PinHeck System

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1 Introduction

This is the first boardset system used by Spooky Pinball. Designed by Ben Heck. Based on a micro controller, everything other than the switching power supply is contained on board.

2 Games

Title Date of Release Model # Production Count Current Code Version Board Set Notes
America's Most Haunted 2014 AMH01 150 22 pinHeck 1
Rob Zombie’s Spookshow International 2016 ??? ??? ??? pinHeck 2

3 Technical Info

3.1 Boardset

The boardset is contained within a single multi-function CPU board and a switching power supply.

3.2 MPU

America's Most Haunted MPU


The pinHeck system uses a single board design for the CPU, coil, light, switch, sound, and video controls. The CPU is based on a PIC32 architecture, running at 80Mhz. The CPU controls game logic and everything except audio and video. All Audio and Video (A/V) is controlled using a Parallex Propeller processor (Prop for short) running at 104Mhz. The Prop is connected to the CPU using an SPI based communication. This allows the CPU to say "Play sound 3", "Display Video 7", etc. This was offloaded from the CPU to allow critical timing for the game code to not interfere with keeping smooth and clear video and audio.

3.3 Power Supply

3.4 Lamp Matrix

3.5 Switch Matrix

The switch matrix consists of an 8x8 matrix for game switches and then 16 dedicated switches for various cabinet switches, such as coin door, flipper buttons, coin switches, etc.

3.6 Diagnostics & Bookeeping

pinHeck Coin Door Buttons. Assisted with use of the flipper buttons.

The coin door buttons for pinHeck are shown to the left. The function of the two buttons (left to right) are:

  • Red - Menu
  • Green - Enter



4 Problems & Solutions

4.1 CPU Board Issues

4.1.1 Relocating Batteries

The pinHeck system does not use any batteries to hold information and incidentally will not suffer from acid damage that most games have issues with.

5 Game Specific Problems & Fixes

America's Most Haunted has been found to have a very reliable and well standing design physically. No manufacturing changes have occurred during production and no service bulletins exist. The game software however has significantly changed since the beginning of production to fix bugs in the code and allow things like ball search to work much more successfully. Updating the code for the game is will significantly help with any issue you may find in your game.

6 Repair Logs

6.1 Jump Ramp

Jump ramp fix

7 References