I’ve been so busy lately working on other peoples machines, I decided to set aside a few hours this week to work through a few “to do” items on my own games. One of the things I’ve been really looking forward to doing is installing the Aux flipper switch upgrade board to my BoP 2.0. What is this? At present, when you’re in the profile menus or video mode, where the flippers would be disabled in modern DMD games, they are still enabled in BoP 2.0. So as you play the video mode, the flippers are still flipping away when you press the buttons. Scott Danesi created a small upgrade board which hooks in to two extra switches on the P-ROC board (CPU board supplied with the BoP 2.0 kit) and allows the flippers to be disabled while still registering presses. The kit is really straight forward and can be installed by anyone.
The first step is to disconnect the 18 pin IDC plug from the coin door interface board. The upgrade board plugs directly in to where this connector was and then the 18 pin connector plugs in on top of the upgrade board.
The next step is to install the switches next to the existing flipper switches. It comes with a small actuator that presses in when the flipper button is pressed and activates the aux switch. This switch is checked by the P-ROC board and will allow the flipper to register without having to power the flippers normally. When the feature is activated in the sortware, the developers can enable/disable power to the flippers as certain points of the game (in the video mode for example), but still read these additional switches to know the player is pressing the flipper buttons. I had to relocate the flipper LED to the other side to make way for the new switch.
The same actuator bit and switch are also installed on the other side of the cabinet. Just like with the other side, I had to relocate my back lit flipper LED.
Once the upgrade is physically installed, the last step is to activate it in the game. Jumping into the menu, there is an option to enable this.
That’s all there is to it. At the start of the game, I entered the profile select screen and the flippers no longer activate when the flipper buttons are pressed. Same with video mode, now the flippers no longer activate while playing it. It’s a really nice little mod and helps bring BoP 2.0 even close to a modern DMD game. You can read more about the mod from the website – BoP 2.0 Aux Flipper Upgrade