Surprise!

Tonight I went to pick up my daughter at college, and I thought we were going to eat dinner together, but when I got there and called her she was already eating. That annoyed me, so I went and got my own food at the local pizza place (called Pizza House probably because it's in a house, but it's next to a bunch of frats so I like to think it's a Greek joke). While I was eating, I heard the tell-tale sound of flippers, so I scouted the hidden alcoves of the restaurant and was surprised to find a Medieval Madness! Needless to say my mood improved. The game wasn't in bad condition, either... a couple of things didn't work and it was in a completely dark room, but I payed for two games and got two replays and a match.

And I did a bad thing. After all that high and mightiness about not getting more games, I bought a Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man playfield on eBay. Nobody bid on it until yesterday, and I was really hoping to get a $1 playfield, but no such luck. It went for $32, the plastics for $12, and in theory shipping is about $10 because it's just down in Richmond... my ideal playfield cost is $50 or less, so that's at least in the ballpark. I'm hoping it will arrive while my wife is out of town so I have a chance to secret it in some dark corner of the basement. M&MPM is actually a second-tier game... in the group after Xenon, Centaur, and Fish Tales. I always have great fun playing it, even though it's a relatively simple game.

I probably forgot to mention, but with one of my orders from Marco or Bay Area, I got one of the Life After Death videos on a whim. I can't say that I was impressed. From what I can tell, their raison d'etre appears to be to give people who hate the guys in This Old Pinball videos to buy. The two guys try to do the same basic shtick as Shaggy and Norm, but they are lacking in charisma. The production isn't as well done, though there is some useful info... but nothing that I hadn't already gotten from TOP. And despite the title they didn't bring a dead game back to life, they just tuned up a working game. I'll stick with TOP videos unless LAD comes out with a video on a game I actually own, which TOP has NOT (KISS and Black Knight/Firepower are on their upcoming productions list, but... and when I pulled up the page to get the link, I saw that they released another video which is NOT the two I need). Plus TOP videos are way cheaper.

My wife -- usually the villain of these pieces, I know -- has been trying for a while to get me to attempt to "trick out" a pinball machine... kind of like case mods for computers, with after market parts, etc. Well, I finally came up with an idea that's worth doing. I told her and she's pretty interested. I have to flesh out the idea, find a beater playfield that I don't feel bad about sanding, cutting the hell out of, & repainting, and develop metal working, woodworking, and electrical skills that I don't currently have. Probably it would help to get some nunchuck and bo skills, too.

I'm always amazed at guys who retire and can't figure out what to do with themselves. Clearly they don't have pinball machines.

Quick! To the Monster Slide!

Some easy stuff to catch up on. I got EBD cleared off except for the trays of playfield parts, so it's ready for me to work on it (sort of... I have to move some stuff next to it before I can get to the backbox).

My daughter mentioned a few weeks ago that she'd never seen Doctor Who working... I guess I always worked on it while she was asleep or out of the house. So when she was home from college last Saturday -- we went to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D -- and after she had (appropriately enough) caught up with the last two eps of Doctor Who on TV, I fired it up for her. Thankfully it worked, so I loaded it up with balls and she had fun shooting the balls around the playfield. I locked the balls in the mini-playfield so she could see the Cybermen on the DMD, since they were featured in the episodes she had just watched. Her "game" went along until I had the bright idea to hand-lift the mini-playfield so she could hit the targets... when she got the ball into one of the Dalek holes, it fell into the cabinet because the under playfield ramp isn't attached properly. She had more fun with that than she had ever had playing any of my other games for real, which was parentally gratifying.

One thing I did find out while she played is that the half-assed repair job on the Tardis opto switch that I did worked -- all I did was twist the wires together. Yay for our side.

My CPU sold on eBay for $168, which means it almost paid for itself and the other board that I got at the same time, not counting fees. Still, I can use the money. The guy who bought it was super Type-A about packing... I finally had to tell him to lay off, I know to use non-static bags, GEEZ.

And lastly, I had a successful post to rgp tonight... I asked if there was a special doodad that closed the playfield glass switch, because my glass doesn't. The answer was no, the glass should contact the switch, so at some point I'll have to try to either adjust or disconnect it. I really would like it to stop telling me I'm going to maim myself.

Number 1 in the Hood, G

Well, I did clear off and play Quicksilver for my birthday. Life intervened with the fixing of the EBD, though. We'll see how that plays out this weekend.

Another Doctor Who purchase, courtesy of eBay: The plastic backdrop of the Master from the mini-playfield, courtesy of my good friend pinballchuck. It includes a Tardis, which I don't need, but I'm hoping that the other guy who bid on it needs one. I'm kind of sad that the other guy bid on it, since I would have been very happy getting this for $4. As it was, I paid $23. But after living through what is now know as The Lexan Cutting Incidents, the fewer plastics I have to make the better (at least until I get tools that can effectively cut plastic). I think that leaves only the pictures of the spaceships on the ramps as the only things standing between me and a completed playfield.

I hope at this point I'm caught up on all the purchases.

Now on to the selling. I'm selling one of the WPC CPU boards on eBay. Money is a little tight these days, and I owe the family a bunch of money for mostly pinball-related purchases, so I decided to sell the two CPUs that I got back in April -- the ones that didn't work until I goofed with them. I plugged them into the game -- back in those days I didn't have a working game -- and found that one didn't boot if the multi-stop ribbon cable (J202) was plugged in, and the other booted up and tested fine. I actually did a really dumbass thing, but it's a long and boring story, the moral of which is: Always read the Switch Matrix chart carefully.

So, I've posted that board on eBay for $10, it ran up to about $100 in the first day, and it's been holding there since. It's still got 2.5 days left. My sincere wish is that this board pays for both boards from the original auction and then some (I paid $160 for both, I think). My timing is actually really good, because when I bought it there was a board or two showing up every week... now the pickings are a little slimmer, so I think I'm getting a better price.

With the other CPU, I could have it fixed professionally, but that's usually about $60. My "I don't know much about electronics" spot diagnosis is that the J202 connector is bad. I can either sell the board as is and get a somewhat diminished price for it, or level-up my soldering skills and try to fix it myself. We'll just give that one some thought and see what comes up.

Well, how did we get here?

Today I'm going to take a step back and look over the collection and its status. Stand back, I might be dangerous! Looking at these pictures, I feel like the eBay Pack Rat, a woman who was obviously mentally ill who bought stuff compulsively on eBay and never even unpacked it. Honestly, we're not that bad... we just have too much stuff, and we're slowly divesting ourselves of it.

I got my first pin, Quicksilver on New Year's Eve of 1985 for $295, right before moving into my first apartment. It is the only one of my games that has been serviced professionally while in my possession, and is currently the only one that is working. It has a few minor things wrong with it, but nothing that keeps you from enjoying the game (other than the stuff on top of it).

Game #2 was Paragon, which I think I got in early 2000 for $800. I had fond memories of it from my salad days in college, we had just bought our first house, and I had just discovered that the Internet was a great way to acquire pin stuff. It works after a fashion, but my wife and daughter both claim to have been shocked by it when they touch the metal side rails when trying to pet the cat that sleeps in the bed on the upper right of the playfield. I've always been skeptical of this shocking business, but it's currently unplugged for the purposes of filial harmony. I do know that it's not 100% working electrically. You can still play it, though.

Black Knight was game 3, and the guy I bought it from sold me a project Eight Ball Deluxe at the same time. I believe they were $750 and $650 respectively, plus I spent $100 on a van to drive them down from PA. BK worked great for a while, then conked out and is waiting patiently for my baleful gaze to land on it. When you power it up the bell rings and one of the fuses blows. I fixed up EBD to the point where it is working tolerably well, with only a few switches not working. I took it apart for cleaning before my brother in law came in May and haven't put it back together yet.

My first playfield was EBD, originally bought for $50 so I could practice playfield restoration techniques. My EBD machine's playfield was touched up with what looks like White-out, then clear-coated, so I wanted to try secret techniques on a beater. With the coming of the Playfield Project (PFP), though, I am evaluating it in a new light.

Next up was Doctor Who, which as we know is the impetus for this blog. I've written about its functional status until my fingers are numb, so I won't bore you with more.

The second playfield is Black Knight, which is the first one bought specifically for the PFP. It looks like it's in really good condition, though I have yet to take it out of its shipping wrap. Since it's probably in the best condition of the three, I'll probably use it for my initial experiments.

My final purchase is, of course, the Firepower playfield and cabinet, shown here in its currently resting place wedged between stuff in my basement. As I mentioned, my wife threatened me with offsite storage when I told her I'd bought it, which is like threatening a house-elf with clothes. I had to put it someplace where she is unlikely to run into it on a regular basis. Putting anything big anywhere in our basement is a game of real-life Sokoban... I spent several hours moving and re-moving boxes to not only free up that little niche, but to have enough space to drive the game and cart to said niche.

So, that's where things stand right now. I have to say, my wife has a good point... I am collecting faster than I can do anything to the collection. So, I've got to actually start making some progress... it's silly to have almost $5000 worth of pinball hardware and only be able to play one game, I want to get playfields working so I can sell the real games to free up space, and I need to have some working hardware so I can buy more and continue growing the collection.

That said, here's my first goal. Tomorrow is my birthday, so I'm going to clear off Quicksilver and play a few games. Next weekend, I will do the switch work on EBD, clean it, and put it back together. Then we'll see where we are.

I had more fun that I expected in York, PA!

The York show ended up being a lot of fun. I've had some medium to poor experiences there in the past, so this was a pleasant surprise. Even the crappy machines -- and there were several -- were enjoyable.
I finally got to play the Zaccaria game Farfalla, which I've been looking for for some time. I've played some European games before and haven't been so impressed, but Farfalla was good. Also got to try out Pirates, which I enjoyed but didn't really have a chance to study. I sank the ship a couple of times but then lost the ball before I could defeat the Kraken or whatever the heck you're supposed to do. It was good, but I didn't have the visceral wow that I got when I played NASCAR for the first time (that was the first of the modern Stern games that I really liked). I played a handful of games that I either had never played before or never as an adult. I got to play the pre-production Scared Stiff that a guy brought last year, too... they definitely tightened up the game play before release, because the pre-game just isn't as much fun.

I did have some amusing run-ins with crappy games... I had a Twilight Zone reset on me, then went to play a Fish Tales and had it reset too. The FT had already been sold -- the guy who bought it was ripped... $2500 for a weak game -- and the guy who sold it noticed it reset. A few minutes later I saw him helping the buyer load it into his car; I'm guessing he was getting it out of view so the buyer wouldn't know just how ripped he'd been. I saw the same guy try to convince some people that one of this overpriced games was a good buy even thought one of the flippers wasn't working! Lame.

I bought a bunch o' stuff: A somewhat messed up lockdown bar, so Doctor Who can give the one it's using back to Black Knight. I got some new balls for when the Doctor is in shapes, a bottom and side rail for the backglass (now it's covered on all sides), a connector so I can attach the new coin door to the game (did I mention I bought a coin door on eBay for $25 shipping incl? I should have). And best of all (heh) I bought a Firepower playfield and cabinet for $75 for the playfield project. When my wife heard about that she threatened me with offsite storage. For the next week, my brain would randomly say "FIRE POWER" and then make the game start sound. I can't remember what I had for breakfast but I can remember how pinball games sound that I haven't played in years. Sheesh.

I didn't get the mini playfield from eBay. I stopped for dinner at a diner outside of York and called my wife and walked her through the eBayage. It sold for more than I was willing to pay, and in retrospect I probably should have bid more, but oh well. My wife was more disappointed than I was... since I didn't do the actual bidding, I was removed from the process and didn't feel the post-auction let down.

I can't really think of anything else at York that I need to say. Next up, we're going to talk about my collector's frenzy and what I'm going to do with all these busted games I've acquired.

It's late and I've got two months of updates to write

Thank goodness I've hardly done anything!

I've been busy with my daughter off to college, a business trip, stuff like that. The one thing I did to is make a fake backbox stuff for Doctor Who!

Hey, that doesn't look so bad, does it? Except for the translite, it's all fake. The glass is a piece of lexan that I bought for $9 at Home Depot and cut down... what you can't see are all the cracks and scratches in it because I don't have the tools to properly cut plastic. O_O; The translite is held on by two plastic clips on the top and bottom that I got from Bay Area Amusements.

The grill was a little more work. I probably mentioned that I took pictures of DW at the Allentown show in May. I photoshopped the best images together into a passable life-sized pic and printed it out on three pages. Then I cut a piece of wood leftover from our remodeling and cut out the DMD and speaker holes. Then I taped the image to the board.

You'll have to go for an extreme close-up, but in the pic on the left you can see the lines from the different pieces of tape (it really isn't that noticable). If you notice around the DMD the tape isn't behaving. You can also see the speaker grill, which is just part of the picture. The real speaker is behind that attached over a hole.

On the back, I just cut up the leftovers from the holes into strips and positioned them where I needed to screw things in. The piece on the corner was intended to hold the board into the backbox (it rotates into place) but when I put the translite in I can't get to the corners to lock them in, so I just trust that gravity will do the work for me. This is a slightly older picture... I added a few pieces of wood at the top to stabilize where the fake grill meets the plastic I-beam thing under the translite. Before it would bow out because the I-beam thing wouldn't sit straight, but now it sits properly. I was worried about vibrations harming the DMD, so I splurged and bought some rubber washers to cushion it. Overall, I think the grill and backglass look pretty good for the $12 I spent.

Tomorrow is the York PA pinball show. I used to go on Saturday, but now I go on Friday because you get an extra hour to play and there's a better selection of stuff to buy. I've been training all week with a squeeze ball so my wrists aren't completely destroyed by flipping all day. Tonight, though I noticed a DW mini playfield on eBay with the motor and cam assembly...! The trouble is it goes off at 9PM EST, which will be about an hour into my drive home. Choices: Leave early (urk!), drive from York to Gettysburg where my daughter is at school (slightly more than a one hour drive and she'll be in her dorm on Friday night? Don't think so), or try to talk my wife through it on the phone from the road while she's at her sister's house in California. Although I'm a little leery -- she did panic and bid too much on that terrible DMD driver -- it should be OK since I'll be on the phone with her and it won't be too late at night. Ganbatte!!!! \/ ^_^ \/

Holy cheese, I almost forgot... the playfield project continues with the purchase of an almost entirely intact Black Knight playfield off eBay from... the guy I bought Doctor Who from. I'll detail that folly in a future posting.

This and that and then some

So the new display board showed up on my wife's birthday (as predicted), but I took the high road and didn't do any game work that day. But Saturday morning I plugged it in and it worked great (I tried to come up with some funny analogy for how great it worked, but couldn't... it defies analogies, that's how great it was). My power board delivers voltage a little too warm, but the adjustable voltage feature allows me to calm the raging beast without trouble. There are 4 vertical lines out on the display, which may be the cable or happened while I've been manhandling the DMD over the last few weeks. I'll worry about that later, but for now I have a more or less working display.

With display issues out of the way, I put in some batteries so it wouldn't forget the volume setting and did some more testing. The switch problems on the ramp were caused by an unplugged wire, and I tested as many underplayfield things as I could -- turns out one of the round targets under the mini playfield doesn't work, and I couldn't get any of the optos to work (one had a wire cut, but even after I spliced it, it didn't work). I did plug in the flipper boards and they work. Most of the lights and flashers are just burned out, though I couldn't get one or two to work, and I didn't try to get any that were in or under the mini playfield.

Hey, just for fun, here's a picture of my impromptu diagnostic buttons that should have been on the coin door. Note the beautiful piece of cardboard the buttons are mounted in. From there the wires are connected by alligator clips to the coin door interface board. Note the pieces of cardboard between the alligator clips to keep them from shorting against each other. It's a class act all around.

What I did notice when I plugged in the flipper boards is yet another MIA part... the things that actually allow the flippers to work. For reasons known only to him- or herself, the loon who used to own this game put regular switches where the flipper buttons are, rather than the "Flipper opto plastic interruptors" as Marco's calls them.

Armed with this information, it was time to spend some more money, because next up are the flippers. I first took stock of the flippers I bought on eBay (they're pretty much complete, aside from having the wrong coils) and what's in the game (random parts, but the main mounting plate and the flipper bats at minimum) and came up with a shopping list. Today, I did that thing I feared most: Called Steve Young at The Pinball Resource, a man who, every time I've talked to him, makes me feel stupid at least once. Now, though, I think this is just a sophisticated way he has of training his customers to do what he wants... sort of like the Soup Nazi for pinball... the Pinball Nazi, I shall henceforth call him. I had my shopping list ready, knew all the correct names of everything, had my customer number, and quickly stepped to the left as soon as I ordered. I got half a flipper rebuild kit (this should give me the parts I need to complete the upper left flipper), a coil, and 10 #906 bulbs for the flashers. I asked if he had the interruptors, but he said no and briefly discussed how some repros from Australia were in his opinion of inferior quality. But overall it was pretty painless. To get the interruptors I put in my first purchase at Marco, where they are $3.75 each. Shipping was $9, and since I felt pretty dumb paying more for shipping than for the items, I browsed for a while and found an opto set which I should be able to use under the playfield... I think it's the one with the wire cut, but I'm hoping to use it for the Tardis upkicker switch, which is also not working.

No pinball this weekend, since the family is going to Otakon. I have Monday off, so if something arrives over the weekend maybe I'll do something then.