More +s than -s

Now here's some awesomeness: I actually fixed something on Doctor Who. The upper left flipper wasn't working, so I finally found some diagnosis time while my wife flipped (no pun intended) between Extreme Makeover and America's Funniest Home Videos before finally landing on Pinky and the Brain. Before I got too far into it, I realized that each flipper has its own fuse, so I thought I would try changing the fuse first. Looking at the manual, I swapped the upper flipper's fuse with the one for the non-existent upper right. This yielded a working upper flipper (yay!) but now the lower left flipper wasn't working (boo!). Then I said screw it, I'll just replace the LRF fuse with a new one. That didn't work. So I lifted up the playfield and checked the coil voltages with the game turned on. This showed me that the LRF wasn't getting any power, and pulling the plug from the Fliptronics board I found that there was no power there, either; it sure sounded like a fuse. Before I got into some serious diagnostic work, I took another crack at the fuses. I decided it was time to question authority, so I pulled all the fuses and popped them in one at a time to see which flippers started working. I found that the manual was playing me for a fool: Fuses F901 and 902 are the lower flippers, and F903 and 904 are the upper flippers, which is the opposite of what the manual and sticker in the backbox says. I replaced F902 with a brand new fuse and the flipper started working. I played a celebratory game and got an OK score.

So all I've got left to do is fix the switch matrix and figure out why the mini-playfield has problems. One interesting thing I noticed was while I was in the switch test: The MPF opto switch was flashing on and off... that would certainly explain why it was having problems.

In other news, I decided to take the day off work Friday and take that trip to Pinball Parlour than I mentioned last post. I figured it would be marginally easier to leave the dog with my wife than go while she's out of town and let the poor dog stay overnight at the vet. Pinball Parlour is only open from 7-10, so I left at about 2:30 thinking I would be there with plenty of time to get some food... but that didn't work out. There was some stuff spilled on the road north of Baltimore, the stupid EZPass malfunctioned, causing me to think I was going to get a ticket for skipping through tolls (I shouldn't since they have my license plate on file), and rush hour traffic in Philadelphia got me there about 5 minutes before 7. Thank goodness for the Nerds Rope and Beef Jerky I had on the way up.

Pinball Parlour has newer Williams games (mostly late 80's on) and a bunch of EMs from barely post-flipper to the mid-70's. They mostly work, with some bad flippers and such here and there. I'm unhappy with their unreasoned prejudice against 70's-80's Bally solid state, but what can you do. There was a kid's party in there, so when they came in and ran roughshod over the games, I retreated to the EM room. Then I would shoot the balls and finish the games that they started to cut down on the noise. The few EMs that were working were in suck shape, and I was sad that their 1948 game wasn't working either... I'm up to the late 40's games in Pinball Compendium, and it would have been cool to play one. I was also sad that their Joust pinball wasn't working -- nor was it working when I went a couple of years ago. I did play the one early 80's game they had, Hyperball. I also snuck in a few vids, like Crystal Castles (which I could finish back in the day, but not any more:( ) and Paperboy. The owner popped in at 10 and said he was staying open an extra hour. That meant I got home at 2 AM, but the drive home was not bad. Anyway, I had fun, and it was relatively cheap if you don't count the tolls.

Speaking of Pinball Compendium, the one thing I don't like about it -- aside from Shaloub's kinda artless style, which I can overlook -- is the way he fauns over everyone who talks to him. I honestly don't need to know that he worships Steve Kordek and Harry Mabs as gods every few paragraphs, and that he is so grateful that they spoke to him.

And I got The King of Kong on DVD from Netflix the day it came out. I enjoyed it, though I watched it knowing that played Michael Moore-style games with the truth (my wife wouldn't watch it because it was too biased). Even so, Billy Mitchell struck me as the sort of person that I dislike -- people who are so full of themselves, whether deserved or not, turn my stomach. Plenty of awesome extras too, though I found the commentary by the I am 8-bit guy and IGN editor extremely witless and boring, so I turned it off after 10 minutes. Regardless, the one thing it did is make me want to go to Funspot in NH -- they have a frickin' awesome collection of pins & vids, and it's just two hours away from my friend Marlin's house in Boston...! And I may have to drop my daughter off in New York if she goes to England for a semester abroad, which is just four hours away from Boston...! Maybe it's time to plan an early Fall New England romp.

And finally... watching King of Kong extras made me want to play some Donkey Kong, especially since I didn't even remember the Pie Factory level since I haven't gotten to in in about 20 years. So I fired up MAME and totally sucked at it... I didn't even make it through the second barrel level. I fell short of the kill screen by about 114 levels. ^_^;