...Continued from previous post.
[] 3rd August.
The service menu controls have now been hooked up.
The little red button on the right is actually the self test button from the original cabinet. It is now doing duty as a control which toggles whether the coin door appears open to the emulation. This is needed to get into the menus on a lot of machines - actually implementing a door switch on here would be a bit fiddly as there's no provision for one, and honestly being able to just choose whether it's open or closed is easier as it saves having to keep opening and closing the door if you're testing things. Gave me a good opportunity to let a bit of the original hardware keep being used usefully.
As this isn't a component that's likely to be changed as we move on I decided that we could go ahead and add loom wrap to the wiring immediately by these controls. Given the little compartment to the left there is being used as "misc stuff storage" and likely always will be giving that bit of wiring some protection seemed wise.
While I was in the area I hooked up the slam tilt switch on the coin door and also tidied up the wiring on there.
I wanted to get that done sooner than later as I felt things were quite vulnerable to getting pinched in the hinge - something that's now impossible. As it's the first thing you see when opening it up, having that look reasonably tidy helps with the first impression I think.
Nice to be at a stage where I feel I can actually do some basic tidying of some bits that I feel are basically finished. We won't be wrapping ALL of the wiring by any means, but i imagine a fair chunk of it will end up that way just because it looks so much tidier.
I don't have any photos, but the last thing I was working on today was testing out a better arrangement for table audio. Up until now we had just been using the onboard speakers in the playfield display, which are predictably very average. They're actually pretty clear and don't distort horribly or anything, but they don't really have any "punch" to them and it all just sounds a bit flat.
The original speaker was long gone, but a random 5x7" automotive speaker I had laying around fit reasonably well over the original cutout, and using a cheap little Amazon Special audio amp has given us faaaaar punchier sound. Much more in keeping with what you would expect from something like this. Given that this was absolutely not hifi sound from new going out of my way to fit a better speaker for that really would just be overkill. Unless this one turns out to be buzzy or distorts horribly (I've only tested it as far as proving it works so far) I'll probably just leave the one that's in there.
There WILL be some quite specialised audio equipment fitted far later on, but that's for more feedback purposes rather than game audio. What will be getting installed will be a set of four exciters which couple sound directly into the sides of the cabinet. What for? I hear you ask. To simulate one very specific effect - the sound of the ball itself rolling around the playfield. I wouldn't have thought of that, but apparently it works very well and does vastly improve the immersion.
Plunger is the last major component we need, and according to Royal Mail it is finally actually in the country after being stuck in customs for what has felt like about a month and a half. Once that's fitted I can get a proper enclosure made up for the apron rather than the current random bit of cardboard.
-- -- --
4th August.
Small details are continuing to be the order of the day.
The PC's SSD has now been properly secured in a caddy rather than just being wedged in place. It doesn't run warm really anyway but I've positioned it such that the intake to the CPU cooler will cause a bit of airflow over the drive during normal operation to help keep it cool.
Given their location, it only seemed to be a matter of time before I either dropped something into the fans, got my knuckles skinned by them or had a wire chewed up by them so added some protective grills inside the cabinet as well as outside.
That just seemed a sensible thing to do before we ended up with blood being spilled. There has already been a blood sacrifice on a couple of occasions, so let's not leave unnecessarily opportunities for more!
Actually played a couple of games this evening and can confirm that this little audio amplifier and the separate speaker in the cabinet base has made a big difference.
I do need to tweak things a little though as it's picking up quite a bit of interference on the audio feed to the amp - I know it's noise on there as moving the input cable around makes it change. I might see if using a shielded cable solves it, or if a bit of careful routing helps. I'm pretty sure the graphics card on the PC is where the noise is actually coming from.
Here's a comparison between the machine itself and a game on my phone which I used to play quite often. Same table, different platform.
The screen I'm using now is just a *little* bit bigger...
-- -- --
7th August.
Last major component I'd been waiting on turned up today.
This is the bit of kit to make an exceptionally analogue device - the ball launch plunger on a pinball table - translate into a digital simulation.
Helpfully the I/O board already has a dedicated set of terminals on the input side set aside for the plunger, and even has the terminals labelled.
The wiring even came labelled ready to install.
They weren't wrinkled up like that when it arrived, that's after being dragged through one of the cable management eyelets.
It probably won't surprise those of you who have followed this project from the start that we had clearance issues. In this case with the ball launch button - so I had to trim the surround a bit.
Not a problem though, the lower mounting bolt isn't used on this type of plunger anyway (this kit is designed to work with pretty much all the mainstream types) and there's plenty of surface area to securely fasten in place. Ideally I would have installed this *before* the buttons so wouldn't have had this issue, but hindsight is always 20/20. Honestly the button position works well from an ergonomic standpoint so an extra five minutes installing the plunger isn't a big issue.
Here's the end result.
Once again in a huge shout out to the designer of the software that drives this lot, it Just Worked. All I had to do was select the potentiometer option in a drop down list for the plunger type and click a big very clearly labelled button to calibrate it. Said calibration took about 15 seconds and just required me to operate it normally several times. It now works exactly as you would expect it to if you were launching the ball with a manual plunger on a physical table.
This is essential for it to feel real if I'm honest. If you're someone who has played any amount of pinball, pulling back and releasing the plunger is one of those very well ingrained muscle memory type things which is just linked to the game.
It's also important for the gameplay in some cases. Several games have a skill shot where you can score (in some cases quite sizeable) bonuses by shooting either a target on the playfield, which is done by carefully modulating how hard the ball is launched. Examples I can think of off the top of my head are Bride of Pin-Bot, Taxi, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Ripley's Believe it or Not are ones which spring to mind - or even Four Million BC which implemented that (and three ball multiball AND Zipper Flippers) on an electromechanical game - that's a fascinating game almost worth a rambling post in its own right, Ted Zale at his very best. Others either have you time the launch to coincide with a specific event (Medusa, Last Action Hero, Jurassic Park plus probably many others) or to predict where a ball will go by cycling a light on the playfield controller by the flippers (Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars and many others). The latter two setups work fine with a button, but anything requiring you to modulate power is near impossible with a button. Functionality aside though, it just feels better!
We are now up to eight contactors in the bottom of the cabinet to make physical clunky noises and feedback to coincide with things happening on the playfield. This will eventually be ten when the two far more powerful coils for the flippers arrive (at which point I'll relocate the two currently serving that role will move to the back corners).
In the same package as those coils there is also an LED flasher light bar and an expansion board for the I/O controller which will give me an extra 21 outputs to play with - which is needed as I'm down to two left now! Those two will be full once the last two main coils are fitted - but I'll still be wanting another five for chimes and bells, the replay knocker, plus the light bar which will need FIFTEEN just in its own (five RGB LEDs and each of the colours is independently addressable). That might seem like a lot of effort for some blinky lights, but it's actually something which will add a bit of visual drama that you just can't get from a video display. Those will likely get fitted to the currently white bit of trim immediately above the main display.
Speaking of lights, here's a look at the playfield lighting on Bride of Pin-Bot. You really could be forgiven for not immediately realising that this is a computer simulation...never mind a photo of a video screen showing a computer simulation.
I shudder to think how long that must have taken to model. Let's not forget this is something that someone has made and is distributing completely for free rather than some huge game design studio.
Here's what you currently see immediately behind the coin door on the table.
Immediately to the left you can see how readily accessible the service control panel is. You can also see the very deliberate space below the main display. This is there to ensure that a decent chunk of the air from those fans is diverted through there and helps keep the display cool.
Someone asked me how on earth I keep track of where all the wires are going, and the answer is that so long as I know what type of wire it is, I don't need to. This is the magic of having a controller running the show with is essentially software defined. So long as I know that the inputs are connected between the input common and AN input port, that's all I need to know physically. Then I simply go to the input test control panel and see which port changes state when I push the relevant button. I then tell the control program what I want that input to be mapped to. Outputs are handled exactly the same way. I just make sure they're correctly connected to the respective power rails and their ground side goes to an output port. Then I toggle each output in the software and see what operates, then tell the software what's connected to that port. Obviously I have been writing a road map as I've been going as I will want that information if I ever need to find faults, but at the initial build stage the ability to make any input/output port be allocated to any function is an absolute godsend in terms of helping simplify things.
-- -- --
17th August.
Back from a nice trip away in Aberdeenshire last week. Definitely needed that.
The Volvo unsurprisingly dispatched ~1000 miles of driving without any difficulty, returning mid 40s MPG throughout the trip. Though it does now need a wash.
A bit big on some back roads but that car is unbelievably good at dispatching long distances in the blink of an eye.
Mostly been catching up on everything that stacked up while I was away, but found time to do a bit more work on the pinball table today.
The flipper buttons needed some attention. Particularly the right one would occasionally bind a little, especially if pushed off centre. My hunch was that this was due to god only knows how many years of grime. Certainly looked that way when I pulled them apart.
Looked a lot better after a good clean.
Back in place.
This seems to have resolved the binding issue. Time will tell I guess. If not I'll swap the buttons out for a new pair - they're not expensive.
Probably the biggest visible change in a while was made today with the construction of this.
Which is a cover for the gap between the lockdown bar and the bottom of the playfield display - essentially where the apron would normally be on a real table.
Obviously paint will happen in the near future.
I did run into one issue though in that there wasn't *quite* enough clearance, so the tip of the plunger would just touch it when released - producing an extremely loud bang. Solution for this was pretty simple - cut a hole in it. A rubber bung will go here shortly to cover the hole while retaining the clearance.
Get some paint on there tomorrow.
Will also add some instructions there on how to use the machine - will break up the space a bit more so it's less obviously not what would normally be there - which would normally look something like this.
Challenge will be figuring out how to make it look in keeping with the original table art.
-- -- --
There we go, a bit of paint has made that look a bit less scruffy.
Next step will be to make some labels with guidance on how the machine works. Will obviously be heavily based on the apron artwork from Eight Ball Deluxe (and indeed most Bally tables from that era).
Pretty simple really. I've got a decently high resolution copy of the Bally logo I believe and a note of the typefaces that were used, the rest should be easy to put together in Gimp. I just need to decide exactly what information I want to put on there.
-- -- --
19th August.
The central display for the DMD worked but had an issue with the fact that it was just too dim. It could just about be passable for direct viewing but was far too dim once the red filter was added. In fairness, I think the panel cost something like £30 so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. It's still handy for random testing of computers which is mainly what it's been used for before.
Today a more permanent solution arrived. A little 12" ultra wide industrial panel. This is more intended for point of sale advertising displays or other industrial applications and as such is stupidly bright, even just at the default settings. If you turn the brightness up it's honestly painful to look at.
Those are all showing the same light grey.
This does a much better job of still looking properly punchy even once the filter is back in place.
Obviously it will be positioned centrally in there in due course - it's just wedged in place on a bit of cardboard in these photos. Being an industrial panel it's in a metal case with several mounting options so shouldn't be difficult to get it mounted securely.
I also seem to have finally got to grips with how the point of view options interact and have pretty much got things set up so the proportions look correct from where you stand in front of the table.
Now I just need to go and tweak those settings...on each of the currently installed tables. Which to date number 138. Only takes a minute or two to set each one up, but it quickly gets tedious!
I do really need to do something about shielding the input to the audio amp as the squealing it picks up at some points (particularly in the menu rather than when a table is playing) while it's really pretty quiet is really bugging me.
I'm really looking forward to actually just getting a few hours in just playing this thing at some point! Nevertheless, it is quite satisfying looking back at some of the earlier photos and my scribbled ideas in a notepad to see how far it's come from the original idea I had a year or so back.
Once we're near enough finished I will probably add up roughly what it's cost me and see how it's compared to just buying a commercial virtual cabinet. A few folks have asked if I could build and sell something like this - and that's a pretty firm "no" in my mind. Not even taking account of the hours I've put into it and keeping in mind that quite a lot of the big ticket items were bought secondhand (main display, CPU, GPU, cabinet) or were just random electronic supplies I had in stock, it's still going to be pretty well into four figures. I'm a little apprehensive about how much the glass is going to cost as I've really no idea what to expect there. Assuming I can even find anywhere locally that will cut a couple of panels for me. That *sounds* like a simple enough thing, but I've learned not to make assumptions like that any more.
While I may complain that the graphics setup is tedious, the really tedious bit is still ahead of me and that's going to be getting the cabinet tidied up a bit. It's not being fully restored and repainted, I don't mind it showing that it's got some miles on it, the thing is 44 years old. I do want to tidy it up a bit though so it doesn't look *quite* so like it's just been abandoned for a decade or two then dragged out the back of someone's garage. Which it was! Paint is something that you can't rush. It'll be a faff to match the colours as it is given how much it's faded (and that varies especially on the one side which has obviously seen the sun) even before I try to strike that awkward balance between reasonable repairs and overzealous restoration.
-- -- --
23rd August.
Two far more chunky solenoids for the flippers have also arrived though I've not had time to connect that up yet. The two currently serving that role will be relocated to the back corners to give us a full 3 x 3 matrix to allow correctly localised feedback for things on the playfield.
[/quote]
-- -- --
26th August.
The weekend itself was a bit of a change of pace. Something I randomly stumbled across a couple of months ago was the fact that there is actually an annual pinball convention in the UK. I think it was in the news section on
VP Universe. This was something of a surprise for me as I didn't figure it really had much of a following over here. I was even more surprised to find that it was only half an hour up the road in Daventry. So of course I signed up to go and investigate.
Let's just say that I had sliiiiiiiiightly underestimated how well attended the event was going to be.
There were a bunch of tournaments running over the course of the weekend, though I was really just interested in the 100+ machines they had set up on free play.
So what did I spend the most time on?
Jet Spin. Has been a favourite ever since I got it running on my virtual setup at home. Simple table in terms of the rule set but it's just enjoyable to play.
A close second was one I'd never really given much time to before, Jungle Queen.
Again pretty simple formula but enjoyable. Plus once you've got the hang of it even I can pretty consistently run out of score reels.
Quite satisfyingly I found that my average scores on there were actually very close to what I've been seeing on my cabinet at home (well that's Jungle Princess - but it's just the two player version of exactly the same game) which suggests to me that my setup is probably reasonably true to form in how it behaves.
It's probably a good thing that I respect the fact that I have no room or this probably would have come home with me.
While it's a little care worn and needed a bit of a service (and the LED conversion undone, sorry I just don't like it on classic tables), £1200 for a proper Steve Ritchie designed table to me in the UK market sounds really cheap. If I had the room it would have been in the car on the way home with me.
A bit of a neat spot during the weekend was an Eight Ball Deluxe LE - what my cabinet used to be.
Though my biggest surprise of the weekend was this madness - Orbitor 1 by Stern. Yes spelled like that, someone had trademarked the proper spelling apparently!
This thing looks wacky, but how it plays is orders of magnitude weirder than you'd imagine possible. For a start, the playfield isn't flat. It's a fairly gently contoured valley, which obviously has an impact on how the ball rolls. That's only half of it though - I initially thought there were magnets or something under the playfield as well as the way the ball behaved just defied any other explanation. However it's way simpler than that - and really clever. Those two red bumpers in the playfield which look like pop bumpers, they're actually spinning and covered in a pretty grippy rubber material. So in addition to bouncing the ball around they also impart ridiculous amounts of spin to it. This results in some incredibly odd looking behaviour.
Jump to 02:00 in the video below to see what I mean.
https://youtu.be/FvUweFvxqWc?si=-Syp8MNsLF5Kp-1-
My initial reaction was basically standing there with a comic strip thought bubble reading "...?" above my head after I launched the first ball.
It's a fascinating table and a huge amount of fun to play. Definitely one that's on my "Yep, I'd buy one if I had the room" list now. Also notable as being Stern's last table before they exited the pinball market until they reappeared in 1999.
This was quite a neat idea someone had done to make a display piece of this Nautilus. It's always a bit of a shame that so much of an EM table is hidden away never to be seen - this shows off all of those dozens and dozens of relays.
All in all it was a good fun weekend. I'm nowhere near skilled enough to be a worthy competitor in any of the tournaments, I was just there to enjoy playing some pinball. Was also quite useful for me being able to snap photos of a bunch of tables from my usual standing position for fine tuning the field of view settings on my cabinet. Will definitely be going back next year.
Did have a bit of excitement i could have done with on the way home though. Driving along quite happily when out of nowhere the car developed the worst vibration I have ever encountered in a vehicle. I thought the gearbox, a CV joint, collapsed engine mount or something like that had let go. It was honestly violent enough I was worried about it triggering airbags and things like that.
A bit of investigation once I pulled into a side road (of course I was somewhere I initially couldn't stop safely) pretty quickly found the culprit.
Yep. That's dead! No chance the can of goo most cars seem to come with nowadays would have been any use. It's a space saver, but at least the Volvo does have an actual spare wheel. Ten minutes and we were back on the road.
Were it not for that I'd probably have been sitting there two hours plus waiting for recovery to turn up.
Honestly between how heavy a car it is, how unnecessarily hard the suspension is, the daft low profile tyres and the horrific state of the roads around here, I'm surprised I've only had one blow out so far. What does worry me though is how much without any warning this let go though. They were last checked on Friday afternoon and the pressure was spot on then, I certainly wasn't aware of any signs that we had lost pressure leading up to the event. Just suddenly the entire universe was trying to vibrate itself apart around me.
Having one odd tyre on the car as I'll have to have now is going to bug me something rotten!
No real harm done though, and it didn't take the shine off what had otherwise been a good weekend for me.
-- -- --
28th August.
First up I want to issue an apology. My phone upgraded itself to the latest version of Android a few days ago and one of the very obvious changes is that autocorrect has become FAR more aggressive. However it also seems to have at the same time become far more erratic and is often autocorrecting things with utter nonsense. I do try to proof read things before hitting submit, but I'm not the best at spotting where nonsense like that has happened.
Using an external keyboard doesn't even stop it!
-- -- --
Very quick upgrade made to the pinball project today - far beefier coils for the flipper feedback devices. The little contactors I'd originally used (because they were readily available and very cheap) just didn't give anywhere near as substantial a thunk particularly for the flippers. These should be more what the doctor ordered.
These are actually made specifically for this application. I may well upgrade a couple of the others down the line, especially for the centre rear playfield which does most of the work simulating the pop bumpers, but will probably go with something more cheaply available like a generic automotive starter solenoid for that. Having some variety between the various items isn't a bad thing anyway as there is in a real machine too.
The light bar behind the display is also now working. This helps make up for the lack of brightness from display panels just not being able to produce the same effect as the high intensity flash lamps which there are on many tables.
These five lamps are all addressable RGB units which are handled by the Direct Output Framework and operate in time with events on the tables - either when the flashers would be fired there, but also just where the folks doing the digital conversion felt it was appropriate. They have some decent punch to them.
The centre display is also far brighter now it has the new panel in place - I just need to paint the backing board for it so that's not visible through the window.
Once that's done the score displays should just "float" there without the display itself really being obvious.
Was quite nice yesterday evening just playing the thing for an hour or so as I'd intended. We're definitely down to more of the detailed work now.
-- -- --
31st August.
This afternoon I had a patient in need of some help on my operating table.
Given that virtually all my Amiga time has been on the A1200, I always forget how tiny the A600 is in comparison.
This one doesn't belong to me. It belongs to a friend who isn't all that familiar with the platform, and was reported to not be reading disks. It wasn't even *trying* to read them though which is a big clue.
Amigas of this era have a disk presence switch so unlike on a PC, as soon as a disk is inserted the system will spin the drive up and try to mount the volume (and start booting from it if it's a bootable disk) without any user input. My guess was that this was where our problem lay as it wasn't doing anything.
Missing screws and scratch marks suggested I wasn't the first one in here, and that the problem with this drive most likely was why this machine was "parked" however many years ago it was.
A close look at the floppy drive revealed my hunch to be correct. There was a dry joint on one of the disk presence switch terminals and it had come away.
Thankfully I was just about able to sneak the smallest tip of my iron in there to solder it back in without having to take the board out - as that would have meant pretty much completely dismantling the drive, which is never high on my list of favourite activities.
Back together and sure enough, it now attempts to read any disk as soon as it's inserted.
Of course I can't find any of my physical Amiga disks (I stuck a Gotek in my A1200 a year or so back and have a feeling I put the disks into deep storage) to confirm it's now working properly, but I cleaned the heads while I was in there so there's no reason it shouldn't. We'll test it when I drop it back with the owner (or if I have a brainwave and remember where the box is). For all their reputation for being unreliable, floppy drives (especially older ones) really are surprisingly dependable so long as the heads are kept clean and you're not trying to use mouldy old disks covered in greasy fingerprints. 99% of the problems I have have been down to mould having got to a lot of my older ones at my parents house in the early 00s where they had horrendous damp problems.
Nice to find a nice, simple, easily repairable physical failure for a change!
It's also a small world. This sticker is on the bottom of it.
Keith is about 25 miles from where I call home up in Aberdeenshire, 400 plus change miles north of where I am now and where this computer has ended up, yet we somehow ended up crossing paths down here in the Midlands.
I did have to sit on my hands not to completely dismantle and clean the thing...but I'm only meant to be fixing what's wrong with it! It's actually a pretty tidy example aside from needing a clean, it's survived without yellowing far better than my A1200.
Said A1200 I need to get back back on the bench at some point to try to figure out why the hell it was behaving so erratically last time I was trying to use it - my money being on a memory problem. That's a job for future me though. This patient though appears to have made a full recovery and is ready to go back to it's owner in the next couple of days.
-- -- --
Did a little bit of pinball tinkering this afternoon as well. While the new solenoids were louder than the old ones, you couldn't really feel them doing anything which is half the reason they're there. I decided moving them onto the side of the cabinet far closer to the flipper buttons was probably a good solution for that.
Another feedback device has also gone in - a shaker motor. Basically the same idea as what makes your mobile phone vibrate but majorly on steroids.
This is actually a proper pinball part, and is a kit intended to add the functionality to modern Stern tables where it was an option on several games.
We obviously didn't need the interface board or anything, just the unit itself, fixings and the safety cover.
This has been slotted in amidships between the audio amp and the interface board.
This is something which isn't fitted to many older tables (Jurassic Park and Earthshaker are the only older ones I can immediately think of), but as with many things because it's controlled through DOF, it's functionality which had been added to many more at appropriate moments and it does actually add quite a bit of extra drama. I did have to dial it back quite a bit though as it was just far too violent running flat out!
-- -- --
7th September.
Big surprise - the sub £10 audio amplifier went pop this afternoon. Can't say I'm massively surprised. It clearly has absolutely zero filtering on the input based on the fascinating squealing and whistling noises it was picking up depending on what the computer was doing. My guess is this is what's killed it, it's gone into some ultrasonic oscillation which has just gone nuclear and wiped out the output stage. I kind of wish it had done this before I went to the efforts of attempting to shield the audio feed to it (which made zero difference).
Let's try fitting something which actually has any chance of functioning properly!
Can't say I was particularly surprised, I only bought that because I didn't have anything on the shelf which fit the bill (size was the biggest problem - an audio amp that would *work* for the application I could grab out the loft in about 90 seconds).
-- -- --
9th September.
New amplifier turned up this morning. It's about half the size of the last one but weighs probably three times as much. Aside from the lack of strange squeaking noises, the audio quality in general is far better.
I think that means that pretty much everything is now in there. Only items still on the wish list are a set of chimes and bells. Those are relatively self contained though and I've already got a location already in mind and kept clear for them. I decided that on the strength of this it was time to do something about the rat's nest that was the wiring.
This was the view looking towards the rear of the cabinet a week or two ago.
As of this afternoon, it now looks like this.
It's definitely nothing close to the absolute artworks of meticulously woven looms you saw in a lot of quality equipment made in the 30s-70s, but I think for something thrown together by some random guy on the street I reckon it's actually decently tidy now.
Even better, testing it afterwards showed that I hadn't even broken anything during all my messing around tidying things up (this involved disconnecting, untangling and shortening quite a number of wires).
There have been a couple of random improvements made in the last couple of days as well. Just tidying things up really. The first of these was actually securing the power supply which had just been sitting in the back of the cabinet. I reused a couple of angle brackets which I think originally held the score display support frame in place to firmly wedge it in place.
The centre display looked far better when lit than the previous one I'd been using, but with any real ambient light it didn't look great when unlit as you could clearly see where the screen was.
This is because the wooden panel the panel is fixed to was light coloured.
Nothing a bit of matt black spray paint can't fix.
Much better. Yes you can still see the reflection of the display itself, and if you really look for it you can see the frame, but it's a thousand times better.
A (not unexpected) problem I had with the PC in there was the fact that it was really struggling to maintain a solid connection to our WiFi network at any usable speed. With the antenna buried inside the cabinet this didn't really surprise me. So I have added an external antenna on the back of the machine where you'll never see it once it's backed up against the wall.
This actually also helps act as a spacer to prevent it being pushed fully back flush with the wall, as doing that would block the ventilation outlets.
The next things I will be meddling with will be adding some trim along either side of the main display to hide the bezel (particularly on the left where there's a big Philips logo and a bright white power LED), tidying up the monitor mounting in the back box, and getting some glass cut I think. Then just play the thing!
We did have a pretty good session a week or so back where we had a few two player games going. Despite having never played the table in question before, my other half absolutely annihilated me!
107K to 35K...I call beginners luck!
-- -- --
10th September.
Had to do a bit of car work today. As the new clutch (and release bearing, given it's just a graphite bushing) has now properly bedded in in the Trabant I had ended up with the bite point very close to the floor.
Yep, having about 1/3" of free play at the arm would indeed do that.
Couple of turns on the adjuster and we're sorted. Five minutes start to finish, including finding the 13mm spanner. Now much better - hadn't realised it was dragging a bit at times before, but it's really obvious now - especially changing into 2nd. Coming up on a thousand miles now since the engine replacement, which I find kind of surprising given the car is almost entirely just used bumbling around locally. It does add up quick.
The glass for the pinball table was ordered today. Actually a lot cheaper than I was expecting, a local place has offered to supply both pieces in the correct toughened glass for £120 all in. Should be here in a week or so.
Does mean I've got to try to get most things I'll want the be messing around under there ticked off though as it'll be a bit of a chore having to manhandle a 43x21" sheet of glass so ideally I'd like that to stay put once it's fitted.
A really obvious thing I needed to address was this being right in front of you to the left of the display.
There's also a little gap there as the base of the display isn't quite flat.
This looks better now I think.
You can't really tell, but I've totally changed how the backglass display is secured.
Rather than faffing around with an actual VESA mount behind it, which was just a giant faff to deal with, it's now just sitting on a shelf with some blocks to secure it. I will probably drop it down a touch further yet. The glass going in here will get a black mask painted at the edges to hide the small gaps at the edges.
That was actually something which took me more brains to work out than I'd expected. The fact that the display is taller than the aperture it has to fit through makes it rather a faff to get it into place. Sorted now though, and no longer sitting on a couple of random capacitors to keep it level.
-- -- --
13th September.
Glass was picked up from City Glass today for the pinball machine. Though I haven't been able to fit it yet as I need to move the machine first. The playfield glass slides in from in front of the table, so I need basically a whole table of room in front of it. Given it's currently tucked away in a corner that's not possible. So I'm going to borrow an extra pair of hands tomorrow and play a bit of a game of life size slide puzzle rearrangement of the Purple Room to try to get it into a better location to use and give me room to get the glass installed.
I will want to add a bit of felt or foam to the location the backglass sits in so it doesn't rattle as the new glass is slightly thinner than the original stuff just because this is a metric rather than imperial size, but that's not the end of the world. Shouldn't be a problem with the playfield itself because it's sitting horizontally.
One very important task I need to do before it goes in though is to also clean the playfield display to within an inch of its life and TRY to ensure it's free of dog hair before the glass goes in. Going to have a bash at getting the graphics for the apron made up as well.
I think then we just actually get to play with the thing as intended. Already have been quite a bit, and working on getting the point of view fine tuned for each table - this is a bit time consuming as every table is different. Of course we're trying to create a 3D looking recreation of something in 2D, so that's going to need to take into account where you're looking at it from, and that's going to vary dependent on the size of your display, height of the table, rake of the playfield, how close you stand to the table and even now tall you are. There's also a bit of a liberty has to be taken with the scaling as we're using a 16:9 aspect ratio display and a typical playfield is actually nearer 18:9. So it's easy to end up with things looking squashed - sometimes you do just have to accept either some cropping (you can usually lose a bit of the apron or back panel without it being too obvious) or some distortion.
As you can see, it looks pretty convincing once you've got it right. Here are a handful of tables as examples.
Eight Ball Deluxe, Bally, 1984. The same playfield this cabinet originally had in it.
Firepower, Williams, 1980.
Flash, Williams, 1978.
Gorgar, Williams 1979. The first table to feature speech. This one still needs a little tweaking.
Centaur, Bally, 1981.
Not everything has been quite so lovingly rendered in innate detail, for example Victory here is a bit more basic in the graphics department - but it still plays spot on.
Victory, Gottlieb, 1987.
It's definitely been a fun project, and is satisfying to see it coming together properly now some of the final touches are being added.
-- -- --
16th September.
That has been a rough couple of days.
It is with great sadness that I have to report that we very suddenly lost one of our dogs, Tesla on Sunday afternoon. He went within the space of 12 hours from his absolutely normal self to being deathly ill with no chance of recovery.
While we weren't entirely unprepared for this given that he wasn't young any more and had had a history of having a few lumps meaning he was always going to be at a high risk of developing cancer, it's still a shock. Having said that, I'd take this any day of the week than a slow decline and loss of quality of life until the inevitable. He was happy and loved right to the end.
Here are the first and last photos I have of him.
Rest in peace my fluffy toasted marshmallow goofball. You'll be missed.
So apologies to folks if I'm a bit off colour for a while, it's going to take a while for me to settle. Also meant that Sunday was a very, very long day and left me both physically and mentally exhausted, so that alone will take time to recover from.
Here's a little insight into his character.
I randomly decided to toss him the bit of cardboard from under a frozen pizza to lick any fragments of food off and/or enjoy himself shredding. He would never destroy anything unless you specifically told him he could - if you threw it to him though, fair game!
https://youtube.com/shorts/eFkmD1ZFysw? ... AVczhBRfcA
Anything and everything can be a game.
You can very clearly see the battle between the German Shepherd bit trying to calmly work it out and the husky "if in doubt bat madly at it" going on.
-- -- --
18th September.
Trying to remember where I'd got to with the pinball table now. I think the glass has just arrived.
I got this installed as quickly as I really could. Simply because by far the safest place for it to live is actually in the machine.
Looks a lot more finished with the glazing all in place.
The giant empty space on the apron was quite conspicuous though. Ideally I'd get this painted up to be closer to the original colour, but for the time being I just made up a graphic with some instructions on that was based on the original apron design. I was aiming for it to look like the original instruction cards, but it just looks like I left white boxes for the text! Eh, it was only a version 1.0 and took me all of about half an hour to make. Most of that was spent finding a photo of high enough resolution to use as a reference.
Or at least the early version...I totally forgot that they used a different colour scheme for the LE version, with black, red and silver rather than cream and gold...not sure why given I SAW ONE in person a few weeks ago.
So I'll probably redo this based on the later colour scheme - random photo from an ancient Reddit thread.
Which I think will blend in better. Nevertheless having *something* in that space makes it look more finished.
Using the black/red colour scheme though will open up more options for me though as I've already got a black base there.
Today's attention was turned to the backglass. The fact that you could see all the edges made it look far too obvious it was just a computer monitor. Hiding those edges needed to happen. Not complicated to do though.
Glass out and the centre area we wanted to use was masked off.
Then the glass was painted with some black paint.
Which results in a nice clear black border around the edges, hiding the monitor surround from view.
I will probably add some foam or similar behind those masked areas just so that you can't look into the cabinet if you're viewing it from a really oblique angle.
This should help keep a bit of tension on the glass too to help stop it from rattling.
Nice to start getting the little details like this ticked off as they do add up and it's starting to feel more polished and less thrown together now.
-- -- --
24th September.
Finally kicked myself into doing a bit of work on the bits of Rover.
Whoever last had the inlet manifold off, I hate you. Apparently rather than replacing the gasket they just slathered it in what looks like several tubes worth of blue Hylomar and smooshed the lot back together.
Which explains why I reckon I could have lifted the engine out by the thing given how well it was stuck to the head.
I didn't take note of exactly when I started, but this took a substantial chunk of this afternoon.
It still needs going over once more but the worst of the gunk is off now at least.
A side effect of the overused sealant was two of the smaller coolant passages having been totally covered. I'm sure that wasn't helping anything.
Now need to remove the partner to this lot from the head...oh, and the underside of the head. Though at least that's just normal carbon and oily gunk which isn't anywhere near as difficult to shift as this was.
-- -- --
27th September.
I think this lot is now about as clean as it's going to get.
From when I was in the process of scrubbing the head.
Head seems perfectly straight as best I can tell with the equipment I have.
All of the coolant passages in both the head and manifold were blasted out with the pressure washer as the manifold in particular was quite full of crap.
There's still some staining around the edges of the combustion chambers but it feels perfectly smooth and uniform, so I think will be fine.
The block was a disgusting, slimy mess.
Not going to win any prizes, but it looked a lot better after I unloaded a few cans of degreaser at it and then attacked it with the pressure washer.
I will hose out the block as well - but I'm going to do that right before reassembly as I don't want to leave the inevitable water that gets into the combustion chambers etc just sitting there. So I'd rather be as close to ready to get the engine started up, warmed up and dried out when I do that.
I have a feeling it might not actually be horrible in there - the head (and the manifold in particular) looked far worse than anything I can see of the block. Not impossible they're from a completely different engine of course!
-- -- --
28th September.
Well I'd hoped to get the Rover back together today, didn't quite end up getting that far. Did make some good progress overall though.
Biggest holdup is that given there are a few areas on the inlet manifold which are pretty pitted, I do want to put a bit of sealant on there to help the gasket out (a *sensible* amount rather than the several tubes worth that went on last time around apparently). Discovered that my previous tube has turned to a rock at some point in the last year.
Figured it would be something Halfords would have...nope! Maybe I can grab antifreeze while I'm there at least. Not a chance, any modern flavour I like, but not a single bottle of the old blue stuff...Well that was a waste of my time, and some idiot has scraped the passenger side mirror on the Volvo while I was parked. Great. I'll go grab both things from elsewhere tomorrow - an hour and a half round trip I could have done without. That'll teach me not to use the Trabant for my short trip.
In better news, with the jammed heater valve removed, turns out we do have perfectly decent flow through the heater core on the Rover.
Not even all that much gunk came out of it to be honest.
The valve however is a block of aluminium oxide and rust and is utterly beyond saving. They're not expensive so I've got a new one ordered. There should have been an O-ring between the two parts of the connection which was completely missing...so I'm guessing it was purely sealed by scale and rust! So maybe didn't get far towards getting the head back on, but I'll take the progress towards a working heater.
I've flushed as much of the gunge out the block as I reasonably can without pulling out the (clearly pretty new) core plugs.
It's a bit awkward to do a really good job of as the only real low point would be the water pump - and given those studs apparently like to snap, I'm not pulling that off if I don't have to. All of the hoses come off the top of it so removing those doesn't really help much.
I get the feeling that someone may well have flushed the worst out when the core plugs were changed, given that aside from rusty coloured water for the first minute or so nothing really came out. I was expecting to have to keep unplugging the drain tap.
I hadn't noticed the "40" stencilled into the side of the block before. Anyone know if that means anything?
In answer to the question of what state the bores are in, about like this.
This camera really doesn't enjoy stuff like this.
Looks good to me, no wear lip I can feel, and you can just about still see cross hatching in the right light in person . Nothing ringing any alarm bells for me anyway. Not that I really expected there to be. The engine seemed to be running okay and didn't have excessive amounts of blowby or smoke, so really wasn't looking for any issues there.
Continued as this post is now too long...
