Star Tech Journal

STAR*TECH Journal
February 1986 (4)
'l'BB PLAYER
1IBAT IS A JU;?
By John 'Root' Pilarchik
By John Batistic
Pennsauken, NJ
A monthly analysis of pinball machines,
currently on location, fran a players
point of view.
EIGHI' BALL CHAMP by Bally Midway
First there was Eight Ball, a good
machine; then there was Eight Ball Deluxe,
a great machine, and now, cones the Olarnp.
To begin with, the playfield is set up
corrpletely different than the last two
games. Spelling "C-H-A-M-P" will work your
time values with the 3X and 4X bonuses
lighting up specials.
The "C" is located on the left bottom of
the machine, "H-A-M" is located at the top
of the playing field and the last letter
"P" is located on the right bottom side.
Secondly, spelling "E-I-G-H-T" and then
getting the eight ball target located at
the top right will light up another
special. The targets when spelling
"E-I-~H-T" are positioned so that two are
on the left side of the playfield, one in
the middle and two on the right side of
the playfield.
All of these targets are in easy flipper
range. The trick, however, is to hit each
just once or a target pops up and you must
hit the letter again.
The machine offers the player a free ball
shot, (and what I personally think makes
this game a fair play), is the nuni::>er of
ways to hit free ganes on specials.
The score setting on the machine I played
was set at 3,000,000 for the first gane
and 4,500,000 for the second, which I
think is a little high, but can be done.
The one drawback this player found was
that there is no spelling out of the
letters on the back glass, as was the case
in Eight Ball Deluxe. (See STAR~H
JOURNAL; Oct85/Vol.7#5 "The Player".)
This, as I explained before, is a key to
keeping the machine busy and attracting
new players.
All in all, this is a good machine and I
found it to be alot of fun to play.
Play on. . . Root.
Univid Test Systens
Cleveland, OH
Many of you have probably heard someone
say that a certain logic board has a
problem with the "data bus" or the
"address bus". I am sure that a good
portion of you know all about the subject,
but I am just as sure that many of you
have wondered what is all this bus stuff.
How the name 'bus' came to be used is a
mystery, but let ne assure you that no one
is riding on this type of bus!
Every microprocessor based system has two
main ingredients that give and take
instructions. The ingredient that gives
instructions is called an address. The
ingredient that takes instructions is
called data.
Data and address signals are nerely
electronic instructions that are
transmitted by what is called a "bus.". The
bus really consists of anywhere from eight
to sixteen different lines of
corrmmication. Therefore, a problem with a
bus could mean one or more of the lines is
not getting through to it's final
destlnation.
Troubleshooting a faulty bus is not that
difficult if you have an oscilloscope and
a bench test fixture. Once you find the
faulty "line", you just need to follow it
until you find the breakdown point. This
process could be corrplicated by various
components on the board like buffers and
transceivers but don't let that bother
you. Realize that the signals are just
passing through the components. They all
have a point that the signal goes in and a
point that the signal comes out. The
signal may change a little but it still
has to come out.
If you search long and hard, you are bound
to find the problem and can fix it easily.
You will have to use many skills on the
search. You will find that clipping and
lifting pins will help to quickly isolate
the problem area. If you came upon an IC
where a good signal was present on the
input pin but a bad or no signal was
present on the output pin, you should cut