Gottlieb Upgrade/Project Panthera Revival: an Electronics Rebuild Project

[cass2024]

Hello Pinball Lovers,

Myself and 3 other students are taking our final term in an Electronics Engineering Technologist diploma in British Columbia, Canada. We have a final Capstone project where we showcase the skills we have acquired throughout the program. As you may have already guessed, our project is to rebuild an old Gottlieb Panthera pinball machine!

The machine had been previously worked on as a project back in 2007. It had original MPUs and driver boards removed and replaced with their own design. Panthera was running a PinMAME ROM via an old brick of a laptop and used ethernet connections between the laptop and other PCBs. In its current state, the machine did not work. So we've decided it needs a new breath of life!

Pictures of old project PCBs and wiring​

Our objectives of the project are as follows:
- Replace PCBs with LISY80 and our own driver board
- Run MPF software on Raspberry Pi Zero via LISY80 board
- Replace VFD Displays with 7-seg LED displays
- Replace speaker and include original game sounds
- Retain original look and feel of Panthera

All hardware for the playfield is original with the exception of the lights, which have been replaced with LEDs. As we wait for some components to get the LISY80 board up and running we have been doing our best to map and test equipment. All solenoids and LEDs have been tested and confirmed to work properly.

Our biggest hurdle at the moment is documenting the wiring from the original board. I have included another post about the lamp assignments here: https://pinballnirvana.com/forums/threads/cable-connector-wire-assignments-help.23247/
My hope is that we can start mapping the wires out by testing them through the LISY one at a time but until we have that up and running we will continue to research, trace wires, and scour the internet for any documentation.

We plan to maintain this thread for the duration of the project, and will continue to update as we go. Wish us luck!

-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 2

We made a list of priorities that included the following:

• Chase wires and label hardware under playfield
• Map out the wire harnesses that were modified
• Research function of driver board and how FETs are working to activate components
• Scour schematics, manuals, and create project deadlines
• Populate the LISY80 board when parts order arrives

Playfield labeling- starting to make sense
​

We had to divide and conquer this past week in order to make efficient use of our time. Something that we were struggling to figure out was where a 24V source was applied to the lamps and solenoids in the original machines. We were not aware of an auxilary lamp driver board until about Thursday. If anyone can offer any insight on the 24V supply it would be greatly appreciated!

Our original idea of designing our own driver board is being reconsidered since we have a LISY driver board on the way. The initial thought was to use the LISY driver board to get some things up and running ASAP and then going back and designing our own. However, we are missing a sound board, an auxilary lamp driver board, and have no pop bumper driver boards. We may have to pivot and design something smaller like a pop bumper driver board to ensure that we can still tackle our objectives.

Our first parts order arrived and I was able to populate the LISY80 board. The only part that was back ordered were the 2x 3.3k resistor arrays, so I got creative and fashioned up my own so we can still test the board out this week. The Pi is flashed up with the necessary image file and we will configure our machine to run with LISYcontrol to begin so we can test some hardware out next week. The plan is to eventually convert to Mission Pinball Framework and make some fun tweaks to the software.

LISY80 board populating. Note the homemade resistor array
​

More to follow next week! Stay tuned.

-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 3
Sept. 15-21

LISY80 Programming/Connectivity
Our next major objective is to gain wireless control of the different solenoids on the playfield. In order to achieve this, we had to finish programming the lisy80 board and get LISYcontrol up and running.

It took a bit of troubleshooting to successfully program the PICs. Initially, I followed the 'simple flasher' procedure that is documented in the lisy user manual. We had success in programming the Switches PIC but got errors for the other two ICs. I then took those ICs and attempted to use an old PICkit 3 programmer but they were not recognized. The socket that fit the switches PIC worked properly, so I moved the display hex file to the 'one-shot' directory under lisy/picpm/one_shot. Then a jumper was placed on the switches socket and voila! The Display PIC confirmed proper programming. I repeated this step for the remaining Solenoid/Lamp PIC.

Next a static IP had to be assigned to our Raspberry Pi at the school network to streamline connecting to the Pi via SSH or LISYcontrol in the future. We were able to ping the device successfully and gain our first access to LISYcontrol! Once our new driver board arrives we will begin by testing the solenoid and lamp functions.

PCB Design
Our research into designing a pop bumper board continued. We are hoping to have some working multiSim models going by next week so we can start prototyping them on a breadboard.

Wire Management
More and more wire management/rewiring. Since we're dealing with a gutted and re-worked machine our goal to restore original wiring schematics has been quite the undertaking. Thankfully our team has been hard at it and we should be good to test the solenoids by next week.

Project Management
Our school semester has other assignments and deadlines for other project-related content. This week we were assigned to create a sketch of the project timeline by using a Gantt Chart. We've inserted milestones and allocated tasks based on previous requirements and team strengths. Apologies if this is too hard to read.
View attachment pinballRevivalGantt.jpg

Gantt Chart- Project completion by December 12, 2024
​

Props!
Huge thanks to Ralf @ Lisy Development for supplying a script to ensure our lisy80 was starting up correctly with the PICs programmed properly. He was quick to respond (despite a huge time difference) and very helpful when I was trying to SSH into the Pi. All of his projects are DIY and he provides the schematics and BOM files for ordering through a PCB builder! All the files provided have worked seamlessly. We are looking forward to the custom capabilities in the future!

 

[cass2024]

Week 4
Sept 22-28

Grounds, grounds, grounds
LISYcontrol - First Milestone!
Now that LISYcontrol was up and running, we finished roughing in the wiring for 24V supply to the solenoids and the control wires back to the driver board. On first testing late into one evening, nothing worked. The next morning we powered up the machine to ensure our voltages were what we'd expect and one of the solenoids we tested fired, without the LISY80 board even connected. Weird.

We realized that we had incorrectly separated the AC ground and DC ground on the boards and it had caused one of the MOSFETs gates to be unpredictable when we powered up the machine. This completed the ground to that solenoid we tried testing the night before, causing it to fire. After fixing that ground, LISYcontrol worked on demand! That was a great moment for the group.

Through further testing we had unexpected behavior on some of the other drop gate solenoids. Basically when we tried firing one, others would unexpectedly fire. After putting our heads together, we again determined that it was probably due to the potential difference between the ground going into the LISY80 board and the ground coming out of the driver board. A connection between the two provided us with complete control of all solenoids!!

Lesson of the day: GROUNDS!

Pop Bumper PCB Design
Working through simulations and breadboards to obtain a 40ms pulse and reduced noise at the output of the PIC18. MPLabIDE syntax for creating delays has been completed and the basic delay code is working, however it needs to be tested with a push button.

Oscilloscope images of Trial 1 and Trial 2: 40ms outputs, respectively
​

We are having some issues with MOSFETs and have concluded that we need to find a better part to meet the needs of the bumper board. Further research next week will have to be done to find a better MOSFET. Tasks that remain to be done on PCB Design:

• fix noise from PIC18 to get a better clock pulse
• Swap MOSFET
• 'push to test' mechanism for both bumper

Our hope is to have the PCB design populated by the October 5th.

Pinhalla Pinball- local support from the community
We were lucky enough to have a local business open the doors to us to check out another system80 machine, the God of War pinball machine. One of their pinball technicians welcomed us in and answered any questions we had. It was a valuable resource for us to see some of the original components and wiring. Funny to see all of the transformers and power to handle the different voltages and AC/DC supply. Our machine will be running on just a 24V and 5V supply when we are finished.

Huge thanks to Steve and pinball tech Chris for helping us out!

 

[cass2024]

Vancouver Island Pinball Expo
Cedar, British Columbia, Canada
Sept 29

Two of our group members made a road trip just south of Nanaimo, British Columbia to attend the Vancouver Island Pinball Expo. We left with a clear indication that the pinball community is truly awesome!

All out on the vehicle wrap!
​

The event had food trucks, beer sales, pinball swag, an outside TV to view tournament play, and tons of pinball machines. We made sure to get our money's worth on the entry fee by playing as many games as we could. My new personal favorite machine is the Williams' 1989 version of the Black Knight 2000, and our other member really enjoyed Stern's Godzilla.

We really enjoyed our trip and even managed to connect with a local owner of a Panthera machine. Although it wasn't present at the expo, we may look to connect in the future to ensure our game looks, feels, and sounds like the original (with our own unique flavor).

Just a small sample size of the variety of games available to play at the VIPE​

 

[shiva]

Damn. I just missed that...

Oh yes, we are truely awesome.

 

[bontango]

We are having some issues with MOSFETs and have concluded that we need to find a better part to meet the needs of the bumper board. Further research next week will have to be done to find a better MOSFET. Tasks that remain to be done on PCB Design:

• fix noise from PIC18 to get a better clock pulse
• Swap MOSFET
• 'push to test' mechanism for both bumper

Our hope is to have the PCB design populated by the October 5th.

What PIC18 you are using? I had difficulties with PICs and MOSFETs at my version 'v3' of my 'GOPOP'
I still need to publish v3, here is the link to v1 which do use a TIP120 https://lisy.dev/pbdb.html
There were problems with v3 in case the used MOSFET had large gate capacity.
With a PIC12F615 it helped to add a 1K gate resistor, with a PIC12F1501 I was even not able to get it work.
Hope that helps

 

[cass2024]

Hey Ralf,

apologies for slow reply... We're using a PIC18F1320. We did have issues with large gate capacity at first. After some tinkering I was able to get the IRL540 to work but I had a floating ground that caused some leakage from D-S that kept one of the test LEDs on slightly.

Here's an image of the schematic we have thus far. Using 1M Ohm resistors to ground w/ 100 Ohm leading to the IRL540 Gates seemed to work. I am yet to try this design hooked up to the physical solenoids so hopefully I've got the inputs correct.

edit: I moved a decoupling capacitor off the 24V, and fixed the jumpers

 

[bontango]

interisting, please keep us updated
About the inputs double check your connector. Its a 6pin with a 'key' at position 3, not a 5pin as in your schematic.
Also note that 5Volt as well as Ground for the pop bumper boards is coming from J6 at the CPU!
So make sure you have a good contact ( new crimps ) there

 

[cass2024]

Week 5 & 6
Sept 30-Oct 11

Our playfield wiring has been well underway and is getting close to completion. A few parts orders, upcoming tests, and project presentations have kept us back from finishing by the end of week 6. Our anticipated deadline for wiring was by the end of week 7 and we look to be close to that mark. Here's a snapshot of the underside of the table:

Still a ways to go but mapping and wire management has been thorough​

We received the shipment of LED displays from Brett Davis @ XPin. Before shipment Brett was kind enough to short the connection for the buck converter to allow the 6-digit displays to run off a lower voltage than the traditional +60/+42VDC.

We were hoping to run the displays off of +5VDC but the displays were extremely dim. We shorted the 27Ohm series resistor and still found them to be too dim, but increasing the voltage supply up to +6VDC made the LEDs considerably better. We can use an ATX power supply we picked up on the weekend which can provide 16A@ +12VDC and we'll just add a larger series resistance.

These displays look really great when lit up and we are excited to send update photos with full brightness next week. Can't wait to see these with the back glass when we get testing soon! Thanks to xPin :)

XPin displays installed and working first light! Some adjustments for brightness still necessary. See next week's post!
​

Speaking of our power supply, the DC output ratings are as follows:

20A@3.3V,
16A@+5V,
16A@12V (x2),
0.5A@-12V,
2.5A@5Vsb​

It's going to be overkill for our project but we wanted to include lots of extra headroom and options to add peripherals if another capstone group wanted to work on the machine in the future.

To build fuse protection and power buses, we've completed a power demand analysis for the following expected loads:

• All playfield LEDs- 2.05A@3.3VDC​
• LED Display- approx 500mA@6VDC​
• LED light strips: 8m total- 10.8A @5VDC​
• Solenoid peak demand: 3.496A@24VDC​

For solenoid peak demand I assumed the most coils that would be activated at one time would be 3 (2x flippers and one extra). I calculated peak current with respective coil windings and pulse times, and determined that the pop bumper would actually draw the next most current. Summing these I found the final peak current to be just under 3.5A. Here's an example of the flipper calculation:

​

Finally, I wanted to touch on the pop bumper breadboard circuit we had been working on. One of the issues that was presenting itself was a leakage current through the IRL540N from D-S (see left image below). This kept the LED on when no active 5V input was applied to the PIC18F1320. When the gate voltage was read on an oscilloscope, a floating ground was observed which we believe may have been causing the current to flow through the yellow LED. The PIC18F1320 was arranged in a low-side, active high setting.

Through some research I believe the active high state could be the cause of the floating ground, so we will investigate this into week 7.

Yellow LED on left appeared much dimmer in person.​

Thanks for checking in!
-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 7
Oct 13-Oct 19

We hit a few milestones this week.

PCB Design
A requirement for our capstone project is that we implement a PCB design. When week 6 began we assessed our progress on the pop bumper PCB and decided to play it safe and design a simple LED with in-line resistor. These would replace the old playfield LEDs used by the previous project, which had no current-limiting resistors on any LEDs. We felt that soldering on in-line resistors would look sloppy and be an immense amount of time, and it allows us to choose a 'warmer' light than the existing LEDs used.

We finalized work on the LED board and double checked components and layers for their production. Then we inspected the layout, made some small revisions, and sent off an order to JLCPCB. With the mandatory PCB ordered in time, it freed us up to focus on getting the final touches and programming done for the Pop Bumper PCB.

PCB Design, but will use 5V instead of 3.3 as we have decided to simplify power supplies.​

Pop Bumper PCB
With some more time to focus on the pop bumper, we picked up on a few errors from our first version of the schematic. First, our idea to include 2 MOSFETs to control 2 different pop bumpers would not work unless we had a second switch input included. Second, we added a resistor in series upstream of the branch between RB7 and the pushbutton. We went back to the lab and worked on the source code for the PIC18F1320.

By programming the PIC18 in an active low (with pullup) setting, we were able to successfully eliminate the floating ground issue we experienced before and registered digital outputs from our output pins. After we solved this problem, we tested a simulated load with an LED and resistor and saw the expected voltage from D-S. Success! We used polling to get our digital outputs but will update the source code with interrupt service routines and share them on this thread in the future.

Our J1 connector will use screw terminal blocks for connections.

The current version of PCB design has been changed to the following:



Wiring
We made significant progress on wiring and have completed the general illumination (GI) LEDs and almost all of the CPU-controlled LEDs on the playfield. Still some remaining on the backboard but since it's GI, we'll leave until we receive new LED/resistor combo on a PCB.

Each LED will receive 5V supply, with GI grounds connected together and CPU-controlled LED cathode connections brought back to the driver board. We're using Molex crimps in 3D printed card connectors that Ralf @ lisy.dev has provided STL files on his website.

To distribute +5VDC and +24VDC more efficiently, we installed terminal blocks to reduce wire clutter and clean the inside of the playfield box up. All of the driver board grounds were completed, with each wire labelled and installed with clear heat shrink.

Wireways formed with GI and CPU-controlled LEDs. Very close to testing!​

LED Display
As promised, I've included a look at the xPin displays with better brightness. They look so good in person! Looks like I knocked a connection loose when plugging the card connector in, as all digits were working before the weekend...

​

Looking to have wiring complete and our LED PCBs populated by the end of next week.
Cheers everyone!
-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 8
Oct. 20-26

Playfield Wiring Illumination Complete

Our team split up on our project day on Monday with two spending time soldering/testing the PCBs while the other two dismantled the old LEDs and mounted new ones. You can see the three iterations of lights this machine has had. The second PCB (silver) has no current limiting resistor because the previous design used PWM to control the current. Our design really cleaned up the underside of the playfield and the warm light looks fantastic on the machine. Note that we had a design change and the +3.3V silkscreen is no longer the case, we made an ECO to use +5V to simplify our power supplies in the machine enclosure.


Testing the warmth!

HiFiBerry miniAmp and Altsound
We are using an external soundcard coupled with the LISY80 board to produce our sounds for the game. The speaker was wired up and we successfully reproduced a test message built into the lisy80 image file. To obtain the original game sound files, Virtual pinMAME was installed, where the Panthera sounds were ripped using Altsound and .csv. We had some trouble with porting those sounds to the LISY and being able to make them work, but will investigate further next week.

Recording altsound​

3D Printed Standoffs
Our first prototype of a 3D printed standoff to elevate the driver board and lisy80 board are in the works. A couple of test prints were made to ensure thru-hole measurements were correct, and a design has been started. It's not the highest priority right now but thought I would post our current iteration to see how much changes in a few weeks. The plan is to have interconnecting bases between the lisy/driver board, with WS2812B addressable LEDs to line the inside of the standoffs. We really want future students at our school to see how clean it looks under the hood.

Initial 3D standoff prototype.

​

We are getting closer to testing and hope to be having pinMAME operable in a week or 2. Our team is getting excited!

-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 9
Oct. 27-Nov 2

Progress Presentation
As part of our semester, our team is required to provide a presentation on the progress made since September. Our focus was on 5 main aspects:

• Playfield Wiring
• LED Display replacment
• Lamp LED replacement
• Pop Bumper PCB Design
• Wireless control successful using LisyControl

It was great to see the progress other capstone groups have made. There is a wide range of projects this year, from a water ROV to identify overboard victims, a fishtank monitoring station, and a musical instrument effects unit.

Our team, left to right: Chris, Sam, Sarah, and Ayoub.

First PinMAME Run!
Our team was successful in completing the playfield and backboard wiring (save the coin door/tilt wiring). We wanted to try a pinMAME run for the first time after testing each LED and solenoid on LisyControl first. Once all lights were successful, we wired in a pushbutton for the play/test button and did rough wiring for the replay button. We fired it up... and voila! The game started up and worked well! Big victory for the team.

Successful Sound Ported!
Getting the sound working properly was a bit finicky. There was a lot of back and fourth changing configuration settings but the issues might have been due to incorrectly setting the DIP settings on the Lisy board when we were initially troubleshooting pinMAME startup. After disabling the Slam switch and setting the internal sound from the HiFiBerry miniAmp, the sound worked!

Here is a video of the game in operation:


Link here:

We are waiting on delivery of our pop bumper PCBs and need to work out a few kinks in some switches, but Panthera is looking alive again! Some tweaking of the sound files will be done to get a better sample of each file. We will have to watch some videos of gameplay to find out which sounds are not interrupted and which sounds continue to loop.

Big week for us! Tune in next time...
-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 10
Nov. 3th- Nov. 9th

Q/T Relay Wiring
To get our project started initially, we wired the solenoids without the use of the Q/T relay so that we could get the system up and running with simple wiring. After we got the ROMs up, our plan was to then add in the Q/T relay and tilt function when we knew that the solenoids were firing correctly.

The relays have been mapped out and will be ready to wire once we receive a shipment of Molex card connector pins. We have no 6.3 VAC like the original general illumination lights from the 1980's version. Since we've replaced all lights with LEDs, 5V is wired directly into the Q/T relay for the lights.


Labelling for Q/T Relay...

Our First Big Ooopsie...
We had to separate the CPU Controlled solenoids from the 'always on' solenoids with the two +24V supply streams from our wire harness. After completion, our group fired up LISYcontrol to test to make sure the CPU controlled solenoids were still working.

We got stuck in a boot loop and one member noticed that the ink on the switches PIC label was looking like it was blotchy, almost as if it was touched with a wet finger or had gotten really hot. Another member checked and confirmed that the PIC was getting very hot, so we powered everything down immediately. On inspection of the system we believe that the issue was one of the card connector pins from the A1-A3 harness had crossed to the wrong underside and could have possibly damaged the PIC.

Of course, the one part we didn't have extra parts for! We have ordered replacement PICs and hope to resolve the problem as soon as we receive the shipment and program the new PICs. Fingers crossed that the issue was at the card connector and not something major.

You can clearly see the 'switches' label ink got too hot!
​

Our group hopes to be back at it early next week. Once our PIC problem is fixed and our solenoids are working as expected, we'll continue the wiring of Q/T relay and the tilt function. Looking forward to getting this checked off!

Thanks for reading,
-Capstone Crew

 

[cass2024]

Week 11
Nov. 10th- Nov 16th

Back in Action
We received the new PIC from digiKey and got to work right away on Tuesday morning. After building a new card connector for A1-A3, and programming the PIC, everything worked again as expected. Glad to see we didn't do any more damage!

Q/T Relay Complete
Before wiring everything together our team went over each connection to make sure we were all on the same page for connection of the Q/T relay. These relays are simple but an intuitive way to cut the power to the lights and solenoids during a tilt. It took a bit of staring at the wires but drawing it out on the marker board helped us get it on the first try. Booting into LISYcontrol confirmed the relays were operating as we expected.

Drawing out our Q/T relay before making any terminations
​

NEAR DISASTER!!!!!!!!!
On Friday morning two of our group members were in the lab working on trying to figure out our switch 67 issue (SEE: https://pinballnirvana.com/forums/threads/switch-67-outhole-gottlieb-system-80.23370/).

Then there was a noise and water started seeping out of the ceiling tiles. The waterflow quickly built and within a minute it was a waterfall just 5 feet from our machine. We acted quickly to get everything across the room and in a safe location. Minutes later the ceiling tiles started crumbling and showered down even more water. Facilities maintenance was able to respond extremely fast and have the water shut off and the room secured. Luckily we had been around to move the machine to a safe location... if it was earlier in the morning we might have had a non-functional machine for our capstone symposium date in December.

Remaining Work...
At this point in the semester, we're confident that the remaining work on the machine will be completed by our capstone presentations. Once we figure out what's wrong with switch 67 we're just going to make some minor improvements to wire management. Otherwise we're focusing on our final reports, user manual, and our 20 minute presentation to sum up our work this semester. We'll continue to post about the project but most of our technical work is completed.

As always, thanks for following along and we hope this documentation can be helpful to a future DIY or student group.

-Capstone Crew

 

[SadieKeller]

Hello Pinball Lovers,

Myself and 3 other students are taking our final term in an Electronics Engineering Technologist diploma in British Columbia, Canada. We have a final Capstone project where we showcase the skills we have acquired throughout the program. As you may have already guessed, our project is to rebuild an old Gottlieb Panthera pinball machine!

The machine had been previously worked on as a project back in 2007. It had original MPUs and driver boards removed and replaced with their own design. Panthera was running a PinMAME ROM via an old brick of a laptop and used ethernet connections between the laptop and other PCBs. In its current state, the machine did not work. So we've decided it needs a new breath of life!

View attachment 44117 View attachment 44118 View attachment 44119

Pictures of old project PCBs and wiring​

Our objectives of the project are as follows:
- Replace PCBs with LISY80 and our own driver board
- Run MPF software on Raspberry Pi Zero via LISY80 board
- Replace VFD Displays with 7-seg LED displays
- Replace speaker and include original game sounds
- Retain original look and feel of Panthera

All hardware for the playfield is original with the exception of the lights, which have been replaced with LEDs. As we wait for some components to get the LISY80 board up and running we have been doing our best to map and test equipment. All solenoids and LEDs have been tested and confirmed to work properly.

Our biggest hurdle at the moment is documenting the wiring from the original board. I have included another post about the lamp assignments here: https://pinballnirvana.com/forums/threads/cable-connector-wire-assignments-help.23247/
My hope is that we can start mapping the wires out by testing them through the LISY one at a time but until we have that up and running we will continue to research, trace wires, and scour the internet for any documentation.

We plan to maintain this thread for the duration of the project, and will continue to update as we go. Wish us luck!

-Capstone Crew

Awesome to see a Panthera rebuild! For durable and compact electronic interfacing in restoration projects, I recommend looking into components like the PRCM12-2DP. It offers strong resistance in classic environments without compromising signal integrity.

Awesome project—restoring vintage pinball machines like Panthera is both challenging and rewarding.