Project: WPC ScoreLog (2008)

WPC Scorelog (Williams PC) is intended to be a "sniffer" device that sits on the data bus in the later model Williams Pinball machines. The goal of this sniffer is to log the score data being written to the memory. The score, along with some other game status messages are to be passed out of a RS232 port on the board to be read by another computer.

Why would this be desireable? The main goal is for the annual hacker arcade contest at the Shmoocon conference in Washington DC. The score information is needed to drive the digital ticket system (think Chuck-e-cheese paper tickets, except digitally signed certificates written to the player's USB memory stick).

The target hardware platform is ATMEL microcontrollers. The hardware modification to the William's CPU board should be a socket where the memory chip goes, unless there are trick clips availiable that will clear the backbox door.

This project is early in the development. We've found the memory locations where the high scores are stored, and found the bytes to watch for the high score (at least on "Star Trek : The Next Generation"), but this is where it's been left off.

A potential use outside of Shmoocon would be hacking linksys wireless routers to sit in the pinball machines connected to WPCScoreLog, and report the high scores of each machine to a national registry of privately owned machines.