Gottlieb Grand Slam (Gottlieb, 1972) Help me out dudes!?

[teamhex]

Well Iv been for the last 2 weeks working on a pinball machine I bought from down the street. I'm going to post all the pics below in order as I took em. Well the basic story is, I played it when I bought it and everything seemed to work. Now the reels don't reset at the beginning of the game, that's not the main issue though. My dad was jacking with the power button(sounded like he turned it on and off to fast) now it wont turn on...at all. Also while I was playing my flippers felt a bit weak, and made a loud hum if I held the buttons down. Im 21 and dont know jack about this old technology. If this were a computer im sure I would be able to easily trouble shoot this.

Gottlieb Grand Slam 1972

 

[Phoenixx]

The older VP versions will crash on Vista

I just checked to see if thats true.

Result: Not necessarily...

VP6: Does not start -> Expired (EDIT: See Edit)

VP7: (0.7.7012) - Starts - Table Boots - Table works - Some partially invisible dropwalls - Ball can get stuck in 4-wire ramps - Exits to desktop without crashing

Thats in deed surprising since i expected the dreaded XPSP2 related 'Crash-To-Desktop-On-Exit' Bug. Still the latest VP8 exe is recommended because of the other problems mentioned,...

EDIT: Did set the time to 2005 and ran VP6. Result see VP7.

 

[sleepy]

Sorry about that. I'm only going by the statements of others using Vista, although that could have been a number of things and not Vista itself.

 

[Phoenixx]

No need to be sorry,...i didnt post this to 'embarass' you, i just thought since you dont have Vista you would like to know whether or not older versions really do crash on it. And as we see, its not necessarily the case.

Of course i cant speak for others, (or better said their systems), but here it worked perfectly fine. If it werent for the issues i mentioned there would be no reason not to use VP6 and 7 under Vista. I even thought VP6 and 7 worked better in so far as they seemed to load a table in about 50% of the time VP8 and 9 need,...

 

[teamhex]

Its not just when you try to play a table, when you try to select pieces of the play field in edit mode it locks and crashes.

 

[sleepy]

I'm under the impression that Compatibility Mode also sets the DirectX to use earlier compatible versions of it.
Visual Pinball was written for DX7 while the current VP beta 9x is updated to DX9, so you might try VP9 with Compatibility Mode set to XP just to see if it crashes.

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

The only way to fail....

Perservere teamhex. You'll get there, and it's F*%king worth it if you like pinball!

See if you can generally isolate the problem (crash dumps, backtrace reports) and give detailed information for us (well sleepy and phoenixx probably) to work with. Start with a system spec.

One thing you might want to try is incrementally turning down graphics hardware acceleration. Sorted out a few problems I was having....

Once you've got it working, try the 3DArcade frontend (see thread 3D Arcade Frontend - Pinball Nirvana Forums)

Got your lamps working on Grand Slam yet? I presume you've tested the bulbs....

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

VPinMame in Vista

Used Phoenixx's installer today while setting up my uncles new vista (32bit) machine. ViPinMame worked straight away.....

 

[teamhex]

I don't know if I cant turn down acceleration. These are my specs.
Sorry its from a signature on computerforum. Sweet, and the links seem to work too. I didn't know you could copy and paste the text and it took code.
Antec 900
ASUS P5Q
IC2D E8400@ 3.6GHz
Silent Knight 2
Radeon HD 4870
Mushkin RedLine 4Gigz 960MHz
Ultra X2 750watt PS
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750gig HD
22" Westinghouse LCD

 

[sleepy]

I'm curious. What does running DXDiag.exe > Display tab > graphics tests from Start > Run indicate? I once upgraded my drivers and found that D3D was disabled. I had to roll back to older drivers.
You can also lower Hardware acceleration in DXDiag.exe. There's a slider for it.

By any chance do you have fraps installed? Others report trouble with VP and fraps.

http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/search.php?searchid=136859

If you've downloaded a ROM to the VPinMAME\Roms folder, try opening the VPinMAME Setup.exe > Test button and running the ROM to check for trouble from the VPinMAME side.

 

[teamhex]

I'm curious. What does running DXDiag.exe > Display tab > graphics tests from Start > Run indicate? I once upgraded my drivers and found that D3D was disabled. I had to roll back to older drivers.
You can also lower Hardware acceleration in DXDiag.exe. There's a slider for it.

By any chance do you have fraps installed? Others report trouble with VP and fraps.

http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/search.php?searchid=136859

If you've downloaded a ROM to the VPinMAME\Roms folder, try opening the VPinMAME Setup.exe > Test button and running the ROM to check for trouble from the VPinMAME side.

I do have fraps installed, however im not using it. DxDiag just shows driver and System information.

 

[sleepy]

You mean DXDiag.exe doesn't have D3D/video card tests and Enable/Disable buttons on the Display tab in DX10/Vista?

 

[Phoenixx]

You mean DXDiag.exe doesn't have D3D/video card tests and Enable/Disable buttons on the Display tab in DX10/Vista?

Nope. All gone. For sound too. Theres not a damn button or slider left - DXDiag is 100% worthless in Vista.

Thank Hollywood and the Content Protection Lobby,...

 

[sleepy]

I read that the ATI WDM drivers for Vista had some problems.
Are the Catalyst drivers up to date?

http://support.amd.com/us/psearch/P...PU+Download+Detail&ostype=&keywords=&items=20

 

[Meecro Hyperion]

Try disabling Catalyst A.I in the Catalyst Control Centre

 

[teamhex]

Try disabling Catalyst A.I in the Catalyst Control Centre

What does AI even do, that and why do they even bother putting AA and AF settings in the CCC. This should all be controlled in games.

 

[sleepy]

The Catalyst AI is a set of optimizations which sometimes conflict with programs/games, Prince of Persia apparently.
http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/atiop/

Just so you know, Visual Pinball had problems displaying EMReels on ATI cards up until VP7, while other glitches may be due to the matter of VP using 2D graphics plus fixes for things like keeping the ball on top of the 2D graphics, so there may be a problem with layers and blits in VP or when using ATI/ ATI AI and DX3D as a replacement for the former use of 2D DirectDraw/DX7 in VP.

With the EMReel issue on ATI we used to have to turn off DirectDraw to get the EMReels to display images at all,

 

[Phoenixx]

...why do they even bother putting AA and AF settings in the CCC. This should all be controlled in games.

Some games dont have any settings for AA and AF, and others would not max out the cards capabilities with their internal options.

Thats why the CCC provides these settings so they can be applied on a general level. That way even the oldest games can have nice AA and AF,...

 

[teamhex]

Some games dont have any settings for AA and AF, and others would not max out the cards capabilities with their internal options.

Thats why the CCC provides these settings so they can be applied on a general level. That way even the oldest games can have nice AA and AF,...

I figured thats what it was for, but I dont think there would be a large change unless the game supports aa and af