Don't kid yourself: Blogging is a lot of work for something you don't get paid for. I'm only doing it now because I'm at the end of a week of vacation and I got a lot of stuff done around the house, so I feel like I earned some non-productive blogwork.
It's also tough because I just haven't been doing a lot of pinball lately. I have been slowly pushing stuff back and forth in my basement to try to get my wife and I separate but equal workspaces. Getting those spaces up and running is one of the goals of my vacation (including both the week that just past and most of December... we've been trying to get a project out at work this year, so I haven't taken a lot of time off). I did a big push in my wife's space this week, because in order to clean out the dining room for Thanksgiving I had to transport a lot of the stuff into the basement. Remember when I said that cleaning our house is like playing Sokoban? Well, this is case in point.
Currently I'm at an impasse with the cleaning. I'm out of space in the bedroom that will become my wife's space, and when I moved all of the pinball stuff into my corner I ended up with almost no space there. The best solution would be if every room in my basement were about 5 feet wider, but for now we'll leave that for my next vacation in a week and a half.
But this is a blog about Pinball, things related to Pinball, and things largely unrelated to Pinball... I've covered the latter pretty thoroughly, so let's talk about the first two.
I went to the White Rose Pinball Show in York, PA in October. Usually I complain about the overpriced junk, the non-working junk, and the just plain junk at that show, but the Hershey show caused me to reevaluate just what a crappy pinball show is. By contrast, York was great. I had fun, played some interesting games, and had a good time. Surprising fact of the day: I barely spent any money. Being dormant in the pinball department has put me in a position of not needing any parts, so I didn't have anything to buy. I think I spent about $40 the whole day, a new record for me.
One fun bonus thing I did in York: I left the show around 8 and was hungry. Usually I end up stopping at an Arby's or something on the way home, but this time I made up my mind to try something different. Right about that time I passed a burrito place about a half mile from the fairgrounds called Roburrito's. I negotiated a series of right turns and went in. It turns out it's like a punk rock burrito place... as a child of the '80s L.A. music scene, it's just the sort of place I would eat burritos at if anywhere around Derwood had the temerity to be like that. It was a good burrito, made better with the selection of hot sauces they had available. Yay!
One of the big pinball auctions showed up at the MD state fairgrounds in the last week of October, and since it happened to be on my birthday I got a free pass to see what was up. The last auction I went to -- in the same building that the York show is in -- was not so much a game auction as it was a crap auction... they had 4 Gorgars in various states of repair and about a hundred beaten down cabinets from late 80's and early 90's D-List video games. This show was much better. A bunch of pins, mostly Stern and 90's games, but a smattering of EMs and early 80's games. There were also a lot of reasonable quality vids from the past 30 years. I took advantage of the games set to free play and left a little before noon. There was nothing I really wanted to buy, but I had a pretty good time.
So, we're up to date. Hopefully I will make progress on a workspace and be able to start fixin' pins and workin' on some of my secret projects before the end of the year.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
November Will Be Magic Again!
Why settle for Change when you can have Transfiguration?
Not as poignant as Republicans for Voldemort, I admit. I made this sign a few weeks ago as more of a Dada Art Project than any kind of real political statement. I had it next to our first actual political yard sign, but my wife forced me to move it because she felt people would think we were making fun of the real candidate. Re-elect Fudge was out for a week or so, then we got two inches of rain and it turns out I didn't properly seal the sign, which turned it into abstract art. ^_^;
Not as poignant as Republicans for Voldemort, I admit. I made this sign a few weeks ago as more of a Dada Art Project than any kind of real political statement. I had it next to our first actual political yard sign, but my wife forced me to move it because she felt people would think we were making fun of the real candidate. Re-elect Fudge was out for a week or so, then we got two inches of rain and it turns out I didn't properly seal the sign, which turned it into abstract art. ^_^;
Sunday, October 05, 2008
* Hero of the Beach *
Forgot to mention two instances where I saved the day for pinball.
When I first went to find info on the Hershey Gameroom Show, the street address on Mr. Pinball was missing a letter, making it unfindable on all of the mapping programs I tried. So I emailed Mr. Pinball and he corrected it.
And way back in August of last year I blogged about the IPDb not having the correct lamp pages for Quicksilver. Well, last month I finally got a response:
When I first went to find info on the Hershey Gameroom Show, the street address on Mr. Pinball was missing a letter, making it unfindable on all of the mapping programs I tried. So I emailed Mr. Pinball and he corrected it.
And way back in August of last year I blogged about the IPDb not having the correct lamp pages for Quicksilver. Well, last month I finally got a response:
Changes you submitted to the Pinball Database for the game
titled 'Quicksilver' have been accepted in whole or in part
by an editor! Thank you for your submission!
The following changes were made because of your submission,
and may include additional corrections and listing changes
made by an Editor:
add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_Lamp_Driver_Schematic.jpg
- Lamp Driver Schematic [] [#3643]
add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_Solenoid_Driver_Schematic.jpg
- Solenoid Driver Schematic [] [#3644]
add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_MPU_Schematic.jpg
- MPU Schematic [] [#3645]
You can see these changes at http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?1895
I am remiss in my blogging duties
Yes, it has been two months since my last confession, but honestly there hasn't been a lot going on. There's been some progress on the work area, but not so much that I can really brog about it (brog == my neologism of the day: blog+brag). Ditto on the games... most of them are buried under the detritus of the cleaning effort.
I did go to the Hershey Gameroom Show two weeks ago. Whereas previous shows had multiple vendors and were more gameroom-oriented and not pinball specific, this show turned out to be nothing more than the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse parking lot sale, albeit in a dumpy old agricultural fairground building. Lots of pins, mostly 90's but a few before and after, and one or two vendors that might have not been PGW front organizations, but that was about it. The flea market consisted of two vendors, both of whom were most likely guys who shovelled out the PGW dumpster. It was like going to the Republican National Convention.
Here's my problem with the pins that were there: Most of them has been lovingly restored cosmetically and were achingly beautiful, but most of them couldn't play for crap. Bad flippers, non-working switches, bad displays, games that rebooted, and so on... and all priced a few hundred dollars below PGW's showroom prices. Would I pay $2300 (marked down from $2700) for a Black Knight 2000 that spit out all of its balls? How about the T2 with one of the plastics on the playfield? Or Hurricane with a bump where the lower ramp connects to the upper that slowed down the ball and caused it to drop off the ramp SDTM? They obviously spend all of their time getting the games to look good at the expense of basic functionality. IMO, you can't have one without t'other.
However, it was worth the trip for one thing: They had a working Lotta Fun. I played that a bunch of times so I could experience what my game will be like when it's fixed up. I also got plenty of cell phone pics of the backglass so I can try to reproduce it -- at least so I know what numbers correspond with what lights (I wish I'd taken a real camera, though). I was also surpised to find a modern Gottlieb game that I actually enjoyed playing, Title Fight. I has some fun in the old school section playing Centaur, Xenon, and Silverball Mania, all canted at bizarre angles on the uneven exhibit hall floor... Xenon was so far off kilter that the ball would stop in the tube.
I didn't buy much... my biggest purchase was a copy of Mad Dog and his Art, Gene Cunningham's somewhat amateurishly made love letter to pinball uber-artist Dave Christensen. I'd been meaning to buy a copy the next time I made a Illinois Pinball run, but it was there and I wasn't buying anything else so I went for it. It's a little disappointing... I'd like it to be about twice as long with more pictures, especially of the playfields. Maybe not worth the ~$35 price, but it's not a travesty, either.
Moan moan moan. I don't have a lot of good things to say about anything, do I?
Next weekend is the York show, which should either wash the bad taste out of my mouth or poison my perception of pinball shows forever.
Another example of how my life juxtaposes rather nicely: I was listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the ride, and that same week I had Netflixed the first season of Pushing Daisies, both of which are narrated by Jim Dale. As my mind wandered during the drive, I kept thinking Jim would say, "The facts were these: At this point Harry Potter was 16 years, 51 weeks, 3 days, 5 hours and 23 minutes old."
Here's the thing that I noticed about Pushing Daisies after watching all 9 episodes in a two week period: The costume designer loves the cleavage. 'nuff said.
I also don't think I've mentioned my latest acquisition (aside from the usual small pin parts that I've picked up here and there when eBay exudes them): After looking for ages online, I finally got a pachinko machine from a local garage sale in July. My wife alerted me to it, so I stopped in and took a look. They were asking $25, and it had no balls and was missing parts. While I was looking they offered $15. I thought I'd make them sweat, so I left and ran some errands, and when I came back they asked $10 and I took it. I bought a load of balls on eBay, but I want to clean it up before I set it up. Another wonderful project that will fill my copious free time!
I did go to the Hershey Gameroom Show two weeks ago. Whereas previous shows had multiple vendors and were more gameroom-oriented and not pinball specific, this show turned out to be nothing more than the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse parking lot sale, albeit in a dumpy old agricultural fairground building. Lots of pins, mostly 90's but a few before and after, and one or two vendors that might have not been PGW front organizations, but that was about it. The flea market consisted of two vendors, both of whom were most likely guys who shovelled out the PGW dumpster. It was like going to the Republican National Convention.
Here's my problem with the pins that were there: Most of them has been lovingly restored cosmetically and were achingly beautiful, but most of them couldn't play for crap. Bad flippers, non-working switches, bad displays, games that rebooted, and so on... and all priced a few hundred dollars below PGW's showroom prices. Would I pay $2300 (marked down from $2700) for a Black Knight 2000 that spit out all of its balls? How about the T2 with one of the plastics on the playfield? Or Hurricane with a bump where the lower ramp connects to the upper that slowed down the ball and caused it to drop off the ramp SDTM? They obviously spend all of their time getting the games to look good at the expense of basic functionality. IMO, you can't have one without t'other.
However, it was worth the trip for one thing: They had a working Lotta Fun. I played that a bunch of times so I could experience what my game will be like when it's fixed up. I also got plenty of cell phone pics of the backglass so I can try to reproduce it -- at least so I know what numbers correspond with what lights (I wish I'd taken a real camera, though). I was also surpised to find a modern Gottlieb game that I actually enjoyed playing, Title Fight. I has some fun in the old school section playing Centaur, Xenon, and Silverball Mania, all canted at bizarre angles on the uneven exhibit hall floor... Xenon was so far off kilter that the ball would stop in the tube.
I didn't buy much... my biggest purchase was a copy of Mad Dog and his Art, Gene Cunningham's somewhat amateurishly made love letter to pinball uber-artist Dave Christensen. I'd been meaning to buy a copy the next time I made a Illinois Pinball run, but it was there and I wasn't buying anything else so I went for it. It's a little disappointing... I'd like it to be about twice as long with more pictures, especially of the playfields. Maybe not worth the ~$35 price, but it's not a travesty, either.
Moan moan moan. I don't have a lot of good things to say about anything, do I?
Next weekend is the York show, which should either wash the bad taste out of my mouth or poison my perception of pinball shows forever.
Another example of how my life juxtaposes rather nicely: I was listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the ride, and that same week I had Netflixed the first season of Pushing Daisies, both of which are narrated by Jim Dale. As my mind wandered during the drive, I kept thinking Jim would say, "The facts were these: At this point Harry Potter was 16 years, 51 weeks, 3 days, 5 hours and 23 minutes old."
Here's the thing that I noticed about Pushing Daisies after watching all 9 episodes in a two week period: The costume designer loves the cleavage. 'nuff said.
I also don't think I've mentioned my latest acquisition (aside from the usual small pin parts that I've picked up here and there when eBay exudes them): After looking for ages online, I finally got a pachinko machine from a local garage sale in July. My wife alerted me to it, so I stopped in and took a look. They were asking $25, and it had no balls and was missing parts. While I was looking they offered $15. I thought I'd make them sweat, so I left and ran some errands, and when I came back they asked $10 and I took it. I bought a load of balls on eBay, but I want to clean it up before I set it up. Another wonderful project that will fill my copious free time!Friday, August 01, 2008
Short, yet action packed
This is going to be a short post because I'm tired and my hands are sore. My group at work is being beaten down by an impending release date so I'm working a lot. My wife got a job last month as an activity coordinator for an assisted living facility, which is good for us financially but she now spends a colossal amount of time on the computer researching activities for the old folks.
I did block out a bunch of time to work on the Doctor Who Dalek Wobble Head kit. It arrived about a week after I paid for it, then it sat around for a few days. Since I don't have a lot of free time, I started doing micro bursts of work on it -- removing stuff one day, fitting it the next, drilling holes the day after, etc. This put me in a pretty good position when my wife's dad and brother showed up for a 2 day visit, which kept her occupied so I could devote some large chunks of time to the process.
Installation was generally pretty easy. I liked the shunts they had to attach new wires to the boards... you plug in their plug to the appropriate location, then plug the real plug into that. Very slick. Of course, since my wiring is different from a standard game I had to do a little fiddling about, but nothing more complicated than before.
Of course, it wouldn't be my Doctor Who if something didn't go wrong, but I did get it to the point where the head would run in test mode. Here is (I think) my first ever blog video:
I'll go into the mighty saga of what went wrong, what went wrong with the going wrong, and what happened when things just fell off a cliff in a later post. It stopped short of the game being left a smoking ruin, but just barely.
But I'll go out on a high note. The state is building a new highway near my house which they've been planning on doing it for almost 50 years now (literally -- it was first proposed in the 1960's). One of the houses we looked at before buying this one was demolished as part of the construction. So a few months ago the dog and I decide to take a walk down the cleared path of destruction where it will be built, and it was kind of fun. So a few weeks ago we wanted to take another walk and see how things are progressing... but this time, we did so when there were a couple of workers doing things on the site. We stayed well out of their way and looked around some more, but it was hot so we turned back after a short trip. So, about three days later, signs such as the one pictured showed up around the entrances to the job sites. I am 100% confident that the signs appeared because the workers saw me walking around and figured I was there to deliberately hurt myself and sue the state or to steal a couple of the 50 foot concrete and steel beams they're using to make the bridges. There are also a group of security guys driving between the job sites on weekends. Regardless, I am partly bummed that we can't walk there any more and partly elated that my actions appeared to have caused such a kerfuffle.
Joe Entropy: Making a difference in the community.
I did block out a bunch of time to work on the Doctor Who Dalek Wobble Head kit. It arrived about a week after I paid for it, then it sat around for a few days. Since I don't have a lot of free time, I started doing micro bursts of work on it -- removing stuff one day, fitting it the next, drilling holes the day after, etc. This put me in a pretty good position when my wife's dad and brother showed up for a 2 day visit, which kept her occupied so I could devote some large chunks of time to the process.
Installation was generally pretty easy. I liked the shunts they had to attach new wires to the boards... you plug in their plug to the appropriate location, then plug the real plug into that. Very slick. Of course, since my wiring is different from a standard game I had to do a little fiddling about, but nothing more complicated than before.
Of course, it wouldn't be my Doctor Who if something didn't go wrong, but I did get it to the point where the head would run in test mode. Here is (I think) my first ever blog video:
I'll go into the mighty saga of what went wrong, what went wrong with the going wrong, and what happened when things just fell off a cliff in a later post. It stopped short of the game being left a smoking ruin, but just barely.
But I'll go out on a high note. The state is building a new highway near my house which they've been planning on doing it for almost 50 years now (literally -- it was first proposed in the 1960's). One of the houses we looked at before buying this one was demolished as part of the construction. So a few months ago the dog and I decide to take a walk down the cleared path of destruction where it will be built, and it was kind of fun. So a few weeks ago we wanted to take another walk and see how things are progressing... but this time, we did so when there were a couple of workers doing things on the site. We stayed well out of their way and looked around some more, but it was hot so we turned back after a short trip. So, about three days later, signs such as the one pictured showed up around the entrances to the job sites. I am 100% confident that the signs appeared because the workers saw me walking around and figured I was there to deliberately hurt myself and sue the state or to steal a couple of the 50 foot concrete and steel beams they're using to make the bridges. There are also a group of security guys driving between the job sites on weekends. Regardless, I am partly bummed that we can't walk there any more and partly elated that my actions appeared to have caused such a kerfuffle.Joe Entropy: Making a difference in the community.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Many are called, few have chosen to pay $300 for a moving Dalek head
As the title indicates, yesterday I got the email offering the purchase of a Doctor Who Wobble Head kit. Of course, I had already talked myself into buying it, so without much ado (other than finding a browser that the site worked with, newly downloaded Firefox 3.0 not being among them) I plunked down $290.75 and eagerly await my booty.
That not being chump change, I feel like I should actually install it promptly. This has lit the fire of righteous fury under me to create a work area in which I could actually do the work necessary without injury. That means the timetable for the swapping of my wife's and my work areas suddenly has a deadline, and I work great with deadlines.
So let's throw shame to the wind and turn the camera towards the parts of the basement that I usually aim it away from. On the right is my wife's work area. In all fairness, this was briefly organized, and over time has become a desperate cry to be featured on one of those HGTV house cleaning shows. And after it became slightly messy, anything even vaguely craft-related was just tossed in, sort of like compound interest for disorderly spaces. Note the exposed sewer pipe in the background... if that isn't a blog post that's just waiting to happen, I don't know what is. Not shown: The partially collapsed drop ceiling!
On the left is my personal superfund site. And this is after some organization earlier in the year... it used to be worse. And while my wife's area is a collaborative effort, this room is pretty much all me because I'm the only one who can squeeze into it without knocking down precarious piles of stuff, thereby blocking the escape route. So you can see this is a mighty labor that even Hercules would pale at. Say, speaking of the labors of Hercules, maybe I can clean my wife's stuff by breaking the sewer pipe and the resulting river of filth would carry away the mess.
And of course it wouldn't be a blog post without a few new purchases. Here's a mostly populated Pin*bot playfield that I got a few weeks ago. It's pretty thrashed cosmetically, but I figure if that's a problem I can move everything over to the unpopulated playfield. Getting this was kind of a pain... the guy who sold it to me was in California and had never sold a playfield before, so he lacked the basic shipping skills, namely accurate pricing and the acquisition of cheap boxes. The original shipping estimate was $140, but I asked if he could do UPS which should be ~$70. He said fine, so I bid and won. Then he sat on it for a few weeks, during which he said he was trying to get a box. Finally he bought a $15 box, which I called bullshit on and suggested he go to a bike store where they'll give you bike boxes for free (like I said, he was new to this). After much haggling, harsh words, and a few angry tears he finally got it to UPS and they wanted to charge him an oversize box fee... hello? Measure the frickin' box BEFORE shipping! So he cut the box down to size at UPS and shipped it for $75. When I got it, it was basically floating free in the box with a handful of styrofoam appliance packing pieces inadequately protecting it. I could reach into the box and touch the unwrapped playfield. I wanted to kill the guy. By dumb luck it did arrive in reasonable condition, but I think I'll be buying my playfields locally from now on.
This just arrived this week, bought from the guy who sold me the non-working "100% working" WPC display board a few years ago. It's the base and functional parts of Rudy's head on Funhouse. The picture was terrible and the description was practically non-existent (the title was "Funhouse pinball Rudy part" and the description was "You are bidding on a Funhouse Pinball rudy parts". Seriously.). But I won, and it actually turned out to be better than I expected. It's got the jaw piece, the kicker, and three of the four coils. If I could get the jaw motor and gear box, that's really all I would need to play the game, since the face and eyes are all just eye candy anyway.
I don't expect to be buying much for a few months, since eBay season has come to an end and the wobble head has put me either really close to or slightly over my debt ceiling of $1000. So it's as good a time as any to get organized so I can prepare for the new fall season, when I'll have to sell a bunch of boodle to return to solvency.
That not being chump change, I feel like I should actually install it promptly. This has lit the fire of righteous fury under me to create a work area in which I could actually do the work necessary without injury. That means the timetable for the swapping of my wife's and my work areas suddenly has a deadline, and I work great with deadlines.
So let's throw shame to the wind and turn the camera towards the parts of the basement that I usually aim it away from. On the right is my wife's work area. In all fairness, this was briefly organized, and over time has become a desperate cry to be featured on one of those HGTV house cleaning shows. And after it became slightly messy, anything even vaguely craft-related was just tossed in, sort of like compound interest for disorderly spaces. Note the exposed sewer pipe in the background... if that isn't a blog post that's just waiting to happen, I don't know what is. Not shown: The partially collapsed drop ceiling!
On the left is my personal superfund site. And this is after some organization earlier in the year... it used to be worse. And while my wife's area is a collaborative effort, this room is pretty much all me because I'm the only one who can squeeze into it without knocking down precarious piles of stuff, thereby blocking the escape route. So you can see this is a mighty labor that even Hercules would pale at. Say, speaking of the labors of Hercules, maybe I can clean my wife's stuff by breaking the sewer pipe and the resulting river of filth would carry away the mess.
And of course it wouldn't be a blog post without a few new purchases. Here's a mostly populated Pin*bot playfield that I got a few weeks ago. It's pretty thrashed cosmetically, but I figure if that's a problem I can move everything over to the unpopulated playfield. Getting this was kind of a pain... the guy who sold it to me was in California and had never sold a playfield before, so he lacked the basic shipping skills, namely accurate pricing and the acquisition of cheap boxes. The original shipping estimate was $140, but I asked if he could do UPS which should be ~$70. He said fine, so I bid and won. Then he sat on it for a few weeks, during which he said he was trying to get a box. Finally he bought a $15 box, which I called bullshit on and suggested he go to a bike store where they'll give you bike boxes for free (like I said, he was new to this). After much haggling, harsh words, and a few angry tears he finally got it to UPS and they wanted to charge him an oversize box fee... hello? Measure the frickin' box BEFORE shipping! So he cut the box down to size at UPS and shipped it for $75. When I got it, it was basically floating free in the box with a handful of styrofoam appliance packing pieces inadequately protecting it. I could reach into the box and touch the unwrapped playfield. I wanted to kill the guy. By dumb luck it did arrive in reasonable condition, but I think I'll be buying my playfields locally from now on.
This just arrived this week, bought from the guy who sold me the non-working "100% working" WPC display board a few years ago. It's the base and functional parts of Rudy's head on Funhouse. The picture was terrible and the description was practically non-existent (the title was "Funhouse pinball Rudy part" and the description was "You are bidding on a Funhouse Pinball rudy parts". Seriously.). But I won, and it actually turned out to be better than I expected. It's got the jaw piece, the kicker, and three of the four coils. If I could get the jaw motor and gear box, that's really all I would need to play the game, since the face and eyes are all just eye candy anyway.I don't expect to be buying much for a few months, since eBay season has come to an end and the wobble head has put me either really close to or slightly over my debt ceiling of $1000. So it's as good a time as any to get organized so I can prepare for the new fall season, when I'll have to sell a bunch of boodle to return to solvency.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
5 minute post... Go!
Last minute addendum! I forgot that for the first time, I won a door prize at the pinball show! Obviously, it's not a pinball machine or flat screen TV, since I probably would have remembered that on the first go round. It's a Pinball Wizards tiny travel alarm clock/calculator/
world time zone thing. I don't know what I'll do with it, but how can I not use it? It's a Major Award!
Actually, one place I could use it is in my new work area! My wife complained that she doesn't have a place for her crafts today... actually, she does, but it's a disaster area (to be fair, not entirely of her own making). We were going to set one up for her in the laundry room, but it's not an ideal space (near water and generally filled with dirty clothes), and it's currently piled to the ceiling with eBay packing supplies and boxes. So she said today that she wishes she could have a room for her crafts. After some negotiating, it was decided that I would move my pinball stuff out of the fake bedroom in the basement (fake -> no closet) and move her craft stuff into the bedroom. She would be away from water and have a whopping two windows for light; I would have a large work area near my games that is convenient to our primary drain pipe, so when it bursts it can spray warm effluent all over my $1000+ collection of playfields!
More on this story as it develops...
world time zone thing. I don't know what I'll do with it, but how can I not use it? It's a Major Award!
Actually, one place I could use it is in my new work area! My wife complained that she doesn't have a place for her crafts today... actually, she does, but it's a disaster area (to be fair, not entirely of her own making). We were going to set one up for her in the laundry room, but it's not an ideal space (near water and generally filled with dirty clothes), and it's currently piled to the ceiling with eBay packing supplies and boxes. So she said today that she wishes she could have a room for her crafts. After some negotiating, it was decided that I would move my pinball stuff out of the fake bedroom in the basement (fake -> no closet) and move her craft stuff into the bedroom. She would be away from water and have a whopping two windows for light; I would have a large work area near my games that is convenient to our primary drain pipe, so when it bursts it can spray warm effluent all over my $1000+ collection of playfields!
More on this story as it develops...
Friday, June 06, 2008
Lucky!
My lazy ass is still catching up... 100% of this post is vintage stuff.
I suppose Mrs. Entropy is very tolerant of my hobby. Financially she can't really say much because she spends a lot on sewing, knitting, et cetera, though I'm currently outspending her by almost 2 to 1. She's sort of accepted the amount of space the games take up, and was even willing to allow Quicksilver in the living room, mainly because she likes the art (as I believe I've mentioned before, she's pretty non-committal on Black Knight, Doctor Who, and EBD, but she is heavily irked with the way Mr. Barbarian is drawn on Paragon... he has the body of a dwarf and his right arm and wing are not anatomically possible). She's even sat with me a few times and watched This Old Pinball vids and Pins and Vids 2 & 3... on the last two, she even asked for more information about Wizard Blocks, and was kind of interested in the process of manufacturing Big Bang Bar. And a couple of times she's been very helpful in reading part numbers out of game manuals while I type them in to Illinois Pinball's search engine. My sense is that a lot of Pin Wives are openly antagonistic to their hubbys' hobby.
But realistically, I could probably use some actual friends who play pinball. I think the last time I had friends to play pinball with was high school and college, which is kind of pathetic... and not tele-pathetic, either. I've thought about going to one of the FSPA nights, but they don't meet local to me any more and the remaining meetings are a pretty big schlep for me, though the one in Virginia is only about a half hour from my work. And in addition my meet & greet social skills are poor at best and I worry about what to talk about when the subject of pinball has been exhausted. I think I'm
at my best when people need something from me and are forced to seek me out. Well, that sounds kind of pathetic too. -_-; Anyway, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I supposed we'll see.
But enough about my tedious life. As previously reported, I went to the Pinball Wizards show in Allentown and had a pretty good time. I probably say this every year, but it seems like there was a lot more junk this time... games with whole flippers not working (I'm looking at you, Tom Tom!), games that were pretty much never turned on for the whole show, features not working, blah blah blah. But there were a few standouts... I enjoyed playing Gottlieb's Roller Coaster, an early 70's game with proto-habitrails. And I had a hella fun time playing Balls-a-Poppin, a 1956 game with multiball and an auto-plunger. The big surprise this show is I spent less than $100. Now, this isn't for lack of trying, I just don't have a lot to get these days that they sell at shows. Classic Playfield Reproductions came down from the forests of Eastern Canada for what I think is the first time (at a show I've been to, anyway) and they had a grab bag of repro plastics for Pin Bot that I needed... I had to force my brain to remember which plastics were missing on the playfield I had just bought (a populated one this time -- like I said, my ass is lazy, and I am behind; I ended up buying one or two that I had, but in general did pretty well and only didn't buy one). Out in the flea market I picked up a Funhouse subway ramp and a crapload of plastics (several almost complete sets) from a guy for a pretty good price... I had to run back and forth between a parts Funhouse and the ramp, trying to make sure that it was indeed the ramp I needed. I also speculated and bought a beautiful TOTAN subway ramp for $10, hoping I could sell it for more on eBay... which in fact I did, I cleaned it up Sunday, posted it, and it sold for almost $16... I probably made only $3, but small victories count, too! I also put up a few of the extra Funhouse plastics -- a set of the pointing hands -- and that sold for $3 or so, which is bonus since all the plastics together cost me $17. And, of course, I delivered the High Speed cabinet to the guy's proxy... that's a first for me, actually bringing something to a pinball show.
It was not all coolness, though. Harshness came in the form of a Doctor Who parts machine that a guy was selling for $250. I dithered about it for a while, then looked around for an ATM so I could come up with $$$, and in that time someone more decisive bought it. It was a relatively unfaded cabinet, it had the Dalek on top, but the rest was wrapped up so I couldn't see it, but I find it hard to believe that I couldn't have gotten that much and more for it on eBay. And I've had good luck with the parts DW and High Speed that I wanted to see if I had actual instincts that I could use to help pay for my purchases. So, that's this year's One That Got Away.
In an attempt at sociability I did speak to a couple of people, and played a doubles game of Maverick with a guy who I was initially beating but who proved to be a pinball savant. I don't think he totally pasted me, as my last two balls were pretty good, but he was definitely out of my league.
I think the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Anyway, it's getting late so it's time to wrap it up.
I suppose Mrs. Entropy is very tolerant of my hobby. Financially she can't really say much because she spends a lot on sewing, knitting, et cetera, though I'm currently outspending her by almost 2 to 1. She's sort of accepted the amount of space the games take up, and was even willing to allow Quicksilver in the living room, mainly because she likes the art (as I believe I've mentioned before, she's pretty non-committal on Black Knight, Doctor Who, and EBD, but she is heavily irked with the way Mr. Barbarian is drawn on Paragon... he has the body of a dwarf and his right arm and wing are not anatomically possible). She's even sat with me a few times and watched This Old Pinball vids and Pins and Vids 2 & 3... on the last two, she even asked for more information about Wizard Blocks, and was kind of interested in the process of manufacturing Big Bang Bar. And a couple of times she's been very helpful in reading part numbers out of game manuals while I type them in to Illinois Pinball's search engine. My sense is that a lot of Pin Wives are openly antagonistic to their hubbys' hobby.
But realistically, I could probably use some actual friends who play pinball. I think the last time I had friends to play pinball with was high school and college, which is kind of pathetic... and not tele-pathetic, either. I've thought about going to one of the FSPA nights, but they don't meet local to me any more and the remaining meetings are a pretty big schlep for me, though the one in Virginia is only about a half hour from my work. And in addition my meet & greet social skills are poor at best and I worry about what to talk about when the subject of pinball has been exhausted. I think I'm
at my best when people need something from me and are forced to seek me out. Well, that sounds kind of pathetic too. -_-; Anyway, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I supposed we'll see.
But enough about my tedious life. As previously reported, I went to the Pinball Wizards show in Allentown and had a pretty good time. I probably say this every year, but it seems like there was a lot more junk this time... games with whole flippers not working (I'm looking at you, Tom Tom!), games that were pretty much never turned on for the whole show, features not working, blah blah blah. But there were a few standouts... I enjoyed playing Gottlieb's Roller Coaster, an early 70's game with proto-habitrails. And I had a hella fun time playing Balls-a-Poppin, a 1956 game with multiball and an auto-plunger. The big surprise this show is I spent less than $100. Now, this isn't for lack of trying, I just don't have a lot to get these days that they sell at shows. Classic Playfield Reproductions came down from the forests of Eastern Canada for what I think is the first time (at a show I've been to, anyway) and they had a grab bag of repro plastics for Pin Bot that I needed... I had to force my brain to remember which plastics were missing on the playfield I had just bought (a populated one this time -- like I said, my ass is lazy, and I am behind; I ended up buying one or two that I had, but in general did pretty well and only didn't buy one). Out in the flea market I picked up a Funhouse subway ramp and a crapload of plastics (several almost complete sets) from a guy for a pretty good price... I had to run back and forth between a parts Funhouse and the ramp, trying to make sure that it was indeed the ramp I needed. I also speculated and bought a beautiful TOTAN subway ramp for $10, hoping I could sell it for more on eBay... which in fact I did, I cleaned it up Sunday, posted it, and it sold for almost $16... I probably made only $3, but small victories count, too! I also put up a few of the extra Funhouse plastics -- a set of the pointing hands -- and that sold for $3 or so, which is bonus since all the plastics together cost me $17. And, of course, I delivered the High Speed cabinet to the guy's proxy... that's a first for me, actually bringing something to a pinball show.
It was not all coolness, though. Harshness came in the form of a Doctor Who parts machine that a guy was selling for $250. I dithered about it for a while, then looked around for an ATM so I could come up with $$$, and in that time someone more decisive bought it. It was a relatively unfaded cabinet, it had the Dalek on top, but the rest was wrapped up so I couldn't see it, but I find it hard to believe that I couldn't have gotten that much and more for it on eBay. And I've had good luck with the parts DW and High Speed that I wanted to see if I had actual instincts that I could use to help pay for my purchases. So, that's this year's One That Got Away.
In an attempt at sociability I did speak to a couple of people, and played a doubles game of Maverick with a guy who I was initially beating but who proved to be a pinball savant. I don't think he totally pasted me, as my last two balls were pretty good, but he was definitely out of my league.
I think the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Anyway, it's getting late so it's time to wrap it up.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me
Right now I'm waiting... waiting for downloads of Daniel Pinkwater books & podcasts to finish, waiting for my wife to finish watching Bones (which I would love were it not for all the disgusting dead bodies), and, I guess, waiting for an absolution that will never come. So I might as well do a little more catch-up posting.
Shockingly, my first topic is about Doctor Who. I'm on the mailing list for the DW Wobble Head, where Al of Pins and Vids fame and his pal Mark are reproducing the mechanism to make the Dalek head move as it did on the prototype games. They say they're really close to finishing, and I potentially have the tough choice of whether to spend $275+/- that I don't have on this thing they're unlikely to make again, or... well, let's face it, if you've read more than three posts you know that my ability to piss away money I don't have is the envy of the Bush Administration. Purchasing is pretty byzantine... basically, they're making 10 sets, and the 40-odd people on the mailing list will be offered a chance to buy in the order that they expressed interest. So without getting too mathy on you, I should have roughly a 50% chance of getting the call to adventure. I feel kind of obligated to go for it since I believe in my heart of hearts that my cabinet was a prototype at some point, and it longs to return to its divine state of being. I am but a humble vessel in its quest for enlightenment.
Here's how I justify funding it: Right now I owe my family about $700 for purchases, plus a few bucks here and there -- for example, I just bought a Pin*bot skill shot ramp on eBay for about $18, which isn't included in the total -- so as long as I keep the total I owe under a nice, round, arbitrary amount like $1000, I should be OK.
Well, my wife finished Bones but now she's watching Battlestar Galactica, which I like but I've only watched the first two episodes and I am so anal about watching things in order that if I even walked into the room while episode 408 was on my head would explode. I mean, I'm working my way through Thunderbirds on Netflix, and I'm watching it in order even though it doesn't involve any kind of story arc or character development to speak of. I'm also watching Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, which is at least marginally serial... and I'm also submitting episode summaries as I watch them to IMDB. When I was a kid, I only got to see Voyage Into Space, so I'm having great fun watching the entire series.
OK, I'm trying to think of stuff that is less pinball-related than this, and I'm having a difficult time doing so. My apologies to the hard-core.
Hey, this has nothing to do with pins, but is cool for me... I had a question answered by The Straight Dope Advisory Board! It's not as cool as having my question answered in the column, but it's the next best thing. There's even a little discussion topic devoted to the answer to my question. Cecil actually answered a question of mine about 10 years ago, but I asked it under my real name so I'm not going to link to it. See if you can guess which one it is!
Well, BSG is almost over so I'll probably rejoin my wife.
Wait, I thought of a short pinball thing! I have finally, against all odds, got Quicksilver in service again. It has been unplugged lo these many months because I wanted all of my games to be plugged into real surge protectors, not just power strips. I bought a big 'un for the four games downstairs and a smaller one for QS in the living room, but the surge protector required a three pronged outlet and our house, built on or about my birth year, is strictly two pronged. So, over Memorial Day weekend I cleared off all the crap my family has been leaving on the game, swapped the outlet (over the course of two days -- yeah, I kind of suck at this stuff, but I did it right, the ground actually works and everything), plugged the protector into the wall, plugged the game into the protector, and played a fun ol' game. So, I've got my one fully working game up and running, and that's always a good feeling. ^_^;
Shockingly, my first topic is about Doctor Who. I'm on the mailing list for the DW Wobble Head, where Al of Pins and Vids fame and his pal Mark are reproducing the mechanism to make the Dalek head move as it did on the prototype games. They say they're really close to finishing, and I potentially have the tough choice of whether to spend $275+/- that I don't have on this thing they're unlikely to make again, or... well, let's face it, if you've read more than three posts you know that my ability to piss away money I don't have is the envy of the Bush Administration. Purchasing is pretty byzantine... basically, they're making 10 sets, and the 40-odd people on the mailing list will be offered a chance to buy in the order that they expressed interest. So without getting too mathy on you, I should have roughly a 50% chance of getting the call to adventure. I feel kind of obligated to go for it since I believe in my heart of hearts that my cabinet was a prototype at some point, and it longs to return to its divine state of being. I am but a humble vessel in its quest for enlightenment.
Here's how I justify funding it: Right now I owe my family about $700 for purchases, plus a few bucks here and there -- for example, I just bought a Pin*bot skill shot ramp on eBay for about $18, which isn't included in the total -- so as long as I keep the total I owe under a nice, round, arbitrary amount like $1000, I should be OK.
Well, my wife finished Bones but now she's watching Battlestar Galactica, which I like but I've only watched the first two episodes and I am so anal about watching things in order that if I even walked into the room while episode 408 was on my head would explode. I mean, I'm working my way through Thunderbirds on Netflix, and I'm watching it in order even though it doesn't involve any kind of story arc or character development to speak of. I'm also watching Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, which is at least marginally serial... and I'm also submitting episode summaries as I watch them to IMDB. When I was a kid, I only got to see Voyage Into Space, so I'm having great fun watching the entire series.
OK, I'm trying to think of stuff that is less pinball-related than this, and I'm having a difficult time doing so. My apologies to the hard-core.
Hey, this has nothing to do with pins, but is cool for me... I had a question answered by The Straight Dope Advisory Board! It's not as cool as having my question answered in the column, but it's the next best thing. There's even a little discussion topic devoted to the answer to my question. Cecil actually answered a question of mine about 10 years ago, but I asked it under my real name so I'm not going to link to it. See if you can guess which one it is!
Well, BSG is almost over so I'll probably rejoin my wife.
Wait, I thought of a short pinball thing! I have finally, against all odds, got Quicksilver in service again. It has been unplugged lo these many months because I wanted all of my games to be plugged into real surge protectors, not just power strips. I bought a big 'un for the four games downstairs and a smaller one for QS in the living room, but the surge protector required a three pronged outlet and our house, built on or about my birth year, is strictly two pronged. So, over Memorial Day weekend I cleared off all the crap my family has been leaving on the game, swapped the outlet (over the course of two days -- yeah, I kind of suck at this stuff, but I did it right, the ground actually works and everything), plugged the protector into the wall, plugged the game into the protector, and played a fun ol' game. So, I've got my one fully working game up and running, and that's always a good feeling. ^_^;
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Pinball World Tour: Rockin' the Free World!
So, the Pinball World Tour 2008 officially concluded a few weeks ago, but I am fundamentally lazy and easily distracted. Usually things like chasing after the dog take precedence over blogging. ^_^;
Stop 1: Continental Bar & Grill, Arlington, VA - The tour started modestly with a visit to the bar near my work. World Poker Tour was gone and Spider-man was in, so I played a few games of that.
Stop 2: Game Time, Cockeysville, MD - This used to be a pool place where Mike and his 24 sons fixed games. I had been there to play pinball a few times, but it never seemed to be formally set up for pinball playing. Now it's basically a pinball store where you can play the games for an hourly fee. There was a pretty good selection of games, mostly from the late 80's on. I played Apollo 13 until I got the damn 13 ball multiball. I also got a chance to play Wheel of Fortune, which I figured would relieve the pressure to play it at later stops on the tour. Overall I was surprised that the games weren't all in amazing condition... I would say they were in decent pinball show condition, but not retail sale condition. Anyway, I had fun.
Stop 3: The Pinball Hall of Fame, Las Vegas, NV - I had to go on a business trip to San Diego at the end of last month, and when I found that I could fly into Las Vegas, drive to San Diego, then fly home from there cheaper than a round trip to SD, I was there. I took an early flight out and arrived in LV around noon. It took an hour or two to get my rental car and find the Hall of Fame, and I stayed for the next 8 hours or so. What can I say? It's awesome to have that many games in one spot. I played several games of the Pinball Circus, at right. After the initial shock of being there wore off, I started methodically working my way up and down the rows of games in a desperate attempt to play them all. Sadly, by the time I got the the last complete row I was about ready to fall over from exhaustion, so I started only playing the games that I hadn't played before or were really interesting. I managed to play about half of them, and if take into account the fact that a bunch weren't working, I'd say it's more like 75%. I supposed I should cut them some slack because they have 140+ games, but there were a few games that had some major problems... the Funhouse, which according to the sign had new more powerful flippers, actually had really weak flippers. I should have expected it, but Tim & Co love their crude and terrible puns (the sign describing Roger Sharpe's Sharpshooter labels it "Sharpe's Hooters"). And I did see The Hippie and I spoke briefly with Tim Arnold... I asked him how the search for the new building was coming along and we chatted about that. Overall, I had a good time and wished I could have stayed longer. I spent the night in a Motel 6 on Fremont Street and lost a few hours and about $35 gambling. I got up early the next morning, stocked up on Monster Energy Drinks and drove across the desert in a mad dash to get to San Diego Airport before 2 PM to avoid getting charged for a second day on the rental car. Here's the tragedy: I had my iPod, the car had an auxiliary jack, I had the cable to connect the two, BUT I obviously haven't ripped my copy of Wall of Voodoo's Call of the West album and didn't have the song "On Interstate 15", which I had been hoping to play while driving on Interstate 15. Bad luck there. I did pass by Calico Ghost Town, which my family would go to every few years on vacation when I was a kid. I had lunch at an In-n-Out Burger, for which I'd been feeling the In-n-Out Urge for my last several trips to California but had not had the opportunity to act on. And on the way to SD, I stopped in at:
Stop 4: Round Table Pizza, Rancho Bernardo, CA - I got this place out the the Visual Pinball forum pinball listings. It was right off the 15, and though they didn't have T2 and ST:TNG, they did have an Addams Family in dirty but playable condition.
Stop 5: Poway Fun Bowl, Poway, CA - This was kind of a gamble, because it was a few miles from the 15 and my rental car was going to turn into a pumpkin soon. Contrary to the VP Forums, they did not have a Champion Pub or Theater of Magic, but they did have a Family Guy and Attack from Mars, and the game room had black lights in it which made the AFM all glowy and cool. I didn't play FG, since I had just played Shrek at the PHoF. I finished my inauspicious game, gassed up nearby, and pelted down the freeway to San Diego proper.
Super Incredible Surpise Stop 6: Loew's Coronado Bay Resort, San Diego, CA - This was my destination, where my company was having its user conference. I tried to check in but my room wouldn't be ready for another two hours. So I was wandering around the hotel in my grubby traveling clothes hoping that no clients would see me and I saw a sign that said "Game Room". And danged if they didn't have a World Cup Soccer, The Shadow, and Dracula, all in playable condition! They also had some driving/fighting/shooting games, but I was stunned at the 90's Williams goodness staring me in the face. Of course, I spent most of my conference downtime in the 
game room, and even coerced my coworker roommate to play a few games. We ended up playing a lot of The Shadow, because of the three it ended up being the funnest. After the fancy dress up party on the last night, I snuck in and spanked World Cup, posting the high score... mainly because a ball was stuck and the various quirks of the rule changes made the game ridiculously easy. By the time I finished I hated the game with a passion.
Stop 7: My House, Derwood, MD - Of course, I have to count the fact that I played Doctor Who a few times. I had gotten a little annoyed the the H switch was in the non-working column, but the game apparently finally figured out the problem and modified the rules. Now when you get the W, the O starts flashing and it hitting it scores the full W-H-O value, including I am happy to say, the extra ball.
Final Stop: Pinball Wizards Convention, Allentown, PA - I'll write more in a later post on this... there was triumphantness, and there was harsh bogosity.
So, the Pinball World Tour was 8 stops, 5 states, and over a hundred games. My fingers are calloused, my wrists bleed, yet still I want more.
And finally, I had to post this most awesome eBay auction description. It reads like the opening salvo from Free Verse Arcade Poetry Slam Night. I have reduced the font size, but the shouting and singular lack of punctuation is 100% authentic. It did sell for about $600. The description is a thing of beauty.
Stop 1: Continental Bar & Grill, Arlington, VA - The tour started modestly with a visit to the bar near my work. World Poker Tour was gone and Spider-man was in, so I played a few games of that.
Stop 2: Game Time, Cockeysville, MD - This used to be a pool place where Mike and his 24 sons fixed games. I had been there to play pinball a few times, but it never seemed to be formally set up for pinball playing. Now it's basically a pinball store where you can play the games for an hourly fee. There was a pretty good selection of games, mostly from the late 80's on. I played Apollo 13 until I got the damn 13 ball multiball. I also got a chance to play Wheel of Fortune, which I figured would relieve the pressure to play it at later stops on the tour. Overall I was surprised that the games weren't all in amazing condition... I would say they were in decent pinball show condition, but not retail sale condition. Anyway, I had fun.
Stop 3: The Pinball Hall of Fame, Las Vegas, NV - I had to go on a business trip to San Diego at the end of last month, and when I found that I could fly into Las Vegas, drive to San Diego, then fly home from there cheaper than a round trip to SD, I was there. I took an early flight out and arrived in LV around noon. It took an hour or two to get my rental car and find the Hall of Fame, and I stayed for the next 8 hours or so. What can I say? It's awesome to have that many games in one spot. I played several games of the Pinball Circus, at right. After the initial shock of being there wore off, I started methodically working my way up and down the rows of games in a desperate attempt to play them all. Sadly, by the time I got the the last complete row I was about ready to fall over from exhaustion, so I started only playing the games that I hadn't played before or were really interesting. I managed to play about half of them, and if take into account the fact that a bunch weren't working, I'd say it's more like 75%. I supposed I should cut them some slack because they have 140+ games, but there were a few games that had some major problems... the Funhouse, which according to the sign had new more powerful flippers, actually had really weak flippers. I should have expected it, but Tim & Co love their crude and terrible puns (the sign describing Roger Sharpe's Sharpshooter labels it "Sharpe's Hooters"). And I did see The Hippie and I spoke briefly with Tim Arnold... I asked him how the search for the new building was coming along and we chatted about that. Overall, I had a good time and wished I could have stayed longer. I spent the night in a Motel 6 on Fremont Street and lost a few hours and about $35 gambling. I got up early the next morning, stocked up on Monster Energy Drinks and drove across the desert in a mad dash to get to San Diego Airport before 2 PM to avoid getting charged for a second day on the rental car. Here's the tragedy: I had my iPod, the car had an auxiliary jack, I had the cable to connect the two, BUT I obviously haven't ripped my copy of Wall of Voodoo's Call of the West album and didn't have the song "On Interstate 15", which I had been hoping to play while driving on Interstate 15. Bad luck there. I did pass by Calico Ghost Town, which my family would go to every few years on vacation when I was a kid. I had lunch at an In-n-Out Burger, for which I'd been feeling the In-n-Out Urge for my last several trips to California but had not had the opportunity to act on. And on the way to SD, I stopped in at:Stop 4: Round Table Pizza, Rancho Bernardo, CA - I got this place out the the Visual Pinball forum pinball listings. It was right off the 15, and though they didn't have T2 and ST:TNG, they did have an Addams Family in dirty but playable condition.
Stop 5: Poway Fun Bowl, Poway, CA - This was kind of a gamble, because it was a few miles from the 15 and my rental car was going to turn into a pumpkin soon. Contrary to the VP Forums, they did not have a Champion Pub or Theater of Magic, but they did have a Family Guy and Attack from Mars, and the game room had black lights in it which made the AFM all glowy and cool. I didn't play FG, since I had just played Shrek at the PHoF. I finished my inauspicious game, gassed up nearby, and pelted down the freeway to San Diego proper.
Super Incredible Surpise Stop 6: Loew's Coronado Bay Resort, San Diego, CA - This was my destination, where my company was having its user conference. I tried to check in but my room wouldn't be ready for another two hours. So I was wandering around the hotel in my grubby traveling clothes hoping that no clients would see me and I saw a sign that said "Game Room". And danged if they didn't have a World Cup Soccer, The Shadow, and Dracula, all in playable condition! They also had some driving/fighting/shooting games, but I was stunned at the 90's Williams goodness staring me in the face. Of course, I spent most of my conference downtime in the 
game room, and even coerced my coworker roommate to play a few games. We ended up playing a lot of The Shadow, because of the three it ended up being the funnest. After the fancy dress up party on the last night, I snuck in and spanked World Cup, posting the high score... mainly because a ball was stuck and the various quirks of the rule changes made the game ridiculously easy. By the time I finished I hated the game with a passion.Stop 7: My House, Derwood, MD - Of course, I have to count the fact that I played Doctor Who a few times. I had gotten a little annoyed the the H switch was in the non-working column, but the game apparently finally figured out the problem and modified the rules. Now when you get the W, the O starts flashing and it hitting it scores the full W-H-O value, including I am happy to say, the extra ball.
Final Stop: Pinball Wizards Convention, Allentown, PA - I'll write more in a later post on this... there was triumphantness, and there was harsh bogosity.
So, the Pinball World Tour was 8 stops, 5 states, and over a hundred games. My fingers are calloused, my wrists bleed, yet still I want more.
And finally, I had to post this most awesome eBay auction description. It reads like the opening salvo from Free Verse Arcade Poetry Slam Night. I have reduced the font size, but the shouting and singular lack of punctuation is 100% authentic. It did sell for about $600. The description is a thing of beauty.
pin bot pinball machine williams
THIS IS A PRETTY NICE ORIGINAL WILLIAMS PIN BOT PINBALL MACHINE I BOUGHT IT ABOUT 7 YEARS AGO HAD IT PROFESSIONAL SERVICED AND CLEANED PLAYED IT AND KIDS FOR ABOUT 2 YEARS UNPLUGGED IT AND JUST LEFT IT IN CORNER IN BASEMENT ABOUT 6 MONTHS AGO FIRED IT UP THE RIGHT FLIPPER STARTED ACTING UP BUT STILL WORKED THEN IT STARTED RESETING ITSELF WHILE YOU WERE PLAYING IT THE SERVICE MAN CHANGED THE BATTERY PACK IN TOP AND NEW BATTERYS 7 YEARS AGO DONT KNOW WHAT IT IS OR IF ITS IT SIMPLE LIKE THAT OR NOT .KIDS LOST INTEREST AND IM READY FOR A DIFFERENT GAME IT HAS VERY GOOD RAMPS TO PLAY AND A ROBOT LIKE IMAGE MUTLIBALL ETC VERY FUN IT STILL HAS COIN CHANGERS AND KEYS BUT YOU CAN MANUELY ADD CREDITS EASILY SO ITS VERY NICE BUT A FEW BUGS GLASS IS GOOD ETC. LOCAL PICKUP IS RECOMENDED, BUT I WILL WRAP IN BLANKET AND PALLET FOR YOU IF NEEDED AND I CAN HELP LOAD TRUCK BUT YOU NEED TO ARRANGE FREIGHT HAVE FUN THANK YOU !Thursday, May 01, 2008
Ecce homo, ergo elk
The Pinball World Tour has officially started, but let's clear away the auction business first.
I've had some good weeks and bad weeks on eBay, some struggles and triumphs, some pride and prejudice, some sense and sensibility... but luckily, no crime and punishment (yet). I started off the eBay season at the beginning of March with my usual collection of pinball stuff and bizarre junk from the 80's that I never threw out. Since I got the populated Centaur playfield,
I decided to sell off the bare playfield and stuff I bought for it. I figured that if the "crazy eyes" Xenon could get over $100 (twice!) I could probably get twice that. What I discovered was what I thought was a good deal at the time turned out to be way more than the market would bear at resale time. I put the playfield up with a $200 reserve and the first time around it got up to just over $100. See, having a certain amount of integrity meant that I wasn't going to post a blurry picture of the front and back like so many eBayers, but rather posted high res pics plus closeups of the flaws... and boy, in retrospect there were a lot of flaws. There was the touchup done on the whip handle, there was wear along the ball launch path, the right cheek of the drain babe's butt, and the captive ball captive's junk. It just was not worth the ~$340 that I paid for it... if only I could have gotten the guy who bid against me and some other clown in a bidding war, it would have been great. Anyway, I couldn't take $100 for it, so I relisted, it went for $150, and after a little thought I sold. I just shipped it off today. As far as the parts went, I was generally disappointed. I paid about $100 for them, and I think I made around $40-50.
On the plus side, I disassembled the parts from High Speed and made a killing. Of course the game didn't work when I tested it, and I tried booting the CPU board but it had too much battery damage. As I mentioned, I did find the working alphanumeric display, but everything else had to be sold as untested. Still and all, I cleared $275, with the bulk of that coming from the police light topper ($112.50) and the display ($69). Even the non-working displays sold for $4, and I was brutally honest about the fact that they had been tested and found wanting. The awesome HS sales combined with some unexpected vintage computer ad sales ($108 for an IMSAI catalog? Yeah, baby!) to propel me within spittin' distance of a $500 week, my second best ever (first would be hard to beat, $565 for a copy of the Apple II version of Ultima with all its packaging).
Finally, to balance the bad and the good with a dash of ambivalence, I sold some of the Doctor Who parts I got from Illinois Pinball. The first time I sold them, I got double what I paid for them, then I since that did so well I sold a second batch the next week and barely covered my costs before shipping. So the important lesson I learned is either don't sell stuff immediately OR eBay is a chaotic system that defies logical explanation. I'm not sure which is the more valuable lesson.
And to balance out my sales, I pulled the playfield out of High Speed and put the cabinet up in my first ever Mr. Pinball classified ad! (I've created an amazing simulation of it on the right.) I guess I kind of had dreams that it would draw a bunch of offers so I would have to sort out the "or best" of them, but as it turns out the only one was from a guy from Missoura who said it was exactly what he needed and agreed to pay full price. The only problem? He lives over 900 miles away. The solution? Luckily, unlike me he has actual friends, and one of them who lives only about 200 miles away from him is going to Pinball Wizards, so I will bring up the cabinet on Saturday and give it to his proxy. If you're doing the math, that means I've made $325 on High Speed, which is just north of what I paid for it, which means it, like the Doctor Who parts machine before it, is PROFITABLE!!! And I still have the backglass and playfield glass to sell! Yay for our side!
So today my wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, tomorrow we're going to see a matinée of Iron Man (her choice! yes, I am the envy of men everywhere), and Saturday is the pinball show... we'll discuss all that soon with all the details of the Pinball World Tour. Sheesh!
I've had some good weeks and bad weeks on eBay, some struggles and triumphs, some pride and prejudice, some sense and sensibility... but luckily, no crime and punishment (yet). I started off the eBay season at the beginning of March with my usual collection of pinball stuff and bizarre junk from the 80's that I never threw out. Since I got the populated Centaur playfield,
I decided to sell off the bare playfield and stuff I bought for it. I figured that if the "crazy eyes" Xenon could get over $100 (twice!) I could probably get twice that. What I discovered was what I thought was a good deal at the time turned out to be way more than the market would bear at resale time. I put the playfield up with a $200 reserve and the first time around it got up to just over $100. See, having a certain amount of integrity meant that I wasn't going to post a blurry picture of the front and back like so many eBayers, but rather posted high res pics plus closeups of the flaws... and boy, in retrospect there were a lot of flaws. There was the touchup done on the whip handle, there was wear along the ball launch path, the right cheek of the drain babe's butt, and the captive ball captive's junk. It just was not worth the ~$340 that I paid for it... if only I could have gotten the guy who bid against me and some other clown in a bidding war, it would have been great. Anyway, I couldn't take $100 for it, so I relisted, it went for $150, and after a little thought I sold. I just shipped it off today. As far as the parts went, I was generally disappointed. I paid about $100 for them, and I think I made around $40-50.On the plus side, I disassembled the parts from High Speed and made a killing. Of course the game didn't work when I tested it, and I tried booting the CPU board but it had too much battery damage. As I mentioned, I did find the working alphanumeric display, but everything else had to be sold as untested. Still and all, I cleared $275, with the bulk of that coming from the police light topper ($112.50) and the display ($69). Even the non-working displays sold for $4, and I was brutally honest about the fact that they had been tested and found wanting. The awesome HS sales combined with some unexpected vintage computer ad sales ($108 for an IMSAI catalog? Yeah, baby!) to propel me within spittin' distance of a $500 week, my second best ever (first would be hard to beat, $565 for a copy of the Apple II version of Ultima with all its packaging).
Finally, to balance the bad and the good with a dash of ambivalence, I sold some of the Doctor Who parts I got from Illinois Pinball. The first time I sold them, I got double what I paid for them, then I since that did so well I sold a second batch the next week and barely covered my costs before shipping. So the important lesson I learned is either don't sell stuff immediately OR eBay is a chaotic system that defies logical explanation. I'm not sure which is the more valuable lesson.
And to balance out my sales, I pulled the playfield out of High Speed and put the cabinet up in my first ever Mr. Pinball classified ad! (I've created an amazing simulation of it on the right.) I guess I kind of had dreams that it would draw a bunch of offers so I would have to sort out the "or best" of them, but as it turns out the only one was from a guy from Missoura who said it was exactly what he needed and agreed to pay full price. The only problem? He lives over 900 miles away. The solution? Luckily, unlike me he has actual friends, and one of them who lives only about 200 miles away from him is going to Pinball Wizards, so I will bring up the cabinet on Saturday and give it to his proxy. If you're doing the math, that means I've made $325 on High Speed, which is just north of what I paid for it, which means it, like the Doctor Who parts machine before it, is PROFITABLE!!! And I still have the backglass and playfield glass to sell! Yay for our side!So today my wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, tomorrow we're going to see a matinée of Iron Man (her choice! yes, I am the envy of men everywhere), and Saturday is the pinball show... we'll discuss all that soon with all the details of the Pinball World Tour. Sheesh!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Yo, Lunchbox.
This is an interim post responding to my reader, severely bifurcated fanboy LunchboxFett. Of course, the real question that's on everyones mind is: Is he happier that SModcast is back, or about the new Star Wars TV series? We'll have to deal with that in a later blog entry.
Lunchbox writes:
Well, at least he's boy enough to admit it.
So here goes. Here we have the entire backbox. Mine is a little messier than most, because I haven't attached the Dalex board to anything... I think the wires don't actually reach high enough for me to mount it in the proper place. Then of course there are all the goofy wiring changes caused the fact that my Dalek plugs are all wrong. I've considered the fact that I may just have incorrect plugs instead of a prototype cabinet, but then I think of the fact that the holes in the top of the cabinet are different from the other one. Anyway, here's the big picture (click on the pic for full resolution):
OK, so here's the upper left hand corner. My wife's camera, which sometimes requires half a dozen shots from different angles to get a decent shot, came through for Lunchbox with some really nice pictures.
Here's the upper right hand corner.
Now we're getting to the meat and potatoes. This is the lower left hand corner, where the serious power get doled out, yo. I don't think I detailed it in the blog, but I spent a couple hours with the manual matching wire colors to plugs... it was tedious, yet highly gratifying work. To answer your question, Lunchbox, I have found errors in the manual, but the plug documentation seemed to be pretty accurate.
And finally, the lower right hand corner. Very colorful plugs, I should point out.
Now, of course, anyone who reads this blog will know that I'm clearly no expert, but it doesn't sound like your problem is plug related. I've seen crazy stuff happen when the easily misplugged ribbon cables are askew... and I hope it's as easy as that. Keep us informed, either way.
Okay Lunchbox, let's try this again. You check your plugs and make sure everything's as it should be. You then boot up your game and it gets through the test menu. And when that's done the game works perfectly and we go smoke a bowl. You got it? Now get your fat ass up there. And dude, don't forget your helmet. Snoogens.
Lunchbox writes:
Could you take pictures of the driver board and the connections you have to it? I have a manual for the game but not sure if I am missing a cable or the wiring diagram is incorrect.
When I first powered up my machine, it would reset during the test menu. I looked at the Marvin repair guides and it mentioned checking and replacing a couple of things on the driver board.
Yes I am a fanboy.
Well, at least he's boy enough to admit it.
So here goes. Here we have the entire backbox. Mine is a little messier than most, because I haven't attached the Dalex board to anything... I think the wires don't actually reach high enough for me to mount it in the proper place. Then of course there are all the goofy wiring changes caused the fact that my Dalek plugs are all wrong. I've considered the fact that I may just have incorrect plugs instead of a prototype cabinet, but then I think of the fact that the holes in the top of the cabinet are different from the other one. Anyway, here's the big picture (click on the pic for full resolution):
OK, so here's the upper left hand corner. My wife's camera, which sometimes requires half a dozen shots from different angles to get a decent shot, came through for Lunchbox with some really nice pictures.
Here's the upper right hand corner.
Now we're getting to the meat and potatoes. This is the lower left hand corner, where the serious power get doled out, yo. I don't think I detailed it in the blog, but I spent a couple hours with the manual matching wire colors to plugs... it was tedious, yet highly gratifying work. To answer your question, Lunchbox, I have found errors in the manual, but the plug documentation seemed to be pretty accurate.
And finally, the lower right hand corner. Very colorful plugs, I should point out.
Now, of course, anyone who reads this blog will know that I'm clearly no expert, but it doesn't sound like your problem is plug related. I've seen crazy stuff happen when the easily misplugged ribbon cables are askew... and I hope it's as easy as that. Keep us informed, either way.
Okay Lunchbox, let's try this again. You check your plugs and make sure everything's as it should be. You then boot up your game and it gets through the test menu. And when that's done the game works perfectly and we go smoke a bowl. You got it? Now get your fat ass up there. And dude, don't forget your helmet. Snoogens.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Beagles: Spawn of the Devil?
Yeah, so, it turns out I have a readership of one... or should I say, at least one! The last post yielded my first comment to the blog. I even waited a few days to answer it so I wouldn't appear desperate.
I was going to blow off writing, but it turns out that as time passes I just have more to write about. This entry will probably be in two parts because I am exhausted... my wife left a door open on Wednesday night, and Darwin took advantage of her generous open door policy and ran out into the forest behind our house. I chased after him on and off for about three hours and the closest I got to him was I touched him once. Then the deer he was nosing around after spooked and he took off after them. My wife and I drove around for another hour or two, and we could occasionally hear him baying in the distance. We finally gave up and spent a couple of sleepless hours wondering how we were going to get him back. Then at 2:30 in the morning he started howling outside our window. He was cold, wet, and tired out... I mean, he'd just spent the last 6 hours chasing deer, foxes, and whatever else he could find. He spent the next day pretty much sacked out, though today with the help of a muscle relaxant he's not walking like Old Man Beaglestein. I still haven't caught up on my sleep, though, and hence the foreshortened entry.
OK, so the Pinball World Tour in February of last year was awesome -- no one is disputing that. But Pinball World Tour 08, if it goes off as planned, will dwarf its predecessor in scope and magnitude. At least five venues! The distinct possibility of states! Several hundred pinball machines! The mind boggles. Oh yes, updates will be forthcoming.
Several hundred pinball machines means I need to get back some lower arm strength, so I bought a squeeze ball for the car. How difficile is it to find an adequate squeeze ball? Very. I had one that was great, but I think it expired. Then I tried a Linux penguin that I got at JavaOne a few years ago, but it was too big. I had a balloon with sand in it, which was great until it sprang a leak. So I replaced it with an excellent knobbly green thing, which I discovered was filled with little green pellets when they started coming out through a hole. A foam world tchotchke from a trade show lasted about two days... it probably would have been adequate, but the dog had chewed on it so it pretty much started disintegrating from day one. Finally this week I looked in grocery stores, 7-11s, and even frickin' Toys 'r' Us (which is too busy trying to pick up Imaginarium's failed high-end toy store business model to stock $1 squeeze toys). Finally I found some rubber balls in CVS... they're a little harder than I would like, but with less than two weeks before zero hour, the begging disallowed the choosing. I'm starting with 10 minutes on each hand per commuting direction, and I'll move up to 15 next week.
After several months of inactivity, I finally fired up Eight Ball Deluxe the other day only to find that in addition to the credit button not working, now the sound cuts in and out too. Not surprisingly the culprit appears to be that daggone J2 connector, which is just getting worse. I think I'm going to have to mount a repair effort.
I have something in my notes that says "elusive DW fix". I can't for the life of me figure out what that is. It sounds really interesting, though, so if I remember I'll certainly write a more memorable description.
I had a really good week on eBay, followed by kind of a crappy week. I'll write about that when I've recovered from chasing the dog. But I will say that I picked up another hopeless cause, a largely unpopulated Pin-bot playfield. We'll go into excruciating detail on that at a later date.
I was going to blow off writing, but it turns out that as time passes I just have more to write about. This entry will probably be in two parts because I am exhausted... my wife left a door open on Wednesday night, and Darwin took advantage of her generous open door policy and ran out into the forest behind our house. I chased after him on and off for about three hours and the closest I got to him was I touched him once. Then the deer he was nosing around after spooked and he took off after them. My wife and I drove around for another hour or two, and we could occasionally hear him baying in the distance. We finally gave up and spent a couple of sleepless hours wondering how we were going to get him back. Then at 2:30 in the morning he started howling outside our window. He was cold, wet, and tired out... I mean, he'd just spent the last 6 hours chasing deer, foxes, and whatever else he could find. He spent the next day pretty much sacked out, though today with the help of a muscle relaxant he's not walking like Old Man Beaglestein. I still haven't caught up on my sleep, though, and hence the foreshortened entry.
OK, so the Pinball World Tour in February of last year was awesome -- no one is disputing that. But Pinball World Tour 08, if it goes off as planned, will dwarf its predecessor in scope and magnitude. At least five venues! The distinct possibility of states! Several hundred pinball machines! The mind boggles. Oh yes, updates will be forthcoming.
Several hundred pinball machines means I need to get back some lower arm strength, so I bought a squeeze ball for the car. How difficile is it to find an adequate squeeze ball? Very. I had one that was great, but I think it expired. Then I tried a Linux penguin that I got at JavaOne a few years ago, but it was too big. I had a balloon with sand in it, which was great until it sprang a leak. So I replaced it with an excellent knobbly green thing, which I discovered was filled with little green pellets when they started coming out through a hole. A foam world tchotchke from a trade show lasted about two days... it probably would have been adequate, but the dog had chewed on it so it pretty much started disintegrating from day one. Finally this week I looked in grocery stores, 7-11s, and even frickin' Toys 'r' Us (which is too busy trying to pick up Imaginarium's failed high-end toy store business model to stock $1 squeeze toys). Finally I found some rubber balls in CVS... they're a little harder than I would like, but with less than two weeks before zero hour, the begging disallowed the choosing. I'm starting with 10 minutes on each hand per commuting direction, and I'll move up to 15 next week.
After several months of inactivity, I finally fired up Eight Ball Deluxe the other day only to find that in addition to the credit button not working, now the sound cuts in and out too. Not surprisingly the culprit appears to be that daggone J2 connector, which is just getting worse. I think I'm going to have to mount a repair effort.
I have something in my notes that says "elusive DW fix". I can't for the life of me figure out what that is. It sounds really interesting, though, so if I remember I'll certainly write a more memorable description.
I had a really good week on eBay, followed by kind of a crappy week. I'll write about that when I've recovered from chasing the dog. But I will say that I picked up another hopeless cause, a largely unpopulated Pin-bot playfield. We'll go into excruciating detail on that at a later date.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Here's what I should have given up for Lent...
Playfields, of course!
I could not resist the urge and ended up getting an unpopulated Funhouse on eBay. Of course, "unpopulated" here means "virtually impossible to complete without throwing more money than a new game would cost", but as usual I couldn't resist. It's in surprisingly good condition... a few minor wear spots, but mostly just grimy. And unpopulated.
So while I'm wondering how I'm ever going to get the parts for this, a guy from Romania who posts regularly on Mr. Pinball classifieds mentioned he had a bunch of parts from a Funhouse that he parted out. So I asked for a few parts, we haggled a bit, and we completed a sale. I got the wiring harness, the two plastics with lights, the clock and gangway light boards, and Rudy hideout and trapdoor mechanisms. Obviously the real money pits will be Rudy and the ramps, but this is a good start. And I can probably repurpose a bunch of the Doctor Who parts (like slingshots, bumpers, ball trough) for this. Let's put it this way: Things could be worse.
Hey, here's an interesting fact about Funhouse that I could only find out by looking at an unpopulated playfield: There's an Interstate 70 shield and the phrase "Feel the Power" in the pretty much hidden upper right corner, obviously a reference to Whirlwind!
And then another fine eBayer posted a populated (*shudder*) Centaur. It was not in as good a shape as mine, but it was fully populated (*shudder*). Resistance was pretty much futile and it ended around 10 AM on a weekday, so I bid strategically and won. 
As you can see, somebody tried and failed to touch it up, it's missing its plastics, I don't think it has correct targets, and if you look carefully at the wiring harness, all of the plugs have been cut off (the auction said it was missing one, but I think that was an honest mistake... it is completely emasculated). Certainly less of a challenge than the unpopulated playfield, so I took the path of least resistance. The current plan is to scan the nice playfield so I can attempt to touch up this one, then sell the nice one on eBay. I've already started selling the Centaur parts I got, and it looks like they're selling for a pathetic fraction of what I paid for them... desperation always up the price of anything. We'll have a full report on that later.
After a few unsatisfactory eBay auctions for the plastics, I bought a new set from Illinois Pinball for $100 bucks. They are super nice, and since I don't care about NOS or original parts, they will no doubt make this game look a lot nicer.
What does this mean for the bottom line? Well, I owe the family almost $1000. That's a little extreme for a guy who's supposed to manage on $20 per paycheck and has already spent his bonus and tax refund.
Well, help is on the way, because the start of Spring means the start of eBay season. In addition to the Centaur parts, I'm also selling the boards and stuff from High Speed, which so far have attracted lots of watchers and a few bids.
The coolest thing was as I was testing everything the High Speed parts, the one thing that worked great was one (and only one) of the displays. Since I don't have another System 11 game, I plugged the displays into my Black Knight to see if they would work. The one that did was one of the two alphanumeric displays, which I found were plug compatible with the plain old numeric displays less the extra segments. Also, the player 4 plug is situated so you can attach the 26 pin cable to it with the 6 extra sockets hanging off the end. The picture on the right is what I got.
Well, knowing it was working meant I had to come up with a hair-brained scheme to test the other segments. My first attempts at using wires to jumper between the connector and the 6 sockets didn't go anywhere... I had a pretty good idea of where things had to go by reading the schematic, but I had to get everything there.
My bright idea was to run wires from the segment plugs from player 3 to the new segments in the 26 pin plug. The six new pins were easy to find, but it turns out that the unused pin 5 in numeric world is used for a segment on Planet Alpha.
As you can see on the right, it looks half-assed but derned if it didn't work like a charm. Whatever did in the other displays -- probably normal outgassing, but who knows -- sure didn't affect this display. It looks nicer than most of mine. And the proof is in the eBay pudding, because this item has the most watchers I've had in a while -- 32 after 4 days, and it's got the highest bids so far. Obviously I have high hopes for all my items, but some items have higher hopiness than others.
I've got a bunch more to write about, but it's late and I don't want to be wrecked at work tomorrow.
I could not resist the urge and ended up getting an unpopulated Funhouse on eBay. Of course, "unpopulated" here means "virtually impossible to complete without throwing more money than a new game would cost", but as usual I couldn't resist. It's in surprisingly good condition... a few minor wear spots, but mostly just grimy. And unpopulated.So while I'm wondering how I'm ever going to get the parts for this, a guy from Romania who posts regularly on Mr. Pinball classifieds mentioned he had a bunch of parts from a Funhouse that he parted out. So I asked for a few parts, we haggled a bit, and we completed a sale. I got the wiring harness, the two plastics with lights, the clock and gangway light boards, and Rudy hideout and trapdoor mechanisms. Obviously the real money pits will be Rudy and the ramps, but this is a good start. And I can probably repurpose a bunch of the Doctor Who parts (like slingshots, bumpers, ball trough) for this. Let's put it this way: Things could be worse.
Hey, here's an interesting fact about Funhouse that I could only find out by looking at an unpopulated playfield: There's an Interstate 70 shield and the phrase "Feel the Power" in the pretty much hidden upper right corner, obviously a reference to Whirlwind!
And then another fine eBayer posted a populated (*shudder*) Centaur. It was not in as good a shape as mine, but it was fully populated (*shudder*). Resistance was pretty much futile and it ended around 10 AM on a weekday, so I bid strategically and won. 
As you can see, somebody tried and failed to touch it up, it's missing its plastics, I don't think it has correct targets, and if you look carefully at the wiring harness, all of the plugs have been cut off (the auction said it was missing one, but I think that was an honest mistake... it is completely emasculated). Certainly less of a challenge than the unpopulated playfield, so I took the path of least resistance. The current plan is to scan the nice playfield so I can attempt to touch up this one, then sell the nice one on eBay. I've already started selling the Centaur parts I got, and it looks like they're selling for a pathetic fraction of what I paid for them... desperation always up the price of anything. We'll have a full report on that later.After a few unsatisfactory eBay auctions for the plastics, I bought a new set from Illinois Pinball for $100 bucks. They are super nice, and since I don't care about NOS or original parts, they will no doubt make this game look a lot nicer.
What does this mean for the bottom line? Well, I owe the family almost $1000. That's a little extreme for a guy who's supposed to manage on $20 per paycheck and has already spent his bonus and tax refund.
Well, help is on the way, because the start of Spring means the start of eBay season. In addition to the Centaur parts, I'm also selling the boards and stuff from High Speed, which so far have attracted lots of watchers and a few bids.
The coolest thing was as I was testing everything the High Speed parts, the one thing that worked great was one (and only one) of the displays. Since I don't have another System 11 game, I plugged the displays into my Black Knight to see if they would work. The one that did was one of the two alphanumeric displays, which I found were plug compatible with the plain old numeric displays less the extra segments. Also, the player 4 plug is situated so you can attach the 26 pin cable to it with the 6 extra sockets hanging off the end. The picture on the right is what I got.
Well, knowing it was working meant I had to come up with a hair-brained scheme to test the other segments. My first attempts at using wires to jumper between the connector and the 6 sockets didn't go anywhere... I had a pretty good idea of where things had to go by reading the schematic, but I had to get everything there.My bright idea was to run wires from the segment plugs from player 3 to the new segments in the 26 pin plug. The six new pins were easy to find, but it turns out that the unused pin 5 in numeric world is used for a segment on Planet Alpha.
As you can see on the right, it looks half-assed but derned if it didn't work like a charm. Whatever did in the other displays -- probably normal outgassing, but who knows -- sure didn't affect this display. It looks nicer than most of mine. And the proof is in the eBay pudding, because this item has the most watchers I've had in a while -- 32 after 4 days, and it's got the highest bids so far. Obviously I have high hopes for all my items, but some items have higher hopiness than others.I've got a bunch more to write about, but it's late and I don't want to be wrecked at work tomorrow.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
More +s than -s
Now here's some awesomeness: I actually fixed something on Doctor Who. The upper left flipper wasn't working, so I finally found some diagnosis time while my wife flipped (no pun intended) between Extreme Makeover and America's Funniest Home Videos before finally landing on Pinky and the Brain. Before I got too far into it, I realized that each flipper has its own fuse, so I thought I would try changing the fuse first. Looking at the manual, I swapped the upper flipper's fuse with the one for the non-existent upper right. This yielded a working upper flipper (yay!) but now the lower left flipper wasn't working (boo!). Then I said screw it, I'll just replace the LRF fuse with a new one. That didn't work. So I lifted up the playfield and checked the coil voltages with the game turned on. This showed me that the LRF wasn't getting any power, and pulling the plug from the Fliptronics board I found that there was no power there, either; it sure sounded like a fuse. Before I got into some serious diagnostic work, I took another crack at the fuses. I decided it was time to question authority, so I pulled all the fuses and popped them in one at a time to see which flippers started working. I found that the manual was playing me for a fool: Fuses F901 and 902 are the lower flippers, and F903 and 904 are the upper flippers, which is the opposite of what the manual and sticker in the backbox says. I replaced F902 with a brand new fuse and the flipper started working. I played a celebratory game and got an OK score.
So all I've got left to do is fix the switch matrix and figure out why the mini-playfield has problems. One interesting thing I noticed was while I was in the switch test: The MPF opto switch was flashing on and off... that would certainly explain why it was having problems.
In other news, I decided to take the day off work Friday and take that trip to Pinball Parlour than I mentioned last post. I figured it would be marginally easier to leave the dog with my wife than go while she's out of town and let the poor dog stay overnight at the vet. Pinball Parlour is only open from 7-10, so I left at about 2:30 thinking I would be there with plenty of time to get some food... but that didn't work out. There was some stuff spilled on the road north of Baltimore, the stupid EZPass malfunctioned, causing me to think I was going to get a ticket for skipping through tolls (I shouldn't since they have my license plate on file), and rush hour traffic in Philadelphia got me there about 5 minutes before 7. Thank goodness for the Nerds Rope and Beef Jerky I had on the way up.
Pinball Parlour has newer Williams games (mostly late 80's on) and a bunch of EMs from barely post-flipper to the mid-70's. They mostly work, with some bad flippers and such here and there. I'm unhappy with their unreasoned prejudice against 70's-80's Bally solid state, but what can you do. There was a kid's party in there, so when they came in and ran roughshod over the games, I retreated to the EM room. Then I would shoot the balls and finish the games that they started to cut down on the noise. The few EMs that were working were in suck shape, and I was sad that their 1948 game wasn't working either... I'm up to the late 40's games in Pinball Compendium, and it would have been cool to play one. I was also sad that their Joust pinball wasn't working -- nor was it working when I went a couple of years ago. I did play the one early 80's game they had, Hyperball. I also snuck in a few vids, like Crystal Castles (which I could finish back in the day, but not any more:( ) and Paperboy. The owner popped in at 10 and said he was staying open an extra hour. That meant I got home at 2 AM, but the drive home was not bad. Anyway, I had fun, and it was relatively cheap if you don't count the tolls.
Speaking of Pinball Compendium, the one thing I don't like about it -- aside from Shaloub's kinda artless style, which I can overlook -- is the way he fauns over everyone who talks to him. I honestly don't need to know that he worships Steve Kordek and Harry Mabs as gods every few paragraphs, and that he is so grateful that they spoke to him.
And I got The King of Kong on DVD from Netflix the day it came out. I enjoyed it, though I watched it knowing that played Michael Moore-style games with the truth (my wife wouldn't watch it because it was too biased). Even so, Billy Mitchell struck me as the sort of person that I dislike -- people who are so full of themselves, whether deserved or not, turn my stomach. Plenty of awesome extras too, though I found the commentary by the I am 8-bit guy and IGN editor extremely witless and boring, so I turned it off after 10 minutes. Regardless, the one thing it did is make me want to go to Funspot in NH -- they have a frickin' awesome collection of pins & vids, and it's just two hours away from my friend Marlin's house in Boston...! And I may have to drop my daughter off in New York if she goes to England for a semester abroad, which is just four hours away from Boston...! Maybe it's time to plan an early Fall New England romp.
And finally... watching King of Kong extras made me want to play some Donkey Kong, especially since I didn't even remember the Pie Factory level since I haven't gotten to in in about 20 years. So I fired up MAME and totally sucked at it... I didn't even make it through the second barrel level. I fell short of the kill screen by about 114 levels. ^_^;
So all I've got left to do is fix the switch matrix and figure out why the mini-playfield has problems. One interesting thing I noticed was while I was in the switch test: The MPF opto switch was flashing on and off... that would certainly explain why it was having problems.
In other news, I decided to take the day off work Friday and take that trip to Pinball Parlour than I mentioned last post. I figured it would be marginally easier to leave the dog with my wife than go while she's out of town and let the poor dog stay overnight at the vet. Pinball Parlour is only open from 7-10, so I left at about 2:30 thinking I would be there with plenty of time to get some food... but that didn't work out. There was some stuff spilled on the road north of Baltimore, the stupid EZPass malfunctioned, causing me to think I was going to get a ticket for skipping through tolls (I shouldn't since they have my license plate on file), and rush hour traffic in Philadelphia got me there about 5 minutes before 7. Thank goodness for the Nerds Rope and Beef Jerky I had on the way up.
Pinball Parlour has newer Williams games (mostly late 80's on) and a bunch of EMs from barely post-flipper to the mid-70's. They mostly work, with some bad flippers and such here and there. I'm unhappy with their unreasoned prejudice against 70's-80's Bally solid state, but what can you do. There was a kid's party in there, so when they came in and ran roughshod over the games, I retreated to the EM room. Then I would shoot the balls and finish the games that they started to cut down on the noise. The few EMs that were working were in suck shape, and I was sad that their 1948 game wasn't working either... I'm up to the late 40's games in Pinball Compendium, and it would have been cool to play one. I was also sad that their Joust pinball wasn't working -- nor was it working when I went a couple of years ago. I did play the one early 80's game they had, Hyperball. I also snuck in a few vids, like Crystal Castles (which I could finish back in the day, but not any more:( ) and Paperboy. The owner popped in at 10 and said he was staying open an extra hour. That meant I got home at 2 AM, but the drive home was not bad. Anyway, I had fun, and it was relatively cheap if you don't count the tolls.
Speaking of Pinball Compendium, the one thing I don't like about it -- aside from Shaloub's kinda artless style, which I can overlook -- is the way he fauns over everyone who talks to him. I honestly don't need to know that he worships Steve Kordek and Harry Mabs as gods every few paragraphs, and that he is so grateful that they spoke to him.
And I got The King of Kong on DVD from Netflix the day it came out. I enjoyed it, though I watched it knowing that played Michael Moore-style games with the truth (my wife wouldn't watch it because it was too biased). Even so, Billy Mitchell struck me as the sort of person that I dislike -- people who are so full of themselves, whether deserved or not, turn my stomach. Plenty of awesome extras too, though I found the commentary by the I am 8-bit guy and IGN editor extremely witless and boring, so I turned it off after 10 minutes. Regardless, the one thing it did is make me want to go to Funspot in NH -- they have a frickin' awesome collection of pins & vids, and it's just two hours away from my friend Marlin's house in Boston...! And I may have to drop my daughter off in New York if she goes to England for a semester abroad, which is just four hours away from Boston...! Maybe it's time to plan an early Fall New England romp.
And finally... watching King of Kong extras made me want to play some Donkey Kong, especially since I didn't even remember the Pie Factory level since I haven't gotten to in in about 20 years. So I fired up MAME and totally sucked at it... I didn't even make it through the second barrel level. I fell short of the kill screen by about 114 levels. ^_^;
Saturday, January 12, 2008
What Narcissism Means To Me
I can't take credit for the title, that's from a collection of poems by Tony Hoagland... but it is appropriate, because this blog is pretty inwardly focused.But enough of that... let's talk about ME!
The DIA on the wall indicates a milestone... the Doctor Who parts game is now officially profitable! I saw a post on rgp from a guy who wanted a bi-directional motor board for a Cirqus Voltaire, and I had a spare one from the parts game. I asked $25+s/h, netted $24 after fees, and that pushed me $11 over the price I paid for the second DW. And I still have parts left, too... I doubt there's enough to push the DIA over 100, but one can always hope. The $11 can now go towards paying for the psychic anguish both DWs have put me through.
Other than that, it's been a pretty quiet month in the neighborhood. While I was testing the board for the CV guy, I spent a little debug time with DW. My goals were to fix the non-working upper flipper, test the U20 chip on either board, attach the Dalek, turn off the mini-playfield, which has a pretty checkered past functionally, and fix the sticking right flipper (which after a year or working fine has now returned). I turned off the mpf first, because that was easy. I was hoping the dead flipper was a loose wire or something, but no such luck... I need to do some serious diagnostics on it. Didn't test the chip. Did attach the Dalek, which careful readers will know involves plugging into different plugs than the standard set. I confirmed that the Dalek's GI board is not getting any power, and it's not getting it from the power board. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that, but it's pretty low on my overall list. I did plug in the flasher and stood the Dalek up on top so it at least looks like it's mounted. And I worked the sticking flipper a little, which usually helps it. It hangs up on the end of stroke switch, and I really don't know why... it's the same size switch as all the others, and I've tried another switch. I guess I should swap the round thing with the arm that closes the eos switch. That's definitely above the Dalek GI on my list but not a huge priority.
But that's it for the month. I think the most significant thing I did was clean up the floor around DW so I could walk there. I also rearranged the boiler room so that High Speed wasn't blocking access to the boiler... before, Lotta Fun and DW parts were next to each other and HS was in front of DW, blocking easy access to the boiler. Now they're all in a much more orderly line. Granted, LF blocks access to the fuse box, but as long as no electrical calamities befall my house, I should be OK.
TOPCast is finally back. I listened to the interview with Tim Arnold, and it made me desperately want to get out to Las Vegas. There was also a good article on the Pinball Hall of Fame in Southwest Airlines' magazine, which I saw a link to in Boing Boing. I also got eps 2 & 3 of Pins and Vids, but they just arrived yesterday and I haven't watched them yet.
I had a $50 gift certificate from Amazon so I spent it on the third volume of Aussie writer Michael Shalhoub's Pinball Compendium based on his interview on TOPCast last year. Apparently my expectations were low, because this book wow'ed me right out of the box. 300 pages, beautiful full color pages, a crapload of text, incredible detail and interviews... it's awesome. I am hard to impress -- just ask my wife -- and this book floored me. Luckily a $25 Amazon gift certificate arrived Friday so I bought the first volume, which should arrive Tuesday... that way, I can read through the history of pinball chronologically. I should get the money for volume two long before I finish the first book.
No playfield progress to speak of... on the last day of my Christmas holiday, I plopped myself down and wired up a small version of the light controller on a breadboard while watching the first season and a half of the animated Tick (of which each season has one episode missing for no discernible reason... luckily I have my pirated copy I bought off eBay a few years ago, but still...!). That was a miserable failure... no results. What I need to do now is actually debug it... test voltages and stuff. I think it was unrealistic to expect to assemble it and have it just work, especially considering my last experience with assembling electronics was in my intro to EE class 15 years ago. I also got some parts that I can use for a switch matrix -> parallel port reader, which I hope will free me from pinmame-hw's silly hacked keyboard approach to reading switches. The parts are all sitting in a box, ready for me to have a couple dog-free hours of frustrating labor.
And this final note: I've gotten a lot of pin playing in lately out in the world. I had to go in to work on New Year's Eve and they let us out early, so I blew off the family time and got in some Funhouse at the Chevron station a few miles from my house. Also played some Roller Coaster Tycoon at the place near my work, but I found on Friday that they'd replaced it with World Poker Tour. It's a super clean machine, but the right flipper is a little weak, so the left ramp is a little hard to hit. And I took my daughter's last couple of books up to her yesterday and snuck over to Pizza House for a few games of NASCAR. Coming soon: I'm thinking about a trip to John's Place, my self-imposed exile from Crabtown can end now that a statewide ban on smoking went into effect at the beginning of the year (but with my luck, it won't apply to the arcade side), and I'm thinking about doing a 3 hour tour to Pinball Parlour, where they have a whole bunch of games... but the trouble is, they're only open from 7-10 PM, so I have to drive for six hours to get in three hours of game time, and I get home at 1 AM. My wife is going out of town to visit her Dad in a few weeks, so I might do one or more of those then.
I'm always amazed at how much I have to write even when nothing happens...
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