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.