I remember discussing this with Doug Macdonald when the -35 board was revised.

The original 6800 based MPU was developed in the mid 1970s. After 10 years some of the key components including the MC6800 chip itself were becoming hard to obtain or discontinued. A complete redesign was planned and eventually resulted in the 6803 based MPU however there was a backlog of production needs for the -35 board. To satisfy immediate demand for replacement parts and games in production a quick revision of the -35 to replace the discontinued IC components was rushed through and that I believe is the 6802 based board.

I had left Bally at the time but over coffee one morning Doug told me they went to place orders for upcoming production and were surprised when some chips were no longer available. They wound up starting production with the -35 boards until the components were exhausted then put the 6802 board into production as a direct replacement as needed.

An amusing side note is that when pinball production was in its heyday in the late 70s, Midway placed a huge order for components like displays and chips. After production died down in the early 80’s it was thought they had a lifetime supply of some things like 6 digit displays. It was thought the New Technology platform would replace the original board set before the chips ran out but apparently not all the chips were available at the end.

I remember discussing this with Doug Macdonald when the -35 board was revised.

The original 6800 based MPU was developed in the mid 1970s. After 10 years some of the key components including the MC6800 chip itself were becoming hard to obtain or discontinued. A complete redesign was planned and eventually resulted in the 6803 based MPU however there was a backlog of production needs for the -35 board. To satisfy immediate demand for replacement parts and games in production a quick revision of the -35 to replace the discontinued IC components was rushed through and that I believe is the 6802 based board.

I had left Bally at the time but over coffee one morning Doug told me they went to place orders for upcoming production and were surprised when some chips were no longer available. They wound up starting production with the -35 boards until the components were exhausted then put the 6802 board into production as a direct replacement as needed.

An amusing side note is that when pinball production was in its heyday in the late 70s, Midway placed a huge order for components like displays and chips. After production died down in the early 80’s it was thought they had a lifetime supply of some things like 6 digit displays. It was thought the New Technology platform would replace the original board set before the chips ran out but apparently not all the chips were available at the end.

We asked Pat if any playfields from the original 1992 run were used for this Special Edition. He replies:

It's POSSIBLE that there were a few old playfields used for GOLD. But unlikely. Here's why. What many people will find unbelievable is that, at the end of the regular run of Addams Family, the remaining playfields that were not designated for parts sales were destroyed. Crushed in a large compactor. I personally saw racks of playfields go to the crusher. That's because Williams never ran second releases later. And that inventory would have had to have been stored somewhere in the building. It was more cost effective to write down the inventory than keep it. When the decision was made to do the Gold Run of 1000 games, new playfields were ordered and used. My game has a playfield made by Lenc-Smith [Manufacturing Company] in March of the build year. Impossible for the regular run! Now maybe a game was repaired with an old playfield from parts sales, but I do not believe that you could make a case that the entire run of Golds was old playfields. (My game proves that is incorrect).

Larry DeMar points out that the Gold playfield is indeed different:

The PMS values for several of the colors were changed to make them "hotter". Side by side, it is easy to tell apart playfields from the original run from the new run which used the same screens with different colors.