Gottlieb System 80 Pinballs

SYSTEM 2-5

The revelation that the original idea for Black Hole came from some pinball playing friends and not from Gottlieb themselves was already a nice scoop for this website. Now we have the honour to present another one: a Black Hole with 7-digit displays!

Now you might be thinking this game is just the result of some System 80 fanatic that was fed up with rolling his score over and modified his game after someone rather clever (name withheld OK : ) had reworked the Gottlieb U2/U3 code to allow the CPU to drive 7-digit displays! That is after all the case with the game pictured left modified by Steve Charland but, that was not the case here: this other game has documentation and it's the dated paperwork that is of interest.

We do know that Gottlieb used games from one system as test-beds for a new operatin systems. Steve Charland in California owns an Incredible Hulk with System 80 hardware and George Riley amongst others has a Jacks To Open game as a System 80B. The chances are then that there were System 80 games used for testing later systems. That�s the supposition and it�s easy to make; actually proving it by finding them is the hard part!

The only game which seems to fit the bill is to be found in Marseille, France. This game is a Black Hole and it's fitted with 7-digit score displays and it's even wired up to run them. The owner only realized that his Black Hole was "unusual" some time after it came back from a repair shop. During the repair work, the U2/U3 PROMS were replaced and the code in them was lost forever. Since then the game only drives 6 of the 7 digits and this sent the owner looking for help on a French pinball forum, which is how the well-known French collector, Jean-Ren� Karr picked up on it. JRK had himself been searching for such a 7-digit BH for quite some time.

Paperwork with this game explains game dipswitch settings in English, and these all refer to "System 2-5". One sheet in French sets out differences between System 2-5 and a previous operating system (presumably System 80). One of the sheets is hand dated in the American date format: 10.28.81 (28.October 1981).

This evidence would seem to rule out the possibility that it's the work of an experiment originating in France, and rather, it suggests that it's from Gottlieb themselves. But why would this be in France if it was a Gottlieb test platform. Perhaps because France was probably the largest pinball market at the time and so an important place to drive ideas for development by Gottlieb and also to test them.


Explanation of the differences in the System 2-5 from System 80 (in French - see translation below on this page).


Start-up flow chart.


Operator adjustable switch settings


Coin chute combinations. Note the date in the lower right corner.

Translation of the French description of System 2-5 (see picture top right)

SYSTEM 2-5

1- The start-up is no more than 103milliseconds.

2- The optional electromechanical coin-counters have been done away with. The transistors previously used for this purpose now serve to drive coils or lamps.

5- The following dipswitches are cancelled:

    A- Attract mode (constant)
    B- Coin switch tune (constant)
    C- Replay tune (constant)
    D- Scoring tunes (constant)
    E- TILT (only the ball in play can be lost)
    F- All the fixed sounds such as SLAM, TILT, Game Over and Extra Ball are always played.
    G- The credits will always be displayed.
10- The ejection of multiple balls is possible.

11- The printing option is cancelled.

12- If on resetting test 15 (average time of play) to zero, the reset button is pressed again, it will reset all the book-keeping data to zero except for the replay scores and the high game to date score.

13- The lamps test (16) will not activate any lamps used to drive coils. These will be activated in test 17 with all the other coils, as well as the sound commands # 1-2-4-8 and 16.

14- There is no more delay between tests 16 and 20

2- The adjustment of replay scores as well as the high game to date score can only be a multiple of 100�000.

3- The display test (19) dies not illuminate the digits in the correct order because of constraints in the hardware.

4- Consult the following pages to understand the new rules and functions of the CPU switches. Note as well the change of the adjustment of the credits and the coins.

5- Special or Extra Ball in Novelty mode now awards 100�000 instead of 50�000.

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Last updated: 25.February 2008
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