Gasp!

This is my first post using my new Christmas present, a spankin' new 20" iMac, which is pretty darned sweet.

The big news is that I have officially received my last part to get Doctor Who to work. I was emailing about this and that with the guy who sold me the speaker grill and mentioned that I had the mini-playfield motor but needed the cam. A little while later he emailed me back with a cam, but not the cam... it was one from the Ringmaster in Cirqus Voltaire. I told him, no that's not it, but thanks for looking... I had done all this myself, so I didn't expect anything. A few minutes later he emailed me another cam, and that was it! It was just $15 from Illinois Pinball Co., and I'd never found it because it's listed solely by its part number (A-15035) and name (CAM ASSY) but not by the game, and there was no picture. I had to change my pants, I was so excited. I ordered it that night and it arrived a few days later. If the speaker grill guy had been here I would have kissed him. mmmm-mwah!

So I got around to installing it tonight (I needed to get a few screws and things from my local hardware store). First I hooked up the motor and ran the mini-playfield test, and the motor ran. Then I attached the cam and worried it into position... it's a little tricky, but I did it by unscrewing the mini-playfield opto sensor and swinging it around, positioning the motor & cam, then swinging the opto back and screwing everything in. I put the playfield down, started up the test, and held down the flipper buttons (which you have to do to avoid crushing your hands)... and the crazy gizmo really worked! Then it gave me an error! That's great news, because the error is probably because the opto doesn't work. So I ran the test again, the playfield went up, went askew ever so slightly, then stopped and gave another error. This time, it wouldn't go down. I left it the way it was and didn't go in to see what was wrong, but still, I was reasonably flush with semi-triumph! Mini-triumph, even!

Which leaves me with this chilling challenge: To install the flippers over my Christmas vacation! Then assuming I can get the mini-playfield reliably running, I should have a fully working game.

The bad news is that the guy selling the Dalek topper did indeed relist it for less money... $5 less. Then some clown bid on it, which just enabled the guy's bad behavior. Sheesh.

Anyway, late now, so gotta go to bed. There's more purchasing of stuff to write about, just not now.

Why do I get the feeling that we've picked up another pathetic life form?

Because we have. Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man finally arrived yesterday, so I took a look. The first thing I noticed was that it reeked like a smoke filled room... the seller is obviously a good friend of the Tobacco Industry. The pictures from the auction really didn't adequately show the full extent of the playfield wear. But I've seen worse. And it's astoundingly complete -- I couldn't spot a single piece of hardware missing, not even flipper coils -- and the mechanicals look pretty clean. The only thing I couldn't find in the box was the right return lane clear plastic... I'm hoping the seller still has it and will mail it along. Of course, I sent this request after I left feedback mentioning the glacial shipping and distinctive odor. ^_^; We'll discuss in detail at a later date.

But the big news in Who-ville is the successful acquisition of a real speaker grill! Two of them went up on eBay within a few days. I bid on the cheaper one that included speakers, and ended up getting it with shipping for less than the opening bid of the other one (sans speakers). It arrived a few days ago and I installed it tonight while watching Bleach on Cartoon Network (which I've seen some of in Japanese, so I don't need to pay 100% attention to in English). After replacing most of the lights and one of the sockets, I found that almost everything works except for the Doctor 7 lamp. While I was there, I put #555 lights in all of the empty backbox sockets (which was most of them), then closed it all up. You have no idea how satisfying it is to get rid of the flimsy-ass thing I made. When I put the translite in, it sat squarely in the groove rather than sitting at an angle and looks like it will fall off if I look at it funny.

The expensive grill guy was also selling a Dalek for too much money (starting bid $100, and - surprise! - it didn't sell). I'm hoping he'll relist for a more reasonable opening bid.

What would a blog entry be without pictures! Here's the DMD shootout... mine versus the real thing. Can YOU tell the difference?!?


And here is the installed grill in the newly lit game. I took the pic without a flash, so it's blurry but shows the lights working. Hee!


This final note: I sold my spare Black Knight plastics last week... I got $110 for about half of them, which is great because I payed $100 for them 3 years ago.

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.