What I have in my gun is a prototype of a new circuit board designed by Marcasite Industrial Co Ltd. of Taichung Hsien, Taiwan, the actual manufacturers of the Wrath. I was contacted by the designer of the Wrath (and many other paintball guns,) Michael Spurlock, who apparently had read some of my endless complaing about the Wrath's gravity feeding issues. I have to admit, I was a bit rude to him at first since I didn't realize who he was. Although I was convinced that the Wrath's inability to feed faster than 9bps from a gravity-fed loader was due to the randomized position of the ram in the lower tube, Spurlock (and many of you, to your credit) attributed the issues to the Wrath's software, specifically the eye logic. Spurlock offered to send me a prototype of a newer circuit board that uses corrected eye logic, in addition to a faster microprocessor, as well as a few other features. To be more specific, he said that the issue had been solved not by tweaking the eye delay, but by dramatically increasing the eye sensor sampling rate. Although skeptical that what I thought was a hardware problem could be solved with new software I agreed to test the software and report my findings to him. 5 days later a UPS package had gone halfway around the planet to my house.



A quick rundown of what this thing is. The circuit board itself is identical to a "Devil Division" logo-jeweled Wrath board. The bi-color LED and battery charger are present, which was especially nice for me since my Silver Edition Wrath had neither feature. The odd, long jumper came already installed on the board, in the same place as one does to enable the full auto feature in the two existing stock boards.


The software differences are pretty much explained by the pictures above. The bootup screen is different, displaying "BD 5 PLUS" which I assume would mean the Wrath is Michael's 5th evolution of his original Black Dragun design and the "plus" bit comes from this being a new revision.

The rate of fire is now expanded to a range of 4 to 30cps, and the thing sounds absolutely wicked when you run the solenoid at its max rate. Fire mode selection and ROF limiting is adjusted in the same method as the stock board, and as with the stock boards there are only full auto and semi-automatic modes available.

The other new feature is the adjustable debounce setting. The debounce value now comes after the "SENSOR" menu, and is adjustable from 01 to 30mS. I've found that even at the lowest setting it's nearly impossible to make the gun double-fire on one shot, even with the Wrath's super-light trigger switch. It does seem to make rapid-fire in semi-auto easier once you walk the trigger, but more on that later.

So, does the board do what it was meant to do, correct the gravity-fed feeding issue. Oh yes, yes it does. Using a Reloader 2 or an X-boarded Revolution I have no trouble hitting 13-14 bps on semi-auto, and a sustained 13 is a sinch with full auto. Keep in mind that previously my gun had only been able to hit about 9 or 10 bps with paint, with the eyes on OR off. Though I'm not totally convicned of it yet, this board seems to load paint faster even with the eyes off.

One of the very first things I tried was taking the gun up to full speed. Now that the 20bps governer was off, I intended to see just what the Wrath was capable of. I'm sad to say though, that the 20bps limit is hardly a restriction for the Wrath. Past 21bps the gun simply couldn't keep up, with the bolt and ram never being able to fully return to the open position and the valve being hit with less and less force. Still, a 50% increase in useable speed is nothing to sneeze at, particularly with the faster switch and sensor sampling rates. With the debounce set at its lowest setting and walking the trigger as fast as I could, I wasn't quite able to get the gun up to 22bps. I know this because my fingers weren't outrunning the gun, but my finger's aren't particularly fast anyway. When I played last weekend I started out with the debounce set to 8Ms to be on the safe side, but by the end of the day I had turned it all the way down and found that it was just as safe and controllable.

I've got a hunch that among other things, the way this board makes the gun faster is by slightly lowering the dwell setting of the gun. Dwell is NOT user adjustable on this board, and I have no idea what the stock or prototype setting is. My reasoning is that my gun was chronoed right at 280fps the last time I played, and almost never needs and adjustment anyway. After installing this board my FPS had dropped down to about 220, so I made a quick LPR adjustment to fix this. It HAD been a while since I had used the gun, so take this with a grain of salt. I'd need to switch back and forth between the two boards to tell for certain what was going on here.

To answer a few of the questions from the old thread before it was deleted.

1. How can I get one?
I have no idea if/when this board will be available. It's being developed right at the source, and as far as I can tell there's no reason why it would be any more expensive to develop than a stock board, so look for it to eventually replace the current board in Wrath type guns, ie, the AR-1 and Fury.

2. How does it compare to a T-Board?
I can't say. I've never shot a gun with a T-board. I will say that unlike a T-board this board is somewhat limited in terms of user-controllable variables and custom firing modes. It is, after all, intended as the new model of the stock board, not a high-performance replacement. Of course, since this board allows the gun to reach its highest potential yet retain the graphical interface of an LCD screen.

3. Can my stock chip be reprogrammed?
Yes, but it sure as heck wouldn't be easy. As Siress explained in detail in the previous thread, Marcasite encases their microprocessors in so much epoxy that even getting to the chip without breaking it would be dicey, and even then there's no telling what the code's like. On the bright side, if these new boards are sold as replacements, all you would need is the outer, LED half of the board. You would could change it out in seconds since the inner half is the same. I haven't tried this out to verify yet, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be so.

So in closing, this new board rocks, but I really don't have any more information about when or if it will be available. I certainly hope so, as it unlocks all the potential this gun has to offer.

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Wrath Rage - Devils Division- (((tera-notics)))

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