My Goodness/Your Badness

No DIA this time because there hasn't been any official movement, but the Loser 500 should be due for a spanking soon... while my Dad and brother were here, we celebrated my birthday a week early and I got some fabulous cash and prizes, which I intend to apply towards my debt to the family.

My brother actually played a few games of pinball while he was here, mostly Quicksilver since it's upstairs. But as he is an electronics whiz and we resisted my Dad's urge to put him to work around the house (on previous trips he has installed the lighting in our basement and office) so that on his last day here he actually volunteered to show me some soldering. In his youth he scored 100 on the NASA soldering test, so how could I go wrong?

In the limited time available, we decided that of the 7 boards that could use some work, the best ones to try would be a WPC CPU and the EBD lamp driver with the bad traces. My brother surprised me with an actual de-soldering iron, which is so much easier to use than the solder sucker that I have. He also confirmed that my soldering iron, which I think is about 2/3 as old as I am, is junk. I plan to buy a new one soon with one of the gift cards that were my gift from him.

Let's do My Goodness first. The lamp driver worked out great. Rather than soldering on a new wire to replace the trace, he cut out the middleman with a pretty cool trick: He noticed that the middle leg of the transistor didn't connect to anything on the underside of the board, so he bent it up and soldered it to the trace. Check out the picture: The elegance of this solution is amazing. He also critiqued my soldering technique of the other transistors... he said I used too much solder. When he finished, I plugged the board into the game and put it into the lamp test, and for the first time since I bought the game the left arrow and the Target 1 Ball lit in all their glory! That left only two lights out, so tonight I replaced the burnt out bulb in the left bumper and fixed the Rack 2 Ball by jiggling the wire on the connector. So for this brief, shining moment, everything on Eight Ball Deluxe is working! Let's pause and savor this moment... ahhhh!

The CPU didn't work out so well. My brother desoldered and removed the old U20 chip (and I helped a bit) with relative ease. Then he soldered on a socket, which didn't go so well... his precision soldering technique is apparently a little rusty. He started getting angry and frustrated, which happens pretty much any time he does work for me but is never a good sign. He was worried that he might have broken some traces or something. When he finished, I did a bench test and the board booted. With high hopes I attached it to the game and fired it up. Unfortunately the results were a little less than spectacular. It said there were pinballs missing even though they were all in place. Then I did the switch test and found that although the one column that was broken has now been joined by two more. Ouch! Well, to paraphrase Meatloaf, 1 out of 2 ain't bad. When I have some time, I'll try to compare continuity tests on the two boards and see if there's anything really obvious, like bridged connections.

But I'm still relatively happy... EBD is working, and that's good news. Plus I got to do some desoldering and watch him solder, which according to D&D should be worth a few Experience Points. Time will tell whether it's enough to level me up.

They crawl out of their holes for me and I blog; you blog

Yes, there's nothing quite like a Gary Numan reference to really date you as a child of the early 80's. I'm thinking of the 80's a lot lately, probably because I acquired a lot of the stuff I'm selling on eBay in that era. The Fathom playfield went for $58, which I won't pretend wasn't a slight disappointment. The clown who offered me $100 didn't even bid on it, though for all I know he was an eBay agent trying to trick people into selling stuff in violation of eBay's rules (We are clean, don't ask, I'm an agent... it's an all Gary Numan post!!!). Anyway, so that accounts for 7DPF going up perilously near the 50% mark... I've only got about $24 more to go to pass the halfway point, and the DIA in the low 60's... who'd a thunk? The Loser didn't fall drastically, because I spent more than I thought I would at the White Rose show, so that ate up most of the proceeds from the playfield.

White Rose was fun, the usual collection of good stuff, crap, and some old friends (it wouldn't be the same without the whitewood Scared Stiff or Future Spa with the hand touched up playfield and gate that doesn't work. The drive up was nice... I've been listening to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that added a twisted counterpoint to the idyllic MD/PA farmland. Nothing really leaps to mind as an outstanding game... I played Jungle Lord, which I used to play back in the day. The worst of show had to be a Gorgar with a half-gone backglass, weak flippers, worn playfield, and toward the end of the day added messed up sound and wonky displays that the guy wanted $650 obo. I was tempted to offer the guy to let me take the game and he could give me $650, and I'm guessing that would have been his best offer. I played a couple of the games I played at the Mid-Atlantic show... Mike & Co. fixed the rubber that trapped the ball on Cirqus Voltaire (I didn't write about that, but it happened during my Voltaire-spanking game) but not the thing that spotted the Q.

Purchase-wise, I bought two white spot targets for Centaur (only to find when I got home that it needs 4 ^_^; ), some #47 lights and a couple of #555 compatible LED lights (just to try... I couldn't afford to convert my games over to them at $2 a pop, though it would probably help Paragon's power issues). I also dropped a load on a guy in the flea market who was cleaning out his parts inventory... I found all but one of the pieces I need to fix the remaining Fathom inline target assembly, and I was lured into buying a playfield from him... well, lured kind of indicates that I wasn't fully responsible. Let's say that I convinced myself like a blamed fool to buy another playfield. As we can see on the left, it's a Flash that's not in too bad condition. A few wear spots, a missing bumper & flipper (& more?), and a hole drilled in the top with a coat hanger stuck in it most likely as a storage device. The guy also had a somewhat beaten Lost World and an OK CE3K and he offered to let me have them all for $125, but that was pretty much all the money I had at the time, so I passed. There was also a nice clear-coated but largely depopulated Lost World... if I was blessed with infinite finances, I would have bought both and populated the clear-coated one with the parts from the beater. I will admit sheepishly that while recounting the day's purchases to my wife I was not wholly forthcoming about it... I really need to work on that controller so I can stop this playfield skullduggery.

Anyway, so that's all I got. My dad and brother are coming in for a week tomorrow, so I'll take an eBay vacation until then.

Oo ee oo aa aa ting tang walla walla bing bang

It's always good news when the DIA indices are moving in the right direction. Thanks to healthy Doctor Who target sales, DW is teetering on the bleeding edge of profitability! It's only got $12.50 or so to go. Unfortunately I don't think I have any more ets parts (Easy to Sell in the Neopets dialect) so that might be stuck there for a while. I've also paid for a quarter of the 7 playfields. Overall I've paid for 50% of these guys with parts sales, and that's brought my loser index within striking distance of $500. Phew!

Better yet, the Fathom playfield has lots of pages views and watchers, no so many bids. It languished at the opening $10 bid until yesterday, when it finally got bid up to $37. A guy emailed me and said he'd give me $100 for the pf, but I decided to risk it and let market forces decide on the outcome. Plus eBay frowns on that practice.

Since last Sunday was the end of the no listing fees promotion, I piled 25 items on in one sitting. About a third of them have bids, but I'm hoping it will get up to about 50%. I relisted some Byte magazines from my youth which didn't sell for $2 three weeks ago but this time a guy paid $17.50 for them. Where the heck was he when I was selling the other magazines? My wife says I should be happy with what I have -- after all, this was the last of my computer mags from the 70's & 80's, which all told got me around $100-200. I guess I can look at it as ending a good run on a high note. My computer magazines are going out like the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

When I was listing the Fathom pf, I realized the White Rose show coming was an excellent selling point -- I could deliver it for free to a potential buyer at the show -- so I tried to push out the Black Jack pf to take advantage of that. Maybe if I didn't have a full time job that might have worked out, but stripping, cleaning, and listing for sale a playfield over the course of two two hour nights wasn't going to happen. I got the plastics off and most of the coils and switches, but the lights are still on. I can try to sell the plastics for some scratch, then finish the playfield at my leisure and get it, Skateball, and the spare Doctor Who ready to sell in April, right before Pinball Wizards.

Not much else going on... I've got to curtail my eBaying activities and start cleaning, since my Dad and brother are coming out from the Fatherland for a visit. Since I missed my daughter's birthday on account of post show explosive diarrhea, I'm going up to visit her at school today and taking the dog with me... that will give my wife a chance to get some pre-Dad cleaning in, and I can see my daughter and check on the NASCAR at Pizza House.