Family Guy Pachislo is Here

[monkeyboy]

Great find. It's a perfect fit.

[SmusheR]

So, we were talking about custom Family Guy sound bytes...

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. First, you need a cheap, crummy and older laptop to do this project. Something P2/P3 ish will do.

Now no need to go fussing with parallel ports and dos programs. Parallel ports are getting harder to come by and I'm not a stickler for propriety.
2. You get a cheap $5 USB gamepad. Install it with the driver.

3. Then get and install a program called Xpadder to use with it.
Xpadder is a handy little program for a bunch of stuff. For this, it's needed to turn USB gamepad button presses into keyboard 'hotkeys' consisting of multiple keys like CTRL and ALT.

4. We're going to completely replace the entire sound scheme of the pachi, so you'd need a WAV or MP3 of each sound this pachi is to make from now on. For each file, make a shortcut on the desktop.

5. Edit each shortcut and pick a unique windows "shortcut key".

6. Bind each button on the gamepad (I hope 12 is enough - 8 buttons plus 4 directions usually) to one of the shortcut keys you made in the last step.

Now, you have 12 simple 'contact closure' inputs that will each fire a unique sound byte on the PC.

I've already tested this part and it works just great.

Now, somewhere on the way into the audio board inside the pachislo, if there is a separate audio board. must be some specific signals for each sound the pachi makes. I haven't looked deeply myself at this part because I only have one pachislo so far and I don't wanna poke at it this deeply just yet, so if anyone knows their stuff on this end, feel free to chime in. If I had another less attractive one to mess around with, I'd probably have this working already

We just need to find these audio signals/pulses whatever, and use them to activate the joystick buttons. Depending on what they are, it may need another step to convert them to 'contact closures', like maybe relays or something, but it could definitely work.

It'd be simple enough for example, to take the pulses that feed the credit display 7-segs and use that signal to trigger one of the joystick buttons, with the help of an inverter IC, but for this I'm needing the audio signals, so it'd just take a bit of hunting around.

If/when I ever do get another pachislo, this is something I'll whip up for the fun of it. This should be enough to get you going in any case.. Hope it helps!

[owennewton]

So, we were talking about custom Family Guy sound bytes...

Here's what I'm thinking:

1. First, you need a cheap, crummy and older laptop to do this project. Something P2/P3 ish will do.

Now no need to go fussing with parallel ports and dos programs. Parallel ports are getting harder to come by and I'm not a stickler for propriety.
2. You get a cheap $5 USB gamepad. Install it with the driver.

3. Then get and install a program called Xpadder to use with it.
Xpadder is a handy little program for a bunch of stuff. For this, it's needed to turn USB gamepad button presses into keyboard 'hotkeys' consisting of multiple keys like CTRL and ALT.

4. We're going to completely replace the entire sound scheme of the pachi, so you'd need a WAV or MP3 of each sound this pachi is to make from now on. For each file, make a shortcut on the desktop.

5. Edit each shortcut and pick a unique windows "shortcut key".

6. Bind each button on the gamepad (I hope 12 is enough - 8 buttons plus 4 directions usually) to one of the shortcut keys you made in the last step.

Now, you have 12 simple 'contact closure' inputs that will each fire a unique sound byte on the PC.

I've already tested this part and it works just great.

Now, somewhere on the way into the audio board inside the pachislo, if there is a separate audio board. must be some specific signals for each sound the pachi makes. I haven't looked deeply myself at this part because I only have one pachislo so far and I don't wanna poke at it this deeply just yet, so if anyone knows their stuff on this end, feel free to chime in. If I had another less attractive one to mess around with, I'd probably have this working already

We just need to find these audio signals/pulses whatever, and use them to activate the joystick buttons. Depending on what they are, it may need another step to convert them to 'contact closures', like maybe relays or something, but it could definitely work.

It'd be simple enough for example, to take the pulses that feed the credit display 7-segs and use that signal to trigger one of the joystick buttons, with the help of an inverter IC, but for this I'm needing the audio signals, so it'd just take a bit of hunting around.

If/when I ever do get another pachislo, this is something I'll whip up for the fun of it. This should be enough to get you going in any case.. Hope it helps!

I like the way you are going at this, so far all thought has been on decoding the pachi itself and trying to replace the sound files in it and everyone has hit a road block. I can follow your idea and I think it is a winner!

[Ash]

that looks really cool

[yose]

Tjhat would be something to change sound themes on machines, that would opennew doors to customs.

[SmusheR]

Thanks owennewton. I tend to use the tricks/building blocks already in my lego bucket to tackle custom hacky things like this.

I really really wanna get this working for you guys because I can feel the excitement it would make for at least this Family Guy pachi. So much so that i'm strongly considering pulling my Pink Panther out of the closet and having a good poke. I'm pretty brave and there shouldn't be much danger. Still, I wish I had a ginea pig machine to hose around with.

If I get it working (I will, hopefully sooner than later) I'll post with DETAILS

[BigBearSteve]

Thanks SmusheR!!

That's sounds like a well thought out plan.

It's a direction that no one has gone yet.

[TikiTim]

Would this theory apply to the possibilty of replacing bonus music as well?

[SmusheR]

Would this theory apply to the possibilty of replacing bonus music as well?

Indeed it would! To replace one sound, you'd have the issue of when to allow the real sounds to be heard and when to allow only your custom sounds to be heard. So, this idea involves coming up with a new sound byte for each unique sound the pachi makes!
What I really need to do is probe around in the pachi near the audio portion of the circuitry and figure out how that works. Once I can find a unique signal or voltage on a pin etc for each different sound, we're off to the races.

I'm looking for another affordable deal on a not so desirably themed pachi, because thanks to this thread, I've come up with a wicked idea for what I wanna do for a conversion!! (no, not Family Guy, I'll tell ya's later

[TikiTim]

It sounds as if my dream of a Rob Zombie pachislo may actually come true!!!

Ya know, you may be surprised at the catalog of sounds you'd find in even the most basic pachi.
I won't even pretend to know how this process you've proposed works... but it sounds like a long ride.

It'd be awesome if you figured it out.
Good Luck

...maybe you could change the video next?

[SmusheR]

It sounds as if my dream of a Rob Zombie pachislo may actually come true!!!

Ya know, you may be surprised at the catalog of sounds you'd find in even the most basic pachi.
I won't even pretend to know how this process you've proposed works... but it sounds like a long ride.

It'd be awesome if you figured it out.
Good Luck

...maybe you could change the video next?

THANKS for the vote of confidence Tim. I don't anticipate it will be dirt simple, but I'm hopeful that I can do it. The value of this seems huge, the idea that we can all have a custom pachi of our own choice complete with custom sounds.

For this reason I'm going to give it my best shot. My wife and I were discussing it and we feel that if we can get the pachi to trigger custom sounds, we could get it to trigger custom videos too! The idea of replacing actual bonus games is still very daunting.

What I need now is to figure out how the sounds are being generated in the pachi so I can use that to do something else.

If the sounds are all generated in the CPU, we're in trouble. If they're stored in some chips somewhere and called regularly by the CPU portion of the circuitry, we're in business. I'm telling the lot of these details so you'll all know that there's hope!

What I really need now is another pachi to play with (working on it) but also, I need some more technical manual(s) than what I've seen so far, to figure this out. Troubleshooting steps for if it doesn't work don't begin to cover the details I need. I'd like to see some schematics, or at least detailed circuit block diagram. Anyone know where I should be looking for those if such things exist?

In any case, probing will get me pretty far to begin with. When I told my wife about my idea for a custom pachi, and about us all wanting this to work, she said that'd be super cool, let's get another and do it! I know you'll figure it out, you're crazy.

[SmusheR]

TikiTim and my pachi friend BigBearSteve. I have something to tell you guys.

I may have mentioned before, when I get something in my head, I'm driven. I work quickly.

I decided to do this for you guys because I think it's a cool and special idea.

Well, I've succeeded!! True, decoding the pachislot is daunting without even a shred of schematics, and I'm talented, but not an electronics super genious, just really handy.

So, I wasn't able to replace all of the sounds as I'd hoped, so I'm settling for a mix of the original sounds but quieter and my own custom sounds over top but on the louder side so as to drown out the original sounds.

For the completed project, I'll be having 13 custom sounds. That's right, 13 custom programmable sound bytes. It's already mostly finished (SPIN, Stop1, STOP2, STOP3, FREE SPIN, BIG CHANCE are WORKING) but I ran out of parts so I need a pitstop at the store.

So, who's handy with their electronics?? This wasn't really that hard. When I'm all done I'll start a new thread with some details and a video!

(I bought a new pachislot to do this with as I said I would. Aruze Continental XXXX for 100 bucks. I'm going to need advice on how to do my own custom glass and reels!!)

More to come..

SmusheR

[owennewton]

very cool

I can't wait for the details

[SmusheR]

very cool

I can't wait for the details

THANKS! The long and short of it is that I realized that yes, decoding the signals is pretty tough, but then it dawned on me, I can use the four buttons on the front as inputs, as well as any of the lightbulbs going off.

So, with a little bit of electronics, you can make a custom sound for each button as well as each light bulb/led that goes off on the front.

[takethecastle57]

The "Freekin' Sweet Song"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGkwhzCZYv0

[takethecastle57]

Bump

Any progress on the audio clips sync-up ?

[Davefin]

I have found something on amazon : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...1-dc3240e894a8
so you dont have to use a laptop and other programs and its super small. But the issue remains of where the trigger points are located to trigger the audio. Any new news on this?

[takethecastle57]

Tech gets better,more efficient, and of course smaller .

Now , Who is going to Reverse-Engineer a Pachislot ? Ben Beck did it Four years ago to a Vintage Pachinko and posted his work on YouTube.



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BNRR1n57TP0

[takethecastle57]

Sorry, it's Ben Heck