Secrets of the Mystery Box... Revealed!

J.J. Abrams: I have two things to say to you: 1) It's awesome that you cast Simon Pegg as Scotty and the guy from the Harold and Kumar movies as Mr. Sulu; and 2) Stop reading now, I'm going to reveal the contents of the Mystery Box!!!

This is it, sorted into various boxes by type. Starting at the bottom plastics and circuit boards, which isn't so much a type as it is a box of the stuff I put on eBay. In the second tier, we have a CD box of all the magic nuts and screws, targets/switches/locks, followed by flipper parts (Darwin contributed the ball to this box, it was not part of the Mystery Box), and 53 pinballs in various conditions. In the top row are miscellaneous junk, plastic posts of many colors, larger plastics including a whole lot of bumper caps, and leg bolts and larger nuts. Not shown are the light bulbs, which were a motley collection of #44s, #555s, #904s, and two #89s.

So was it worth it? Well, most of the plastics sold on eBay, with the best performer being the guy in the middle right, an Elvira plastic in really nice condition that went for $13. Overall the highest priced item was a Williams relay board (not shown because it was probably under the BS Dracula graveyard) which went for $27... pretty good for an untested item. Overall, after expenses I made $80. I figure that there were about $5 worth of working bulbs, and I've already used a 904 in DW... not bad, since I was planning on picking up lights at the pinball show next week, and now I don't have to.

A lot of the stuff is unusable, but over time I'll probably be able to dip into it for various parts. I may also see if I can mix up some of it into some little mystery boxes of my own and sell them as lots on eBay... my conscience would demand that I sweeten them with some better stuff, though.

So, along with the roughly $5 worth of fun that I estimated I got out of pawing through the box, so far I'm up to about $90 worth of goods and services from the $96 I paid for it. And I now have a huge supply of odds & ends, which has already served me well more than once. Overall, I am reasonably satisfied, as I have been the author of much larger fiascos.

I also got around to listing the High Speed backglass. A guy wanted it on Mr. Pinball, so I sent him an email but I made the mistake of making a scammer joke ("I am from London in UK and I only accept Western Union payments... just kidding, I'm actually in Maryland."). It turns out he was one of those guys who only reads the first part of an email, because he replied back and said he'd found one in the US. Oh well. But since I had the pictures ready to go, I turned around and started a 5 day auction on eBay, which I usually don't do but I wanted it to finish with plenty of time so I could offer free delivery to the pinball show. I'm hoping that a local snaps it up, since I don't relish packing it for shipping. A guy from Canada asked if he could pick it up, which is a 9 hour drive one way. His max bid was only $5, though, so it doesn't look like he'll get it. I'm hoping to get about $75 for it so I can have a little extra boodle to take with me to the show.

Also on Mr. Pinball, I posted an ad for a Lotta Fun backglass again, hoping someone going to the show would respond in the affirmative. No such luck though. I also successfully avoided another round of boneheaded scammer emails by putting the following in my ad: "Note to scammers: You must be at least as smart as I am to successfully rip me off. If not, I will waste much more of your time that you will of mine."

In repair news, my crimping supplies arrived but I haven't done anything about it yet.

Also, I was going through my old saved links and found this one about DW mini-playfield problems. Rereading it, I realized that this guy was describing my problem exactly. So I decided to do a quick round of testing, with an eye towards asking Pinball Resource to bring a motor with them to the show. And what did I find? A completely working and well-behaved mini-playfield. W? T? F? I really don't think fixing the power to the CPU board would have fixed this, so I'm kind of at a loss. I plan to turn it back on and try it out in gameplay tonight to see if the failures come back.

We went up to visit my daughter at school yesterday, and basically checked out for 20 minutes to play a few games of The Champion Pub. I've been prevented from doing so for the last couple of visits, so I had to play the Bastard Card or face the prospect of the school year ending without me playing any games of it. I had fun, beat a few boxers, lost to a lot more, got two replays, and had a hard time in the dark bar with no GI.

There is more to write about, but it's getting late and I have to walk the dog before it gets dark.

A Shocking Development: Repairs of Actual Substance!

I was going to write about the Mystery Box, but some actual pinball fixin' has been going on, so I feel obligated to discuss it.

Doctor Who is back up and running, thanks to the Shaggy Repair Guides, specifically the section on WPC resets. Basically, I worked through the steps and was fine until I got to the point where I measured the voltage on the CPU board. Instead of being the healthy 4.95 VDC on the power board, it was a slightly anemic 4.87. The next step was to reseat J101 on the power board, and that didn't help. But reseating J114 (the power->CPU connector) got me .01 V back. That was a step in the right direction, so I reseated (resat?) J201 on the CPU. That put me up to 4.92 VDC, which is just good enough to keep the game running. To celebrate, I played what turned out to be a pretty good game, making sure to whack the flippers more than usual to put as much stress on the system as possible. It played like a champ, albeit a champ with a bunch of features disabled. And fate rewarded me for my work, because I got the Doctor Cow Easter Egg for the first time while I was playing.

However, that is not the end of the story. As the repair guide says, reseating the connectors is not the fix, it's an indication of the problem. I need to level up my connector skills and replace J114 & J201. To do so, I ordered a crimping tool, connectors, keys, trifurcons, and etc. from the fine folk at Great Plains Electronics, who is on spring break right now but will be back Tuesday. So April will be Connector Month here at the Pinblog, because I need to fix this, redo the coin door connector, and finally get around to fixing the MPU J3 connector on Eight Ball Deluxe, so I can play more than one game at a time without reseating it. Yeah, baby.

This brings me to a painful topic, but one which I think needs to be addressed at this juncture: What I need to fix to get Doctor Who fully functional. They are, in no particular order:

1. Replace the connectors listed above.
2. Fix the column that's out on the CPU. I think I just need to flow some solder between the encoder chip and the resistor that precedes it, but it could be more complicated than that.
3. Fix the miniplayfield so it raises and lowers properly. This could be as easy as replacing the opto, or it could be much worse.
4. Fix the gray time expander buttons. I believe one of them has a bad opto, and I think the other appears to have a problem at the opto board.
5. Reconnect the wobblehead, which I disconnected until the reset problem was dealt with. Hopefully replacing the connectors will bump my voltage up to a healthy 4.95 V, because I honestly don't think 4.92 V + flippers + a functional miniplayfield + that crazy moving dalek is going to cut it. No sir, I just don't like it.
6. Lower priority items: install the new playfield switch, install a more effective backbox lock, replace the bogus plexiglass with actual translite glass (which I have prepaid for and should pick up at the Allentown show in 3 weeks!).
   
7. Give the game a thorough cleaning.
8. The unknown... things I don't know are broken yet, things that will break in the future, things in the scary darkness beyond the light cast by the single 555 bulb I'm holding in my hand.

So that's what I'm up against. Let's set a hard target of trying to finish this all up by the end of summer. OK, that's kind of a pretty flaccid target, but for a professional procrastination proponent such as myself, that's as hard as its going to get.

And as if that's not enough, I've got eBays going for a bunch of Mystery Box stuff, and they're up to $50 with a day to go and lots of watchers. So it's possible that I may be able to pay for all these repairs, as well.

Pinball Vacation: The Final Chapter

Well, sadly, the Pinball Vacation has come to a close. The last day wasn't quite as interesting as the rest because I ended up having to do a lot of the household chores that I should have been doing the whole time.

I did edit down the pinball music I recorded for Scared Stiff, Monster Bash, and Tales of the Arabian Nights. After Doctor Who, I started recording them in one long file instead of putting each track in a separate file, and that made a huge difference. I could just select a track, paste it into a new window, fade it out at the end, and save it. By the time I did TOTAN I managed to complete 13 tracks in under 20 minutes.

Now that I've had a chance to listen to them, I've found that if the computer was doing anything else -- such as complaining that it's not connected to the network, which it does constantly while I'm in our dining room, the farthest point in the house from the router -- the music slowed down slightly. I also noticed this occasionally on the 80 tracks I downloaded last month. The computer I was using to record was my daughter's old laptop, which is not a powerful machine. So I decided to give it a try on my work laptop, and the results were a lot better... the music was a continuous tempo. Of course, that may also be because I'm using the new pinmame 2.1, but I'm guessing it's the machine speed.

The problem is that my work computer is not supposed to have any program installed on it that aren't approved by the mega-corporation that owns us. To get around that, I set up something I've been thinking of doing for a while: A PinDrive. It's a USB flash drive with pinball programs and ROMs on it. That way, when I want to play on the work laptop I can just pop the drive in, play, then remove it when I'm done. I plan to install Visual Pinball and Future Pinball to the PinDrive. The only evidence that the programs are there will be a couple of entries in the Windows Registry, which I'm hoping the company's auditing software will ignore. This PinDrive is only 128 Mb, though, so my next step will be to get a bigger one.

The other pin thing I did was list some of the Mystery Box items on eBay. I'm curious to see how they sell... so far almost all of them have either bids or watchers. I doubt they'll pay for the Mystery Box, but hopefully eBay proceeds + the useful bounty its already provided will offset the box's cost.

So overall I thought the Pinball Vacation was a success, though as far as the repairs I did went I really feel that I needed to do less cosmetic work and more real work. I mean, it's nice that I connected the coin door switch, but I didn't do anything towards getting the game to stop resetting. Also, I spent all my time on Doctor Who and didn't do anything with the other games... if I had had time on Sunday, I would have done some BK work, but, well, you know. And I reserved my harshest criticism for last: I didn't play any of my own games! I played 4 frickin' games out in the world, but didn't even start up any of my games except for DW, which I only turned on to test. So next Pinball Vacation I take, I need to play the games.

Pinball Vacation, Day Four

The saga continues...

Today was the first sunny day of reasonable temperature that we've had for the entire week, so I was obligated to run out and do some yard work. We also went to a local park and perambulated about. And on the way back I convinced Mrs. Entropy to stop in at Sole d'Italia for some Family Guy pinball!!! Yes, it's one of the rare occasions when I played pinball with my wife... it wasn't a huge arm twist, since it was just slightly out of the way and she likes the show. I got a free game and she made what I thought was a respectable novice score, but she is a perfectionist so wasn't happy with her score. Regardless, at least I got to share my interest with the spouse, which is not always easy to do as we have somewhat mutually antagonistic hobbies.

In the repair corner today, I verified that the playfield switch will work with the hardware I have, but didn't install it since I didn't want to bust out the soldering iron. So the primary job was making a connector for the coin door test buttons. I would like to stand here and say that I added connectors to my pinball repair skill set, but it's only partially true. I did get some EP, but I don't think I managed to level up.

So I had a Molex .156" plug empties and a bag of Trifurcon terminals that I'd bought a few years ago. First I cut the plug to size, 13 pins. I don't have a crimping tool, because I rarely spend money on tools until I know I'm going to use them, so I did my crimping with needle-nosed pliers. The final score was Joe 2, Crappy Crimps I'll have to redo at some point 4. Then I inserted the first terminal into the plug and immediately discovered that I had was orienting the plug to the pin listing in the manual, which meant I put pin 3 into slot 11. At this point I discovered the importance of having a terminal removal tool, which I plan to buy at the same time I get a crimper. But get it out I did, and inserted everything into what I thought were the correct slots. I plugged it into the board and it fit very nicely. I turned on the game to test it and found that the buttons were completely backwards... the test button added service credits, and the service credit button got me into the test mode. But I did do it, I learned from my mistakes, I know what tools I need to get to do a better job next time, and I didn't hurt myself in the process. I've had far worse days doing pinball repair.

Pinball Vacation, Roman Numeral III

As previously mentioned, today was a road trip. I was plannin' to take two road trips durin' my vacation, but scaled it back to one so I could spend some time with my wife. Today I headed up to Winchester, MD, to verify two entries on the Free State Pinball Association site... I made this same trip about a month ago, but the first stop was only open M-F and I couldn't find the second. This time I went on a Friday and got better directions. The first stop was Ellie's Carry Out in the charmin'ly named town of Finksburg. There was a T2 there 6 months ago, but it has been replace with a Mousin' Around. While I do appreciate how that game ties in with yesterday's "dropped g gerund" theme, I was a little disappointed. To use an analogy, it's like I went there expectin' a classic Williams game and got a mediocre late model Bally game instead. I played it, had a fun time, ate a pretty decent BLT, so no big loss. The second place was a wash... no pinball in sight.

When I got home I did my civic duty and updated the FSPA site, then spent a half hour or so on the Pinball Rebel Locator site enterin' as many Maryland pinballs as I could remember, includin' addin' 20 of the 25 games there and correctin' the existin' entries (c'mon, guys, BK ≠ BK2K).

OK, I'll stop the Journey thing now.

Today's pin work ended up as gratifying as yesterday was frustrating. I started doing some work on the playfield glass switch, but after taking the newly installed glass bracket off I sort of stopped. Instead I put tops on as many of the pop bumpers as I could easily reach (the main ramp blocks one). I also started goofing with the backbox lock again and found that the coin door lock I was trying to use was too long. Luckily, one of the locks from the Mystery Box was not only short but it also had a key, and after fiddling with it for a while I found that it worked just fine. I even managed to find two security bolts in the huge container of hardware I salvaged. I was extremely happy that the Mystery Box has actually paid unexpected dividends. I even put a lock on the coin door, so that game is ready to be put on location!

I was looking at the calendar today and marvelled that there's only one more month until the Pinball Wizards show. Since it's always the first weekend in May, there's always a chance that it will fall on our Anniversary, May 1st... which in fact it did in 2004. Although I could try to go to the show instead of taking Mrs. Entropy out to dinner, I'm guessing that would be a non-starter in our house. In 2004 I went on Friday April 30th, which was generally unsatisfactory because of shorter hours (4 - 9 on Fri vs 10 - 7 on Sat), and the general suckingness of starting a 3.5 hour drive at 9PM, which got me home around 1 AM. Sadly, it will happen again next year... I might go on Sunday (10-4) which gives me an extra hour, but I'm guessing the flea marketage will be poor at best. White Rose is just the opposite: Friday is 10 - 8, and Saturday is 9 - 6, so I go on Friday and take the extra hour. Does anyone else put this much thought into these kinds of things?

Pinball Vacation, Part B

Here's a perfect example of Why I Suck: I'm running errands today in the car, and on the radio comes Journey singing Don't Stop Believin'. Now, a normal person my age would think about high school, that party at Biff's house in our Junior Year, driving home with friends after watching, oh, I don't know, Comin' At Ya! and hearing that song. What's the first thing I think of? The freakin' Journey arcade game, where you controlled the band members with their little digitized heads as they flew around killing aliens with their instruments. That's me in a nutshell.

Btw, here's an interesting fact about Journey, a band which I largely avoided in the 80's thanks to Punk Rock and New Wave. I did an analysis of their song titles and lyrics when a friend loaned me their greatest hits CD, and I found that they almost never write ing, always in'. I mean, Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'? Come on, are gerunds so terrible?

So. Pinball Vacation Day 2... or shall we say, Day 2 of the Pinball-iday? (Yes! *fist pump*) I have to put this in the frustrating and somewhat productive pile.

Again with the music, I rerecorded the Doctor Who music, as well as a new recording of Star Trek TNG. ST took twice as long as usual because it has a lot of music, and then I got hung up on the zillions of speech calls. I also mixed together the weird high pitched reedy music I mentioned yesterday with normal music. The result was a horrible, horrible thing, discordant and strange, like the soundtrack to Tim Burton's Doctor Who.

I had a frustrating time with the coin door. I cleaned off the French door and then found that the screw holes to attach the door to the frame are slightly different. So then I went back to my old door, only to find that a metal tab that holds some wires hit the door switch mount and kept it from closing. So I bent that down a little and that worked, so I now have a functional coin door.

Then I got the bright idea to replace my broken launch ball button with a new one I bought a year or two ago from Pinball Resource. How hard could that be? First, I couldn't find a wrench big enough to unscrew it. After I gave that up, I managed to get the plastic nut off with my fingers. Then I found that the threads on the new button didn't extend past the wood of the cabinet (I later found this wasn't necessary, as the assembly snapped in). So then I swapped the new button cover with the old one, but then I couldn't figure out how the switch attached to the button shaft. After puzzling over that for a while, I thought I'll just use the entire new button assembly. But then I found that the holes on the switch didn't match the corresponding pegs on the mount (of course, I just now realized that I was trying to put it in upside-down, duh). So finally I ended up Krazy Gluing the switch to the shaft and calling it a day. As the before and after pics below show, it does look a lot better.

Stay tuned for Day 3, which may just involve a Road Trip...

Pinball Vacation, Episode 1

So today was the first day of what I have decided to call my Pinball Vacation. I actually have a bunch of other stuff to do, like clean the house, catch up on laundry, and take the dog to the vet for his annual physical; however, Dog Care, Cleaning, and Laundry Vacation just doesn't play well with the whole pinblog theme. For more on those subjects, feel free to browse Nikki's Blog. Extra special bonus: Nikki delves into her fertility treatments in loving detail, another topic I am also unlikely to cover with sufficient depth.

So the verdict on Day 1: Success! I started off easy by completing a long simmering project, collecting and editing the Doctor Who pinball music. There was a bit of panic early on when I realized that I hadn't recorded the DW theme, which is pretty crucial. So I set up one of the old laptops and re-recorded it while I ate lunch. I also took the opportunity to record music for Scared Stiff, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, and Tales of the Arabian Nights. Each one took about 15 minutes to record. Editing the files took about 30-45 minutes, not counting a couple of early false steps caused by Audacity being kinda goofy. Here is the result... it sounds pretty good, but there is a click at the beginning of each track that I'm not happy with. While I was recording, I found slightly higher pitched versions of a lot of the DW music... now I'm starting to think that those are separate tracks intended to be played through the smaller speaker to give the music more depth. Not today, though.

Just that would have fulfilled the terms of my contract, but I pushed further... rargh! I decided it was time to do something about the coin door on DW. Currently, the coin door switch consists of the two wires shunted together, so when I want to "open" the coin door, I disconnect the wires. Also, the coin door buttons are sitting inside where the coin box goes. All of these are connected to the Coin Interface Board using alligator clips with pieces of cardboard in between to keep them from shorting. Calling it half-assed would be an insult to partial glutes everywhere. I would say that it could not possibly be more than 18%-assed.

So I pulled the door off, and pulled the frame of the door off the old parts machine. I also disassembled the door & frame that I bought on eBay a few years ago that I got the buttons from in the first place. Amazingly, none of the frames or doors are remotely similar. The frame from the parts machine has a mount for the door switch, the others don't. The eBay door has a mount for the buttons, mine doesn't. My door has two quarter coin mechanisms, the eBay door has one solid state mechanism for Francs. None of the coin units look like they will work on any door but the one they came from. Quel dommage! Anyway, I'm done for tonight, but the plan is to use the parts frame with the switch mount and the eBay door with the button mount and just accept the Franc slot for the time being, then jettison the alligator clips in favor of a real connector. And I have to take the dog to the vet, get some laundry done, and go with my wife to see Monsters vs Aliens. Zut alors! Oh, and get used to the Franc slot so I can stop ejaculating in French.