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All posts for the month November, 2018

It’s time for the third installment on the Batman Forever rebuild. I’ve been a little slower than I’d like getting this update posted, but it’s been a busy time of year (and getting busier as we race towards Christmas). Having worked through the lower playfield areas in previous updates, I’m now going to focus on the middle playfield sections. This area is home to an upper flipper, some stand up targets and also a 4 bank of drop targets. There is an orbit shot which I want to remove the parts from and clean too as the rails are attached under some of the middle playfield plastics – so it’s easier to deal with that now than have to remove plastics again to remove the orbit rails at a later time. To start with though, I’ll need to remove various rails and ramps to get access to the playfield parts below. I’ll start with the right side.

Batman Forever Pinball Repair
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Time for a quick update on the Batman Forever progress. For this post, I’ll be focusing just on the assemblies and parts that form the playfield area. In general the area is in pretty good shape. There are a couple of small mylar patches below where the ball exits the return rails that have helped protect against playfield damage where the ball lands. The playfield condition in the area is really nice, with a only few marks around the insert edges – but nothing anyone should worry about. The playfield surface needs a clean though to remove a layer of filth that has formed over the years. It’s not immediately visible to the eye, but when you run your fingers over the surface, you can feel it. The right slingshot has a small chip broken off the lower corner of the plastic, and the colours have faded somewhat on the left piece – but they are otherwise fine. Alright, let’s get to it.

Batman Forever Pinball Repair
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Something that has been on my to do list for the last 8 months is take a backup (drive mirror) of the hard drive in my Bride of Pinbot 2.0 machine. At the very heart of the 2.0 upgrade kit is a mini PC running Windows on a solid state drive (SSD). Solid state drives are very reliable, but like any computer – it’s at risk of failure over time. If your BoP 2.0 hard drive becomes corrupt or the drive dies – there’s no install CD to run and get it up again. The mini PC hardware can be replaced – but what’s on that drive can’t. Small SSD’s are cheap now (the one I purchased for this backup here was $35AU) and because it is just a Windows computer, you can mirror the drive with a full backup should some disaster occur. I thought I would put together this post for any other BoP 2.0 owners wanting to mirror their drive so it’s easy to restore if a new HDD / computer is needed. There’s a good video tutorial for backing up your BoP 2.0 on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLaBT30dpM&t=849s), which uses a different method to what I cover here. Both methods work though, so go with what you’re more comfortable with 🙂

Bride of Pinbot 2.0 Repair
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