pinball turns on, doesn't start

When I replaced the fuses, bammo the lights come on and stuff starts to move inside.  However, it doesn't want to start a game.  There's a motorized spindle under the playfield right in the middle that seems to spin forever, as if it can't clear something out, so I'm not sure what could be wrong (perhaps a relay stuck open?)  Of course after bumping the coin door a few times, and messing with the position of the scoreboard, it suddenly starting working!  Of course, it only worked once, but man getting it working felt so good.  I did notice the left flipper had issues flipping everytime (at least when the zipper flippers came together).  Also there seems to be a missing wall in part of the playfield because the ball got stuck a couple times.

My first pinball machine

Literally looked at a recent craigslist ad in the morning, someone was having a garage sale 2 miles from work today (starting at 8:30). Another pinball fan from work drove over there right away to check them out, we went back at lunchtime. He wanted $200, talked him down to $150. Backglass has cracks, and so far it doesn't fire up, but I'm hoping it's just the blown fuses in it.  I was so careful driving it home, I was worried that the backglass would shatter the rest of the way just from the bumps, but it survived.  I want to try to take a bunch of photos straight on, and merge them in photohop (clean up the crack marks), and hopefully get a reproduction glass.  I found out a process called "duratrans", which is the process you see for large backlit ads in malls and such.  Looks like I'm looking at about $50 for the print:

http://www.mightyimaging.com/backlit_transparency.html

and then I can either do plexiglass or get real glass cut from a local frame shop (maybe another $10-$30?).  Here's my pin on the database (which I still need to add myself to):

www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=987

Met mark ritchie

Yes, the pinball designer:
http://pinwiki.org/wiki/Mark_Ritchie

The younger brother to the VERY famous Steve Ritchie now the lead engineer at Stern Pinball:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ritchie

No, this was not recently, it was a long time ago (and not realizing at the time who he really was).  This was probably around 1998?  My brother worked for Incredible Technologies at the time, and I was still getting my feet wet as a mechanical engineer (doing mostly drafting work for a company, trying to get my opportunity to do some design work).  Mark was at the time working on an mp3 jukebox (completely new cabinet from scratch), and gave me some drafting work.  Not sure if he was throwing me a bone (because of my brother), or really that was his way of interviewing me to see if I'd be a good fit for a job there.  Needless to say, I got paid (something) for the work I did.  Had I known who it was at the time, I would have been a more excited of who I was meeting.  I must say he seemed like a really cool guy.

Tron Pinball

I dug the new movie, and I'm a bit excited for the new Pin from Stern.  Slated for a May-June release, I'm sure the Gameworks in Schaumburg will get this as soon as it's available.
http://www.pinballnews.com/games/tron/index2.html

pinball auction

Went to an estate auction this morning, didn't win :-(

They had a stargate pinball, sold for $1000.  1994, so recent, but not a great layout.  You would have to really be a fan to want to a pay that.

They also had a hi-flyer which ended up selling for $350:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=11670

Granted it's old and I shouldn't have been so critical, the flippers seemed weak, there was at least 1 bulb out, and the backglass had scratches in the artwork.  I also wasn't too keen on the layout (though it would have been nice to have a mechanical pin as my first machine).

I'm going to keep looking on craigslist and ebay until I find one I like at a reasonable price.

pinball podcasts

Yes, they do exist!  I'm trying to catch up on these:
http://www.spookypinball.com

http://www.silverballpodcast.com

Also check out ben heck's latest podcast where he shows off his custom lost pinball he's working on, and great teamwork with jeri elsworth

Future Pinball working!!

So I've been fighting with this for probably a good week (I REALLY want a virtual pinball).  Visual Pinball is a pain, from what I've read from dribbled information from forums, if you want to run visual pinball (the old emulator) as dual screen, it HAS to be run through a frontend like hyperspin, and I believe you have to manually configure position/scale, which is a pain in the ass (which I still don't understand how it works).

So then I read that future pinball is a little easier (and you don't need hyperspin to make it work).  Started it up as always, this time with my 37" LCD TV hooked up to it.  Can't understand why the option to do 2nd screen isn't available (greyed out).  Read some more forums, nothing.  Then I think.. "I can select two displays in nvidea settings, but I can't select primary, and it doesn't show the 2 monitors in windows setting"

So I go download the latest drivers for my Geforce 8400 GS card, and low and behold.. I can select primary display, I get the checkbox in future pinball to select backbox on secondary display.  After about 20 minutes of tweaking settings (choosing primary, selecting rotation, etc), I finally get pinball working on 2 monitors: