Pinball

I just installed new ROMs with the latest software in my pinball machine, so I’m now running version 3 instead of version 1. It fixes a couple minor issues and changes the pattern of lights slightly for some events.

Yesterday I received a nice box of parts that I had ordered, and immediately set on installing many of them as soon as I got home. I installed a new ball shooter, although it doesn’t seem to shoot the ball far/fast enough to go all the way up the skill-shot-entrance-ramp-thingy. I may need to adjust the angle of the playfield or use the spring from the old ball shooter or something. I replaced about 2 dozen lights (I wasn’t keeping a close count), and now there exists much more flashing and prettiness.

I removed the metal piece that was preventing the ball from launching properly. (I think it fell off of the lock mechanism that we drilled through.) The game is now completely playable. All that’s left is replacing some lights, fixing some switches, getting a new plunger (the one we have mostly works, but it’s held together with duct tape), replacing some connectors (which are used for the general illumination, which just lights up the playfield but isn’t required for the game to function), hooking up a new battery connector (so I don’t need to reset the settings each time I turn it on), and a lot of things could use cleaning. But the machine works, which is very exciting.

I got my package from Germany today that had my replacement pinball display board (that runs on LEDs instead of Neon). Once I could see what the pinball machine was saying to me, I could put it in test mode to determine that a Slam Tilt switch was stuck closed, preventing it from doing much. Likely, it (quite correctly) got jostled during transport. It still doesn’t have batteries (meaning that it can’t keep high scores or Free Play settings through a reboot), about 20 lights don’t work, some switches don’t work, and launching the ball onto the playfield via the plunger (you know, the normal way of launching a ball onto a pinball playfield) gets the ball stuck at the top somewhere. But we can play games, and it mostly works.

I just ordered the PinLED 10001 display board for my pinball machine. From the only place that seems to have them in stock, which is the people who created them. In Germany. I think I got a little hosed on the $ to € exchange rate, and I hope that it safely makes it here, and then doesn’t get too caught up in customs. (I can just imagine seeing a box of circuitry coming over with a display and someone mistaking it for an explosive device counter or something.)

I’ve been getting handy with a multimeter now, and it looks like the voltages are all getting to the right spot on the pinball displays, but the displays still aren’t working. It appears that having dead displays isn’t that uncommon. So, it looks like I need to either (a) buy 2 new alphanumeric displays and do quite a bit of unsoldering/soldering to replace them, or (b) get a board designed/manufactured by a third party that uses LEDs instead of gas tubes and replaces the entire existing display board. I’m currently leaning toward (b), because even though it’s about twice as expensive the LEDs should last much much longer.

The display on the pinball machine still doesn’t work. Diagnosing this required getting into the backbox where all the circitry is. Getting into the backbox requires removing the backglass (with the pretty art drawn onto the glass). There is a lock holding the backglass in place.

We didn’t have the key for this lock.

So, today, I bought a drill, and my wife the master driller drilled through the lock, into the screw on the other side attaching the lock to the bar holding the backglass.

After much work, we finally managed to get the pinball machine out of my brother’s basement and into ours. The key broke in half while trying to open up the backbox, so getting inside to further diagnose it may be a challenge.

Now this is just cool.

I’ve done quite a bit of research on the Internet this week, and there’s a ton of stuff out there on fixing old pinball machines. It’s quite a significant hobby. Unfortunately, it seems that the era of pinball is slowly dying, as everything’s moving to video games and slot machines (and video slot machines), as there seems to be a lot more money to be made in those areas. There’s only one remaining new pinball machine manufacturer. But I’m looking forward to getting our machine this weekend, and hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll be able to make it playable. I’ve already ordered a multimeter which will probably help me in my quest. From my online research, the score display probably just needs a fuse changed (if I’m really lucky), a couple resistors and diodes replaced (if I’m slightly less lucky), or I’ll need to try to replace the whole score display system (if I’m really unlucky, as it’s not like anyone makes these parts anymore).