Comments on: The lost Williams Vector unearthed!

By: weirdal1968

weirdal1968 — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:28:01 +0000

I bought the rest of the WMS vector schems from Pinballinc a few months ago. They didn’t include a page with DAC ICs so there are probably more sheets buried in the warehouse. That also leaves the mystery of what kind of vector monitor it used but my gut says they hit up Wells Gardner for a K6100. The interface to the sound PCB is a nine pin connector so its probably Joust/Robotron/Stargate hardware.

As for Mr Ollefen, I managed to track him down but he doesn’t remember much from back then and he’s no longer in the electronics field. FWIW he did not work on Predators.

Here are some better pics of the RAID PCB schems.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9720/cpuraidrt.jpg
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/805/cpuraidlft.jpg

By: Rav

Rav — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:03:10 +0000

Whilst I can shed no new light on this mystery, can I say that I have had a few emails with Mr Graham and have ratified his Wms employee he spoke of circa 1983-84, intitials JM.

Although not good news for this thread, JM replied:

Sorry, but I don’t know anything about any vector games, or anything that might have been called Predators, from back then. When I was there we were still using 6502-era technology (M6809). I worked on Star Rider, which was a laser-disc based raster game. I didn’t get into the M68000 until I worked at Lattice, Inc., after getting laid off from Williams.

So a lead closed sorry…

By: James Loflin

James Loflin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:23:17 +0000

Just stumbled across this thread, yes I do have a bit of Williams video documents. Being more into the Pinball business I don’t know when I’ll get to sorting through the video stuff. If anyone is in the Atlanta area and would like to stop in and have a peek at some of it I’d be happy to accommodate. If I recall I have a few more schematic drawings of the vector game.

James Loflin
Pinball Inc.

By: Ahh… What Could’ve Been! «

Ahh… What Could’ve Been! « — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:45:55 +0000

[...] http://www.rotheblog.com/2010/01/arcade-history/williams-vector-prototype-schematics-found-illinois-... [...]

By: Ken Graham

Ken Graham — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:13:11 +0000

Just wanted to drop you a line. Williams had a 68000 based color vector system in development. I don’t know if it was the same system as Larry and Eugene’s or if the Vid Kids picked the hardware up after the 2003 AMOA massacre at Williams. The programmer in Chicago that was working on the prototype system was John Miesner (spelling might be off, it’s almost 30 years ago now). John had it up and running and was working on an art system and some simple animation routines. It was an extremely fast system thanks to the 68000. At the time, I don’t know if there were any games that were looking to use it until Star Rider, Sinistar and Bubbles went into production.

John was among the batch of programmers and hardware people that were let go (along with myself) after the 1983 AMOA show when Williams made a failed bid to be acquired by Bally/Midway. When I last talked with John he was working for Lattice Software working on their 68000 C compiler.

ken graham
(programmer at William’s 1982-1983)

By: Jeff Rothe

Jeff Rothe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:42:51 +0000

My research showed that Duncan sold that Gimix box on eBay, but Larry also alluded to another one possibly that they still had. It might be worth following up if you are interested to know what is on the old arcade development system.

Your site was great, we all really hope its back online soon.

By: Jeff Rothe

Jeff Rothe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:40:47 +0000

If you ever want to chat about RSS, which isn’t too hard to pick up and can save a lot of time visiting different sites (if available), shoot me an email.

By: Spriggy

Spriggy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:35:02 +0000

I’m a noob when it comes to RSS m8. But I don’t think it does .. no. Definately can’t find the RSS shortcut on threads.

By: Rav

Rav — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:06:25 +0000

Hi Jeff
Thanks for the email – interesting read indeed! yes my web server had a hardware issue over Christmas and I’m running on a backup box.. but I’m getting the web site up asap.

Predator is indeed a 68000 game, although the board its located in is labelled CPU PCB whears the picture says 68000 RAID Board (surely not the disc IO??)

Ive tried blowing up the picture to try and read whats tantalisingly written onthat chip… 1440 U44? The Predators set has each chip labelled with a U number beside them – do you have a better copy of this picture to relay me those numbers?

Would lvoe to know more abotu the Gimix system too – very intriguing indeed! Keep up the good work
Regards, Rav

By: Jeff Rothe

Jeff Rothe — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:46:32 +0000

Is there an RSS feed for that forum Sprig?

@Chris. I don’t think that headed over seas. I think he just picked the Aussie forum randomly to start a lengthy thread, possibly because of the large body of pinball guys there vs. BYOAC or Klov. He said he didn’t want it to get buried like it would in a newsgroup like RGP. I think those docs are still down south with him, correct me if I’m wrong.