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Categories
Funky Instruction Cards
Posted on August 14th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
On the front of the pinball just below the flippers there are two places for instruction cards. Usually these have a bit of paper on the right that says “£1 – 3 Credits” and one on the left that has some kind of vague suggestions for what to do with the ball, e.g. “shoot at stuff and things might happen.. and err.. press the flipper buttons, ok?” Basically the ‘standard’ ones are a bit pants.
Behold! My super funky new instruction cards! Blatently using a sh1t load of stolen graphics from google image search 😉 The top one is going to be for the cost stuff. I haven’t quite figured out how to set the prices on my machine at the moment, so I haven’t put the cost in, but it’s going to go in big yellowy-orange letters under the ship picture. What I want is one credit for 10p (WOO RETRO PRICING!!) .. but at the moment my pinball is spitting out 10p’s and instead is giving four credits for 20p! .. I’m sure it’s quite simple to change, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
Under that is the instruction card. The standard one is black and white, so i’ve re-done it in LCARS yellow with a black background to match the metal under the flippers. This pic doens’t do it justice. Both are printed on photo paper at 600dpi and look wicked!
Eproms
Posted on August 14th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
I’ve seen on t’internet that you can buy new eproms (teeny tiny computer programs squished into chips) for Star Trek The Next Generation. My CPU chip is version LX2 and the one people (you know.. *them*) are selling is LX7… oooh that’s like *five* more.. err. stuffs higher than mine! .. Must have it! .. Trouble is, I can’t for the life of me find out what differences the new chips are supposed to make! .. So maybe I won’t get them until I find out what they do!
Parts hunting
Posted on August 13th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
OMG you would not believe how hard it is to find the triangular cannon part I’m looking for!
This is the thing I’m looking for: 
It’s a bit of triangular metal that attaches a crank to the cannon to turn it from left to right.
No-one has it listed on their website, let alone has it in stock!!
Knackered opto chips
Posted on August 13th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
I’ve descovered that a load more of my opto chips were knackered! This new set were hidden under the playfield so I didn’t see them before, on a secret PCB tucked under a pile of cables thicker than my arm.
I poked it with my multimeter and I decided that the most likely broken bit is the chip in the bottom left corner of the pic. .. which is the most annoying chip to be broken!! Because, if you look on the board, all the other chips have got easy remove/replace clip things that they slot into.. so changing *those* chips is super easy, you can just pull them straight out! .. But oh no, the one that’s knackered today is the one that’s soldered into the corner!
Everyone on the internet wants to be your friend.
Posted on August 11th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.
Now that I’ve got the power working I can just about play a game and now I’m finding more things missing/broken! .. but it’s ok, because I like fixing stuff!
Todays quandry was why doesn’t the machine do something cool when I hit the ball down the top hole? I was sure that when I hit the ball down the top hole, lots of lights were supposed to flash and magical pixies should pop up, bringing me beer on folded £50 note coasters. .. but alas.. [plonk] (that’s the sound of the ball going down the hole) ..