45 replies to this topic

[wirralbret]

Does anyone know anything about the Dot matrix LED displays used on the 1990s ACE machines?

Pinout for the 10 way IDC plug or even source code?

I have a few that I would like to drive with a couple of PICs but have no idea how to drive them...... yet!

any help would be appreciated

[TTX]

I was thinking of trying this out myself one day if things get quiet at work.

Pinouts from the sp.ACE service manual:

1. - EN DISP
2. - DATA
3. - STROBE
4. - CLOCK
5. GND
6. PWR GND
7. +5.6V LOGIC
8. PWR GND (no pin / key)
9. +VDISP
10. +VDISP

I assume you just clock the 60 bits of row data in and then strobe the row. Repeat for the next 20 rows and it should wrap back to row 1? It's basically a daisy chain of self latching shift registers. The downside is that the more dots that are lit in a row, the dimmer the row gets.

As a point of interest, the circuit design has barely changed (if at all) since late 1987 when Dave Powell (re)designed it as part of Revision 2A of Castle's Mach2000 system.

Hope this helps!

[wirralbret]

wow! thanks very much for the pinout. I'm gonna have a go this weekend hopefully, but if you manage it first, I would appreciate your findings.

I remember the castle machines. They where based in Newark right? right next door to the classic BWB? what ever happened to these people, they where good!

[ady]

Pointless reply here but I was originally going to say "wait for TTX".....and he had replied on me getting back home....

I think I know what you guy's are talking about, but how the fook to you get to dabble with it all?...the knowledge etc?, trial and error or some kind of training?

Change a 3 Pin plug and i'm a virtual bloody crisp!

[wirralbret]

I just play until it works usually!!!

seriously, i don't know how i know, it's just something I picked up from an early age, and up until last May, I was a fruity engineer going back to 1987 when I started in an arcade in Liverpool. I hated the job, specially a company I once worked for; G****tec, who had to meddle and buy RLMS. But I don't mind dabbling in them now!

hope that helps....


btw, plugs arn't my strong point either!

...all we need now are ROMs for the Stop N Flip or Step N Skip!!!!!!!

[ady]

...all we need now are ROMs for the Stop N Flip or Step N Skip!!!!!!!

lol, nice One..........


Would be nice Wirr' and some good artwork too.

[TTX]

wow! thanks very much for the pinout. I'm gonna have a go this weekend hopefully, but if you manage it first, I would appreciate your findings.

I remember the castle machines. They where based in Newark right? right next door to the classic BWB? what ever happened to these people, they where good!

I believe Castle & BWB were right next to one another, a big white building in Brunel Drive? I had a look on Google Earth but the imagery is pretty poor.

Castle were bought out by ACE Coin at the end of the 80's. ACE wanted the Mach2000 system! There's a good Castle topic going on at the MPU Mecca at the moment - Castle, ACE & emulation prospects. - The MPU Mecca

The first thing I'll do with the display is rig up a manual driver board - a bit of veroboard with a toggle for the data and a couple of buttons for the clock and strobe. It should be enough to light one row at a time and prove the concept.

[wirralbret]

nice one fella, that would be good with the displays, i have two here and would like to get them working, as I built a few coin pushers from scratch a few years ago, currently in my dining room, and they would look fab in the back board!

I can't believe, many years ago, around 1988, i used to collect the service manuals from all the makers, BFM, barcrest, maygay, jpm, castle, bwb etc. and when i moved house in 1995, they all went in the bin. The castle manual had a fantastic picture in the front cover of their factory, castle at one end and BWB commodities (newark) at the other, brunel drive seems to ring a bell. A bit like the inside cover of JPMs system 80 manual. I kick myself now for throwing them all out.

[TTX]

At least now I know that there WAS a service manual for Castle machines, now all I need to do is find one! That's a real shame you threw them out...

[wirralbret]

yes, the machines had personality packs as well, very similar to JPMs personality packs. The castle book i seem to remember was a glossy black covered book with red writing and spiral bound with a pic of the factory inside.

[ady]

FAO wirralbret & TTX


Please don't go private on this topic............it's very interesting guy's.

A really good read.

[wirralbret]

I'm glad i've sparked an interesting subject. Just wish I could remember more about their machines. Most of the stuff I used to work on where Bell fruit nudge gamblers, the old system 75 relay chassis. It was nice to work on the newer stuff with Mars mechs, flashing lights and interesting displays!!!!

[wirralbret]

incidentally, is Dave Powell related to Henry or Terence Powell of powells automatics in whitley bay?

[ady]

I'm glad i've sparked an interesting subject.

Indeedy......

It's great to actually learn bit's 'n' pieces.

There are Fun, 'want to know' and general FME thread's and then there's something totally different like this...

Geeze how i'd love to 'toy' as you guy's do. I don't pretend to understand it at all, but take TTX's quote (Second thread I believe) I got my SpAce components out (of TTX's package!) and tried to figure some stuff out having 'the hardwares' at hand....Great to have a 'little' understanding.

[TTX]

Hmmm... Must be worth dropping a quick email to Powell's Automatics methinks.

As far as Castle manuals are concerned, the next time I go to Arcadia (Ryde) I'll ask if I can have a poke around. They used to have one Castle, a Big Fifty. A previous scavenge there yielded it's old PSU which I managed to get running again but not a trace of the rest of it.

I'll have a bash at getting a display to do something tomorrow, probably nowhere near as simple as I'm assuming but we'll soon see! What it really needs is a multi-channel scope hooked up to the data, clock & strobe lines to see what's going on but we haven't got one at work and they're much £££££.

[wirralbret]

Henry Powell is quite helpful, i'll drop him an email and see what he says. Me thinks the display you may have to send a string to it and strobe it along the way (shift register), display enable will probably light the row data then ck it to the next line and send a fresh string to that, enabling the display once the string is sent which will then display only data on row 2 and so on to the end. Its a lot of programming, couldn't really store the data in a PIC as they're only 1k and 24x60/8=180, thats about 5 display tables full of data.

[TTX]

My first and second attempts to drive the display failed, but no surprise there...

The first go did nothing at all but the second made whole blocks light up, so the row at a time theory doesn't work! Some more in depth examination is required. I WILL get this going!

[wirralbret]

keep going fella, we will get there, i'm downloading the datasheets, but at a glance, it looks like a row of shift registers for the row and then a multiplexer (thats the big chip at the end) for the row select, it's just knowing how to interface to them. the display enable at a glance looks like it displays the data for the row on the registers before strobing to the next line, but data will have to be shifted again as it will still be apparent from the previous row

[TTX]

You've got pretty much the same theory as me there. I'm going to have a bash at drawing up some kind of schematic...

The -En Disp line is connected directly to the watchdog chip (74HC123) on the spACE main board, in the same way as the lamp multiplexer circuit except the output is driven low under normal operating conditions. The watchdog is reset by the lamp strobe signal which is at a higher frequency than the watchdog timeout value. If the lamps stop strobing (cpu crash, whatever), the lamps and dot matrix are disabled.

I'm pretty sure the -En Disp should always be pulled low for the display to work at all. The shift registers are latched by the strobe and turn on sinks for the columns. The bit I don't quite fully understand is the way the row decrement system works.

Also, the clock, data and strobe are all inverted, so high = logic 0 and low =logic 1. I think!

The power supply for both the logic and the +VDisp are rated at 5.6v.