Road Show!

Boy, a lot of stuff has happened, so let's have at it.

On some other errands, I stopped in at the pool place with the Pirates machine to see if they'd gotten it fixed, and it was replace with Red & Ted's Road Show, which is actually one of the games they used to have when they had four pins in the back. I played a couple of games and it was in reasonable shape. Yay!

Saturday was Pinball Road Trip day. I had to pick up the DW parts machine at the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse in The Lebanon, PA. Post-auction communication was a little difficult as the guy running their auctions is a "one question per email" guy... if you put two questions in (in this case, hours on Saturday and location), he only answers the first one because apparently the rest of your email is unimportant. So I had to send a second email to verify the location. -_-*

Since the path to The Lebanon led past Gettysburg, I offered to drop my wife off so she could spend the day with my daughter doing historical reenactment crafts (mostly hand-sewing a hem on my daughter's antebellum dress) while I get the game. Aside from leaving a bit late, that worked out just fine. The drive up was pleasant, and the GPS came to my aid again, allowing me to not follow its directions and avoid the PA Turnpike... since it recalculates as soon as you make what it considers a wrong turn, I can just steer in the direction I think is best and eventually it all works out.

The Lebanon looks like an old industrial town that has seen better days. Down the street from the warehouse, there was an awesome old marble bank building that was built in 1915. The warehouse itself was kind of a dump... an old storefront that was probably some nice downtown store when downtown Lebanon was actually nice. It was crammed with arcade games, mostly in good condition from what I saw, but all way too expensive for my taste.

As I suspected/feared, security was somewhat lax. The guy (not the one who runs the auctions) asked me what game I was here to pick up and if I'd paid for it. So for all he knew, I could be any yahoo that pops in and says he bought a game online. After a couple of trips in the creepy freight elevator, we got the game down and loaded into my car and I drove back to Gettysburg.

My wife and daughter were still involved in the hemming of garments, so I went over to Pizza House and found that NASCAR was running. I totally spanked the game... I got the #4 high score and the grand champion score, knocking off machine default Pat Lawlor. And that was even though the ball release would fail sporadically. I ended up playing for about an hour on my $2. After an extremely collegiate meal at the dining hall and waiting for them to finish hemming, we drove home.

The game is in about as good shape as I might expect. I'll post some pictures soon, but it's nice that in addition to the nicer cabinet and Dalek, it also has actual door and playfield glass switches (so I don't have to short the wires) and a couple of nuts that I'm pretty sure I need.

It came with a translite, and since a DW translite had just sold a few days before for a (to me) ludicrous price of $171, I wanted to post the spare while the disappointed bidders were still unsatisfied. I put it up Sunday night, and it's already up to $76. Ideally I'd like to pay the $200 I spent on the game via parts, so we'll see how that works out. Strangely enough, the current high bidder is the guy who won the last auction... I'm not sure what his story is.

I also got a second DMD from pinballchuck. It had one line out, but since my current one (that I bought brand new!!!) has several lines out, this is definitely a step up. It was only $32, and it works just fine.

While I was testing the DMD, I plugged in the speaker panel (which doesn't have the plastic facing but does have the lamps) from the new game and found that light 7 doesn't work on that, either. I wonder if it's a wiring issue. I was thinking about connecting up the Dalek, but it's not easy to disconnect and didn't feel like running wires over to it.

I came up with a bright idea while I was sitting around at work yesterday... I figured that there was probably a game setting to shut off the mini-playfield. I checked the manual and it turns out there is, so I shut it off... playing the game is a lot easier when the ball doesn't get stuck in the gap (which, I discovered, is caused by the lower end of the mini-playfield being loose... and it doesn't screw in properly, so something is wrong down there. Another thing to look into, yay!). I WD-40'd the outhole, so now that delivers balls nicely. So really, the only things keeping me from playing a decent game are the sticking flipper (not that bad lately) and the Tardis popper switch that doesn't register reliably. I've played several games and both had fun AND not burst a blood vessel in frustration. I actually did a couple of WHO loops, got multiball once, and successfully completed a video mode.

Finally, having the parts game allows me to experiment with secret techniques... last night I tried out dishwasher ramp cleaning from TOP #3. The under-playfield ramp in the new game was not attached and amazingly filthy. So, following Shaggy's advice, I put it in the top rack of the dishwasher and a broken slightshot plastic in with the silverware. I selected normal wash and the energy saver air dry. As you can see from the pics, it worked really well. There is still a line of dirt in the ball trails, but it's a huge improvement! I'm a little concerned about how stickers fare in this... this ramp just has a warning sticker, but playfield ramps are a different story. Washing didn't help the plastic so much, though.

An Experiment

Tonight I was watching yet another playfield on eBay... this time it was a Medusa in Richmond. It spent the whole week with no bids at $100, but tonight people started bidding and it went for $200. I would have liked it... I like Medusa a lot. I played it back in the day and at a recent pinball show. Oh well... it was a bit rich for my blood. My adjusted max was $175.

I listen to a public radio show called Calling All Pets about pet stuff, and in this weeks show they talked about animal hoarders... like the old ladies who have 60 cats. Honestly, I recognized a lot of my own traits in the hoarder description... I've always collected things. Like when I was a kid, I collected baseball, football, basketball, and hockey cards, even though I didn't care much for sports. I collected Partridge Family trading cards even though I didn't care much for David Cassidy (though I was partial to Susan Dey). I started playing Neopets largely because I like collecting items. I spent about $1000 amassing and refurbishing a complete set of Colorforms Outer Space Men, of which I had all but three as a kid (and I still can't find my originals...). I just collect things. On the show they said that the urge to hoard is probably instinctual -- most likely a survival reflex -- and tightly bound to the limbic system. That probably explains why buying playfields is so much fun... they are just the latest in a long line of stuff my brain tells me I gotta have.

Anyway, the experiment: This week's obsession is fixing the lights in EBD. In the past I've tried replacing bulbs, and that's no good. Some of them used to work, so the wiring & socket should be OK. So I was reading the lights section in the repair guide and found the part about testing the components on the Lamp Driver Board. I realized that I had bought an Auxiliary Lamp Driver Board a few years ago to practice circuit board repair (it's actually the one they used in KISS to run the KISS lights on the backglass). I tested a bunch of the SCRs following the instructions, and all the ones I tried failed the test... the values were higher than they should have been. But, it was kind of fun testing them. Last night I located my bad lights on a schematic, and this weekend I plan to go in and see if I can figure out what's wrong with all those lights.

Bonus!

Early morning post! I just noticed that the DW parts monkey I bought last night includes the 2-10W Resistor board that I don't have in my game, which I think deals with the Dalek head. I was reminded of this when I saw an eBay auction for same this morning from the imo overpriced and too expensive shipping European pinball magnate Duke of Pinball. I checked the pictures of my newly one game and it's the only board in the head. Bueno!

Hey, watch me buy more stuff!

Tonight I bought another Doctor Who parts machine. Ideally, I will get a better looking cabinet (the red has not faded, but there may be some scuff marks on the side), a Dalek topper (hopefully with all the parts), a playfield, and a bunch of stuff that I can sell. Probably I'll do the classic parts machine shuffle... keep the best and sell the rest.

I was bidding by proxy tonight. We had driven my daughter back to school after her Spring Break, and we ended up leaving about an hour late. So we got up there an hour late, and didn't leave until about 8:30. The auction ended at ~9:45, and I knew that we probably couldn't make it back home by then, so we had my daughter login to our account and directed her to bid using our secret bidding techniques over the phone (she has actually started using simplified versions of these techniques for her own auction purchases). I won it for just over $200, which is about $100 less than I would have paid. It's in PA, and I'll probably try to pick it up next weekend. Then we'll find out if I'm a champ or a chump...

At last: A victory that's NOT Pyrrhic!

This is a pinball weekend. Wanting to accomplish something other than Doctor Who this weekend, I turned my baleful eye and expanded brain on Eight Ball Deluxe. Last night, while my wife was watching Looney Toons: Back in Action (which was surprisingly good, especially in light of the incredibly average and not very Looney Toony Space Jam [but to be fair and on topic, there is a Space Jam pinball game]), I used my newly discovered knowledge with flippers to replace the coil on the chattering left flipper. This time, though, I soldered it and everything. It was a small consolation that my soldering job was better than the one that was in there, but since those solders sucked that's not much to crow about.

Today I was after the non-working switches... the left bumper and both slingshots. I read the pinball repair guide for 80's Bally games, and since there wasn't an entire row or column of switches out, I figured it had to be either a broken wire or disconnected diode. I looked around under the playfield near the left bumper -- you really learn to appreciate newer fold-up playfields after wedging yourself into those older games -- but didn't see anything. Then I had the bright idea to look at the other bumpers... and there was a broken wire on the switch for the center bumper! A quick experiment with the switch test indicated that connecting the wire solved my switch problems. So out came the soldering iron and I attached the wire.

Now Eight Ball Deluxe is fully functional (except for lamps)!!! That's the first game that I have completely brought from mostly non-working to completely working! I played a few games and suffered NO disappointments!

But that can't last, of course. One of my daughter's friends was over, and I mentioned that DW was marginally working, so her and my daughter played it. Boy, what a disaster. The mini-playfield seems to have recessed in the night, so pretty much any hit to the gray buttons causes the ball to stick. Also, my unqualified success with the outhole kicker has now been qualified. It is sticking again, so I'll probably have to lubricate it in some way.

Here's a picture of the cleaned up outhole kicker... I wish I had a "before" picture... it would be unabashed pinball restoration porn. The mounting plate, the ball hitting thing, and the post it rotates on were filthy and disgusting. Even though it doesn't work, I'm still really happy with the cleanliness.

And here's some fun. Here's a picture of Rosie, our remaining cat, sitting on Doctor Who. Actually, I had a bit of a scare with her today... I was setting DW on free play -- with a slight detour when I changed the languages to French and German to see what the mini-playfield warning sounds like (the French voice is female, or extremely effeminate! Cool!) -- and she jumped in the open coin door. I didn't want her to zap herself on any exposed wires -- my game is not exactly up to code -- so I turned it off asap.

Doctor Who, Hey! Doctor Who

Yes, the long national nightmare is finally over. I just finished playing my first complete game of Doctor Who.

While my wife watched the commentary on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest... not only are we big Disney fans, especially myself as a former Disneyland employee -- somewhere, I should have a sword and some coins I stole from the ride when I worked there 27 years ago -- but I went to school from elementary through college with the guy who plays Pintel... and he actually knew who I was, unlike Emilio Estevez, who I went to high school with but didn't realize it until about 5 years later. Lee knew me long enough that (the last time I spoke to him when we were at UCLA) he still called me by the diminutive form of my name, which for the purposes of this blog is "Joey" (you should have figured out by now that Joe Entropy is not my real name).

Anyway, I reassembled the sticking right flipper, replacing the plastic thing that contacts the EOS switch with electrical tape, hoping it would provide less friction. Not so much. Then I tried a new spring from the flipper rebuild kit. No. Then I attached to spring to the far side of the switch mount. Oho! That didn't do the trick entirely, but it did more of the trick than anything I've already tried did. So now the flipper still sticks every so often, but usually contact with the ball will push it down. And it does hold properly, as does the upper left flipper, which kind of surprised me, since neither of them do so in test mode.

So, how does it play? Like a crappy game that's been on location for a year and the operator has forgotten about it. The Tardis switch is back to not working reliably, so whenever the ball goes there you have to wait for the ball search... but usually the randomly firing kicker will get it first. You really have to whack the Escape targets or they won't register... I think I lit video mode twice during four or five games, and never got it. The mini-playfield was fine for the first couple of games, but now it stops at random points, which doesn't really help. And there are a handful of lines out on the edges of the display. BUT... I completed all the games I played, and my daughter even played one, too. And it only took me just over a year.

So was it worth it? Probably not... but in some future post, I'll have to total up all the money I spent getting to this point. Obviously I still have some work to do. But I have learned a lot... certainly enough to fix the chattering flipper in Eight Ball Deluxe, which I think is my next job. I really would like to put some distance between the Doctor and I for a few weeks. ^_^;

Hey, last thing: I was searching for something Who-related last night and found the history of the game written by Pfutz, the designer. Really interesting reading for someone who's spent so much time with the game. And inside was a link to the Williams promotional video for the game! Neat.

Eegah!

I was so close! Tonight, I actually got to play one complete ball on Doctor Who.

While my wife watched the commentary on Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, I replaced the switch on the right flipper because the thing that closes the EOS switch kept hanging up on the switch. That took a while, but I got it back together and ran through the flipper test and it worked fine. The upper left flipper still won't hold, but holding really doesn't do you a lot of good on a vertical flipper anyway. Then I loaded the balls -- the outhole kicker loaded the balls oh so sweetly -- ran a rag over the playfield to get the accumulated dust off, and tied down the slingshot rubbers. It was time to play!

So as I said, I got through one ball fine. The Tardis kicker seems to fire every few seconds, so we'll probably need to take care of that at some point. My second ball started, I was doing OK, then the right flipper stuck. >:(

I took the flipper apart again and took out the entire thing that closes the EOS switch assembly. I intended to replace it with the new one from the flipper rebuild kit, but after I put it on I remembered that it was for a left flipper. So what I'll probably do is use the one from the Hurricane flipper set that I got the coils from. I didn't feel like staying up later, so that'll have to be tomorrow.

There are some interesting eBays going on in the upcoming week. Actually, I think the same clown who tried to sell the Dalek head for $100 is at it again. This time, he's selling a ramp for $100 (which one? probably the big one, but who knows? He has no pictures!) with $25 shipping. He selling some other crap for too much money as well. I hope nobody buys from him again, since it just rewards bad behavior.

Progress with a Capital P!

Again, real life intrudes on the light frothiness of the blog... our cat Ryo-ohki had a really bad day Monday, so we decided it was time to put her to sleep. I really didn't feel much like doing anything for a couple of days, but now I've got a few more things to write about. Again, this is going to be one of the more sedate entries. Sorry, no links either... but I've linked to everything in here before, anyway.

Last weekend my daughter came home for her first Spring Break, and I kind of vowed to have Doctor Who working by the time she went back. When I went up, we ate at Pizza House which has replaced Medieval Madness with NASCAR. That would have been fine, but it wasn't turned on. We'll see if it's been fixed when we go up Sunday.

Over the weekend it was time to do some work. The flippers were the major stumbling block, so on Sunday I had at it. First I tried to replace the Mini-playfield optos to see if a new one would help, but it didn't.

Looking carefully at the flipper mechanisms, I found that all three were just missing the coils, except for one which lacked the coil stop. I used the coils from the flippers I bought on eBay, and installed the coil and stop from the rebuild kit I got from Pinball Resource. Still unsure of my soldering skills, I just twisted the wires together and taped them up. I used a diagram from a repair guide to match the wires to their proper shunts on the coil. That worked out surprisingly well, and got me a completely
working left flipper, an upper left that works but doesn't hold, and a right that get stuck in the up position. It got stuck because the thing that closes the EOS switch was bending the switch blade to the point where it trapped the thing. I tried bending the switch blade but it would just rebend and get stuck. I have a new switch from the rebuild kit, but that requires me to desolder the old switch, so I'll do that this weekend.

Yesterday I found that working keeps me from thinking about the cat, so I tackled the outhole. It has always had very poor action... sticking, not hitting the ball hard enough to send it into the trough, etc. At first I thought the coil itself was weak, but an in depth investigation showed that the kicker assembly wasn't moving on its post very well. It was surprisingly easy to detach and take apart -- I love it when it's easy -- and it turns out some smarty-pants had greased the mechanism at some point. The repair guide said you should almost never have to lubricate a pin, and the grease had coagulated into a sticky goo. So tonight I sat down with some paper towels, q-tips, and 409 and started cleaning the gunk off. I was amazed at the results... not only did the mechanism look almost new, the degunked assembly actuated like a dream. I put it back together, ran the solenoid test, and it worked perfectly. One of my few unqualified successes.

So, if all goes well, this weekend could be the first game. I will ritually sacrifice some leprechauns to St. Patrick to hasten the inevitable.

She's got legs, you idiot!

Let's remind ourselves that we've got other pinball games to deal with, in this case Doctor Who. I have been slouching slowly towards Bethlehem with that one.

Our boiler has been having a lot of problems for the past year, which is tough because DW, when down, blocked access to it. When service guys have come in the past, I've folded the game up and lifted it upright... making sure to keep it on boards in case of a flood. I decided I was tired of that, so with the help of my wife I finally attached the rusty legs I got back in May. I was going to try to remove the rust from them, but it's probably less trouble to buy a $20 pair of legs in two months than it is to de-rust these legs. Then I put my el cheapo pinball skates (tiny wheels I got at Home Depot for $9 each, thanks to a recommendation from This Old Pinball) and rolled it into a corner. Yay!

So this weekend it was time to do some actual stuff. I'd just gotten a new lock that clamps together the cabinet and the head (plus some #906 lamps) from Bay Area Pinball earlier in the week. I was disturbed to find water in the channel between the playfield glass and the hole into the cabinet! I think the dumbass service guy must have let some water slip when he drained the boiler. It looks like none got on the playfield or in the cabinet, so I dried it off and continued. I screwed on the new lock, then replaced the one or two lamps (I think the Escape flasher is still burned out, but I have to look at it more carefully). When I lifted up the head, I noticed that the DMD panel had come loose from the head.

Tonight I powered it up for the first time, and I seem to have lost a few more vertical DMD lines on the right side, probably when the panel came loose. But on the plus side, after a quick look at Black Knight's door switch, I found the two connectors for the coin door switch, closed them with a wire, and removed another obstacle in fixing the game... when I turned it on, the mini-playfield started cycling and for the first time the game didn't yell at me to keep my damn hands away from the mini-playfield. That was nice.

I was going to try to connect the service buttons that I got on the French coin door, but found that the Molex pins I had were the wrong size. So I got out the old alligator clips and attached it the old-fashioned way (I put paper between the clips to keep them from shorting). Here's an interesting fact: The game won't let you press the buttons if the coin door is closed. I had to remove my short before it would let me test the game.

The test was somewhat enlightening. The mini-playfield goes up OK, but when it goes down it registers an error. My hope is that the opto switch for the mini-pf is bad, since I have a replacement.

My goal this weekend was to get the flippers on, but I wimped. As you've probably guessed if you've read a few of my posts, whenever I get close to doing something for the first time, the Big Fear grips me and I put it off as long as possible. I have always had a huge fear of failure, and it has kept me from doing a lot of things -- like dating regularly in high school and college. Usually either circumstances intervene (for example, my wife asked me out on our first date) or I get over it. Hopefully I'll get around to it soon.

Continuing the World Tour, last week I stopped at a pool place in Rockville which supposedly had a Pirates of the Caribbean, albeit in poor repair. Unfortunately, when I finally found it, it was turned off. The place it's at is under new management, but a few years ago it had four pinball games, and I would go there every few weeks to get my pinfix. At various times, they had (sorry, no links: it's late. look 'em up yourself) Scared Stiff, Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, Whitewater, Attack from Mars, Monopoly, Roller Coaster Tycoon and possibly one or two others. It was also the Montgomery County home of the Free State Pinball Assoc, so the games were usually in reasonably good repair. At some point, though, they moved the games out and I was sad.