From: knudsen@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (michael.j.knudsen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
Subject: Re: Bally's Genie ?
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:41:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsd.1992Apr10.174101.12158
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T

In article <5031@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM>, jerryc@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM (Jerry C Carathers) writes:

> Genie is on of the last D. Gottlieb and Co. pins made, just before they went
> to Gottlieb logo (well, maybe 2 years before). It came out in 1979. I used to

Do you mean going to the Premier logo?  Gottlieb already belonged to Columbia
Pictures before the Rockwell Series 1 games came out.  Or did Gottlieb
do an extra logo change during the Columbia period no particular reason?

> have two of them. This employed the old Rockwell CPU that scored very slowly
> and it would in fact tally up points from previous targets as you held the

I'd thought that it was just the chimes (or beeps) that kept on going,
having been queued up in software somehow.  But Jerry may be right,
since all early SS pins synchronized each beep/bell to an incrementing of
the appropriate score digit -- thus the digits would keep incrementing
and beeping.

My '79 Stern TRIDENT is smart enuf that if at least 10,000 points get
queued up, it will hit the 10K digit directly and sound a deep-bass note.
Unlike those early Gottliebs, it never misses a hit -- the old Gottliebs
often miss target hits while ringing up earlier points.  Other than that,
those G's aren't bad pins for their time.

One way Gottlieb helped out their slow CPU was to use featherweight
plastic spinner targets that gave only a few spins on a solid hit.
These miserly spinners are my major *player's* gripe on these pins.
My buddy and I were thinking up ways to add weight to 'em...

BTW, one thing that made Gottlieb Series 1's so slow is that they
matrix-scanned everything (as Williams does now), while Bally/Stern
used direct inputs for standup targets and the like, with R-C networks
to stretch the pulses (can't use those on scan matrices).

> ball. People that have played those early Gottliebs know all about this. Games
> like Sinbad, Charlie's Angels, Close Encounters, etc. all did this. I remember

Totem, Pinball Pool and Countdown, to name a couple more good ones.

> noticing it most when I would hit the extra ball target and it would stay lit
> as though it were never touched until the ball was back to the bottom of the
> playfield, then the points would tally and the SHOOT AGAIN light would come

It seems that well-programmed pins (like my Stern) have a set of priorities
in handling events.  First priority is to give audio feedback,
and *internally* queue up the score award, which may keep dinging for a while
afterwards.  Turning lights on/off seems to be way down on the list -- I
can see delays like Jerry mentioned on my Stern.

Unforch, some early pins also used the light-driver memory as state memory,
so you might get cheated.  You hit the last target to complete the
Special sequence; the software takes too long to light the
Special When Lit lamp; before it lights, you hit the Special target;
it wasn't "lit" yet either mentally or physically, so you get no Special.

Anybody who can integrate good pinball software would probably
fall asleep in (or substitute teach) a graduate seminar in real-time
operating systems.  As the current Data East gripes here show, it's
a long way from cookbook programming.
-- 
"Starbase, this is 1702: Suspect exceeded speed-o'-light, over!"
"OK buddy -- slow to impulse!"
	knudsen@ihlpl.att.com