Post by Duncan BrownPost by Kerry ImmingPost by Duncan BrownI have seen some Williams documentation referencing the fact that some
Congo games shipped with WPC-95 boards instead of WPC-S, as a test of
the new system. So that probably explains why only Congo used the .1
schematic set (if that is in fact the case.)
The .1 CPU schematic lists no part number for the schematic Revision
Level 8, and A-20119-XXXXX as the board number in question.
The .2 CPU schematic lists a part number of 16-10195 for the schematic
at Revision Level 1, and still A-20119-XXXXX for the board in question.
The .3 CPU schematic lists a part number of 16-10296 for the schematic
at Revision Level 0, and now the board in question has part number
A-21377-XXXXX
I have not studied the teeny-tiny details in question to find all the
differences. I leave that to Where's Waldo fans...
PinWiki lists a service bulletin 86 for the early/prototype games.
http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Williams_WPC#WPC-95_CPU_2
- Kerry
OK, I misspoke earlier - Congo shipped with all WPC-95, but added
support for BACKwards compatibility with WPC-S when the kits came out
(for the obvious reason that anything you'd want to kit was going to be
WPC-S, as Congo was the first production WPC-95 game.)
Jack-Bot was the game I was thinking of, that shipped some with WPC-95.
I have an operator's manual supplement for WPC-95 for Jack-Bot, plus a
note handwritten by someone (probably Steve Kordek) along the top of a
manila folder, saying that 100 of them were shipped that way as a test
of the new board system.
Duncan
Who Dunnit also shipped with a handful of WPC-95 games.
I wasn't there, and I know you were, but Congo was released as a WPC-95
game, a kit game that would go in any narrow body WPC-S or WPC-95 game,
and then as a 2nd run of complete games to use up the left over 'kits'
that didn't sell well apparently.
The 2nd run of complete games were run after TOTAN in B&W cabinets (I
know this, because I had a B&W Congo with pieces of TOTAN cab used
inside the cabinet)
There are at least 3 different WPC-95 MPUs, I've seen examples of 3
different varieties from boards that have come in for repair.
The earliest of WPC-95 CPUs from Congos and Jackbots had a service
bulletin released, #86, that had a trace cut, additional diode and
additional resistor to fix an issue with premature battery drain.
One later revision had 2 electrolytic caps above the ASIC, another only
1. I can dig into my repair notes to see if I wrote down anything else
of interest about them.
Congo didn't support WPC-S until ROM version 2.0, when the routine was
added to detect whether the game had a WPC-S or WPC-95 MPU.
Ted Estes nicely took the time to explain to me how the CPU ROM would
detect which board it was installed in - as a WPC-S game had functions
on the fliptronics board, while the WPC-95 had the functions on the
Driver board.
WPC-95 has more video RAM than WPC does. The CPU tries to read and write
to that video RAM.
If it succeeds, it's a WPC-95 board
If it fails, it's a WPC-S board.
I had an alkaline damaged CPU board come in last year that worked great
with its early 1.3 ROM, but when I upgraded it to the 2.1 release as
part of the repair, the flippers and a couple solenoids stopped working!
Sure enough, an address line wasn't making it off the CPU board due to a
via that was compromised by alkaline. A jumper fixed that problem!