Pinball!

Nice...but I can see those flashers working against a player lol I would have missed that ball too.
So its all done, now for some serious playing.

:) Yeah, my camera rig (two strings) got thrown in the trash during my last office cleaning, so was kinda hard to play single handed. I do want to do another demo/walk through, the lights really do add some excitement to the whole game, I didn't think they would, but was pleasantly surprised how well they worked out.

I do still have the plunger to get working, though I kinda splurged this week and found two antique art deco ones from the 30's and 40's that I may end up using rather than the modern one I bought.
artdecoplunger.jpg artdecoplunger2.jpg
 
So a few updates....

I got both of the plungers above, I'm planning to install the second one pictured as I like the look of it better. It's got a ball lift shaft/button that will allow me put the plunger in place of the current ball lift button and keep the functionality of it and still add the plunger, it will just be more mechanical now.

I swapped the computer's original hard drive for an SSD drive, which made it run about 4 times faster. I also added a 1 TB secondary drive for game storage.

Lately I've mostly been doing cleanup of the tables, adding lighting effects to some of the more modern ones, and adding a few new ones (Yeah baby!).
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I also added two Xbox 360 Controller Receivers to use with my old xbox controllers, as in addition to Pinball tables, the menu system will allow me to run Mame emulators. Most of the older emulators have to run on the primary monitor, which was my play field monitor. So I found an app that will swap the configurations of my monitors to make my back box monitor the primary when Mame emulators are running, then swap them back as the pinball games/menu reloads. A co-worker also "shared" a portion of his library of emulators and games, about 324GB of 80's - 90's video games that I can play on the back box, already setup to use the xbox controllers I have, just had to copy his folder into my drive. Should allow a little something for everyone in the family to play, even Ms. Pacman to keep my wife happy. ;)
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The project that keeps on giving! What a great 'object' to have in a game room.

Speaking of which, it just got moved down to the house so the whole family can enjoy it. Things seem to work pretty solidly on it now. I do have a couple of code changes to make on the controller for adding multiple players, but working well otherwise.

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As an update, my wife was doing some re-arranging of the living room and decided that the Pinball cabinet looked nice enough she dedicated a corner of the living room for it, rather than being banned to the sun room. The grandson has started to get the hang of it and has his own step stool for standing on to play.
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The last couple of nights I've been adding some jukebox software to it to play all of our mp3's. I found some instructions for mapping the pinball keys to the software for navigation and song selection.
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I finished up the graphics last night, still working on a few other features. I have a Bluetooth receiver on order for our surround sound, so we can connect to it for playing music there and probably a receiver for our stereo for the pool area.
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I may end up getting a touch screen and building a separate jukebox, but figured I'd hold off and see how much we used it here first.
 
Man oh man now you took cool to a whole new level.

Teaching him young, will turn him into a pinball wizard. Lol

But that jukebox ...man i really like that perhaps even more than the pinball and boy i love pinball.

Darren you gotta be really happy with that project.
 
Hopefully I'll get back to the plunger on this project this next week. I've got a new PC to install in the cabinet, but it's getting really tight in there. I've actually considered stripping down some of the features and selling it and starting a new larger cabinet, but I think my wife has claimed it as part of the living room furniture. Of course if I can get $3,000 or more for it, I think she'd hold the door as it was carried out. ;)

I did find a good history of pinball documentary that covers the life of the game and how some of the features of it came about, a good watch, but view it full screen as it's a long one (60 minutes).

https://youtu.be/rVj6_g7rbcs
 
In my best Steve Urkel voice, "Did I dooo that?" :doh:

So last month I picked up a i7 Processor, Motherboard, and memory from a co-worker that was updating his gaming computer for $100. Way too good of a deal to pass up, so I jumped on it. It was going to go into the pinball cabinet to replace the Duo Core processor.

Unfortunately, the case wouldn't work due to the differences in power supplies and such, so I ended up finding another case that was of the correct width. Unfortunately I didn't check the height and had a very tight fit getting the monitor cables for the back box monitor ran to the back of the computer. I needed about 1/4" of space to make it work, so adjusted my monitor brackets for the play field monitor.

Had wires routed, all worked well, then I moved the cabinet back into it's place against the wall. As I did so, the computer case, which is on drawer glides slid back, which also turns out was supporting the front half of the monitor. As the front half of the monitor moved downward, the back half was wedged between the back trim and support, doing a fulcrum type of movement, cracking the screen from the left corner out! :eek:
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I did figure out a better way to mount the computer case, giving me about an inch of clearance, and moved the monitor mounts back where it won't bind again, but will now have to pickup a replacement monitor. Unfortunately it's a very specific size and have to buy the same monitor again to avoid further modifications to the cabinet, but have located one of the same model and will pick it up later today.
 
Man oh man i feel your pain, bad words said on your behalf too. Rest assured you not alone with luck like that. I have way too many a time pushed mine and come unstuck.

Take comfort i the fact that doing anything involves risk and judgement. The safe way would be just being a veg and doing nothing. The exciting way is pushing your luck and living trying to do things. I cannot imagine not being able to do things.
 
A cousin posted this pic of my great grandparents cafe. I posted the pic on a pinball fb page to find out what pinball table it was, and someone came back with the name of the table based on the side panel artwork.
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It’s the 1948 Gottlieb Barnacle Bill table (https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=176). Also, based on the fact my great uncle in the background still has his hand, which he lost in a farming accident in 1948, it was a brand new pinball table at that time.

My great grand father, which is in the picture, took over the cafe which he worked at as a young man. He ran the cafe until his death in 1972. I also have a pic of the front of the cafe in business in about 1920 under the previous owners name.
 
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