Went down to Allentown

Brr neer neer ner
Went down to Allentown
Brr neer neer ner
And I played pinball
Brr neeeer neer ner
Oh I went down to Allentown
Brr neer neer ner
And I played a bunch of pinball
Brr neer neer ner
And yet I am so white that I can't sing the bluuuuues.
Bwah wah wah wah wah wah!!!!!
Yeah

Actually, I went up to Allentown, but that doesn't sound like a good blues song. Saturday was my day at Pinball Wizards, and it was generally pretty fun. The GPS performed very well so I didn't make any wrong turns. I left about an hour late because the puppy is extremely high maintenance... a fact which hasn't seemed to have changed much in the last week (btw: the puppy now has a name. My daughter suggested Darwin, because he's a beagle. I'll pause her for the hails of derisive laughter that will no doubt ensue).

Anyway, the drives up and down were largely uneventful. The show itself was good, though I was a little disappointed in the merchandise. I did pick up a handful of things, but not much I truly needed... I found only one of the electronics parts I needed, and I ended up paying too much for it. I think I only spent about $100, which is an all time low for me at a pinball show. I thought about getting a Lost World populated playfield, which is on the medium short list but they wanted $80 for it and it was pretty badly worn. I kept an eye on it to see if they would drop the price, but they didn't so I let it go.

I don't know if it was just me, but it seemed like there was more crap than usual... games without working flippers, games than reset when you hit both flippers, etc. But what was there... I totally spanked Future Spa, the futuristic 70's exercise porn machine. I recognized a Close Encounters from the White Rose show because it had indians on the slingshots. I played a game called Sky Kings which was totally a single player version of the second game I ever owned, Champ. I finally got to play X's & O's, which I believe is the only Visual Pinball game that I did (of about 20) that I had never actually played... sadly, the upper flipper only worked sporadically (hey... I don't pay tribute to my storied VP/VPM past... here's a screen shot of the game... I did the script, and another guy did the art and table design). Played a Doctor Who that had bad flippers, but over all had more stuff working than mine (and right after my game somebody reset it by hitting both flippers... yeah, I'd buy that... and sadly, somebody did. I hope they got a crappy game discount). There was a Creature from the Black Lagoon that had a really cool custom day-glo playfield. And at the very end of the day I waited and got to play Family Guy. Boy, I love Pat Lawlor games. The game itself was pretty fun, but Stewie Pinball ROCKS! That tiny little playfield with tiny flippers, a tiny pachinko sized ball, and even a little plastic ramp! Also saw some ads for the new Stern Spider-man table, which hopefully is better than the first one, which in my tiny brain is significant only because it was the first game at UCLA in the 80's that was two games for a quarter instead of three (rip!).

I did pick up a flyer for a new show: The Mid-Atlantic Coin-op Show, Sept 21-23 in Timonium, which is about an hour away. My guess is that it's being organized by Mike Frasca, the guy who runs MD's Pinball Palace, since I think the flyer was at his table and it says to contact Pat or Mike (not Pat and Mike, hyuk hyuk). I'll give anything a shot once, especially if it has "Quality Catered Food" like it says on the flyer.

Of course, there's no DIA this time because I have no DW or playfield-related sales. We've been selling on eBay... my wife is selling some fabric for some pretty good cheddar, and I've been selling old Star Wars and Barbie toys for a guy at work. Most of that is going towards paying for the puppy and our upcoming trip to visit my dad in the ancestral homeland, Santa Monica, CA. I did earn $135 for rating 1,100 songs in a focus group for a local radio station (summary of my ratings: 80's New Wave == Awesome! Everything else == sucks).

Since the electronics scene was poor at the show, I put in an order from Great Plains for SCRs for the Eight Ball Deluxe lamp driver board and a replacement U20 chip for Doctor Who. I also picked up a $5 parts kit for high voltage section of the DW display driver board.

A part that I bought for DW is selling on eBay for about twice what I paid for it... I'm thinking about listing mine and see if I can get in on some of that boodle, then just buying another one. yoink!

I don't anticipate any pin work this weekend... my daughter comes home from her first year in college tomorrow, and the house has been declared a superfund site because Darwin is leaving us no time to clean.

Short, but informative

So we're moving along with the DIA... the mini-playfield sold for $77, the wire ramp for $5, and the plastics for $14. I would have liked a little more for the mpf and plastics, but I guess $100 is about what I've seen mpfs go for in the past, and I guess I should be happy the plastics sold at all, since they weren't in great condition.

Today we got a new puppy, and getting him to go to sleep is a little tough. O_o;

I just noticed that I hadn't posted my last entry from a week ago. So there it is.

Tomorrow is Pinball Wizards, if the puppy doesn't keep me up all night.

The big news today is BK testing, which I was going to write about in the last entry and this one, too. Last weekend I finally started looking into the Black Knight. I knew that fuse F2 blew every time I turned it on, which meant a coil problem of some sort. I also checked everything to verify that it's getting the correct voltages and it all checked out.

Tonight I started in on the diagnostic of the coils. The first thing on the list was "Check to see if the slingshot or bumper switches are stuck closed." The bumper was. I taped it open, powered up the game, and went straight into audit mode. Now I feel kind of embarrassed that I waited so long to fix something as simple as that. I changed the batteries (they were long dead) and the game went into attract mode. Yay for our side.

But all is not won just yet. When I started a game, the balls wouldn't come out. It turns out none of the solenoids are working. I checked the plug and changed the fuse, but no go. I didn't want to stay up late frustrating myself before I have to get up early and drive 200 miles, so I bailed with the small consolation that the game at least runs now.

Diagnosis: Pinball!

Still no DIA today... the auctions go off tomorrow. The mpf is up to $77, and the others are still at their opening bid. Honestly, I don't expect them to go any higher, but I wouldn't be adverse to being pleasantly surprised.

As I've mentioned before Pinball Wizards is approaching fast, so since this is the last weekend before the show, it was time to get off'n my bottom and figger out what's wrong with my games. Last night was a particularly good night to do it, since my wife took a break from the TV, so I wasn't in danger of being distracted by a particularly good episode of the Fairly Odd Parents or something (that sounds snide, but I am very easy to distract, and the Fairly Odd Parents is actually pretty good).

First stop, Doctor Who. Most of my tests used my latest diagnostic technique, the continuity check on my multimeter. First I checked the wires for the mpf opto switches, hoping there would be an obvious break, but there wasn't. In addition to my own game, I wanted to show that the optos on the mpf I'm selling were working so it would hopefully attract more bidders.

But the biggest problem is that switch column, so I tackled that next. I looked around for loose wires &tc. No luck. I beeped through the wires and found no problems between one of the outlane switches and the pin where the column enters the CPU. Then I used the diagnostic in the switch section of the repair guide to test the columns. That demonstrated pretty clearly that the problem is on the CPU, which it says means I should probably replace the chip at U20.

Then I got the bright idea to try my other CPU board in the game. That's the one I got from eBay from England a year ago that turned out to mostly work until you plug it and the display board in to the multistop ribbon cable. I was hoping to determine if the column worked entirely by sound... possibly the way Tommy would fix pinball machines (though I know, he's deaf too, so the analogy doesn't entirely work). I was able to get the game to boot, but not start... maybe it knows the display isn't there? And the switch levels test -- it cycles through all the closed switches, beeping as it goes -- beeps with the same tone, so you can't tell if there's been a change. So that was disappointing. I did, however, glance as the dreaded J202 connector and noticed that the solder seemed to run between the pins. Looking at the picture, the two pins in the top left are fairly discrete blobs of solder, whereas the ones after that seem to have some cohabitation action going on. Some quick continuity testing indicated that most of the pins in the upper row are pretty much in bed with each other, which is not good for precision electronic devices. Most likely, the English Guys I bought it from tried to resolder the connector and botched it, so they gave up and put it on eBay. Another interesting thing I learned from this board was the underside around the U20 chip has scorch marks, which makes me think the U20 fails a lot. If/when I get around to fixing mine, I should definitely put it in a socket for easy replacement.

That was pretty much it for Doctor Who... I put it all back together and played a game, which is not as much fun without that column of switches. You can't transmat without the bumpers, you can't get all the Daleks in multiball, and you can't get an Extra Ball or as many Hang Ons. And sick as I was of it, I was surprised at home much I missed "Quick, Ace, it's a Second Chance!", which the outlanes trigger in many cases.

Next up was the feature lamps on Eight Ball Deluxe. I used the lamp diode test described in the repair doc -- I just love those things, don't you? -- and after initially finding nothing I ended up with a handful of diodes that didn't respond. I can try replacing those as soon as I level up my soldering skills to boards... and 1980 Bally boards are much easier to start with than 1990 Williams boards by a long shot.

When I was done with the testing, I played a few games... they were a lot more satisfying than DW, but was off my game... I didn't exactly come close to beating the high score.

This morning I decided to make another assault on the optos in the mpf up for auction. After a couple of failed attempts, I detached the opto boards from the unit, plugged them in to the game, and powered it on. Then I used the digital camera, because they can see the infrared -- thanks to the repair guides again, man they're awesome.

Back in the Saddle Agin

No DIA updates today, but there should be some soon. I posted the Mini-playfield, the wire ramp, and the Skateball plastics on Sunday, and everything has at least one bid. After the Doctor Who Plastic Debacle (as it is now known), selling everything will do a lot to bring back my eBay confidence, which was shaken severely. I'm extra happy about the Skateball plastics selling, since some of them are in terrible condition. It also helps that some stuff my wife is selling is doing pretty well, too.

I'm very happy with the way the mini-playfield cleaned up. I pulled the mylar off, which was really grimy, but decided against putting on new mylar. I tried cutting a new steel piece, did a really crappy job (because I don't have good tools for cutting steel), so I just cleaned and re-blued the old one and it looks fine. And I cut a washer and glued it to the plastic, and it looks better than a missing piece. The gray targets don't look great, but they sure look better than they used to. I'm really proud of the Dalek targets and ramp... I am looking forward to putting my own filthy targets into the washer. Overall, it's much cleaner than it was before, and the market has agreed to the tune of $66 so far. Plus, I got a lot of valuable experience that I'll be able to apply to my game.

Cleaning (plus decent weather and the requisite accompanying yard work) left me no actual time for game work last weekend... I do need to get on that, so I can go to Pinball Wizards in two weeks with a proper shopping list. Very excited about the show... I've been training with a squeeze ball for the last month while commuting to build my wrist strength. I'm hoping to partially allay post-pinshow soreness. I'm up to my goal of 15 minutes per hand per commute -- 1 hour total of squeezing per day. I plan to keep that up after the show so if the opportunity to play 8-10 hours of pinball should occur more than twice a year, I'll be ready for it.

One small step forward for a man, one giant leap backward for Mankind

Yeah, here's some of that action I mentioned in the last post: The DIA went up .01. That's because none of the plastics I posted sold, and the ramp I thought would carry everything else went for the asking price, $7.50. If I hadn't miscalculated the ramp's shipping weight in my favor, I wouldn't have broken even by 8 cents. Not a great week on eBay.

I also didn't post any of the other stuff I had. I decided to try to flatten out the Skateball plastics, and spiff up the mini-playfield slightly. To that end, I bought a sheet of new blue spring steel to replace the rusty piece and a sheet of mylar to replace the grody stuff that's on there. I also picked up some clear washers to see if I can de-emphasize the broken plastic and some post rubber to replace the ones that had rotted out. I ordered this stuff from Bay Area and PBR, and this time I spoke to Mrs. Pinball Resource instead of Steve Young. I also got a new launch button to replace my cracked one... Bay Area's been out of stock for a while, and Marco charges too much for them, so PBR was the right combination of price and availability.

Good and bad news on Doctor Who... the mini-playfield has decided to continue working. I ran it through the self test after reassembling everything and replacing the fuse and it still works correctly. Of course, during my first game I found that an entire column of switches is not working. I don't know if I did this while manhandling the game to try to get the mpf out or if something happened when I blew the fuse. So if I have time that my end up being my project for the weekend. Quelle fun. But before that, I'm going to try to debug Black Knight, which has sat dormant for several years now. Yes! I will crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of the women on their backglasses!

Rough Night

The Tardis shipped yesterday, and hence the movement in DW on the DIA. Hopefully we'll get some action from my auctions going off today, but so far no bids on 14 lots with 9 hours to go. You know, I love being a lurker, but I hate dealing with them... hypocritical, I know. I'm not confident that the plastics are going to do too well... not too many people are watching them (2 currently). I wanted to list them separately to give people who needed individual plastics a chance to pick them up -- that worked really well with my Black Knight plastics, but isn't playing out with Doctor Who, probably because only certain plastics are prone to breakage. The Great White Hope here is the ramp, which has 14 watchers... a decent showing from it could push the DIA close to 50, even if it has to carry the unsold plastics.

Last night was a march across Eastern Europe to Russia. The goals of my two pronged attack was to 1) pull out my mini-playfield for testing and repairs, and 2) test the new mpf and reassemble it for auction today.

First the good news: Before disassembling, I tested the mpf to try a technique for diagnosing an under-powered motor: running the test with the playfield up, so the motor doesn't have to lift the mpf. But I was foiled when the test ran without problems. I hope that bodes well for when I put it back together.

Things went bad fast after that when I found that, even at this late stage, I'm finding missing parts: This time it's the thing that lowers the Dalek targets as the mpf moves up and down. And there isn't one on the new game either. Luckily, it's nothing more than a metal bar, so I can probably fashion one if necessary. Then when I tried unscrewing the mpf mounting screws from the playfield, the screws just spun in place because the thing they screw into that's supposed to lock into the playfield wasn't locked in. My wife gamely tried to help me as we tried various and sundry techniques to get them out, all to no avail... a task made more difficult by the fact that the more frustrated I am, the more snippy I get. After about an hour, I finally gave up and tried to unscrew the Dalek target assembly for easier access, only to have the same thing happen with those screws and their locking things. ugh.

I did, however, find out why the gray targets are not positioned correctly: None of the screws that hold it to the mpf base were there. Luckily, I had trawled the new cabinet for detritus the night before, so I had a ready supply of magic nuts and screws, and I was able to find two of the four using the screws from the new mpf as a guide.

So I gave up the disassembling fiasco and focused on testing the new mpf. I plugged the wiring harness in and started playing. Just about everything worked, though one of the 5 target optos never lit and one was flakey. Then when I was testing the feature lamps, everything stopped working, because (I think) I blew the lamp fuse on the power driver board. That was the perfect end to a perfect night, so I gave up.

So today I'm reassembling the new mpf, fixing problems I caused in my game, and generally praying that nothing else goes wrong. Yes, that which does not kill me makes me stronger, but I'm plenty strong right now thank you very much.

The Seven Deadly Playfields 2: Skateball

A little movement on the DIA, since both the Solenoid Expander and DW ramp sold. I should point out that I'm not doing this the way I said I would... I said I would factor in the value of the parts I'm keeping to lessen the dumbassedness of the index. But we'll see how things go... plus, if I can hit 100 on both indices, that means I got the stuff effectively for free and will be even better!

I posted the DW playfield plastics and a few misc parts. It doesn't look like there's a huge amount of interest... I think some of those plastics just don't show up broken or missing as I might like. There does seem to be interest in the Tardis and the right ramp, so I'm looking for a little action there. I had the pictures taken of the Skateball plastics, but decided not to post them. I don't expect much from them... most of the plastics aren't in that great shape.

One thing about post DW parts is you find out what people really need, because they send you emails asking if you have such-and-such a part. An English Guy asked me if I had the plastic that goes on top of the mini-playfield. I do, but I was going to sell it along with the rest of the mpf. Since I currently have the mpf disassembled for cleaning, I did offer to send him some reference pictures so he could try to make his own. Good for him, I say.

I've been cleaning the mpf in the evenings... last night I cleaned the grime off the gray buttons and put the plastic through the dishwasher. If I have time, today I'll try to clean the frame and the wood portion with the Doctor & Ace holes and maybe start reassembling it. Then I need to pull mine out of the game and start testing the parts... for example, see why two gray buttons on mine aren't working. Seeing how the wood on the new game's mpf has been chewed up, I proactively bought a Cliffy Protector for mine from Bay Area Amusements, who seem to be the only ones who stock them (Cliffy doesn't even list them on his site).

Oh, I became the Loop Champion on my game today! \/ ^_^ \/

And now, on with the show. Skateball is a game that I think is OK... hate its ugly 70s style (I like the art better on the Taito Brazil version, Rally), but the gameplay is fine... kind of reminiscent of Flash. The playfield is just under OK shape -- unlike Fathom, it has a quorum of its parts -- but has some wear and at least one gnarley scratch. At first I thought it was totally complete, but as I took the plastics off I found that a couple of them aren't from the game... the weird blue thing by the outlane, the thing just below the center bumper, and I don't know what's going on next to the left flipper. I glanced at some games in vain trying to identify what the plastics were, but no luck. They're probably extremely worthless, whatever they are. The bumper caps are not original either, and two of them are broken. Most of the plastics are warped and cracked, so I don't think they're worth much. I'm not expecting much from the hardware, either. So overall, kind of a disappointment. I can probably scrounge for parts and use some of it for experimental porpoises.

I was thinking about using Skateball for one of my secret projects, but I don't think it's messed up enough for me to want to sand off everything and hand it over to my wife for re-painting. Who knows?

I'll probably post the plastics on eBay this weekend. I think I'm going to see how/if the DW plastics sell, and based on that combine the SB plastics into lots. I can also hope that SB parts are rare and owners are desperate.

So you, young Skateball; we shall watch your career with great interest. I'm guessing that I'll be burning it for warmth in a few years, so anything better than that will be a pleasant surprise.