Looking for an MCS-4-01 board? historic pinball project!

[pgethea]

Hi everyone,
I have a historic pinball machine in my basement, it was originally a old Electromechanical machine but was given to some guys that consulted for Bally back in the early 70's and they modified it to use a Intel 4004 microprocessor. It was the first microprocessor based pinball machine ever created, even ended up being an exhibit in court in a patent lawsuit between Bally and Williams! I completely stumbled upon it, bought it by mistake and was able to uncover it's history. If you want to read all about my pinball machine and it's interesting place in pinball/microprocessor history, the story was published years ago in GameRoom Magazine, here's a copy of the article:

http://www.tzannes.net/pinball/flicker.pdf

As you can read in the article, I am missing the actual board with the 4004, we are trying to recreate it, we are getting close. But I am pretty sure it was simply a MCS-4-01 prototype board. Does anyone on here have one of these?

Thanks, any and all information appreciated.

Alexis

[johnorun]

WOw!
Amazing story. You really put your passion into this research. Shall we nickname you "Columbo"? lol

[jrmunro]

Maybe you can get this from 6a6ar09a. Look near the bottom of the page.

http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2860&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=375

[smithy]

How many gazillion dollars do you have to buy such a board?? It won't be cheap....

[Chiefish]

Well actually it shouldnt cost all that much, I doubt they used A full board of grey traced mcs 4 chips to do this back in the day, its possible but not probable.
I myself have always loved to play pinball machines, and can attest to the fact that I will still play a pinball game over most other video games at an arcade. Finding this machine to a pinball fan is like finding a 4004 es to us. One in a million or greater.
As a fan of both chips and pinball games I would volunteer any chip I have from my MCS4 collection to get this game up and working, as long as I could have the chance of playing it and trying to break that 30 year old record on it. Heck it would be alot more fun than just looking at it in my antistatic collection tray.

[pgethea]

Chiefish, thanks for your generous offer. We are in the process now of recreating the Brain, I actually have plastic versions of the whole chipset (4004, 4002, 4008, 4009 and 4289) The only one we could not find was the timing chip, I think it was a 4201. Do you or anyone else have that one? if you do, it might be useful to us. If we can't find it, we will have to recreate the timing circuit using modern parts.

The plan is to get the Brain recreated, tested and get the game working again and then take the game to a couple pinball shows, for people to see and play it. So you might have a chance to play it someday and break that high score. I also plan on writing a follow-up article on the process of rebuilding the Brain.

One thing that would be cool, if we did take to a show, would be to have a gold ceramic 4004 in it, like the original Brain did. it would much more impressive than the plastic chips I have, so if you are serious about your offer, I might take you up on it. I wouldn't want to keep the chip, just borrow it for use during the show. That assumes that these chips you guys are collecting still work, do you think they do?

[Chiefish]

Actually I do have a C4201 in my collection. But I can not gaurantee it works as I got it with a bunch of chips not in thier original sockets. But my C4004 did come in its original board that looked fine.

[pgethea]

would you be willing to "donate" your 4201 to this project? You would get full credit in the followup article, of course. What's a 4201 worth anyway? are there any plastic or cemamic ones out there that might be less valuable?

[Chiefish]

I would be willing to give that up without much hesitation for the project. As I have told you before When I buy chips, most of the time I spend wisly on them and this one was just a bonus chip in a group of chips I bought for others I really wanted. So you can count me in on that for sure. As for the C4004 lets see how things turn out with getting it running first and then decide if you really want to borrow an expensive chip.

[lither]

[pgethea]

OK, let me check if we need it and I will let you know. I can also buy one on Ebay, even though it's a bit pricey.

I agree about the C4004, let's see how things go, it's early yet...

[Chiefish]

Cool just let me know if I can help on this.

[JAC]

[Windmiller]

Cool project, look forward to hearing about the outcome.

[pgethea]

Well, I guess predictably, no MCS-04 board surfaced as a result of this post, but it was useful in that it lead us to another chip we were missing. Chiefish has generously donated his C4201 chip to the cause, so we will have the original timing chip along with a bunch of plastic chips from the 4004 family.

I will keep everyone posted on the progress, thanks for the encouraging and kind words.