It just floors me that today you can order up a custom PCB for a few dollars if you are willing to wait a few weeks. What a world.
Also you can buy new boardsets for System 11 machines in both kit and complete form. They are electrically identical to the Williams parts but use modern components. They even come on red PCBs like the Williams development boards.
The software is whatever you flash on to the ROM and could be modified on a Williams or DumbAss board equally.
Also what System 11 machines do you have? I have a High Speed (with Williams boards).
The t2 back glass is signed by Steve Richie when I met him at Texas Pinball Fest in 2019.
There’s a podcast interview with Richie somewhere that he talks about designing HighSpeed. As I recall, he had a Porsche in the 80s. He was speeding home one night - very fast like 120 mph or something crazy. He was pulled over by a cop. Or maybe he dodged the cop. I don’t remember the rest of the story but it was interesting, and it became the inspiration for your pin.
I got into ownership during the pandemic, was the only way to get my fix. I’m up to five now!
Would love to meet Steve and his brother Mark who designed Fish Tales, which I also own. TPF seems to be the place for that.
Another bit of Steve Ritchie trivia is that he shared a cube with another Steve at Atari. This one was named Steve Jobs!
https://www.kicad.org/ is free and open-source It is mature and useful, has a vibrant active community, and is progressing at a healthy pace. It competes with the paid options, but might have rough edges comparatively speaking. I recommend starting here. I've only ever used this.
There is also Eagle PCB which is now an Autodesk product. It requires a Fusion360 subscription but I don't know if the free version qualifies. It's a professional tool.
Those are the only two I really hear about from the communities I lurk. But I know there are about a dozen or so currently that range from simple to professional.
I'm not sure how it appeared on windows, but cadence is the kind of software with an extremely long history. I'm pretty sure even recent releases have code that date back to the 70s.
As far as I know, it has always targeted UNIX, then X11, using raw XLIB for drawing? X11 forwarding still seems to be the preferred option for using it.
Anyway, try kicad, which is free and open, it has made great strides recently. You can also look at the gEDA suite, though it may be a bit rough. Commercially, I've also used Eagle and Proteus. LTSpice still is a pretty good no-$ option for simulations (though kicad integrates some barebones SPICE simulator now).