Whoda thunk?

Did you know that pinball machines have about a million plugs? I didn't. ^_^;

I started identifying plugs, carefully determining wire color and writing the socket it goes in, and after about 10 realized that it was kind of pointless. I could do a lot better by mounting the boards and plugging the plugs into them... that way, I don't have to identify the same plug twice or search desperately for an unidentified plug only to lose it when you turn to read the manual.

So then I decided to find only the ones that matter for the task at hand, namely the guys that go to the transformer. What I found was that there aren't enough wires coming out of the transformer to power the game... in fact, there's a 12 pin socket coming from the transformer and a 15 pin socket going to the backbox. As the kids these days say, wtf?!? This prompted a change in stragedy... I got a good idea of which pins should have which voltages, so I'm going to measure them and see if they're correct. I'll also measure some of the random wires that are hanging around and see what's up wit them.

A few more positive notes... since I was messing with plugs, I installed the board s under the playfield and plugged them in, and placed the under playfield ramp (with only one screw, which is all I had handy). A couple of eBay auctions flew by... they weren't my style (actually, they went beyond what I was willing to pay). I did buy a working Fliptronics II board for $51... they generally go for $80, so the savings offsets the fact that I won't need that board for a while.

Tomorrow I plan to go to The Home Depot and pick up a bunch of bolts so I can mount the boards in the backbox. I plan to get enough that I can replace missing bolts in my other games as well...