We dropped off our daughter at school, and I took the opportunity to school NASCAR for a few free games. My high score is still on (heh). I managed to get a couple of free games, and things were going fine until I managed to get all three balls stuck. Basically one ball got caught to the left of the race track diverter, keeping it half open, then a second ball that was racing around the track got stuck on the right. After numerous ball searches, it served up the third ball, which I used to try to knock the second ball free. After a few hits the third ball got stuck too, so I gave up, turned the machine off, and slunk away quietly.
The home front is relatively uninteresting. I did find that my complete lack of confidence in myself paid off for a change: When I ordered the chip to replace U20 on the DW CPU, I actually ordered two chips as I was worried that I would break one of them. (In retrospect, what am I likely to do to a chip that will render it unusable?!? Kind of silly, really.) Well, since it appears that my second CPU also has a bad U20, the second chip may come in handy! I should doubt myself more often.
Tonight I took a trip to John's Place, a bar in Fairfax, VA -- about a half hour from my work, or about an hour if like me you take wrong turns and choose the wrong street during rush hour. It's the home of the VA branch of the Free State Pinball Association, and they had a bunch of games available. I had to turn most of them on myself, but that was no problem, and most of them were in reasonable condition since they're maintained by FSPA members. They had: Attack From Mars, Fish Tales, Getaway, Mars: God of War, Mousin' Around, Night Rider, Strikes 'n' Spares, The Addams Family, The Shadow, White Water, World Poker Tour, and a Baby Pac-Man unplugged in the corner. I played 'em all except Getaway, which I couldn't get to accept any quarters. Shadow and Fish Tales were either sluggish or just off their game. I had one good game of ATF. It was nice to play a WPT that wasn't filthy, like the one I played in California... considering Steve Ritchie designed it under protest, I didn't think it was that bad. Mars spanked me. I guess that's the reason he has that smug look on his face. I couldn't get multiball because after every ball any captured balls are returned to the trough, which made it impossible to build on previous balls. I think I've played Mousin' Around before... 1985-1990 Bally games really don't do much for me. And on TAF I got the ball stuck -- and hence the title of today's entry. Near the end of an undistinguished game, I shot the ball with the Thing flipper toward the swamp, and the ball got wedged between the upper-most spot target and the wall. I was hoping it would go into a ball search, give up, and serve another ball, but it never got past step 1. After a while I gave up, turned the machine off, and slunk away quietly.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Slow week
Not much to tell... the week has been focused on getting my daughter back to college tomorrow. That means me watching the dog a lot, which means me not working on the pinball machines a lot. But going up to Gettysburg means a stop at Pizza House, which means I'll get to see how much lower the NASCAR game has sunk.
I forgot to mention that after the Great Doctor Who Board Swap and subsequent left flipper malfunction last weekend, Eight Ball Deluxe decided to show its solidarity by having both flippers go out. I'm hoping it's just a bad connection -- EBD occasionally loses touch with the coin door, so I have to wiggle a connection on the CPU board to remember it's there -- but I haven't had the heart to look at it yet.
The parts from Great Plains showed up yesterday, but of course I haven't installed them yet.
I have to say I'm really loving the TOPcast shows. I've been powering through them, mostly while walking the dog and walking to and from my car at work. I've made it up to #35 with Barry Oursler. A lot of them are really interesting... guys who designed games that I own or really like, and guys who worked in the industry for decades. And I love it when it's inadvertently topical... like listening to Steve Ritchie talk about Spider-man the day I actually played it for the first time. Plus so far there's been interviews with either the artist or designer of all my games except Quicksilver. At the very least, it's great dog walk listening. I'll be kind of sad when I catch up to the current shows... Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and The Writer's Almanac will seem drab in comparison (yes, I am a Public Radio nerd).
Boy, there's something else pinball-related nagging at my subconscious, but I can't quite remember what it is. Well, it will come to me at a point at which I can't do anything about it...
I remember what I was going to write. Last weekend when I was tracking down the bad SCR on Quicksilver, I looked at the manual from IPDb for the schematic only to find that the manual was missing some of the diagrams. It wasn't too annoying -- I just had to dig out my copy of the manual from the basement -- but it annoyed me enough to actually do something about it. So I scanned the three pages that were missing and posted them to IPDb. We'll see if they post them.
I forgot to mention that after the Great Doctor Who Board Swap and subsequent left flipper malfunction last weekend, Eight Ball Deluxe decided to show its solidarity by having both flippers go out. I'm hoping it's just a bad connection -- EBD occasionally loses touch with the coin door, so I have to wiggle a connection on the CPU board to remember it's there -- but I haven't had the heart to look at it yet.
The parts from Great Plains showed up yesterday, but of course I haven't installed them yet.
I have to say I'm really loving the TOPcast shows. I've been powering through them, mostly while walking the dog and walking to and from my car at work. I've made it up to #35 with Barry Oursler. A lot of them are really interesting... guys who designed games that I own or really like, and guys who worked in the industry for decades. And I love it when it's inadvertently topical... like listening to Steve Ritchie talk about Spider-man the day I actually played it for the first time. Plus so far there's been interviews with either the artist or designer of all my games except Quicksilver. At the very least, it's great dog walk listening. I'll be kind of sad when I catch up to the current shows... Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and The Writer's Almanac will seem drab in comparison (yes, I am a Public Radio nerd).
Boy, there's something else pinball-related nagging at my subconscious, but I can't quite remember what it is. Well, it will come to me at a point at which I can't do anything about it...
I remember what I was going to write. Last weekend when I was tracking down the bad SCR on Quicksilver, I looked at the manual from IPDb for the schematic only to find that the manual was missing some of the diagrams. It wasn't too annoying -- I just had to dig out my copy of the manual from the basement -- but it annoyed me enough to actually do something about it. So I scanned the three pages that were missing and posted them to IPDb. We'll see if they post them.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
I Fix and I Break: A Joe Entropy Adventure
This was a busy little pinball weekend. Buoyed by my success with EBD, I launched myself into checking the lights on Paragon. This involved clearing off Paragon and plugging it in, because it is a dumping ground for my family's stuff and shocks them without mercy. So I put it into the lamp test, and noticed that it can barely light all the lamps... I had to turn out the lights in the basement just so I could see which lamps were out. It turns out Paragon was in good shape, lamp-wise... there were a few burned out bulbs, but that was it. I don't know whether to be overjoyed or disappointed that I didn't get to use my new-found SCR replacin' skillz. I'll opt for the former. A little research indicated that dim lamps probably mean a bad bridge rectifier on the power board.
Next I pulled the lamp driver board out of Quicksilver... I was reasonably certain there would be at least one bad SCR on there, since there were several lights that have resisted bulb changes. While my wife watched the Doctor Who one last time (she wanted to watch the Pop-up Video-style comments), I tested the SCRs and found one bad one. I wasn't sure what it was -- not only is the lamp driver schematic mislabeled as belonging to Cheetah in the manual, it says that the left and right spinner lamps use the same pin. I replaced the bad SCR and tested the game, and the broken lamp was the left spinner, which I kind of suspected it was. QS also had a bunch of stuff on it which I didn't feel like clearing off, so bulb replacement will have to wait.
Finally last night was Doctor Who and the CPU of Death. I posted again on rgp about the remaining English-guy CPU -- the one which won't boot if J202 is plugged in -- and got a response to try reseating the ASIC chip, because that can solve a lot of seemingly random problems. I tried it and by gosh did it work much better than I ever could have dreamed! The game booted and almost entirely worked. Unfortunately -- there's almost always one of those, isn't there? -- while plugging and unplugging cables I broke off one of the pins from J202. >:( I think/hope that it's the pin that takes care of the left flippers, because that's what didn't work. It was nice, though, to hit all of the switches that were out on the other CPU and have them do something.
After these exciting pinball adventures, I put in a Great Plains Electronics order. I realized at work today that I ordered something for four of my five games (which I really don't feel is an accomplishment): A chip to fix the blanking problem on Black Knight, SCRs for EBD, a bridge rectifier for Paragon, and a new plug for J202 on DW. Sheesh.
While I was waiting for someone to call me back, I glanced at the list of local pingames and noticed that a place near my house had a brand-new Spider-man! Ignoring my family's needs, I toddled right over to the Sole d'Italia restaurant to give it a go. I had fun, but I didn't love it. The playfield is kind of like the bastard love-child of Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. The thing I had the biggest problem with was fighting the villains like Venom or Doctor Octopus... I knew that by hitting the shots I could start battling them, but I never figured out how to defeat them. I think I did -- I guess it was just hitting their shots repeatedly -- but I never felt like I finished fighting them, as opposed to Spider-man's bastard love-parents, where you can easily tell when you've complete an objective. I got a bunch of replays, and ended up leaving a matched credit on the game because it was getting late and I had to walk the dog. I also found a quarter on the ground, so instead of 40 cents per game, it really cost me only 35 cents per game. Yoink!
But really, the best thing about playing Spider-man is that it was the first time in a while or possibly ever where I've played a completely working, virtually brand new machine. It was pretty sweet. And for fun, I played a game in Spanish, since you get the chance to choose your language when you press start. El yoinko mas bueno!
And on a slightly anti-climactic note, I realized while I was walking the dog and listening to TOPcast on the iPod tonight that I really need to switch to external batteries on all of my games. I don't think I've ever changed the batteries on Quicksilver, and I've had that game for over 20 years (to be fair, the service guy might have done it, but that was in 1995). The potential for leaking battery mayhem is great, so I need to make that a priority.
Next I pulled the lamp driver board out of Quicksilver... I was reasonably certain there would be at least one bad SCR on there, since there were several lights that have resisted bulb changes. While my wife watched the Doctor Who one last time (she wanted to watch the Pop-up Video-style comments), I tested the SCRs and found one bad one. I wasn't sure what it was -- not only is the lamp driver schematic mislabeled as belonging to Cheetah in the manual, it says that the left and right spinner lamps use the same pin. I replaced the bad SCR and tested the game, and the broken lamp was the left spinner, which I kind of suspected it was. QS also had a bunch of stuff on it which I didn't feel like clearing off, so bulb replacement will have to wait.
Finally last night was Doctor Who and the CPU of Death. I posted again on rgp about the remaining English-guy CPU -- the one which won't boot if J202 is plugged in -- and got a response to try reseating the ASIC chip, because that can solve a lot of seemingly random problems. I tried it and by gosh did it work much better than I ever could have dreamed! The game booted and almost entirely worked. Unfortunately -- there's almost always one of those, isn't there? -- while plugging and unplugging cables I broke off one of the pins from J202. >:( I think/hope that it's the pin that takes care of the left flippers, because that's what didn't work. It was nice, though, to hit all of the switches that were out on the other CPU and have them do something.
After these exciting pinball adventures, I put in a Great Plains Electronics order. I realized at work today that I ordered something for four of my five games (which I really don't feel is an accomplishment): A chip to fix the blanking problem on Black Knight, SCRs for EBD, a bridge rectifier for Paragon, and a new plug for J202 on DW. Sheesh.
While I was waiting for someone to call me back, I glanced at the list of local pingames and noticed that a place near my house had a brand-new Spider-man! Ignoring my family's needs, I toddled right over to the Sole d'Italia restaurant to give it a go. I had fun, but I didn't love it. The playfield is kind of like the bastard love-child of Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars. The thing I had the biggest problem with was fighting the villains like Venom or Doctor Octopus... I knew that by hitting the shots I could start battling them, but I never figured out how to defeat them. I think I did -- I guess it was just hitting their shots repeatedly -- but I never felt like I finished fighting them, as opposed to Spider-man's bastard love-parents, where you can easily tell when you've complete an objective. I got a bunch of replays, and ended up leaving a matched credit on the game because it was getting late and I had to walk the dog. I also found a quarter on the ground, so instead of 40 cents per game, it really cost me only 35 cents per game. Yoink!
But really, the best thing about playing Spider-man is that it was the first time in a while or possibly ever where I've played a completely working, virtually brand new machine. It was pretty sweet. And for fun, I played a game in Spanish, since you get the chance to choose your language when you press start. El yoinko mas bueno!
And on a slightly anti-climactic note, I realized while I was walking the dog and listening to TOPcast on the iPod tonight that I really need to switch to external batteries on all of my games. I don't think I've ever changed the batteries on Quicksilver, and I've had that game for over 20 years (to be fair, the service guy might have done it, but that was in 1995). The potential for leaking battery mayhem is great, so I need to make that a priority.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
But I digress...
First I have to start off with the eBay Loser of the Week. This guy posted a set of Centaur plastics that were "New NOS (Used)". The title of the auction included New and NOS but strangely enough not used. And these things are warped, a few are cracked, and the upper left one is in three pieces. So I send him an email saying that (imo) New, NOS, and Used are three different things. He replies and says his bad and he's updated the auction. Now it just says NOS (Used). So I send him another email, and then he relists it without the NOS. Ultimately, I think he was just careless because he has other items that he's selling that are actually NOS. My wife the conspiracy theorist believes that he was hoping to get away with it. Anyway, I wouldn't buy from him anyway because he's charging $15 for $8 worth of shipping, so the minimum price is $40, and I can get a brand new set from IL Pinball for $100+shipping.
Speaking of Wall of Voodoo (which we were, really) right after I wrote the WOV stuff, a guy at work pointed out that Stan Ridgway, the WOV lead singer, was doing a 25th anniversary of Call of the West tour and was in town on the 2nd. My wife and I were totally there. It was mostly empty... for the whole show, I doubt there were more than 10 people in the balcony and maybe 40 on the floor (compared with when we saw The Residents at the same place, which was a lot more crowded). But it was a great show. He played about half WOV songs and half solo songs. It was pretty cool... a nice nostalgic rush. They also had copies of WOV's first album on CD for $15, which go for $50 on eBay.
But I digress, so back to pinball: I have finally leveled up my soldering skills to introductory board level! I replaced the little things that drive the lamps in Eight Ball Deluxe on the Lamp Driver Board. About a week ago while my wife and I watched an old Tom Baker Doctor Who on DVD I pulled out the components -- I think they're SCRs -- that failed the continuity test and correspond to lights on the playfield that don't work. I sucked the solder out of the holes (I had inexplicably lost my solder sucker, so I had to buy a new one from Radio Shack, which I think is better than my old one anyway). Then last night while we watched the commentary on said Doctor Who -- it was the last episode with Sarah Jane Smith in it, which I'd gotten a hankerin' to watch after the Sarah Jane episode of the new Doctor Who... and the Doctor totally didn't leave K-9 with her, he didn't even get K-9 until he was with Leela, even my pathetic neurons remembered that!... but I digress -- I soldered new SCRs in. I only had one size... I got some of what I thought were the bigger ones at Pinball Wizards, but I don't think they're the right kind (and like a dumbass, I paid like $2 a piece for them, and Great Plains sells them for .55!). Anyway, I plugged the board back in, and now all the lamps driven by SCRs that I replaced work great! Mostly they were all but two of the 9-15 target lights. My next job is to test the SCRs on the other two games of that ilk, Paragon and Quicksilver, order enough parts from Great Plains, and solder some more.
My new favorite comic strip these days is Lio. It's reminds me of the Addams Family in that it's weird, creepy, and morbid, but incredibly funny. And it's so much better and more authentic than the generally lame Addams Family tribute by the Non Sequitur guy, The Gravesytes (which is almost exactly like the Addams Family except that it's usually not funny and, like just about every other Non Sequitur strip, it's just a vehicle for the writer's cynicism and bitterness).
But I digress... new arrivals from eBay -- and I thought I'd written about these, but I guess not -- are a set of Xenon drop targets with memory that I can use for Centaur, which were about $30 with shipping. I need to get new 1-4 targets from PBR, but that can wait. I also got an incomplete set of Eight Ball plastics for the playfield for $20
w/shipping. Without realizing it, the set had all the ones on my playfield that were broken or missing, plus I have a few extras to sell.
Through random Internet searching, I found that the guys who put out the Gottlieb Pinball Hall of Fame are putting out a version for Williams in October, just in time for my birthday! The game list is pretty good -- Gorgar, Pinbot, Funhouse, Black Knight, Space Shuttle, Whirlwind, Firepower & Taxi -- and it's only $15. I think there might also be two hidden tables, because the descriptions for the other platforms include two more games, Jive Time & Sorcerer.
But I digress...
Speaking of Wall of Voodoo (which we were, really) right after I wrote the WOV stuff, a guy at work pointed out that Stan Ridgway, the WOV lead singer, was doing a 25th anniversary of Call of the West tour and was in town on the 2nd. My wife and I were totally there. It was mostly empty... for the whole show, I doubt there were more than 10 people in the balcony and maybe 40 on the floor (compared with when we saw The Residents at the same place, which was a lot more crowded). But it was a great show. He played about half WOV songs and half solo songs. It was pretty cool... a nice nostalgic rush. They also had copies of WOV's first album on CD for $15, which go for $50 on eBay.
But I digress, so back to pinball: I have finally leveled up my soldering skills to introductory board level! I replaced the little things that drive the lamps in Eight Ball Deluxe on the Lamp Driver Board. About a week ago while my wife and I watched an old Tom Baker Doctor Who on DVD I pulled out the components -- I think they're SCRs -- that failed the continuity test and correspond to lights on the playfield that don't work. I sucked the solder out of the holes (I had inexplicably lost my solder sucker, so I had to buy a new one from Radio Shack, which I think is better than my old one anyway). Then last night while we watched the commentary on said Doctor Who -- it was the last episode with Sarah Jane Smith in it, which I'd gotten a hankerin' to watch after the Sarah Jane episode of the new Doctor Who... and the Doctor totally didn't leave K-9 with her, he didn't even get K-9 until he was with Leela, even my pathetic neurons remembered that!... but I digress -- I soldered new SCRs in. I only had one size... I got some of what I thought were the bigger ones at Pinball Wizards, but I don't think they're the right kind (and like a dumbass, I paid like $2 a piece for them, and Great Plains sells them for .55!). Anyway, I plugged the board back in, and now all the lamps driven by SCRs that I replaced work great! Mostly they were all but two of the 9-15 target lights. My next job is to test the SCRs on the other two games of that ilk, Paragon and Quicksilver, order enough parts from Great Plains, and solder some more.
My new favorite comic strip these days is Lio. It's reminds me of the Addams Family in that it's weird, creepy, and morbid, but incredibly funny. And it's so much better and more authentic than the generally lame Addams Family tribute by the Non Sequitur guy, The Gravesytes (which is almost exactly like the Addams Family except that it's usually not funny and, like just about every other Non Sequitur strip, it's just a vehicle for the writer's cynicism and bitterness).
But I digress... new arrivals from eBay -- and I thought I'd written about these, but I guess not -- are a set of Xenon drop targets with memory that I can use for Centaur, which were about $30 with shipping. I need to get new 1-4 targets from PBR, but that can wait. I also got an incomplete set of Eight Ball plastics for the playfield for $20
w/shipping. Without realizing it, the set had all the ones on my playfield that were broken or missing, plus I have a few extras to sell.
Through random Internet searching, I found that the guys who put out the Gottlieb Pinball Hall of Fame are putting out a version for Williams in October, just in time for my birthday! The game list is pretty good -- Gorgar, Pinbot, Funhouse, Black Knight, Space Shuttle, Whirlwind, Firepower & Taxi -- and it's only $15. I think there might also be two hidden tables, because the descriptions for the other platforms include two more games, Jive Time & Sorcerer.
But I digress...
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