Pinball club meetup

Felt so good to meet with other pinball fanatics.  Both guys are clearly passionate, and Jeff seemed really knowledgeable both about general facts, and restoring (and modding) pins.  We brainstormed some ideas, and I really think this club is going to take off (sounds like a LOT of people have really been wanting someone to start a new one, but nobody has the time to put into it).

I like little sandwiches too!  let's form a club!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YGNPwdE5MI

legs painted

I decided since the legs were so pitted and rusty that I'd just use some good rustoleum paint.  Almost went with hammerpaint, but decided on a nice reflective silver that closely matched chrome.  First I had to grind all the rust off

shopping, and not the grocery kind

Ok, so I fixed my issue with the USA switches at the top (I assumed it was microswitches, not copper leafsprings).  Quick sanding of the contacts, voila! working again.  Left flipper gets stuck once in a while, so I'm going to have to rebuild it one of these days.  Some of the playfield sockets are bad under the plastics (replacing bulbs didn't work), though it seems to be in sections.  Might just be a weak connection to the first bulb.  Still waiting for my roms from indiana, was half expecting them to arrive today, ,but shouldn't be here any later than tomorrow.  I ordered a new CPU and main sound controller chip ($10 each, shipping included).  If that doesn't fix the no-sound, I'm going to have to start replacing caps, possibly look at the op-amp.

pinball life

Stopped by pinball life in huntley to pickup some parts and check the place out.

The owner was really nice, asked me if I was a long time pinball collector or a newbie.  I showed him a list of parts, and he brought me out to his warehouse to grab stuff.  He asked how far away I was, I said 4 miles.  He goes "wow, out of the 1 of 4 pinball part suppliers your that close by?  Lucky you".  He clearly has a good grasp of what he has in stock and what I'm looking for (he has about 4-6 pins in the middle at all times).  Asked about ben heck since he was there recently, he said he's a really nice smart guy, but he asks a little too much money for his projects (isn't sure how much he actually sells).

Told him about the 4-player start problem I'm having with my gator, gave me a business card of a local guy that works on stuff, says he's really cheap (he must love the hobby).  I might just give him a call, who knows he might give me some tips.

Anyway, here's the goods I got fer $36:

* The feet (and most of the inside legs) of the space shuttle were rusted to hell.  Whoever had this originally must have had a flood in the basement.

* Can never have too many LED bulbs for replacing
* My gator was missing two acorn bolts, so figured I should replace those (and have spares)
* Two of the balls in the space shuttle were rusty too (seriously, how do you allow a pin to get so badly abused, I've never seen rusty pinballs, they're chromed for crying out loud!), picked up 3 (can never have enough)
* New lock mechanism for backglass cabinet.  Doesn't seem to have a key, so out it comes

space shuttle - getting in deeper

So I'm reading postings on forums about sound.  It could be the CPU chip, it could be the main sound processor chip, it could be a faulty op-amp.  I figure the easiest quickest fix is to just replace the two main roms for $10 each.  Worst case if mine aren't bad, they are good to have backups for the future (never know when roms aren't going to be available).  There's a guy out of indiana that sells them, so it shouldn't take long to get here:
http://www.thatpinballplace.com/eproms/index.htm

If it's the sound amplifier, I guess I'm going to have to just start desoldering capacitors until something works.  I'm not so sure someone sells NOS of space shuttle amplifiers.  There is some troubleshooting in the manual about sound not working
http://www.ipdb.org/files/2260/Williams_1984_Space_Shuttle_Manual.pdf

So I might just have to go through it one by one.

One thing I do like about this pin is the fact that it has so much diagnostics built in.  3 self test buttons behind the coin door, and test buttons on the main CPU.  I don't know how modern pins are, but this is the first time I've seen this.

Anyway, here's a quick test of it playing with backglass installed

Space shuttle pinball setup

So I got my pinball all hooked up.  Sound doesn't work, but I did a of cleaning up.




















Already replaced the incadescent bulbs with LED's:

Sound still isn't working, all the rom chips there:

Also there's some corrosion on this board towards the top:

I've noticed that sometimes the LED versions of the #44 bulbs don't want to fit in correctly, but if I lightly squeeze them with a wrench, it fits better

won an ebay auction for another pin

Take a guess what it is!





Will post more about it (and pics and video) once it's in my basement all hooked up.

backglass cleanup

Well I took the best photo I could, and I'm still not satisfied with the results.  There's shadowing from my dark basement, and if I use lighting I either get hotspots or reflections.  also because the camera is so far away, the image isn't as sharp as it could be.

I think I want to do two things:
1. Take the photos outside on a cloudy day (to prevent reflection), but still have enough light to give natural color
2. Take 4 separate photos to increase detail, and also prevent the perspective skewing you get with an image.

This blog sort of talks about it, but it doesn't really go into detail HOW he took the photos.  I would imagine you'd want to at the very least use a tripod, but you'd also want to make sure the camera were perfectly perpendicular to the backglass everytime, otherwise when you merge them together your going to have uneven sizes (and it will never line up right).
http://tuukan.fliput.net/bglass_en.html

illinois pinball club

So it seems the only pinball club in this area is this one:
http://www.pinballmafia.net

And it seems to be an exclusive club that is limiting members that I'm never going to get in, what to do?  Well start my own of course!  I posted an ad on craigslist, and got 3 responses right away.  So since I had some interest, I decided to just go ahead and toss up a website real quick (so it would start getting indexed by google).  It only cost me $1 to register the domain (sale at godaddy), and I found a pretty good reliable free host to point it to.  Anyway, if your in illinois, go ahead and check out the site:
http://illinoispinballclub.com

Gator buyer?

Ok, so I registered my gator pinball on a database that tracks who owns what pinball when I first got it.  Just logged in tonight, and it turns out I have someone interested in buying it.

I find that so interesting that someone would look for a pinball they used to play when they were younger.  It makes me want to find more pins and restore them (and keep them out of the dumpsters).  I'm sure there are lots of pins just sitting in basements and garages, not working, owned by someone who doesn't have a clue how to fix it, and keeps telling themselves "oh, I'll get it running... someday".

Anyway, part of me says "don't get rid of your first pin, it's your FIRST".  Well honestly, evel knievel was my FIRST, this is just the first one I paid for and restored myself.  Would I sell it? Sure, but at the minimum I'd want to get back what I invested in it (including parts)

LED'S are here! LED's are here!

I'm totally digging that there are direct replacement bulbs for pinball in LED form. The bulbs mine uses is #44/47 (bayonet) bulbs, same ones you probably used in science class as a kid. Super bright, no heat, and they last a long time. Here's a photo of a few I've replaced so far, you can easily see the difference. The incandescent looks yellowish, the LED's are true white.

If your looking for LED replacements for your pinball, here's where I ordered mine (best prices I could see):
http://www.centsibleamusements.com/pinball-led-44-47.aspx