how much $$ one can sink into a project like this, here are some of the other updates I had made.

Besides for the replacement 7 digit LEDS, I have replaced 3 of the 5 main boards with new aftermarket ones. Only the sound card and auxiliary lamp driver are factory.



I also replaced the power supply board with an aftermarket one. You can see some of the old repairs from wires that had burt (typical on these machines)


Another mod was to use a separate 48V power supply to run all of the solenoids except the flippers. This has given me a more 'active' game as it really gets the pop bumpers etc moving. I had to keep the flippers on the original supply due to the larger initial current drain when you press both flippers at the same time (especially since they are dual flippers).



And the last and one of the simplest mods that I would recommend to anyone with an older game like this, is I built an extender cable for the power supply test points and have it located just inside the coin door. This makes it a lot easier to check the power supply voltages without having to raise the playfield and try to reach down in there. I left off the 190v line since it was only for the old displays. I also have the power supply fuse for that line removed.




I have some simple custom art on order for the side. I'll post a picture of that when I get it.

[StatFreak]

I like that voltage test harness. It looks like it would save a lot of back pain.

[poppo]

I got my custom generic side art today. Nothing fancy, but better than a blank side.

I got it from http://customvinyldecals.com. Just send them the artwork (preferably already sized properly) and they can make it pretty quick. This one only cost me $20.

[poppo]

Since I have way too much time on my hands  I picked up another BetaBrite and decided to use it with this machine. Heck it was already modified beyond recognition, so why not add something else.

While I am trying to figure out how I can make it interactive with the game, I just programmed in some text and graphics. In case it's not obvious, those are supposed to be flippers and a ball rolling toward the end of the video.

Note: What makes the BetaBrite a cool display is that it has a serial input and the first 'memory slot' so to speak can be updated on the fly without any of the other programmed displays being affected. That is how I have my home-brew slot progressive set up.

While you can upload text and built in graphics from a PC, making custom graphics has to be done by hand with the remote, which is time consuming and not very easy. But if you later upload any new programming from a PC (other than that special first memory slot), it wipes out the custom graphics.

Anyway, here is a short video of my work in progress.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/5de13ESdANg&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/5de13ESdANg&rel=0</a>

[Ron (r273)]

How cool is that!    I get mad at myself when someone comes up with an idea and is smart enough to make it work. I come up with ideas
but I am to dumb to make them work.

GOOD JOB poppo!

Ron (r273)

[poppo]

<update>

In my home-brew progressive thread, I showed how a Beta-Brite display can be used as a progressive display. What makes this unit neat is that the first
message can be changed on the fly via the serial port without disrupting all of the other messages.

So I decided to see about making the display I have above my pinball 'interactive'. I already had the code written for my progressive, so all I had to do was figure out how to interface it to the machine. I decided that the easiest way would be to use lit lamps as the input. I had some problems initially because first the lamps are strobed and secondly they are driven by SCRs applying a ground. This caused 'noise' that was triggering the Atom module when it shouldn't. I tried several things to eliminate it without success (I wanted it to be simple). I finally got an an idea from the S+ SAS RS232 board. It had an opto-coupler on it and I had a bunch of spares. So I rigged one up and ta-da.

The first picture shows the display showing Extra Ball when that lamp is lit. The display will continue to show that until the ball is in play (and the lamp goes out). Then it continues on displaying the other animations (which I have updated since the above video).

There are limitations since there are only so many 'special' things that can be displayed (i.e. have dedicated lamps). But at least now I can easily add up to 15 'special' messages. One line is reserved for the serial out to the Beta-Brite.

The second picture just shows the Atom module and the opto-coupler is circled in red. I will clean things up later as I need to make a board that can hold several of them

BTW, I finally found some software that lets you upload graphics directly. 10000X easier than trying to do it with the remote.  

[StatFreak]

...
BTW, I finally found some software that lets you upload graphics directly. 10000X easier than trying to do it with the remote.  

It it provided by Beta-Brite or a third party? Maybe you could post a link for others who might be interested in using this product.

[poppo]

Is it provided by Beta-Brite or a third party? Maybe you could post a link for others who might be interested in using this product.

It is AlphaNET. There is a full version demo and upgrade at the link below. The demo will load ads into the sign. I will leave it to the reader's imagination on how to install the non-demo 'upgrade' to remove the ads.   No 'hacking' is required.

http://www.adaptivedisplays.com/Downloads/

On a side note, I just remembered I have a speech synthesizer board that I used for one of my other projects. I can easy adapt it to also add some voice effects. Of course this is all common on today's pinball machines, but this machine is from 1980.

[poppo]

I had a problem with using the opto-coupler so I had to try something else. At first I tried to just drive a small reed relay with the lamp voltage. But since the lamps are strobed, the relay chattered causing the same problem. So I stuck a 330uf cap across the relay coil and that solved the problem, the cap will hold a charge (and the relay energized) until the lamp is strobed again.

Next I took an old voice synthesizer module from another project and connected it. It's SPO3 module and it's very easy to use. You can program it with up to 30 phrases with a computer, and then you simply send a small serial command to tell it which phrase to speak. For example the line of code - serout 11,N38400,[2] tells it to speak phrase #2. Pretty simple.

When a lamp is lit, the display will continue to display the corresponding message until the lamp goes out. For this application, that is fine. I did have to add some code to get it to only speak the phrase once per lamp lighting otherwise it would keep repeating every time the program loops.

This still need some work, but now it's easy for me to change the BetaBrite text and graphics whenever I want. I also need to tweak the voice phrases a bit, although there is not too much more I can do with them due to the limitations of the module.

Here is a crappy video I made of it as it is now. I took the glass off so that I could manually press the playfield switches to do the demo. So it's a lot noisier than it normally would be. As I noted earlier, that is supposed to be a pair of pinball flippers and a ball rolling across the display. Then I have some invaders drop down and a ship fly across. Even before I modified the heck out of this game, the original still kept some of the video game elements which I tried to replicate a bit.

<eidt> In the video the extra ball display stays lit up for two balls because when I triggered the event by pressing the switch that would generate it, I had not launched the ball yet that normally would have been in play. So the first ball should have been the one in play that would have triggered the extra ball. And then the second ball was the actual extra one. This game is not capable of storing more than one extra ball at a time. It sort of sucks because if you got an extra ball during play and then your score reaches the threshold for an extra ball, you still only get one. So sometimes I will avoid trying to get an extra ball on the playfield if I know my score is about to win me one.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/4e4b5v33JDw&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/4e4b5v33JDw&rel=0</a>

[FORDSBS]

poppo, That is a FANTASTIC job you are doing.
   for sharing with us.
Ford