Version 3.03     added easter egg..  Hint: Scroll down to find all Ep1 infos ore use the tag list.

 0) The SWE1 statistics

 1) The Easter Eggs
 2) The Credit Error Dot Problem
 3) C3PO Problems
 4) The captive Ball
 5) Game Swap Problems
 6) The Collectors Plates
 7) Backbox does not open
 8) The number of queen ships
 9) 1.3 - 1.4 SW changes
 10) Plastic Sets
 11) MEL games
 12) Slings without Sounds
 13) The Ep1 Flyers
 

0) Some SWE1 statistics Earnings of Starwars on Location in Germany:
It might be interesting how much money a SWE1 earned in the years and how many hours it ran... Therefore I did start collecting some information out of specific games. Find the recording date in front followed by some significant informations about that game:

1/2007: Uptime: 1362 days, Powerups: 1683, 24856 games, 26752 DM earned, 17 games > 500 Million
1/2007: Uptime: 807 days, Powerups: 2513, 23xxx games, 23569 DM earned, ?? games > 500 Million

1) Easter Egg & Co

Easter Egg:  Try    B R L RR L RRR L L   , it shows up the whole PIN2000 crew.

Easter Egg #2:   Try    B R-19 L R-18 L R-13 L L   , it shows up ... do it yourself.

Great: The action buttons allow to flip pages (last score, high score, ...)  in standby mode.

SAD Easter Egg:  With Version 1.4 the number of Points for Spelling Jar Jar (Jetbumper Rule)
was set to 19,992,510. If you look closer this is a date, 25.10. 1999
- the day after Pinball Expo '99 where WMS announced the pinball division close
and fired most of the pinball crew.... (Hint came from Kevin Mc. Carthy)
I was in Chicago that time -----  and got this info att Happ Controls

2) Error Dot at Powerup:

Hey folks...
Does anyone else have a SWE1 machine that chronically shows an error dot at
powerup time, but the dot goes away after you play a game, and no diagnostic
errors are reported at any time?
It seems to be an Ep1 SW Bug - also when all errors ar cleared the
dot still appears! This happens with all P2K versions!
 

3) C3PO shots do not register about 1/3 of the time:

 Is it a known design problem to have left orbit (C3PO) shots not register,
about 1/3 of the time?  Or is it switch adjustment time?  (Seems that between
the button and the standard rollover, ONE of 'em would trigger...)

Seems to be same problem as many RFM have - bad quality microswitches

4) What for the captive ball?

Anyone know what the captive ball does?

It absorbes the shot power and makes it easier to lock the ball.
.--Joe :)
And from version 1.4 on it also counts points (first increasing, the decreasing) M.Wiest
 

5) Problems after changing ROMs Ep1 <-> RFM:

See  RFM / Ep1 Swap
 

6) Last Ep1 Games with collectors plate:

From RGP 9.5.2000   Duncan Brown:

Since a couple of other people have heard rumors of Williams putting out
a special "collector's edition" of the SW:EI pin (basically one of the
last few games made, with a special plaque attached) it sounds like they
might actually be doing it.  So as promised last week, here are a couple
of pictures of the plaques.
 Plaque Pic 1 ;  Plaque Pic 2,
 even a golden Ep1 cabinet might exist....

See Howards golden panels
and his other plaque  Last 100

7) Backbox does not open:

From RGP 16.5.200
ELP!

Turned my SWE1 this weekend and heard that dreaded power supply fan
whine.
Long story short - NONE of my keys will open the backbox - either the
front OR back.  I have both sets of keys, the coin door and the
playfield security lock, and they work fine, but neither of them fit in
the backbox locks.

Answer 1:
I had this problem with my RFM - the key that unlocks the back of the
backbox will indeed open the backglass lock..  problem is the locking
arm gets jammed over the CPU box and the lock won't turn.  Jonathan
suggests sticking your arm back there (thru the back) and freeing it
manually..  since my game was already in place against the wall, I gave
the lock an extra twist with a pair of pliers before resorting to moving
it and the lock turned finally ..  of course, this approach risks a key
broken off in the lock, so watch it!

Answer 2: Where are the Backbox keys:
Originally- the backbox key (equal for back and front)  is attached to the wood
crossbeam that is bolted to the lower cabinet front side of the backbox. They are
attached with a nylon tie. If you were not the one to unpack the game- someone
else might have thought these keys redundant and tossed them :(
There are four screws holding the back cover on for shipping. Remove these
first- it might be unlocked (but doubt it)
marc b
 

8) Number of Queen Ships on Playfield:

From RGP 7.7.2000

>P2K-SWE1 Owners, does your playfield have 3 queen ships on the playfield, 2
>on the left, and 1 on the right? I just noticed that the flyer (which are
>often not accurate since they come out before hand) has 2 droid ships on
>the left and 1 queen ship on the right. Much better that way IMO. So is it
>just my pf (which came from the upgrade kit), or everyone's like that?

It should be two droid starfighters on the left in attack formation
(matching the 3 painted on the playfield beneath them) and one queen's
starship on the right (matching the one painted on the playfield
beneath it.)

Either someone really screwed up...or more likely, they ran out of
droid starfighters at the very end of the run, had extra queen's
starships, and just bolted on what they had, threw it in the box, and
went home.  Those were the very last days of a crew who knew they were
being laid off...

They are just off-the-shelf toys, you should be able to find them at
Toys R Us or somewhere and fix the problem.  (Not that you should have
to, but...)

See a picture of that commercial droid fighter made by Duncan here

Duncan Brown

(addition: other Ep1-Kit owners report the same)

9) Changes from version 1.3 to 1.4:

From Joe Schober,  RGP 4.8.2000
 

So, installed SWE1 1.4 this evening.  Here are the changes I've found so far:

   - There's a captive ball rule!  Sort of an eccentric one, but fun.  The
first hit on the ball is 50 points.  Next hit is 40, then 30, 20, 10.  Then:
500, 400, ..., 100.  Then: 5000, 4000, etc.  Your place in the sequence is held
through the game.  Don't yet know where the ceiling is, if any.  (I got up to
10,000, which I suppose was 20 hits.)  Does any other pin have a
backwards-forwards-backwards scoring rule like this?

   - At the start of Darth Maul multiball, there's a rather, ummm, gaudy :-)
graphic illustrating which shots to make (center and ramps).  The graphic
disappears once you make a shot.

   - New Adjustments for "Ramp Combo Max" and "Ramp Blocker Max per ball".
Haven't played with these yet, but I assume these control the mods Cameron did
for Expo.

   - Network support is in Adjustments>Communications.  Haven't tested this yet
either, but I'm guessing it works like in RFM.  (Rainy day project: Specify a
Tourney Server, run an Ethernet sniffer, and see if I can reverse-engineer the
protocol enough to write a Tourney Server myself.  I suspect this would be
hard, since I'll only see sample frames from the machine, not sample responses
from a "real" server... but we'll see.)

   - It kinda seems like there were a couple new video effects while playing,
but I couldn't put a finger on anything and might just be imagining things.  It
also seems like there are a couple new features in the operator menus, but
again, I'm not certain.

Outstanding bugs that I know of, carryovers from 1.3:
   - In certain cases, a sound channel gets "stuck" on for a little while.
This is easiest to repro by starting a new game in the middle of the match
sequence: you'll often get a stuttering sound leftover from the match sequence
for a few seconds.  Also occasionally happens during game play.
   - "Right Saucer" feature audit is never incremented.

More changes reported by Jim Hicks at 7.8.2000:

XINA version is now 1.18 - Mon Jun 26 13:01:18 2000 (RFM 1.4 was 1.17,
SW:E1 1.3 was 1.16)

There is a new "Disable Service Credits" adjustment under Game Pricing.

Some defaults in Advanced Pricing have changed:

All Slot X Credit values default to 0.  Slots 1,2,3,7,8 formally
defaulted to 25.
The Bill Validator slot default is "None" - was 7.
Coin Meter units default is "Off" was "25".
Slot 1/2/3/4 Credit values now default to 0 (was 25) and are no longer
shown unless "Edit Credit Values" is set to yes.

On SW:E1 - The ramp blocker feature puts up a blue shield (and raises
the drop target) with what I think is a question mark on it.  Hit it and
you score a million points and resets the shield.  You can adjust the
number of combo shots before the blocker will activate (Off, 5 to 100 in
increments of 5) and the number of times the ramp blocker will work per
ball.

And (Duncan, cover your eyes), I may have found a bug or two.  First,
the ramp shield works in at least one scene (Pod Racing) where you can
shoot ramps.  (Wasn't able to get enough in a row to try this out in
Darth Maul battle mode, underwater chase or queen's game.).  Maybe
that's how it's supposed to work.  But the one that gets me is that if
you have multiball restart active and hit the center target and THEN
sink a saucer shot, you get no restart, even if the time hasn't
expired.  Sigh.

I like the captive ball rule, not thrilled with the "Shoot here you
idiot" graphic that pops up in the battle scene.  I'll give some credit
to the programmer though - you can't miss it!)
 

10) Plastic sets:

Howard Leshner was able to buy a plastic set.
Although 2 were missing - better than nothing.
See here  plastics part1 and plastics part2
During pinball expo 99 and 00 a lot of plastic sheets of
Ep1 were distributed and signed. See me sheet
here with autograms from John, Duncan and Cameroon.
And remark: No spare slingshots are there!

11) MEL games:

About 25 EP1 MEL games were made - the last has serialno 51 and
is in the posession of Duncan Brown. Here an explantion:
"Manufacturing Excellence Lab" (so of course "MEL Lab" is
redundant in the same way as "Pin Number" and "ATM Machine.")  I
would point you to the Uncle Willy article where it was described,
but that part of the WMS web site seems to be down again.  They
were the games hand-built in Engineering with the first batches of
production parts, to test that everything fit and worked.  Those
were the games that went out on test locations, got used for photo
shots, etc.  the first 2 (plus a 3rd as a spare) SW:EI MEL
machines were taken to the big Star Wars fan convention in Denver
Colorado on May 1, 1999, before the movie opened and long before
the game was officially put on test or sold!  We wanted to give
fans of the movie a little treat, and they loved it.  (And nobody
from the r.g.p community was there and reported on it, so we got
away with it!)

12) Slings without Sounds:

Very unusual for John Popadiuk games: The slingshots do not produce
any soundeffect - or did you find one?    M.Wiest

13) The Ep1 Flyers:

 Euro Flyer German Version Front
 Euro Flyer German Version Back
 Euro Flyer English Version Front
 Euro Flyer English Version Back