STAR*TECH
Journal
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February 1 996
CID
SEGA PINBALL, INC. PRESENTS THE NEW
"WHITE STAR BOARD SYSTEM"
TEAM SEGA
Joe Blackwell, Eric Winston,Jay Alfer, Ted Kilpin
Sega Pinball, Melrose Park, Illinois
STOP!
Hold on to your pinballs! It's not
another case of a manufacturer
sticking it to the operator by
changing the board system to
something you're not familiar
with ... ; do not have parts stock
for ... ; and let's not even bring up
compatibility ...
Our Sega Pinball Engineers felt
it was time to enhance the capa-
bilities of our Board System and
provide a system that's operator
friendly.
Our previous system design has
been around for approximately
15 years, which means even
though it's very familiar to us all,
certain parts are heading towards
obsolescence.
Another factor is with more bells
and whistles going into machines
these days, the Board System was
evolving and becoming more
complex to troubleshoot
by trying to meet the needs of
today's
machines
with
yesterday's design.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT!
This next statement may be a
little hard to believe, but one of
the first things our engineers did
was to ask the service department
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what we would like to see or not
see in the New Board System.
The following was our response
(also refer to the component
board layouts for locations):
1 - Simplify - Simplify - Simplify
2 - No Surface Mount / PLCC
Packages / Hybrid or Custom
Integrated Circuits.
3 - All L.S.I. Integrated Circuits
socketed (i.e. no 40-Pin Chips to
desolder; also easier to swap for
troubleshooting purposes).
4 - Diagnostic LEDs with LED
Indicators for all voltages.
5 - All connector descriptions
screened on the board next to the
connector so you know what it is
used for without having to check
your schematics.
6 - Tear Drop holes for the board
mounting screws so that the
screws do not have to be re-
moved when changing boards.
7 - Test Points for bench diag-
nosis and location diagnosis, for
example:
E: CPU Reset, Sound
Reset and Plasma Reset
F: Q & E Clock Signals
G: 24 Mhz & 6 Mhz
Clock Signals
H: VBATT for CM OS
Battery Pack voltage
I: The metal tabs on all
drive transistors can still be used
to trigger a solenoid or flash lamp
with a jumper wire or to check
the drive circuit voltage.
J: Beef up the General Il-
lumination (G.I. Relay) Circuit.
Our engineers used the same
Micro-Processors for sound
and CPU Circuits (68B09EP)
which are socketed & can
be swapped for troubleshooting.
90% of all Integrated Circuits on
the two boards are TTL (e.g.
74HC245, 74HC273 and
74LS374's).
A: 5v, GND.
B: Audio Out Left (AOL)
and Audio Out Right (AOR)
C: FET and TIP Test
What we have done is simplified
our design, increased the capa-
bilities of our system and used
parts which are readily available,
if not in stock already.
Points which allow you to trigger
the drive transistors with your
jumper wire.
Note: In future issues of.
STAR*TECH Journal, we will
D: CPUFIRQandSND
FIRQ
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be going into the "Theory of Opera- _
tion" of our New Board System cir-
cuit by circuit.
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