Dot Matrix Display

[Eddie]

Im working on a Plexiglass display of the Pinball Circus ( I managed to Purchase the Ringmaster from the game) anyway I thought that it would be cool to have the dotmatrix display going on in the back if it were at all possible. What are you thoughts on that?
If the roms were available would it be possible and what would it entail?
If I cant get a Dot matrix display I will just use a print in actual size of the ringmaster lit from behind.
Here are some pics of my foam core mock up before I was finished with it and the Ringmasters Head and hand that I made in Photoshop. Also a pic of the Ringmaster. He has no Head or hand as they are projected behind him in the game. Hence the desire to have that display in my model.
When done it will have the correct color flippers, Start button, Flipper buttons and 2 spotlights. It will not be a Playing machine just a simple display made in Black Plexi with a removable front glass.

Here is a link to the video I posted before . Note the figure of the Rinmaster with the DOT Matrix Display behind it.

The Pinball Circus

[daverob]

If you were to use a genuine pinball dot matrix display, then you would need a CPU board and a DMD driver board to run it as well, along with a suitable set of ROMs for the CPU board and appropriate power supply circuitry. This could get very complicated very quickly and unless you could program the CPU yourself, you would just end up with whatever animations are available in the attract mode of the ROMs you are using.

Personally if I wanted a static display, I'd just make a matrix of orange LEDs in the shape of the ringmasters face and wire them to be lit all the time. Put behind a bit of neutral grey plexi, they would be hard to tell apart from a genuine DMD display. You could use the LED matrix units from PINLED displays (I believe that they will supply the LED parts individually as replacements), wire them up so that all the LEDs are lit and then blank out the ones you don't want lit with paint or black tape.

If I wanted an animated display, then I'd use an LCD display. This could be driven by a PC (probably cannibalise one of the cheap netbook PCs that are available now, ie an EEE PC or aspire one etc). A cheaper alternative would be a portable DVD player with a DVD burned to show an endless loop of the ringmasters head animation. This approach would require minimal hardware hacking, simply cracking open the display and mounting the LCD panel. You wouldn't need to play around with complex software modifications either, as would just need to put your animation together in a video editing package (something which you have already demonstrated your skills in ).

[Eddie]

WOW thx for the info! This is not going to be as easy as I would have liked.

IF I get my paws on the roms I would go for the DMD set up (I only want the attract mode animations anyway)

However your other ideas are very good and are what I may have to do as getting the ROMS may be impossible.

Using the LCD from a dvd player would also be tough because I would have to get the animation the correct size which is fairly large. (The Ringmaster Head is BIG!) as is his hand so I would need a very large screen to show both of them together.

Blocked out LEDs on a matrix board would still look very good even if they were not animated. You would still have a feel for how the real machine looked.

Decisions, Decisions but first the quest for the ROMS!

[daverob]

It's also worth noting, that according to the IPDB the game is a WPC-S machine, so you'd need to get the correct security chip as well as the game ROM.

You'd also need to work out how to make the CPU board think that a power driver board and a playfield are connected (and possibly a sound board), otherwise it will probably just show an error message on the display rather than going into attract mode.

[Eddie]

I think I have come up with a solution. It is based on Daverob's idea of a dvd players LCD

I will use a Digital picture frame's LCD.
I just happend to have one that projects the Ringmaster's head and hand in the exact size required and since it has the slide show feature I can simply use different stills of the head to give a sense of animation.
Too bad I couldnt adjust the speed of that feature
Another plus is that it would screw flat, directly to the back of the machine's case as it does to the cheap wood frame that it comes with! How easy is that?

No need for the ROM's after all Daverob your a genius!!!

Here are 2 pics of the image in actual size. Funny the color only shows when using the flash? As you can see the image is Yellow and not white.