Cyberamic Control Centers

[TheShowbizPizzaGuy]

Hello everybody, well, Im sure most of you already know about Chuck E. Cheese, and probably are thinking "What in the world is it doing on a vintage computer forum?" and well, I get that. But the old Chuck E. Cheese characters had a very complicated computer system. Here, Im talking about the Cyberamic Control Centers. there are other computers, such as the ones used in the 70's, and Cyberstar, but here, Im talking about the early 80's controllers. Some photo's are included. I dont entirely understand the systems myself, so I was wondering if any of you could identify some of the components.

Thanks,
TheShowbizPizzaGuy

 

[TheShowbizPizzaGuy]

Here are some pictures of the Control Cards.

 

[TheShowbizPizzaGuy]

Nobody? Alrighty then.

 

[SomeGuy]

Are you saying you actually possess one of these units? Are you trying to do something specific with it?

If so, you might need to post higher resolution images of the cards so people can see part numbers and such. Clearly it is a completely custom system.

 

[stepleton]

Yeah, this is pretty interesting I think, but the pictures are too small to make out enough detail to identify anything.

 

[ColanderCombo]

My understanding of these control systems is that they're not "computerized", per se. The animation is recorded onto an audio tape, and these cards pull out individual channels of data and convert them into a form that can drive the actuators on the figures. Based on the hardware, it *looks* like the data was recorded to tape digitally, but that's just a guess. It's hard to see in the small photos above, but some of the board look like they're 8 or 16 channel digital cards. I'm guessing the digital channels are pulled from the data stream and routed to a pneumatic valve via the card edge connector and backplane. (As far as I know, chuck-e-cheese figures used all pneumatic actuators. Don't quote me on this, but I don't think they had any analog control; e.g., every action was on/off. If there's an analog card somewhere in those cages that would prove me wrong there.)

 

[TheShowbizPizzaGuy]

No, your exactly right. they run off of a reel to reel tape deck system. They all did run using pneumatic actuators. As for analog, I'm pretty sure that it DOES have an analog system (ie, the reel to reel tape deck) To answer another persons question, I do own one of these, but I'm currently moving it, so its in a crate. I intend to use it for its original purpose: To operate Chuck E. Cheese's Cyberamic characters.

 

[Knarfian]

Hello,

Well, I know this is an old post, but I am currently very interested in this hardware. I worked at CEC PTT back in the day (in high school!) and I always wondered about these systems. (I got to push the BDAY button a few times - that's all they would let a high school kid do back in the day)

The schematics for a lot of the system is available. (Links at the end.) This was originally a 6502-based system, which read tape audio and data from a reel to reel drive. The tape format is mono audio on the left track, and digital data on the right. The buttons on the front panel could be used to control the tape drive - seeking around to certain types of programs for example. The cards could decode the signals for each character's pneumatics, stage lights, curtain controls, etc. with lots of blinkenlights on the front of each card. I assume these cards were connected to the various pneumatic actuators.

Sadly, the one piece of software that runs it, the code in the EPROM on the CPU card, has not been properly dumped and archived. I urge you to back that up and archive it properly (If your EPROM dies, there is no known copy of that data)

I am currently looking for an image of this EPROM to allow for emulation of the entire system. This would help with many things, including repair work, as well as recreating user documentation. (There are no user docs that I know of)

If you would be able to help by providing more pictures and especially data, I'd be happy to help with interpreting everything that's there, and helping with any repairs needed.

Thanks in advance,
-Frank Palazzolo

Info about the animatronics and some control unit drawings:
http://showbizpizza.com/info/documents/ptt/ptt_cyberamicspartsmanual.pdf

Important schematics for the cards:
https://archive.org/details/ptt-various-technical-docs-1979-1982

Information about the system - note the missing EPROM images(!)
https://decodedocdigitize.miraheze.org/wiki/Cyberamic_Control_System

The only known show tape that is properly archived with the data track:
https://archive.org/details/country-helen-1984-full-audio-signals-scans

 

[TheShowbizPizzaGuy]

Unfortunately, I had to move the cyberamic control center into storage, and its going be there for awhile, HOWEVER, when I do pull it out, I do plan to dump the EPROM to save it.

 

[Knarfian]

Hello - It's been over a year - I just wanted to check in and see if you had time to dig out your system from storage. I managed to acquire a newer version (1990) of the card cage, but I'd really like to get some info from your original cards. The CPU card in slot 3, in particular. Thanks!