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Lights I never knew I had
Posted on August 24th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
Today I decided to check all of my bulbs. I knew I had one blown bulb on the enterprise shileds, but I didn’t want to order one bulb then find later I had a load more blown. So I decided to prop the playfield up and check all of them using the test menu.
I soon realised that I had a whole load of bulb that weren’t lit when I selected to light up everything, so I went through each lighting section of tests until I found that “Playfield 2″ was doing nothing. (more…)
Yeay, I fixed the internet!
Posted on August 23rd, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
Illinois Pinball have just replied to my email that I send last week asking where my order was! (Only after the part has been delivered! Bit late me thinks)
“Kati” gave me the UPS shipping number and apologised for not getting back to me sooner. Ok, so they made an effort.. 
I checked the UPS tracking and they acutally posted it on the 16th! 3 working days after I placed the order, so they actually aren’t that crap after all, it’s just that they didn’t say it was posted and the postage took ages! (more…)
Oh Happy Day! Oh Canada!
Posted on August 23rd, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
My drive plate has arrived in the far off land of maple syrup and mounties! Huzzar!
Illinois Pinball, all is forgiven! You do however receive zero smilie faces for your level of customer service!! (more…)
Drops n Rails
Posted on August 23rd, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
Now that Rachel and I have been playing for quite a bit, a few little areas for improvement have become apparent.
This is the top drop target. It’s right at the top of the playfield under the borg ship. It’s got a big solenoid to raise it up and a much smaller one to make it drop down. Whenever it pops up it has a tendency to click up and down lots before settling. It usually pops up and down about three times before it locks up properly. (more…)
Mechanically sound
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
My optos arrived on saturday! along with a shiny new flipper button and my new firmware eprom 
Rachel and I were out in London in the morning visiting friending and checking out the Victoria and Albert museum, then went out for dinner at a cool Sushi place. Then we got home to find the post! Bubble wrapped delicious goodness.. optos!!!
We dashed to the garage, flipped open the pinball machine and fired up the soldering iron Rachel held the tiny Opto PCB’s with the pliers while I soldered in the new Opto emitters, then I fired the machine up and went into the switch matrix test. Holding my breath I got a tiny slip of paper and fed it in front of the opto [beep] [beep] Oh yeah baby! It works!! I nearly sprained all my smiling muscles!
Rachel said she wanted to fit the new flipper button so I handed her the socket wrench, while I threaded all the opto wires through the cable guides and got them neatly tucked away. Rachel had the flipper changed in no time and had the flipper opto board screwed back on before I’d finished tucking my wires away (yeah, she rocks!). Lastly we yanked out the old CPU eprom with a specially bent computer blanking plate (basically just a thin strip of metal) and fitted the new CPU. We stuck all the glass back on and flicked the power switch.
EVERYTHING WORKS!!!! This game is so awesome! Rachel and I pretty much spent the rest of the day locked in the garage playing pinball .. but I have to make a special note about my first game after turning the machine on fully working for the first time… So after we got it all together, I quickly ran the switch test to see that the optos were all cool, then the general illumination, flashers and other lights. I had a few lights which didn’t come on, but I wiggled the bulbs and they were all fine except for one which is blown (just a boring general illumination bulb), so I’ll change that later.. Anyway.. so, glass on, locked down, free play turned off, coin door is all working and has a jam jar under it for the takings.. gotta have that proper authentic arcade feel! (even if I am just going to take all the 20p’s out in a minute) 
.. I drop in my 20p and wow! It’s all rocking along awesomly and I am playing soooo well! I completed all the standard missions and activated the final frontier crazy mega awesome super multi ball!!!! The table went MENTAL with balls!! Final Frontier multi ball is INSANE!! I’m pretty sure that it’s only a six ball multiball, but it felt like there were about twenty! I racked up an awesome 2.8 Billion highscore! :-) In my FIRST game!! (3balls to start and 3buy-ins)
To celebrate my completion of full mechanical repair I decided to take some pics:
Speeding balls
Rail slide
The bottom two shots are of Rachel playing. On the left if you zoom in you can see the streak of the ball going off the right flipper and hitting the spinner in the left most lane! and in the one on the right, you can see the line where the ball is getting fired from the right cannon towards the neutral zone :-)
BTW, the reason I’m posting this blog entry so late on a Sunday night is because my Dad and loads of my mates have been over we’ve just spent all day playing pinball tournaments
I can’t stop whistling the Star Trek theme music!!