14 Oct
2007
14 Oct
'07
11:53 p.m.
Dan Roganti wrote:
Brent Hilpert wrote:
As it happens, those Gottlieb boards are the task I was working on: trying to
get enough details about the chips to create an exerciser for the boards for
use in servicing them. Was working on it last winter, I hope to get back to it
this winter. I have no knowledge of the pinball arena though, it's purely a
technical task to me.
you are but the 2nd person I've ever heard to
mention the PPS-4.
After learning what I did about it I believe that two of my calculators are
based on it, that is, I've had a PPS-4 system for years but never realised it.
Another area that I frequent is vintage pinball machines. The PPS-4 was
widely used in another embedded controller design for Gottlieb(Chicago)
in their first generation digital pinball machines. Although it wasn't
the first digital pinball in the market, their first digital pinball
using this design was released in 1977, well after the PPS-4 became
obsolete, until 1980. Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most
pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a
replacement board which emulates the embedded software.