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A1Pinner: The Discontinued Arcade1Up Pinball Mod

A1Pinner is discontinued. It still works on a healthy stock PCB, and V3.9 stays available below, but it is no longer maintained, updated, or supported. It has been replaced by Pinner OPI, a hardware repair and upgrade kit that replaces the Arcade1Up pinball main board entirely.

A1Pinner is the mod most people know as the "30 table mod", the soft-mod that added Zen Pinball and Pinball Arcade tables to an Arcade1Up Virtual Pinball cabinet. If you were sent here looking for the 30 table mod, the 30 table hack, or the Arcade1Up pinball table mod, you are in the right place. Read the status notice below first.

Why we stopped building on the stock PCB

We built A1Pinner on top of the board Arcade1Up shipped in the cabinet. Over the years that board turned out to be the weak link in two separate ways.

First, they fail. Machines that were working fine develop a dead main board and the cabinet stops booting. No picture, no sound, no flippers. Arcade1Up pinball cabinets are out of production, replacement PCBAs are scarce and getting scarcer, and a fair number of the mod support requests we received were not software problems at all. They were dying hardware.

Second, they are underpowered. The stock board could not drive the resolutions, anti-aliasing, or table counts we wanted. Every version of Pinner ran into the same ceiling, and there was nothing left to optimize.

So rather than keep patching software on top of failing hardware, we replaced the hardware. Pinner OPI is a custom PCB (a HAT for the Orange Pi 5 Max) that drops into the cabinet in place of the stock board. It is effectively Pinner 4.0, and it is both the repair for a dead cabinet and the upgrade for a working one.

Does your Arcade1Up pinball have a failed PCB?

If your cabinet is doing any of the following, the main board is a likely culprit and the Pinner OPI kit is a direct replacement for it:

  • The machine won't turn on at all, or powers on with no response
  • Black screen with the power light on, no picture, or no video output
  • Stuck on the logo / splash screen, or caught in a boot loop
  • Random freezing, crashing, or rebooting mid-table

Some of these have cheaper causes worth ruling out first, such as a loose 30-pin ribbon cable, a failing power supply, or a bad LVDS connection. Check those before you buy anything. If the board itself is gone, the kit is the fix.

The Pinner OPI repair and upgrade kit

Pinner OPI is designed to work in Arcade1Up pinball cabinets with a failed or failing PCBA / main board, including:

  • Arcade1Up Attack From Mars (AFM)
  • Arcade1Up Star Wars Pinball
  • Arcade1Up Marvel Pinball
  • Other Arcade1Up Virtual Pinball cabinets built on the same platform

The kit keeps everything the cabinet already does and removes the ceiling A1Pinner ran into:

  • Full stock functionality preserved. Solenoids, DMD, plunger, and buttons all work, with no new control encoder required
  • 1080p and 2K output (4K is possible with additional cooling, at your own risk)
  • 4x MSAA anti-aliasing and super-sampling support
  • Runs PinnerOS, our custom Android build made specifically for Arcade1Up pinball cabinets, on a preloaded SD card
  • Ability to load additional tables and software that you legally own
  • Installation is close to a straight stock-PCB swap, with no new wiring or cabling beyond the LVDS converter and SBC power

An Orange Pi 5 Max is required and is not included. Not the Pro, not the Plus, and not a Raspberry Pi. Read the full required parts list before ordering.

The kit ships with the tables intended for your stock Arcade1Up pinball cabinet. Additional Zen Pinball tables must be purchased from Zen Studios through the Zen Pinball Android app; we do not and cannot provide them.

→ Get the Pinner OPI kit at shop.team-encoder.com

Not sure whether your cabinet is a fit, or whether your board is actually dead? Ask us before you order. We would rather answer the question than process a return.

A1Pinner V3.9 (final release archive)

A1Pinner remains available for anyone running a working stock PCB. V3.9 is the final release and will not be updated further.

Final release: A1Pinner V3.9

Read that entire page before you start. Known issues are listed at the bottom of it, and there is an FAQ under the A1Pinner menu above.

A1Pinner was a modification for Arcade1Up Virtual Pinball tables with an easy-to-use UI and little risk of damaging the machine. Download the installer from the drop-down menu above and select V3.9. If you are still on an older version, upgrading to V3.9 is worthwhile even if you only play the stock three tables; it fixes several bugs and is the most complete build of the soft-mod that exists.

What the modification offers:

  • Ability to install Zen Pinball (Android version)
  • Ability to manage installed Zen Pinball Android tables
  • A custom launcher with custom graphics for launching individual tables
  • The ability to exit a table set being played and launch a new one
  • Solenoids functioning in Zen Pinball
  • 1080p across the board
  • Pinball Arcade support
  • Zen DMD working (enable in Launcher Settings)

Support policy

We no longer provide support for A1Pinner in any version. The documentation, FAQ, and known-issues list stay online and the community may still be able to help, but we cannot troubleshoot soft-mod installs, and there will be no further releases, patches, or compatibility fixes. Active development and support now go to Pinner OPI.

Team Encoder is an independent entity and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Arcade1Up, Zen Studios, Atari, or any other third-party intellectual property holder. Product names are used solely to describe cabinet compatibility. A1Pinner and Pinner OPI are unofficial products provided as-is; installation may void your manufacturer warranty.

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