Total recall update 1.0

I've added some more detail, it's finally starting to look like a real pin.  I'm starting to feel sort of like an archeologist piecing together bones to recreate what a dinosaur might have looked like.

So I've split the cabinet into 3 pieces (not worried about the middle piece just yet).  I decided to make the cabinet continue at an angle all the way back instead of flaring back to a square angle (There will be angled rails on the back to mount the legs to).  The backbox ends up being really big, like 35" wide.  Keeping the dimensions of the backglass at the same aspect ratio, it leaves about 4" of gap underneath, which should be enough space for speakers.  I know it looks really narrow, but it's because the backbox is so wide.  You may notice there are some square channels inside between the cabinets.  There needs to be something to tie the cabinets together, and by bolting them together along the seams is the way to go.

Total Recall thoughts

I should have never blogged about it last night because I couldn't get it off my mind and I had a hard time falling asleep (also couldn't keep my mind focused at work today).  I find this interesting because I'm sure the guys at Data East at the time had the same thoughts.  So here's what I went into deep thought about:

Cabinet design: Looks straight forward right? Build an odd shaped cabinet, done.. Nope, there's no way an operator would be happy trying to lift such an awkward cabinet as one piece, and the home market would hate it even more as it would make lifting into a basement nearly impossible.  I'm thinking it really needs to be 3 pieces, one pentagon shaped piece in the back where the top playfield would reside, and then the 2 cabinets.  As for the glass it would also need to be 3 pieces with a plastic trim to join the 2 lower panes with the upper.

Gameplay: One obvious thought is how to deal with balls from each cabinet being shared between sides.  As far as the live playing, it could simply autofire a new ball in the opposite playfield after one drains in yours (very much like the 2-player joust).  I don't remember what happens on joust when the game ends, does it fire any extra balls into the opposite side to make them even?  Makes it a little harder when the playfields are side by side but it's certainly feasible.

I think I'm going to go ahead and model up the cabinet the way I think it SHOULD be feasibly built, who knows how far I'll take this.  I do think it would be a neat project to make for real.  I doubt I would ever go so deep as to create an entire ruleset and custom alphanumeric displays, but I could see buying a generic CPU like an alltek, wire up some targets to existing score points.  I think just having built the cabinet and a semi-playable game would blow people's minds at a pinball show.  They wouldn't care if it's not as Data East intended, they would just love playing what could have been.

Only thing is I would effectively have to run two separate pinballs (so you could start a parallel 2 player game), and because most likely you wouldn't want to try running 6 flippers off an old power supply (but 3 flippers would do just fine).

Also came up with this parody logo

Total Recall pinball

This subject comes up over and over.  Someone isn't aware that Data East had a concept to do a dual side by side playfield, and about every year someone discovers this and goes "Hey! anyone see this?"  You know what sucks (besides the fact it never got past a whitewood stage)?  There really isn't any good info on it (or renderings of what it could have been).  So what I'm going to do (since I have no skill in messing around with virtual pinball but have great solidworks skills) is attempt to recreate it in solidworks.  Yes, I'm going to take the crappy photo from IPDB:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4335

And attempt to recreate it in 3d, plop the backglass in, and make up my own artwork of what I think a data east total recall would look like.  It might not be accurate, but it would be something to look at.  Here's a very early rough layout:

No progress, just a lot of researching around

After putting the pin in the basement (and back on it's legs), I've realized I really let the blue october project slip.  Maybe I'm a little bit discouraged after seeing all the incredible PROC systems at expo, I don't know.  I'm starting to think that even if I get an entire playfield designed the way I want it, it's going to be useless without having a way to control it.

Part of me thinks that by the time I get the layout done, there will be a solution on the market other than PROC (skillshot, ben heck's C+ arduino based board).  Part of me thinks maybe someone will step up and do the programming for me if I supply the hardware (yea right).

So then I really started to look for other simplistic options.  Sure, I could probably wire up a pair of flippers directly to 50V, but if I held them on they would fry up without reducing power.  Obviously I can't do PWM without a microcontroller, so I thought I'll go old school.  I'll simply use an EOS switch to switch to a 12V tap for holding.  That's great and all, but what about pretty much everything else?  I need logic to keep track of how many balls have been played, track multiballs, track players, track any extra balls.. Hell, just keeping score is a task if I want to bypass the stock Stern MPU I have in there now.

So here's my next logical step, I need to learn electronics.  I can design mechanical things all day long, but half a pinball machine is electronics, so if I want to design one I have to learn.  My boss likes to push adult education, and he agreed to send me to a basic electronics course so I can understand circuits (I work for a company that does gas products but we are starting to get into the electrical market).  Even if my boss didn't send me, I can always take a course at my local college for less than $100 (and my company would likely reimburse me, my benefits cover up to $3k/year for tuition).  Once I learn what does what in circuits and I truly understand how things work, I plan on experimenting with arduino.  I'll pickup some kit that includes a bunch of add-ons and just go through tutorials.  Once I start to realize not only how circuits work, but the programming that goes along with it to run a microcontroller, I should have enough grasp of how to at least create a crude controller to do as much as early solid state controllers are capable of.

I figure even if I don't go down the arduino route, C+ and Python are supposedly very similiar, so if I chose to give in and just buy a PROC system I could adapt easily.  One cool thing about the PROC project for "Wrath of olympus" is that he did all of his layout, artwork, and sounds inside visual pinball first (because it's easier to move things around digitally in case you have a bad ball trap in your design), then he created the real thing based on the virtual one and to his surprise it played almost identical to the virtual one


One key difference on this project, he used one of the plugins where he could run the PROC system through USB into his computer, and have a real controller run a virtual pin.  That way he could tweak his rules at a computer, then start running wires from a driverboard to real parts:
http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=13153

door actuator pinball - part 2

So even though I have so many projects, I've been jones-ing to finally hook up the stronger 10lb actuator to real pinball parts (stopped by pinball life today).  I have to say it's looking promising.  I need to still hook up the other side, wire it up to buttons, build a border around the edges, perhaps some slings, but at least this project is going somewhere.  Here's a quick video:

blue october pinball - quick update

So I got the front coin door finished, the backbox finished, and all the cabinet clearcoated.  I still have to re-locate score displays and get a translite printed, but I did photoshop the backglass in to see how it would look:

basement layout

Ok, so now that my basement crack is getting filled in next week, I'm already planning the layout.  I've had an idea on where I want things, but it's nice to actually visualize it by modeling it in solidworks:

Once you start laying things out in actual scale, you realize how some things fit great, and others don't.  For instance, in the upper left corner you can see I have a drain pipe that runs along the upper portion of the wall (but not high enough for pins to clear it).  So either I have to loose 5" of space, or I have to consider having it modified to raise it up.  Then there's the matter of the water softner.  Could they have installed that next to the water heater?  Heck no, it needs to get installed at the main, which is RIGHT next to the bottom of the stairs and eats up more precious space (I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, but clearly architects never intend to maximize basement living space).  I have some industrial shelving I bought from costco (each shelf can hold up to 2,000lbs), one of which fits nicely at the end of the stairs.  This shelf is for storing things that get accessed a lot (bags, overflow of food, toiletries, etc).  Then there are 2 more of the same shelving that I currently have next to the water heater / HVAC system.  I have a feeling a chunk of this side of the basement is simply going to become an unfinished storage area that will get walled off.

I'm figuring for flooring in the finished area will be some engineered wood flooring.  You can usually buy it for $1/sq ft, pins slide nicely on it, it wears well, and it gives you a nice warm feeling.  I've looked into how to fasten down the stud framing, and a lot of people swear by the masonry screws (drill a hole, gently torque the screw into the concrete), but I have read a couple bad reviews about how the difference between the minor and major diameter are so minimal that screw holes strip easily.

high speed project

I hate to detour this blog with restore projects, but it's the only blog anyone follows.  So I bought a high speed from a semi-local guy that I've bought from before.  He restores pins on a consistent basis (probably has more than a dozen projects in queue), which is probably one reason he let this one go.  Paid $600 for a fully working high speed.  Now you may say "wow! what a deal".  Hold your horses, the playfield looks horrible (which he warned me about).  While a lot of people would rather fix issues and have a perfect playfield, I'm finding I'd rather have a working pinball and fix up cosmetic issues (especially after I've put off fixing black knight for a while after replacing every board).  So the cabinet is in decent shape, all the artwork still looks great, but I'm gonna have to bondo the areas by the legs since it's chipping away (easy fix).  Backglass looks awesome, displays bright, sound works, flippers flipping (does need a rebuild).

Now for the playfield, you might even laugh at this.

So let's start off with the fact that it appeared all the plastics were in good shape, until I lifted this one.  Since the plastic was cracked, the previous owner decided the best fix was to just glue it to a piece of galvanized steel (which is great for allowing light to shine through):

All the rubber was so aged, it was flaking off into a fine powder.  My favorite though, the flipper rubbers were falling off so badly he decided that rather than spending $1.50 that he would simply wrap them with electrical tape:

This is my favorite though, this artist has decided to touchup the center playfield with what looks like a hobby paint set (thankfully this was not directly on the playfield, but on a top mylar layer):

So aftert stripping all that crappy plastic off (which was also scotch taped on the edges), I finally have a cleared off playfield.  Granted the paint is still missing, at least you can see the playfield instead of a muddy mess:

I removed the rest of the plastics and posts (still have a few things to remove).  Just as a test, I printed out a chunk of the center of the playfield (I'm working Photoshopping a clean play-field by starting out with a playfield image from visual pinball, and merging chunks from the web).  I simply printed it on photopaper and glued it down with some wood glue.

Obviously this isn't permanent, photo paper (even if it were cleared over) is too thick and would tear easily (and the inserts would need a lot of filling).  Plus I plan to sand the playfield completely before doing an overlay.  Really I wanted to see how bad it would be shifting and lining up an overlay, and rolling it flat, and making sure glue wouldn't seep through holes.  I'm trying to avoid putting more work than I need to.  The professional way would be to completely strip both sides, remove inserts, replace them, then overlay, clearcoat, and re-assemble.  I may still do that (I would want to connectorize and serialize every part so it can easily be re-assembled), but if I can avoid it I will.  I've clearcoated a playfield in the past just by filling any holes with foil (which works better than you would think), and it seemed to work pretty well.  I priced out a vinyl print, and I can get it done for $16 plus about $7 shipping, which I think is really reasonable (same place that printed the blue october cabinet artwork).

Cabinet halfway done

So I ordered the decals from a website. What was nice is they let you upload your work ahead of payment so a proof can be completed. After I paid for it, I literally had vinyl printing with adhesive in 3 days (shipped from India of all places). $62 later, I have a tube of artwork delivered to my door. I was worried about bubbling putting it on after hearing horror stories of applying decals, but using a spatula it went on pretty much smooth. I still have to sand and paint the backbox (I have decals for that too), but now that the main cabinet is done, and the legs and siderails are painted, it's starting to look pretty good:

Update... sorta

Since I actually have followers (hi followers) figured I should make an update.  I have almost no progress physically, unless you count the fact I shorted something out on my lamp driver board (the multiplier no longer lights up after knocking down the 3 drop targets).  A lot of time has been spent restoring my black knight (currently it boots, but game doesn't start and my bottom flippers are stuck on).

Anyway, I'm convinced it makes no sense to retheme the current playfield (too constricting) so I know I'm going to have to make a completely new playfield.  I also need to drop the playfield down a good 4-5 inches, but again I don't want to do that till I know everything is working 100% again.  Since I'm dropping the playfield, that also means I have to move the plunger down as far (which means new hole, fill in the old one).  I also want to break down my components to make wiring simpler and simply have a terminal block under the playfield.  In other words:
spinner switch
target (50 point, 100 point)
rollover switches
drop target mech

The original schematic may have run separate wires for each target, but if there's redundancy why not just have those values, and then I can tap into that terminal for as many targets as I want anywhere on the playfield (makes wiring and troubleshooting simpler too).

One last thing, since I'm integrating the mp3 trigger into switches for sound, I have to have a separate shielded contact (if I wire it into the same switch, it will trigger loop sound as soon as it boots up).  This means replacing every single blade switch with a 2 terminal blade switch.  These aren't cheap, in fact even by Pinball life pricing I'm looking at $9 a piece!  Also, I freaking HATE these switches! They've existed for over 60 years.  They're archaic, they get pitted, they cost too much because they have copper and tungsten, and they wear (and flex out of position and need readjustments). a MUCH better switch that is proven and has been tested up to a million cycles is the microswitch (AKA cherry switch).  Also, if you design a mechanism to use them, they are cheap (46 cents a piece), and will handle up to 5 amps a piece.  So even with a double throw, I'm looking at less than a buck.  I've got an early mechanism designed that looks like it should work, I just gotta prototype one now: