I was lucky enough to purchase a non-working Storm pinball, thinking it would be an easy fix due to being a Williams System 4 based system. Little did I know what I was getting into.
From the description of the video I took of my pinball in 2011. (re-uploaded version)
“Very rare pinball. At least two were imported to New Zealand. (I have the playfield and pcbs from the 2nd one but it was cannibalized for parts).
Storm is a licensed (edit: not) Spanish re-work of the Williams Flash pinball, completely re-built using a different CPU and locally built and sourced parts. (coils (edit: they look like Williams originals) and custom parts) The system is based on a RCA COSMAC 1802 8-bit processor and support chips (CDP1852, CDP1863,etc), rather than the Motorola 6808 used in all early Williams games (including Flash).
The design was modern for the time period. All the IC’s are CMOS rather than 74LS series TTL and 99% of the chips are made by RCA, even the jellybean CMOS chips. The displays are also 7-segment LED’s rather than the then standard.
E.F.O. Barcelona manufactured and possibly designed the whole system as the company name is present on the pcb and on the eprom labels.”
I was asked on my original video upload if I had dumped the eproms. When I was doing the initial repair work, I dumped the 2708 eproms in an unusual way. Making a simple adapter and powering the 3 rails with a PSU doesn’t work with newer modern eprom programmers that can drive all their pins high or low. Tying the ground pin to zero on the adapter ends up with blown SMD transistors inside the programmer when it does a powerup test. Ooops. Ultimately I used my Fluke 9010 hooked up to a Space Invaders pcb that used 2708’s and dumped the roms via the serial port. (initially I thought I all was lost as one rom wouldn’t read. Fortunately I noticed one of the legs was bent under the eprom. Bent it back in place and it read fine. Likely that was the fault with the CPU board as it worked after that).
After a bit of searching on my PC I found the original video and photos I took back then, hence the re-upload of the video. (not to mention I’d lost the login info for the original YT account).
After doing some research to see what the manufacture date of Storm I came across this facebook post from Newcastle Pinball Association that talked about the history of the Williams Flash pinball and Steve Richie replied saying that none of the re-makes were licensed.
To Be Continued
Rom dump SegaSA Sonic Storm