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Part 17: 1985 Pinstar Gamatron Project. Can I get the Robot to Speak?

Pinball Shenanigans·video·30m 26s·analyzed·Nov 15, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Gamatron speech board installation halted by bad ROM chip; resolved via accidental reconnection.

Summary

Mike Duz attempts to add speech functionality to his 1985 Pinstar Gamatron pinball machine by installing a VSU-100 speech board from a Flight 2000. After sourcing instructions from fellow enthusiast Dave Brennan and fabricating custom wiring harnesses, he encounters electrical issues with a deteriorated speech ROM chip and sends the board out for professional repair by Brent Butler. By episode's end, he accidentally reconnects a loose connector and restores the machine to working order.

Key Claims

  • Gamatron (1985 Pinstar conversion) lacks a speech board while the original Flight 2000 had one, resulting in missing audio on single-player starts

    high confidence · Mike compares Gamatron silence to Flight 2000 startup sounds and confirms Gamatron never had speech ROM

  • A third-party vendor created an updated VSU-2 speech board that supports all original games plus Gamatron with custom audio substitution (Gamatron spoken instead of Blastoff)

    medium confidence · Mike describes finding a redesigned VSU-2 drop-in replacement with Gamatron-specific audio modifications but does not name the vendor

  • The speech ROM chip on the recovered Flight 2000 soundboard has severely degraded legs with multiple breaks, making direct reuse impossible

    high confidence · Mike visually inspects chip legs, identifies breaks, confirms rotting condition preventing soldering repair

  • Corey (local technician) is capable of burning new Flight 2000 speech ROMs

    high confidence · Mike reports direct phone conversation with Corey confirming ROM burning capability

  • Brent Butler is a professional board repair specialist handling capacitor replacement, socket replacement, and full restoration of pinball circuit boards

    high confidence · Mike and Corey reference Brent as a board repair expert; Mike plans to send speech board to Brent for 'full treatment'

Notable Quotes

  • “I literally just got to make that connector for here. And then here is the five-pin connector.”

    Mike Duz @ ~10:30 — Describes the relatively simple wiring task required to install the speech board

  • “Well, I got some bad news. I just turned on the machine when I heard a squelch come from the speaker and the machine's not booting up.”

    Mike Duz @ ~18:45 — Critical failure moment revealing the speech board installation caused electrical problems

  • “So, that is definitely a problem. Not sure if I can resolve it or not, but I'm going to pull out this chip, too, and have a look at that.”

    Mike Duz @ ~21:00 — Mike discovers deteriorated ROM chip legs, pivotal moment identifying root cause of failure

  • “I think my mission might be over for now. I was just trying to lightly sand these legs and they're just falling off like freaking rotting teeth.”

    Mike Duz @ ~23:15 — Vivid description of chip degradation forcing suspension of the project

  • “Sadly in Shenanigander fashion, this is the current state. My sound on Gamatron. No steps forward and couple steps backwards.”

    Mike Duz @ ~28:00 — Self-aware summary of project outcome; establishes ongoing saga narrative

Entities

Mike DuzpersonDave BrennanpersonCoreypersonBrent ButlerpersonBigfoot BrucepersonMitch HeirspersonGamatrongameFlight 2000gameVSU-100productVSU-2product

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Corey (local technician) has established service relationships with professional board repair specialist Brent Butler; Corey regularly sends boards to Brent for specialized repairs, indicating sustainable service pipeline

    medium · Mike reports Corey saying 'he's going to be sending out some boards to our board repair guy, Brent Butler, in the very near future'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball enthusiasts actively share technical knowledge and instructions across Pinside forums and private communication; Dave Brennan provided detailed custom wiring schematics to Mike for replication

    high · Mike credits Dave for providing 'perfect instructions' with specific pin-level wiring details; describes searching Gamatron Pinside club thread multiple times

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Gamatron conversion kit was fundamentally incomplete—lacked speech board functionality present in original Flight 2000, requiring modern enthusiasts to reverse-engineer and add missing features

    high · Mike confirms 'Gamatron does not have a speech board and Flight 2000 did'; Flight 2000 startup audio includes speech prompts absent from Gamatron baseline

  • ?

    community_signal: Mike operates with pragmatic problem-solving approach: sources original hardware when possible, fabricates custom connectors to avoid unnecessary parts ordering, documents troubleshooting process on video for community reference

    high · Searches own eBay inventory for forgotten parts; repurposes old wiring instead of ordering new; attempts alligator clip testing before full wiring; documents chip inspection process on camera

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:01
Before I get started on this episode, I'd just like to give a shout out to Fish DS9 who donated the channel a super thanks of $5 US. Thank you very much, Fish. Very much appreciate that. Going to Fork River on Sunday for some action, and I will put that to good use. I'm Mike Dus, [music] and this is Pinball Shenanigans.
0:33
Okay, and just when you thought the Gamatron project was finished, I am back. It's because I had this crazy idea to see if we could make this robot talk using this Stern speech board, which is a VSSU-100.
1:01
And I know it can be done, and I don't see any reason why I can't do it. I have some instructions on how to do it and we're going to go over all those on this video. Okay. So, I discovered when working on this game that every time I hit the start button on player one, you don't really get anything. No sound, no nothing. Watch this.
1:37
we just start getting the background sounds. Thought that was a bit odd. When you add in a second player, you will hear this,
1:56
Pinstar
company
Pinball Shenanigansorganization
Pinsideorganization
Fish DS9person

product_strategy: Third-party vendor has created VSU-2 replacement speech board supporting original Flight 2000 plus custom Gamatron audio with speech substitution (Gamatron/Tron instead of Blastoff)

medium · Mike describes VSU-2 as 'redesigned drop-in replacement' with Gamatron experimental support; notes vendor separated audio into multiple clips (Gamma/Tron) instead of single Blastoff

  • ?

    technology_signal: Speech ROM chip shows severe physical degradation with multiple broken legs; unable to repair via soldering or micro-work, requiring professional chip replacement or ROM burning by external specialist

    high · Visual inspection reveals broken legs on ROM chip; Mike describes legs 'falling off like freaking rotting teeth'; concludes chip is not salvageable

    • which is way cool. But I have since learned that that silence is because Gamatron does not have a speech board and flight 2000 did. So here is what it's supposed to sound like. This is Flight 2000, of course, when you start a game. Listen to this.
    2:25
    and we'll see if we can't get this multiball going. Well, that's Chuck Wart and he got a Well, that's Chuck Wart and he got a prepare for mission and a startup audio sequence. So, I think if I install this speech board, I'm hoping to get one or both, but at the very least, I'll get the prepare for mission sound effect. I'm hoping to get the like five, four, three, two, one sound effects. And of course, when you start multiball, you should get blastoff. Um, which on a side note, some dudes made a brand new speech board, like an all-in-one speech board that does every machine, and they even included Gamatron, and I don't know exactly how they did it, but I think they took little audio clips from all the different Stern games and uh they changed it. So, it doesn't say blastoff. It actually says gammaron. And I think even when you spell gamma, it says gamma. And when you spell tron, it says tron. So it's separated into two audio bits there. So this is the redesigned vsu-2 dropin replacement for the vsu-100. So, it's a pretty sleek design and it supports all of these games plus Gamatron experimental. And I, like I said, I think the only difference between the Flight 2000 sound effects and Gamatron sound effects is the one word Gamatron swapped out for Blastoff. Before I did my gameplay tutorial video on Gamatron, I Googled what else was out there to see if I could learn a thing or two about the rules that I didn't already know. That's where I stumbled on uh Dave Brennan's video on his Gamatron. And that's when I stumbled on
    4:41
    the fact that his Gamatron had speech added. And I thought that was pretty cool. I didn't know whether I was going to go in that direction or not. In my head, my gamutron was finished. But I was messaging with them and um I was looking to see if I actually had one of these circuit boards, which I ultimately found because when I bought this spare flight 2000 head off my buddy Mitch Heirs, it actually came with the soundboard, the speech board, ribbon cables, wiring harness, and I had listed this in my eBay store and I kind of forgot about it and I went digging through all my board stash and I couldn't find one. And then I think it was like last night or this morning I was in bed half asleep and I thought, "Wait a minute, I actually have one of these in my eBay store." Uh, from time to time I forget what I have listed. So, you know, if I'm looking for an item, I got to remember to check my own freaking inventory in my eBay store. This all started or partly started because Dave was asking me where I got the coin door decal on my Gamatron cuz he liked it and was hoping he could get the file to print one himself. And I happen to have a spare from Bigfoot Bruce. So, I actually just shipped that to him today. So then I was asking him about the details of the soundboard cuz he has the replacement board in his machine. So I was kind of asking around like to him and or I think maybe to the gamutron group on pinsside, hey, do you think I can use the original Stern speech board to get speech rather than having to buy the new speech board? And in theory, I think the answer was yes. I chosen said I think you should be able to do it. And so that's when I inquired a little bit further since I had Dave on the line here. It's like um asking about, you know, actually, you know, our I carried our conversation over. Uh this was uh this marketplace. He was replying to my Gamatron conversion kit for sale ad. By the way, my conversion kit, my extras are officially for sale now that I know I don't need any of this stuff. So, if you're interested, reach out to me. Okay, so back over to just regular messenger. I messaged Dave and was asking about the speech board and he uh showed me a photo of the wiring and how it's set up and uh graciously he uh sent me some very detailed instructions on how to wire it up. So, you can see here that the connector here that would normally go onto the um lamp driver here, I'm not sure what I think this might be J4 possibly. Don't quote me. So, that connector that would normally go there gets plugged into the speech board here. And then you need a new harness to go from the speech board back to that connector. Fairly simple. Um, I can whip something like that up. And then there's this other I think five pin connector that goes onto the speech board. And that is uh drawn from a bunch of different areas. So, like I said, Dave graciously sent me perfect instructions. He says that the pin one splices into this connector here, the red wire. Pin two is a key. Pin 3 goes to the soundboard J3-5. Pin 4 goes to MPUJ1-8. Pin five goes to MPUJ4-11.
    8:56
    And that's it. Uh, instructions complete. And then, of course, you need some sort of standoffs to mount the board. So, thanks Dave for the instructions on that. Without you, I would have had zero clue on how to do it. I don't know that the instructions are out there anywhere. I don't know if they're on the uh Gamatron pinside club. I don't remember running into those cuz I read that whole thread like probably twice by now. But anyway, I uh think I'm going to try and tackle this venture. It's convenient that I have the actual Flight 2000 sound ROM in here because if I didn't, it would make it a little more difficult. I literally just got to make that connector for here. And then here is the uh five pin connector. So the board's laid out a little different. Obviously, how do my capacitors look? That's the the one thing, right? This board is really untested and I could go through all this trouble to find out that this board just doesn't work. But it shouldn't be um anything too crazy. This uh you know, knock on wood. I mean, if if it's not working, then probably just start by simply changing the capacitor. So, that's the project at hand. See what we can make happen. Hey, fellow shenanigans. If you are enjoying what you are seeing, why don't you click on these three dots at the bottom of any video and then find this heart. Click on that and hey, look at this. You can buy me a beer. You can use the slider to buy me 500 beers if you really like. But this is a way you can uh send thanks and I very much appreciate your support. If you do so, your comment will be highlighted and also I will give you a shout out. So, thank you for all your support. Instead of making a harness from scratch, let's see if I can uh repurpose some old wiring. Check this out. That is the exact connector even with key. Let's see. Look at that. That's halfway there. Now, this is an IDC connector and there is one wire cut here. So, this may or may not work. Well, here's my Meteor parts playfield, and it's got a few connectors on here and a little mud. This guy's a little long. I do like that this is uh the Molex style connector, though. Man, that is muddy. Another connector here. A little short, but uh I could potentially reuse this connector. Clean it up. Let's see if I got anything else. Okay, I remember there's a not used connector for the lamp driver in the back box here, but that is for this bottom connector J2. And it is not the right size either. So, I don't think I'm going to go that route. I do have a stash of stern soundboard connectors.
    12:08
    So maybe something in here might be fairly plugandplay. All right, check this out.
    12:27
    one pin shy for a perfect plug-andplay option. So, I could potentially use a jumper um alligator clip just for testing purposes. I mean,
    12:45
    that is so close. That's unfortunate. You know, I think I remember these gray ribbon cables, as crappy as they are, are actually a little bit longer.
    12:57
    And look at that. It is maybe two pins longer. So, that might actually work. So, I'm going to grab a few of these. Look at this. I might even have uh newer ribbon cables. I'll go digging and see what I got. Okay, so here's the uh crappy [snorts] gray style ribbon cable. And um who knows, it may work. It does fit. So that's a start. It just overhangs. Oh, I guess it's only uh one pin of overhang. So, you know, as long as I uh put this side on correctly, you know, pin one will be the uh the first pin on this connector. Make sure I don't put it on the last pin. Then that should line up. So, there's that connector. I mean, now if it the speech doesn't work, I have this to possibly blame. So, you know, I may end up making a new connector in the end, but this is a good way to test it quickly. Okay, so making this uh five pin connector here that's going to be a little more I wouldn't say irreversible, but I'm going to have to tap into those different areas on the different boards and like pull out the pin that it was in that location and then add another pin to it and stick them both in there. And I'm going to have to do that what is it? Uh, I guess just three times. Well, four when you include the square connector here. Let's go look for that square connector. Okay, so that looks like that's this red wire right here. So, I guess uh let's just rip off the band-aid and start splicing. Okay, so I'm just looking at all the uh connection points here. My biggest challenge is going to be removing this red wire. Tried already and I've failed. It's because I don't have the proper tool. I really need to uh get the proper Molex pin removal tool for this because at this rate I might have to splice in just like cut a bit of insulation off. I don't love that idea, but I can't get this freaking thing out. And I could order the part or see if someone has it, but I want to do this tonight. So, I'm checking on the other connectors. And uh so we need J3 pin five on the soundboard which is actually open 1 2 3 4 5 right in the middle there. So that's not a problem. And J1 pin 8 on the MPU is also open. That is right below the orange wire. I added that for my displays. The orange one. And then uh MPU J4 pin 11 which is
    16:14
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. So it looks like right there. So all those spots are actually open. So that's super easy. Just dealing with this is going to be the challenge. All right, let's start on this little harness I found in my stash. an already cut five pin female housing. I've got my 100 terminals, crimp contacts. I've got my little key plugs,
    16:51
    my ratcheting crimper, and we're going to steal some wire off of this harness here. Need five wires. And probably I'd say this much wire should do the trick. So I'm going to have to cut all this off. And
    17:18
    you know what? Might as well just cut all this. And I'll save this connector. Wait, that's the IDC. Do I really need to save that? Probably not. I don't think I'll ever use an IDC connector, so probably trash that. But there we go. The makings of a harness. All right, there we go. There's a little one side of a harness here. I made pin one red to match the red wire. So, pin one is going to go right here, like so. Got my key in there.
    18:03
    And the key kind of prevents you from getting that connector all the way flat. So, I don't love that about the key. Maybe I'll file that down a bit. Nonetheless, there is that side. Now, I just got to hook up these guys. Okay, I got the speech board just sort of resting in that spot so I can measure up the wires. And turns out uh I was shortch changing myself a little bit for the one wire that had to go all the way to this top connector. So I extended two of the wires that go to the MPU. And I just put a terminal on pin three connector which goes into the soundboard J5. No, pin five, J3, which Whoa, that's backwards. I've done that a couple times before. So, pin one is on the right like so. Just double check my key aligns properly. Anyway, I'm going to basically need my other hand for this. Or am I? Let's see if I can pull this off.
    19:26
    Yeah, there we go. So, install that. And boom, that one's done. All right. So, I got u pin four, this green one, connected to J1, pin 8. Then I've got J3 pin five connected to uh what was this? J4 pin 11. Yeah, J4 pin 11. So that is all done. So I'm going to save best for last this red wire. But now I'm going to um connect this to the speech board and then this to the MPU and try not to screw that up. I mean lamp driver. The speech board was already trying to mess with me. I'm looking for pin one and I see it right there. But uh that was deceitful because the sticker was covering up the seven which I picked back. So that is actually pin one road block. This connector has a key on this female housing, not the other side. So I need to uh figure out a new plan. Okay, I just realized something. Um because there's a key in here, which check this out. I was able to pull that out. That would technically mean that there's no wire there, which would mean that I am missing a wire and it probably won't work. But fortunately, that key was in a position with the wire and the terminal. So, because I believe I may need wires going across the entire connector just to be safe, right? But uh I've never really seen that before. A key in place of a terminal at the same a key and a terminal occupying the same space. I mean probably common on on these style cables, I guess, but uh we might have solved that problem. All right, I got this all set up. Got my ribbon cable plugged in hopefully properly. my whatever J4 connector plugged into the speech board. Our five pin connector that we made, that's all hardwired in except for this red wire, which um I'm not going to deal with that just yet. I have it just alligator clipped. And that red wire, uh no, that red wire, that is just my my doing. Don't think that connects. Uh maybe it does. I don't know. Let's go over here. I think that is more likely going to be the red wire coming off that harness there. I think I just used these red wires to unhack what was going on there in the first place. Okay, so there it is. In theory, this should work unless I screwed something up, which is very likely. So, I'm going to um close the back box, install the back plexi for a dramatic effect, and we're going to hit the start button and see what happens. Well, I got some bad news. I just turned on the machine when I heard a squaltch come from the speaker and uh machine's not booting up. Uh something is wrong. My wiring or the speech board itself. Not sure. But uh sadly Gamatron is not speaking. All right. I double checked all of my wiring and looks good. So I just reversed this cable just to see if that makes any difference. Let's see what happens.
    23:56
    I think I had three flashes last time. There's four. And that's where it ends. So, uh, I guess I can check and see what four flashes means. But definitely a good chance that the speech board just needs servicing. Okay. Okay. Well, I looked up, you know, what the fourth and fifth flashes do, and it never really gave me any information that I thought that I could use. So, I know it is speechboard related and it is talking about um the 6820 and 6821 chips on the MPU, I believe. And I know they're fine. So, I thought maybe I will just receat the uh chips on this board and I pulled out the speech ROM and those legs are in real bad shape and got one broken leg on that side and also another on this side. So, I imagine those are somewhere in this
    25:26
    So, that is definitely a problem. Not sure if I can resolve it or not, but I'm going to pull out this chip, too, and have a look at that. All right, I got this chip loose. And used to be a spider's home in there. How about these legs?
    25:52
    They actually look to be okay. So, I guess I must focus my attention on this socket. Maybe I could replace the socket. Bust out my Hacko desoldering iron for the first time in a while, possibly. Okay, I think my mission might be over for now. I was just trying to lightly sand these legs and they're just falling off like freaking rotting teeth. So, that is not going to be salvageable. I thought maybe I could solder on some legs. And I've seen people repair chips before. Uh, but I don't know that this is possible. Actually, I do have a slight idea. I wonder if it could work. Let me uh let me go investigate. I'll be right back. I remember seeing a video once where someone repaired a chip by adding legs, these machine pins, and then like for the broken legs, kind of like somehow soldering the gap. But uh yeah, I don't think I'm going to do that. I think just going to see if someone I know, maybe Corey or Dan Shhat, someone local is capable of burning me a flight 2000 speech ROM. On a side note, I'm wondering because these two circuits are identical, like they're just a one for one. Oh, or maybe they're not. I was going to say maybe I could just move this chip over to this location, but uh does that look possible? I think they are two very different circuits. So maybe I can't just do that. So I don't think I can just burn a chip and pop it in there because there's probably still remnants. So, if I can burn a chip, then I'm almost certainly going to have to replace this socket. Okay, I just got off the phone with Corey, and he is definitely capable of burning me a new speech ROM, but he also said he's going to be sending out some boards to uh our board repair guy, Brent Butler, in the very near future. So, I may as well go ahead and get Brent to give this thing the full treatment. I'm going to need the new socket, all new capacitors, and you know, even that one resistor there kind of looks a little sketch. So, I may as well just go ahead and get this board to uh Brent to for the full Brent treatment. And um so that unfortunately is going to be the end of this episode. And uh hopefully there will be another. Well, sadly in shenanigander fashion, this is the current state. My sound on gamutron.
    29:10
    No steps forward and couple steps backwards. So that's a bummer. I just accidentally discovered this. I don't even know how.
    29:28
    I guess just from I don't even know how that happened. Tugging on this connector, I guess. So, if um that resolves my sound, I will be happy again. Please. Yay. That sounds good. Okay. Oh my god. I thought I was going to have to send my soundboard out to print. I thought I blew it up, but uh Oh, it's waiting for a ball just to confirm. Let's hit the start button and see what happens. Feeling good about it, though. All right, here we go.
    30:17
    Oh, thank God. I was very disheartened there for a moment. So, at least we're uh back to square one. Yay.