Volunteering

A few months ago I put in an application to volunteer to fix games at the National Pinball Museum. I interviewed with my daughter, then museum director David Silverman asked me a few questions, then I got the job. So for the past couple of months I come in after work on Tuesdays and fix games.
There's a guy that fixes the games, but from what I've seen he fixes games like an operator fixes games -- so if the ball doesn't register when you shoot it into Rudy's mouth, so what? You can still play it. That's what the ball search is for. I try to get the games into the kind of condition I want them in when I play them.
At first I came in figuring I'd use the museum's tools, but with the exception of a very nice soldering iron the museum's tools are either terrible or missing (for example: There are I think three sets of socket wrenches on the shelf, but not one driver that works with any of them). So next week I brought in my tool box. Then I discovered that the museum also didn't have a partiuclarly good collection of spare parts. So next week I brought in my parts box. Now I just have a luggage cart with 4 tool/parts boxes on it, plus my laptop which I've loaded up with manuals and reference. If I had infinite time and patience, I would probably organize the tool area into something that people could actually use. 
Typically of any collection of games, every game that needs fixing is a rabbit hole that you just keep falling into. So for example, Funhouse. It had two problems listed: Rudy's mouth and the P target didn't work. I also wanted to fix something I thought was kind of stupid: David loves to put add-ons in his game, and in Funhouse he'd attached a promotional plastic to the left slingshot. But he'd attached it in such a way that the ball would sometimes hit it.
The P target was easy: One of the wires had broken off, so I resoldered it. Rudy's mouth was also pretty simple: Of the 6 screws holding the kicker and Rudy's head to the playfield, there were only two installed, which caused the kicker to droop so the switch wouldn't close when the ball was in it. A quick look in the cabinet turned up the other 4 screws, so I screwed them in. Problem solved. Although I wanted desperately to remove the promo plastic, instead I just raised it up so the ball wouldn't interfere with it.
While I was digging around in the cabinet for the screws, I found an envelope. Inside were a set of Cliffy Protectors that David had ordered almost 10 years ago and never installed. So I installed the hole protector (the ramp protectors were a lot more involved).
Finally, I noticed that the mylar on the playfield was bubbling up, especially around the clock inserts. Not much I could do about that, so I had to leave it.
When all was said and done, the game was pretty much working correctly. It didn't even have a credit dot! I pointed this out to my daughter, and she didn't realize what the credit dot was. So a few days later she asked their tech about it, and he said that the credit dot doesn't necessarily mean the game is broken, because it can come on if someone hasn't hit a particular switch for a while (!!!). So when my daughter told me that, my first thought was: Yeah, dumbass, so why don't you hit that switch and see if it still works? Like I said, he fixes games like an operator.
Tonight was an extra big night: I spent 4 hours in the trenches. The autoplunger wasn't working on Guns 'n' Roses, which turned out to be a blown fuse (and of course, that particular fuse wasn't in the fuse box, but luckily I found one sitting on a work table), and while I was in there I replaced a bunch of burned out bulbs. Next I worked on Indiana Jones, which was ejecting two balls into the plunger lane. I was worried that it was a bad opto board, but the switch test showed that the trough switches were working fine. A little more poking around showed that there was a ball in the idol lock, for a total of 7 balls in a six ball game. Removing one ball fixed that problem.
The left flipper on Jurassic Park wasn't working, and a quick inspection showed that a ball was trapped in the raptor kicker (this has happened before). The flipper had basically fallen apart, so I just fixed the nut and screw out of the cabinet and reassembled it. I freed the ball and repositioned the kicker, hopefully for good. I also installed a set of Cliffy Protectors which I had ordered. Nice!
The lockdown bar on Stargate didn't close, and they had taped the door closed. Turns out the bar just needs to be whacked down smartly before it would close. I also retrieved the lock pieces from the cabinet and put it back together.
Lights Camera Action also had a non-working left flipper, and the problem was pretty much the same as Jurassic Park, but in this case the linkage had fallen apart and I couldn't fix it without a new one. Since it was getting late, I noted it on the fixit list and moved on to the last game, Barb Wire. Balls keep getting stuck in the Retinal Scanner, and the problem turned out to be a flaky connection to the kicker. I noted that it should probably be resoldered.
And other than being particular long, that was my day fixing games at the NPM. There were a few more that I wish I was able to get to (I also bought a protector for Star Trek TNG and newer Funhouse protectors which I wish I could have installed, and I'd really like to tear into Star Trek and fix a bunch of crap on it). Ideally the museum won't close for good next Monday so I'll have another opportunity to finally get more of those games tuned up. Of course, what would be best would be if I could just take a game home every few weeks, give it some TLC and care for it like a game should be cared for, then return it to the museum.

9 1/2 Months

I am a nut for to-do lists, so much so that I save them. Here are a couple of items from the last months: 

Christmas 2010 - Blog
Feb 2011 - Update blog
3/4/11 - blog!
5/6/11 - start bloggin

Etc. Unfortunately, blogging is always harder than not blogging, and the longer you don't blog the larger the backlog of things to write about becomes... I'm reminded of a diary that I kept religiously in the early 80's that eventually became a many pages long to-do list of things to write about, until finally I got to the point where I couldn't remember what my cryptic comments meant. 

But there comes a time in a boy's life when he has to shit or get off the pot... so be prepared for me to take a massive dump on you, my loyal readers.

Here's what I've done lo, these many months, in no particular order:

• Got Terminator 2 up and running, even to the point of it making its public debut
• Loaned two games out for a league party
• Did not make the league playoffs for the first time since I started
• Participated in the Pinburgh tournament against some of the best players in the world, and came in ninth (yeah, you heard me... Ninth, bitches!)
• Added mapping to the Pinball Locator
• Got my league back to reporting our stats to the World Pinball Ranking website
• Was solicited to help bring the PARS rating system back to life
• Organized my basement to the point where I could actually get to most of my games, but then a bunch of stuff happened that made it all fall apart
• Attended the opening of the National Pinball Museum in December, which my daughter was instrumental in getting to happen
• Started volunteering to help fix games at the National Pinball Museum, which is fun and educational
• Mourned the possible closing of the National Pinball Museum in July, which my daughter didn't really have much to do with
• Got a crapload of new playfields for my playfield project, which I have non-bindingly vowed will move forward this year

And there's probably a bunch of other junk which I can't remember. In the next few days/weeks/months I'll probably write about one or more of these things and a few more besides.

So, to subtly reference the massive dump metaphor one last time: Let's get a move on.