STEPS TO RO -> RO + SC or SC -> SC + RO CINEMATRONIC CONVERSION
---------------------------------------------------------------
PARTS FOR SIMPLE CONVERSION: Rip Off (RO) control panel and RO (or Star
Castle (SC)) motherboard. A SC (or RO) sound
board. 9 pin molex connectors (plus 8 male
pins and 1 female pin) to power each of the
sound boards. One 9 pin molex connector
(plus 1 male pin and 8 femail pins) to tap into
the cabinets power to the sound board. A single
ribbon cable with enough connectors to hook up
all the sound boards and the motherboard together.
A switch with at least 5 poles (preferably 12
poles) and one position for each game you plan
to have in the cabinet. See the below note
about extra parts if you plan to use 5 poles.
Current limitting resistor.
NOTE: For more complex conversions, you can start with any cabinet, an Armor
Attack (AA) mother board plus any RO, SC, AA or Solar Quest (SQ) sound
boards you'd like your cabinet to play. Because your EPROMS do not
fit in the 24 pin motherboard socket, you'll either need to use
wirewrap sockets or bend the pins upward so inappropriate pins don't
go into the wrong place in the motherboard socket. A switch from an
A-B-C-D box will have enough poles and positions to support your
complex conversion. If you intend putting the volume pot back on
the sound board (meaning you will need less poles than usual), you'll
need some 10K and 100 ohm pots and 100mF capacitors.
NOTE: The board set should be positioned like this on a metal plate:
------------------------------------
|parellel conn->==== X |
|power connector(MOLEX)-^ |
| ^ |
| sound board TOP |
| <-LEFT RIGHT->|
| BOTTOM |
| V |
------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
| ======= ==== ======= XXX |
| ^ ^ ^ XXX |
| | | | ^ |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| monitor sound board control panel power |
| connector connector connector connector |
| (parellel) (parellel) (parellel) (MOLEX) |
| __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| | V | | V | | V | | V | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| |U7 | |T7 | |R7 | |P7 | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| |___| |___| |___| |___| |
| ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ |
| | |2716| | | |
| |____EPROMs_____| TOP |
| mother board <-LEFT RIGHT-> |
| BOTTOM |
| | |
| V |
| |
| |
------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: Please see the Cinematronics history to get a background in differences
between the RO/SC hardware and the AA/SQ hardware. You'll note that
no references are made to older Cinematronic games like, Space Wars,
Star Hawk, Tail Gunner and Warriors, because the hardware for these
games while almost exactly similar to the RO/SC/AA/SQ hardware does
use different addresssing and sometimes different EPROMs. As such,
only RO/SC/AA/SQ lend themselves to the EPROM conversions described
below.
1) Burn the U7 RO into both the lower and upper half of a 2732 EPROMs for
later use in the RO motherboard. For more complex conversion, use 27128s
(which have four more pins than the 2716 or 2732) in wirewrap sockets (so
you have room to solder connections in tight quarters) since 27128s can hold
all four games! Plug the EPROM (or in the complex conversion the EPROM in
the wirewrap socket) in to the U7 socket on the RO motherboard, and power
up the cabinet. You'll see RO playing, even though you don't have the
original 2716 RO EPROM plugged in! The 2732 with two copies of the 2716
RO EPROM is doing the same job!!
Simple
Lesson: Both the 2716 and 2732 can be used in the same sockets of a
RO motherboard since they both have 24 pins, but to make the
2732 you need two copies of the games, so that it doesn't
matter what value is on the high address line of the 2732.
Advanced
Lesson: For 27128s, use 28-pin wirewrap sockets. Position the
wirewrap socket above the 2716 socket in the AA mother board
so that the extra four pins are in between the AA mother board
socket and the mother board's connectors. Now shove the
wirewrap socket into the 2716 socket so that all the wirewrap's
pins go into the mother boards 2716 socket (except for the
wirewrap pin that would go into the 2716 socket's Vcc and A11
of the 27128 which would go into the 2716's four pin from the
top on the right side). See the next paragraph about how
to power up the 27128 properly so that the AA mother board
can read the two copies of the RO that you placed in it!
You'll have to shove hard, since the 2716 socket was never
meant to take a wirewrap socket! You'll probably think you'll
break the mother board if you shove as hard as you need. The
wirewrap socket will not jiggle if you've shoved it in properly.
Regarding the four extra pins on the 27128 and the pin that
would have gone into the 2716 Vcc, tie the 27128 Vcc
to the 27128 Vpp and the 27128 !PGM...or rephrased tie the
uppermost left pin of the 27128 wirewrap socket to the two
uppermost right pins on the 27128 wirewrap socket.
Tie the other pins together (A12 and A13 which are located
third from the top of the 27128 wirewrap socket's right side,
and second from the top of the 27128 wirewrap socket's left side)
and ground them. Now your ready to go!
NOTE: All +5v (called Vcc) must go through a current limitting resistor.
2) Now that you've swapped a single EPROM, the next step is replacing all
four of the EPROMs on the RO mother board with your own EPROMs. For the
simpler coversion of RO -> RO + SC or SC -> SC + RO you can use a RO
mother board with its simple addressing.
Simple
Lesson: Before we proceed you'll need to learn a little about
Cinematronics addresses their memory. Any conversion other
than a RO -> RO + SC or SC -> SC + RO will need the fancier
addressing on the AA mother board (because AA or SQ needs
double the memory used in RO or SC) and will require the
wirewrap sockets using EPROMs larger than 2732s since the only
two games that can fit on 2732 are the smaller games, RO and SC.
Advanced
Lesson: If you do the advanced conversion, you'll need to use
multiple copies of the smaller game's code to trick the
fancier addressing on the AA mother board to get the
correct instruction. By having multiple copies available
for the upper address line to select, we insure that no
matter what random value is on the upper address line
a copy of the smaller game's code will be found and the
correct instruction from within this copy be found! This
"trick" wouldn't work unless all Cinemattronic games had
2K, 4K or 8K memory...thus you can put copies in until you
have the correct size for memory space!
Back to the simpler conversion. Take four 2732's and burn an image of the
SC code in the top half followed by an image of the RO code. Make sure to
put SC's code in SC 2716 (labelled U7) and RO's code in RO 2716 (labelled U7)
into your new Starrip 2732 (probably also labelled U7). Do the same for T7,
R7 and P7 using the respective SC and RO 2716s T7, R7 and P7. Now bend pin
20 (if the 2732's notch is facing up, then pin 20 is fourth down from the top
on the right side) upward so that it won't go into the socket and attach a
single wire to all four EPROMs. Temporarily tie this wire to the +5v being
supplied to the 2732, and insert all four 2732s into the RO mother board.
Power up the cabinet, and you'll see RO playing again! If you flip the
diagnostic dipswitch (dipswitch 7) and ground the wire, you'll see SC
playing, though unless you swap in a SC sound board, you'll not hear SC
playing...just screaching.
NOTE: You may want to leave plenty of spare wire since later you'll also
connect this wire to a switch on the control panel AND E4 pin 13 on the
RO mother board.
Advanced
Lesson: The following diagram shows the optimal memory lay out
for fitting all four games on 27128s for an AA mother board.
Note that since 27128s and 2764s use the same packaging
(28 pins), you might as well use the below even if you
just want to do a simple RO -> RO + AA conversion.
A13 A12 NOR (feeds Dipswitch 7 at E4 pin 13)
--- --- ---
______________
0 0 0 | SC |<-----NOTE: A11 will randomly
|____________| | sellect one of these
| SC |<--- two copies of SC.
|____________|
0 1 0 | |
| SQ |
| |
|____________|
1 0 0 | |
| AA |
| |
|____________|
1 1 1 | RO |<-----NOTE: A11 will randomly
|____________| | sellect one of these
| RO |<--- two copies of RO.
|____________|
NOTE: The above images fill the whole 27128. Just like
in the simple conversion, you'll need 4 27128s and
you'll be putting the respective U7 images on the
27128 U7.
It may seem strange to put RO at the end, but when you
have to handle the diagnostic dip switch incompatibility
(dipswitch 7) mentioned below, then it'll become apparent
why RO is always at the end of the address space.
Advanced
Lesson: Wirewrap sockets don't liked to be shoved into regular
sockets, so they are constantly popping out. If any one
does pop out, then the game will pop the circuit breakers
because the mother board won't have the instructions it
needs to display a picture. You may want to consider just
shoving the 27128s in, and bending all the pins upward to
connect the high address lines and power...but you'll find
you have problems fitting all those wires in to such a
small space!
NOTE: All +5v (called Vcc) must go through a current limitting resistor.
3) Diagnostic dipswitch logic allows RO and any other Cinematronics
game to be played WITHOUT having to open the back of the machine and
flip dipswitch 7. In the simple conversion, all that has to be done
is that the wire that controls the high address line to the 2732s also
has to be connected to the dipswitch 7 at the E4 chip pin 13 on the
motherboard. To find E4 (since many boards are not marked) start at
the molex connector (there's only one on the motherboard) and go down
two rows and left five chips. If E4's notch is facing up, then pin 13
is 4th down on the right side. Because you can't easily solder to a
particular pin (and you don't have the option of bending the pin upwards)
you may just want to attach a small clip lead to the pin and the other
end of the clip lead to the wire for the hight address line.
Advanced
Lesson: Because there are two high address lines that allow us
to select any one of the four games in the 27128, we'll
need to make use of spare gates on the AA mother board to
provide the NORed result to dipswitch 7. The 7432 at K2
will OR together the two high address lines, and the 7404
at I2 will NOT the signal giving us a NOR to apply to E4.
So connect A13 to K2 pin 1 and A12 to K2 pin 2 and feed
the result at K2 pin 3 to I2 pin 5. Finally, feed the
result at I2 pin 6 to E4 pin 13 and now you won't have
to switch dipswitch 7 depending on what game is being played!
Now the motherboard will see 1 for RO's case and 0 in all other cases.
MAKE SURE TO LEAVE DIPSWITCH 7 OPEN (SET IT TO OFF OR 0) AFTER YOU CONNECT
UP E4! As explanation on why dipswitch 7 must be left open, in a normally
operating RO closing dipswitch 7 connects ground to E4....and if E4 is
connected to +5v (because the high address line must ve +5v to select RO)
then you've just shorted the +5v to ground!
4) Now that we have the conversion operational at the motherboard level, we'll
turn our attentions to the "perperals", the easiest being the control panel.
The control panel for Cinematronics games can be shared with only the most
minimal switching. In fact, RO and AA share the same controls. The only
time you need to "switch" the input from the controls is when two different
buttons are connected to the same input. The reason you need to "break"
this is because pushing one button would cause both button to be grounded at
the same time indicating to the motherboard that both buttons were pushed!
The easiest way to figure out where to use switching is to draw a diagram
of each control panel, and then to draw lines between all the common
buttons AND all the buttons with the same input number. Below is RO and SC:
RIP OFF CONTROL PANEL
P2 LEFT P2 RIGHT P2 THRUST P2 FIRE P1 LEFT P1 RIGHT P1 THRUST P1 FIRE
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
( 0) ( 2) ( 4) ( 5) ( 1) (12) (14) (15) (13)
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
| | | | __ |\ |
| | | | ( 3) | \ |
| | | | -- | \ |
| | | | | \ |
| | | | | \ |
| | | | | \ |
| | | | | \ |
| | | | | \ |
__ __ __ __ __ \__
( 0) ( 2) ( 6) ( 8) (10) (12)
-- -- -- -- -- --
LEFT RIGHT THRUST FIRE
STAR CASTLE'S CONTROL PANEL
While you can't break any of the vertical lines (since they represent the
same physical button, you can break any diagnal line using the switch. Just
connect the output of the switch to input line 12 of the control panel, and
RO P1 LEFT button to one input of the switch and the RO P1 RIGHT (=SC FIRE)
button to the other input of the switch. Then when the switch is set for RO,
pushing RO P1 LEFT will ground input line 12 (and not also RO P2 RIGHT), and
when the switch is set for SC, pushing RO P1 RIGHT(=SC FIRE) will ground
input line 12 (and not also RO P1 LEFT(=SC THRUST))! You can connect RO P2
THRUST to input line 6 (gives you SC LEFT), RO P2 FIRE to input line 8
(gives you SC RIGHT) and RO P1 LEFT to input line 10 (gives you SC THRUST).
So now your control panel is wired for both games!! If you were starting
with a SC control panel, you'd have to drill a few extra holes to add some
buttons for player 2, but you could still use the above procedure to figure
out where to switch control panel input lines.
Keep in mind that the P1 and P2 Start are not used during game play, and
as such you don't have to worry about these buttons being accidentally
pushed with another button that controls the player's ship. However, the
P1 and P2 start buttons could be a part of a string of connected lines
that inadvertantly cause a player's button to accidentally push another
players button...and in this case you'd have to break the string of
connected lines with switching.
Simple
Lesson: Underneath the control panel is a small 1" by 2" piece of
PCB with no chips on it. This serves as a patch panel for
all control panel and coin door function, and here (and on
the actual control panel buttons) is where you should make
any modification.
Advanced
Lesson: Because RO and AA have the same control panel, most complex
conversions will be as easy as the simple conversion. However,
if you are intersted in adding SQ, then you'll need to switch
three input lines! Input line 1 will need to switch between
RO/AA P1 START and SQ FIRE, since RO/AA P1 START is positioned
at the same place SQ NUKE is (and you can't break the link
if the buttons are linked because they share a button)! Input
line 2 will need switch between RO/AA P1 RIGHT and SQ
HYPERSPACE. Then like above, you'll need to handle input
line 12 for RO and SC, and connect up the rest of the buttons
to the correct input line. Below is layout for this combo
control panel, though it certainly isn't the best layout!
RO: P2 LEFT P2 RIGHT P2 THRUST P2 FIRE P1 LEFT P1 RIGHT P1 THRUST P1 FIRE
SC: LEFT RIGHT THRUST FIRE
SQ: NUKE FORWARD LEFT RIGHT FIRE
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
( 0) ( 2) ( 4) ( 5) ( 1) (12) (14) (15) (13)
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
SQ: HYPERSPACE
__
( 3)
--
NOTE: If you mess up for any reason, then the ship in the game will
either not do anything at all when you push a button or it
will try to do two things at once when you push a button.
Thankfully, this mess up is not catastrophic, and you just
need to go in and recheck that you did things correctly.
4) The last perpheral you will need to handle in your conversion is the
sound board...and it will take the majority of poles on your switch!
A sound board has 9 leads of which 5 are power, 2 are to the speaker
and 2 are to the volume pot on the coin door. For the simple conversion
I suggest switching all 9 leads to the sound board, since anything short
of this takes some technical expertise (and modifications to every sound
board you will be using in the conversion)! However, if you do not have
enough poles on the switch you are using for your simple conversion then
you may have to consider these more complex conversion possibilities since
they would cut down the number of poles you need for the sound board to four.
NOTE: You may want to physically seperate the high voltage power connections
(like +25v and -25v) from the volume and speaker connections, since
any crosstalk would result in speaker static! This is not necessary,
just a recommendation.
All your sound boards need to be connected with a single ribbon cable with
enough connectors to plug into all sound boards and the mother board. You
are essentially making a bus for the digital signals going to the sound
board and controlling which sound board receives the signals by switching
power to the one board you'd like to produce sound.
Advanced
Lesson: If you look at the schematic for the sound board, you'll
notice that the volume pot for the sound board is remoted
on the coin door. If you simply connected the two pins
on the sound board for the volume pot (3 and 8) together
via a 10K pot (with the last lead on the pot grounded),
then you wouldn't have to switch pins 1 (goes to ground),
3 and 8 on the sound board. If you ground one side of
the speaker, then you wouldn't have to switch pin 5. And
finally, if you tie all the sound board's grounds together
(pin 7) then you wouldn't have to switch that either! This
would leave you switching +5v, +25v, -25v and speaker!!
And if you only hand to switch one control panel input lead,
then you'd only need a five pole switch (or a couple of two
pole switches)!!!
NOTE: If your sound boards each have a volume pot, then you will be
be able to set each sound board to the volume you desire...
and given how loud AA is relative to the other games, you'll
appreciate this feature!
NOTE: You may want to put a 100mF capacitor in series with each pots
output to clean up the signal. Another enhancement might be
a single 100 ohm pots right before the speaker.
NOTE: STOP!! THIS IS THE MINIMUM YOU'LL HAVE TO DO FOR ANY CONVERSION. BELOW
ARE SPECIAL FEATURES YOU MIGHT WANT TO ADD TO YOUR CONVERSION AND SOME
SUGGESTION FOR REAL SIMPLE CONVERSIONS THAT DON'T USE A SWITCH AND RELY
ON YOU SWAPPING PARTS IN UNDER 10 MINUTES (AND SINCE YOU SWAP THAT MEANS
NO SOLDERING IS NEEDED!)!
5) The optimal dipswitch setting (that maximizes number of ships, individual
scores and free play) is below
OFF ON
---------
| _____ | _
1 | | X| | |
| --- | |
| _____ | |-- maximum (or real close to max) ships for all but RO
2 | |X | | _|
| --- |
| _____ |
3 | | X| | - credits
| --- |
| _____ | _
4 | | X| | |
| --- | |
| _____ | |-- SQ max ships, AA attract sound
5 | | X| | _|
| --- |
| _____ |
6 | | X| | - SQ free play and has RO display individual scores
| --- |
| _____ |
7 | |X | | - diagnostics should be OFF because dipswitch logic handles
| --- | this
|_______|
NOTE: Further connections to E4 could tailor the dipswitches more
to each particular game if desired! If you have the extra
poles on the switch then they could be used in this way!!
6) Because SQ uses a mirror to show the screen to the player, all the writing
is backwards (however since you still spin clockwise vs counterclockwise
turning is preserved). By inserting an sturdy double-pole, double-throw
toggle switch in wires that feed the X deflection, you can swap the two
signals and reverse the image. THIS CAN BE QUITE DANGEROUS, SO BE CAREFUL
TO USE MATERIALS THAT CAN HANDLE THE HIGH VOLTAGES USED TO DEFLECT THE
ELECTRON BEAM!!! Below is a diagram for this:
one set of poles
/\ V V V
the --> -=/ \_________\
toggle / /| __|___|/
switch \ /__X____ / <----bottom of toggle switch
\/|___|___|/
^ ^ ^
another set of poles
Where the X appears in the diagram is where the signals are being switched
to produce the mirror image of the mirror SQ image. On the other side we
have the regulare signal being sent to the monitor for RO, SC and AA.
7) Two conveniences are a credit button on the coin door and velcro patches
on the screen and on the overlays for quick alignment when switching games.
To add the credit button drill a hole in the coin door and put a normally-
open, normally closed, three pole switch. Because all credit switches
must be in series, make sure to connect the a wire from the game's credit
switch's normally-closed pole to your credit button's normally-closed pole.
Neither of these poles on these switches will register continuity with the
common pole. Then connect the normally-open pole for each of the switches
together, and finally connect the common pole of each switch together. The
game times the closure of these switches, so to "trick" the game you may
have to push your credit button several times to get the right timing and
trick the game into thinking that you just dropped a quarter in it.
8) AA -> RO solderless, swap conversion. Burn 2732s with two copies of RO
and put these EPROMs in the AA motherboard. Flip dipswitch 7 to OFF.
Plug the RO sound board where the AA sound board use to be. Remove
the AA overlay and power up your RO games!! Since both games use the
same control panel, you don't need to change anything!!
8) AA -> SQ solderless, swap conversion. Burn 2732s with one copy of SQ
and put these EPROMs in the AA motherboard. Plug the SQ sound board
where the AA sound board use to be. Remove the AA overlay and
power up your SQ games!! Since the SQ control panel is a little
different, you'll probably find it difficult to play. In addition to
this, the screen is a mirror image...see above for a way to fix this.
9) RO -> SC swap conversion. Burn 2716s with one copy of SC and put these
EPROMs in the RO motherboard. Flip dipswitch 7 to OFF and plug in the
SC sound board where the RO sound board use to be. Add the SC overlay
if desired. Move input line 12 to RO P1 RIGHT. You can connect RO P2
THRUST to input line 6 (gives you SC LEFT), RO P2 FIRE to input line 8
(gives you SC RIGHT) and P1 LEFT to input line 10 (gives you SC THRUST).
Power up the game and play some SC!
10) AA -> RO + AA conversion. Burn 2764s with one copy of AA and two copies
of RO. Using a switch with one pole, control the high address line of
the 2764's and the diagnostic dipswitch as described in the RO -> RO +
SC conversion at the beginning of this FAQ. Plug in the desired sound
board and put on the AA overlay if appropriate. Set the switch for the
game you want to play and power up the game! Since AA and RO use the
same control panel, you don't have to make any control panel modifications.
|
