williams

All posts tagged williams

I went into the first update with quite a bit of momentum, but that was slowed down somewhat for this second update. As is often the case, life enjoys serving up a combination of things like family events, illness and work all at once to get in the way. What I’ve taken to doing though is breaking all the bigger tasks down into many smaller tasks (and breaking them down even further into more smaller tasks) that can be done independently. That way even if I only have 20 minutes in a day to make some progress, I can select a handful of small tasks to do which helps keep progress happening. In this update I’ll be focusing on the middle section of the playfield. There’s a number of assemblies on both sides to look at which should fill this update up pretty quickly. Both sides have large plastic moulds that help decorate the playfield and bring it to life. There are also a few ramps and rails that will need to be removed at this point as they will be in the way. Time to get in to it.

Dracula Pinball Repair
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Time for the final update on Corvette so I can get it back to its owner. At the end of the last update, I had removed everything from the pop bumper area and cleaned the playfield. The leaves just the upper left section of the playfield to strip and clean. This section is home to the engine. It’s an interesting feature as the engine revs during game play by rocking left and right. It’s used in a few different modes and also you can use the flipper buttons before launching the ball to have the game rev the engine. Beside the engine is also the 3 ball lock. It’s normally covered by a large plastic engine piece, but I had removed that weeks ago so I get the rails and ramps off the playfield.

Corvette Pinball Repair
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For quite awhile now, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing my own home brew pinball project. The idea first crossed my mind around 4 years ago, but I didn’t give it much time. Thoughts about doing it came again and again since that time, each being stronger than the last. But again I had always pushed it off as building a machine from scratch is more work than I was willing to do. It was more work than I could even get my head around. What about extending something that already exists though? Now that was something I could start getting my head around. Enter Bride of Pinbot 2.0. Owning a BoP 2.0 allowed me to see just what was possible with extending an existing game and how it all hooked up hardware wise. I was impressed with what a platform like P-ROC could do and the fact it was all reversible, means the game can be switched back to stock configuration again. I don’t have a large collection of machines that I could choose from in order to do this project, but there was one in my line up that stood out the most. Pinbot.

Pinbot 2.0 Extended Project
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After all the work I’ve done to the cabinet and playfield, there was one part that still stood out as needing attention. The apron. It’s by no means terrible, as I’ve seen much (MUCH) worse. But it now stands out as being below standard when compared against everything else done to the game. So it’s time to give the apron a face lift. There were two options in front of me to consider for the face lift. The first is a set of black decals to keep it looking original. The second option (which was more appealing) is to go with a fancy set of 2.0 apron decals from Retro Refurbs. These are printed on a chrome style material and give a cool looking rainbow shine effect when light reflects off the surface. The perfect look for a 2.0 machine with this theme!

Bride of Pinbot Pinball Repair
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There are some things that remain on my pinball “to-do” list for quite awhile before I get around to them. Addressing the picture quality of my SWEP1 has been one of these things that I keep pushing back. In the current state, it’s not terrible and the game is very playable which is why I’ve considered it a low priority. But, I know it can be SO much better as much of the detail in the video and playfield animations is lost. The issue is the contrast. The contrast dial (which is responsible for the “white” level) is already at max and cannot be increased further. That’s where the small video amp board from Ultimarc comes in. This little board sits between the PC display output and the monitor, boosting the video signal. It’s available here, along with some additional information: http://www.ultimarc.com/vidamp.html

SWEP1 Pinball Repair
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