I win the right to fight the Black Knight again!

Quite a lot to blather about, so let's go...

Black Knight is once again working (after a fashion)! July 4th was mostly rained out here and we were stuck at home with the dog. It ended up more festive than usual... we ordered pizza, my daughter and some of her friends hung around and played Life (the new version, which is NOT heartily endorsed by Art Linkletter, so is therefore lesser in my eyes). I ended up spending most of the evening with Black Knight and troubleshooting. Still stuck on the idea that it was a bad coil or permanently closed switch, I ended up disconnecting several suspect coils to no avail. After blowing through five 2.5 amp fuses, I gave up and threw myself on the mercy of rec.games.pinball. This time, it came through! A guy answered who had had the exact same problem two years ago with a darned helpful suggestion: Pull the fuse out, start the game, then put the fuse back in. I tried this and lo! the game worked just fine, solenoids and all. The trouble appears to be a bad blanking circuit, probably the timing chip that allows the CPU to power up the playfield once it's decided that its slave chips are all suitably obedient. Basically the signal is sent early, the playfield powers up, but (this is my reading of it) there's garbage in the solenoid line, so a bunch of them fire at once and the fuse throws itself on the grenade to prevent widespread carnage. Remove the fuse allows the CPU time to get control of itself first. This problem is either caused by the timing chip (that's what the guy's problem was) or a bad egg in the 40-pin connector between the driver board and the CPU. When I get around to doing it, I'll prolly try replacing the chip first. For now, I'm doing the lame-ass method of removing and replacing the fuse to play the game.

And how does it play? I've had better. :( The upper right flipper is very weak, and the others are a little anemic. There are a couple of burnt out lights, and my favorite settings (slightly longer hang time on the targets, 5 balls, etc.) were forgotten when the batteries died. But I did have a couple of decent balls, and since I had played EBD earlier, it was a rare night when I actually played two of my games. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus!

I have been playing a lot of Deluxe Eight Balls lately, because it's the workingest game that's not covered in pet materiel. I sucked tonight, but last weekend I had an awesome ball... I completed two balls + deluxes and was working on a third, 4X bonus or so, I would have gotten the extra ball if my settings hadn't still been hosed from the MPU board's last service (I corrected them soon after), and I discovered that if you go long enough it starts making a whirring background noise instead of the usual chew chew chew chew chew. I got the high score, which was only about 2 mil. If I had a video of it, I would have posted it on YouTube, that's how good it was.

We got out of work early on Tuesday, so I took a detour to Beltway Chevron for a few games of Funhouse. I did OK... Rudy's eyes are open now, but the right one wanders like a lazy eye. At one point it rolled into the back of his head, which was kinda weird. But it was fun.

Also on the Fourth, I powered up Doctor Who to play a game despite the missing column, and found the playfield dead. Now that I think about it, it's probably that F105 fuse or whatever, but at the time -- I had just given up on BK in disgust -- I wasn't thinking that clearly.

I was poking around the Marvin3m repair site and found my latest obsession: TOPCast, the This Old Pinball Internet radio show and podcast by Clay/Shaggy. Clearly modeled on Car Talk, it features call in trouble-shooting, news, and interviews. I powered through 5 episodes on July 3-4 alone. The most interesting interview so far was with Tim Arnold. My impression of him in previous interviews I've read was that he was kind of a dick, and now I still think he's a dick, but at least he's an interesting one. His stories about building his business and collection and the Pinball Hall of Fame are fascinating, and he mentioned some interesting tech tips like replacing incandescent feature lamps with LEDs. The show is often hard to understand and amateurish, but I enjoy it immensely. I was kind of sad that my BK problem was solved by rgp, or I would be tempted to call in.

Man, I would love to go to the Pinball Hall of Fame. We're just not Las Vegas people... I think about going some time when I go visit my dad, but Las Vegas is a long, hard six hour drive across the desert on Interstate 15... and the Wall of Voodoo song is only 3 minutes, which leaves 5 hours and 57 minutes to fill (both ways!). It's hard, because I'm usually out there to visit him for a week, and a trip to Sin City would be 3 days minimum. But Tim Arnold's not getting any younger either...

I tried calling PBR on Monday to buy drop targets for Centaur, but they were closed for the week. I thought I would explode with frustration, but it had pretty much wandered into the back of my mind by Tuesday night. I pulled parts I knew I would need for Centaur from Skateball, Fathom, and one or two from Black Jack. I've been disassembling the target banks and throwing them in the dishwasher, and at some point I'll give them a final cleaning and reassemble them. I also washed Skateball's apron and ball launch guide, and found out that paint doesn't stick to metal parts so well. ^_^; Well, if I use them I'll have to repaint them anyway.

Here's something that made me simmer with impotent rage: About a week before I bought the Centaur playfield, there were a bunch of target assemblies on eBay, including a four target bank with memory, exactly what I need for the 1-4 targets. It went for like 11 bucks, too.

That looks like about all I've got to write about for now. I don't know how much pin work I'll be able to do, as we're starting to ramp up for the trip to Otakon in two weeks. My daughter invited four friends to stay in our hotel room... she insists she told me but I have recollection of it, Senator. Seven in a room reminds me of when my friends and I went to the 1983 Baltimore Worldcon, and I'm pretty sure we stayed in that very same hotel. We probably had 6 or 8 in the room for that, but I could sleep on the floor a lot easier when I was 21-ish. Well, the good thing about being the only 40-somethings in a room of 18-20 y.o.'s is my wife and I always get the bed!

Holy crap, Art Linkletter is still alive. That guy's a rock. Old people are funny... they say the damnedest things, after all.

OK, adding the On Interstate 15 link made me search for Wall of Voodoo links, and I found a MySpace page that played Call of the West. And damn if I don't still remember ALL the words to that song, even the spoken word portion at the end. Even after 25 years WOV is still my favorite band...