Sunday, July 24, 2016

gameroom art update!

Newly up on the walls:
Atomic Punk marquee
A much nicer Future Spa backglass
Space Duel and Astron Belt marquees
A rough Peter Pan backglass  (rough shape, alas)





Friday, July 15, 2016

LOTR dmd update!

My friend lent me his NOS DMD and we swapped it in and the power went out again, so we know there was much more to investigate.
We finally traced down cracked solder on the power supply, reflowed that, and put the old DMD back in.



SUCCESS


Stars lights!

Stars needs all of it's indicator lights!  Very important for decision making.
After replacing a few more sketchy light sockets, it was time to hunt down the bad transistors.

The manual for Stars is a bit of a mess.  Go download it at IMDB, page 5 is a long list of corrections for the lamp driver board.
On top of that?  We found that even the CORRECTIONS had a mistake!
J1-10 is listed as SPECIAL WITH WHITE STAR, but we confirmed it is actually just the WHITE STAR.

So we proceeded carefully with the transistors we had.  But J1-10 needed a MCR-106 transistor, and I only had bought 2N5060s.  So the game will be missing that single light.
BUT, the rest are now working!

With the light board removed, we also noticed Capacitor C1 was disconnected.  Looking at the schematics, I don't quite understand where J4-3 connects to, but it's back connected now.
Lamp driver A5-J4-3 connects to A3-J3-16, on the voltage regulator / solenoid driver board.
So looking at the schematics, I really think this capacitor is there to connect two voltage test points, so probably not critical to gameplay.


The wires connecting the left flipper are now sealed properly, with the flaking electrical tape removed.

At this point?  I think we might just be one transistor away from a fully working game!

Thursday, July 14, 2016

more public pinball at the Neighbourhood Pub!

Very excited that Ottawa has another wonderful place to play!  Check out Ottawa, Canada over at the pinball map!


We have 3 main spots:
House Of Targ, with 18 pinball machines and an equal amount of arcades
Lowertown Brewery, with 6 pinball machines and I have yet to visit yet...
and now.. Neighborhood Pub at 2257 Baseline Rd, with 9 machines plus a few arcades









OTTAWA HAS PINBALL GOING ON


Neighbourhood Pub, which I will forever refer to as Neigh-P, is also the first to dive back in to the EMs.
Yes, that is a 60s era shuffle bowler!
They are all wonderfully fine tuned, and a blast to play.


Neigh-P does 45 cent wings on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays, and they are delicious and probably the most affordable meal in the city.
MAACA people are going to be meting there on Wednesdays (with the wings special honoured,) I think.