Sys80b SIM PRB developement
Channel: Fabrizio Volpi
Date: 2020-04-18

Here is a very early development stage of my System 80/B replacement main-board for old 80's Gottlieb pinballs.
The SIM PRB aims to be a fully programmable board, carried with software library for low-level and mid-level basic control functions for Gottlieb System 80/B pinballs.

The PRB carries the following interesting components onboard:
- 8x8 led matrix, used to show either current light or switches states
- optional LCD alphanumeric display (16x2, on upper-left side) to display messages
- 10x led strip to show current solenoid outputs
- SD card as non-volatile memory for settings and statistic data

The SIMulation design approach requires programming the board from scratch and does not  rely on original ROMs code and System 80/B hardware emulation.
Software developement is in C/C++ language under VS.Micro, using Arduino framework.
The microcontroller I used is an Arduino compatible "Teensy 4.0" , which offerts much power and memory available. 
I've running in many troubles and a lot of time to resolve them, much more than expected, spending really a LOT of time... but I can finally see first encouraging results now.
The project developement is open to external contributions.

Link for actual HW board revision: https://easyeda.com/fabvolpi/sys80b-sim-prb-rev2
Link for Arduino software: 
 - Sys80b PRB driver: https://github.com/fabrz71/sys80b-board
 - Sys80b PRB low-level and mid-level software library: https://github.com/fabrz71/sys80b-sim-rb

Thanks for watching!