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Episode 374 - Multi-Bingo Hardware Issues and 1952 Bally Miss California

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·32m 1s·analyzed·Jul 14, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Multi-Bingo hardware issues resolved; 13 games playable; Miss California (1952) featured.

Summary

Nick Baldridge reports significant progress on his Multi-Bingo custom pinball project, detailing complex hardware challenges involving relay control, ball-counting logic, and switch configuration. He successfully wired and tested the system, now running 13 games including Bright Lights and Broadway 51, and is implementing additional games like Stock Market. He also introduces Bally's Miss California (1952), a regional variant of Atlantic City without the extra ball feature.

Key Claims

  • All 13 games are complete in the Multi-Bingo system, though not all have been tested yet

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge, early in episode discussing Multi-Bingo progress

  • The P3 Rock has an 8-bit pulse width limit of 255 milliseconds, which is insufficient for relay control

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining technical constraints of P3 Rock coil pulsing

  • Trough switch number 8 in the system is wired directly to the lifter motor and doesn't run to the Jones plugs

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge detailing wiring challenges with the lifter system

  • Miss California (1952) is a rethemed Atlantic City without the extra ball feature, apparently due to regional gambling regulations

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge introducing the featured game, Miss California

  • Bally added extra balls starting with Coney Island, allowing up to three additional balls if the player paid extra

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining evolution of bingo game features

Notable Quotes

  • “I am now playing full games on the MultiBingo. So I am, needless to say, very excited about that.”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:00:30 — Marks major milestone in Multi-Bingo project—system is now functional for gameplay testing

  • “The P3 rock, by default, will pulse coils for one millisecond. and while this is way more than sufficient for something like a knocker when you get to something like a relay that has to be active for a few seconds at a time that's not quite so good”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:05:00 — Identifies core technical constraint driving hardware redesign decisions

  • “The EM bingos had a lifter override button. This is a button directly below the shooter rod that you would push, and if somehow the timing was confused or something happened to prevent it from lifting one of your balls, then you could push this button to try and force it to do so.”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:18:00 — Explains historical EM design feature being replicated in custom system

  • “Don Hooker every single way that I possibly can they were so clever he was able to determine in hardware EM only how many balls were lifted and if the player was trying to cheat”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:20:00 — Acknowledges innovative design by legendary bingo engineer Don Hooker

  • “There nothing quite like the thrill of wiring up a game from scratch almost firing it up and playing There something about that thrill of creation, which is something that you don't get just from restoring a game”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:35:00 — Reflects on intrinsic motivation and satisfaction of building custom machines vs. restoration

  • “Atlantic City is a three-card bingo with corner scoring. Each of the cards can be doubled independently. And then on your first three coins, the center number of each card could be spotted randomly.”

    Nick Baldridge @ 00:50:00 — Details gameplay mechanics of Atlantic City/Miss California, explaining appeal to players

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonDon HookerpersonMulti-BingoproductP3 RockproductBright LightsgameBroadway 51gameConey IslandgameMiss CaliforniagameAtlantic City

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Multi-Bingo implements P3 Rock with custom switchboard and driver board architecture to control EM bingo playfields with DC coil drive and AC relay control, enabling playfield swapping

    high · Nick's detailed explanation of relay architecture, coil pulsing logic, and switch integration for ball-counting across multiple bingo games

  • ?

    product_concern: P3 Rock's 8-bit pulse width limit (255ms max) insufficient for relay control requiring seconds-long activation; workarounds include enable/disable methods and drive pattern specifications

    high · Nick describes pulse width constraint, consulting custom pinball forums, and iterating on solutions like enable coil and drive patterns

  • ?

    technical_challenge: Multi-Bingo uses only 5 of 8 available trough switches, creating blind spots for ball tracking; requires extended trough with additional switches for games like Miss Universe and future solid-state implementations

    high · Nick's extensive explanation of trough switch logic, dead switches, and planned hardware expansion for 20-hole and solid-state bingo games

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Nick is building a modular custom machine that functions as both a restoration platform and experimental game laboratory, enabling rapid implementation of rare and single-copy EM bingo games

    high · Multi-Bingo design goal to swap playfields; plans to implement rare games like Ticker Tape, High Flyer, Dixieland, and games where 'only one copy is known to exist'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Nick prioritizes replicating EM bingo logic faithfully in software, including timing-sensitive features like lifter override buttons and tilt penalty mechanics

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.096

0:00
what's that sound it's for amusement only the em and bingo pinball podcast welcome back to for amusement only this is nick baldridge a triumphant nick baldridge um things have progressed very well indeed i finished all the wiring for the multi bingo and turned it on.
0:28
And while it didn't work right away, there were a couple of adjustments to be made, a few wire corrections that needed to happen, I am now playing full games on the MultiBingo. So I am, needless to say, very excited about that. Right now I have all 13 of the games complete in the system, but not all 13 tested.
0:56
So, if you'll recall, the goal was to create a pinball machine that used an EM bingo cabinet and bingo pinball playfield, but would use a P3 rock, multiple switchboards and driver boards as necessary, and a computer to control it all. And the idea is that you'd be able to swap out play fields to play any bingo created by Bally, United, Williams, Keeney, etc. So I am one step closer to that reality.
1:36
When I actually turned the power on and started testing the games, the first one I tested was Bright Lights. And what I found was happening, I have relays which allow the 50 volts AC to be driven by this DC system. So all of the coils and lamps are actually wired up via DC now, rather than AC from before, when it was purely EM. But the motors being AC, you can't drive those with DC. So I had to have relays wired up, which would take the 50 volts AC, which is generated on the transformer, and push it only when the relay is active.
2:25
game
Stock Marketgame
Silver Sailsgame
Miss Universegame
Spotlightgame
Palm Beachgame
Light Aligngame
Ticker Tapegame
High Flyergame
Dixielandgame
For Amusement Onlyorganization

high · Detailed discussion of ball count timing, lifter override implementation, tilt penalties, and acknowledgment of Don Hooker's clever EM design decisions

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Multi-Bingo exhibits scoring glitch when multiple winners occur simultaneously; requires additional code refinement to pause searching during winner increment (as EM machines do)

    high · Nick describes occasional missing or incorrect scores when two cards win at same time; acknowledges issue and indicates it's fixable with additional work

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Bally's Miss California (1952) is a West Coast retheme of Atlantic City with extra ball feature removed, likely due to regional gambling regulations in California

    high · Nick identifies Miss California as identical to Atlantic City except for theme and removed extra ball feature, speculates on regulatory basis for variant

  • ?

    game_history: Bally's EM bingo machines evolved from early ball-count units to more reliable trough switch systems; extra balls introduced in Coney Island era as paid feature

    high · Nick's chronological explanation of ball-count mechanisms from early games through Palm Springs/Palm Beach generation to later extra-ball variants

  • ?

    product_launch: Nick is methodically implementing additional games on Multi-Bingo: Stock Market (1970s 6-card) next, followed by Ticker Tape, High Flyer, Dixieland, and rare single-copy games

    high · Nick outlines implementation roadmap; Stock Market chosen for its player-controlled collect and double-or-nothing mechanics; rare games included to democratize access

  • ?

    community_signal: Nick consulted custom pinball development forums and community for P3 Rock pulse-width solutions, receiving multiple technical suggestions

    high · Nick describes asking custom pinball forums about relay control, receiving suggestions to enable coils, use drive patterns, and expand pulse width

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Nick's enthusiasm escalates as Multi-Bingo progresses from wiring phase to playable games; expresses heightened excitement about artwork, future games, and creative potential

    high · Progression from initial 'triumphant' tone to 'very excited' about 13 games, then escalating to 'having a blast' and 'highly recommend' custom building

    • The P3 rock, by default, will pulse coils for one millisecond. and while this is way more than sufficient for something like a knocker when you get to something like a relay that has to be active for a few seconds at a time that's not quite so good so i ended up playing around with the pulse width uh when you pass a pulse call to a coil you can specify how long it should pulse but the maximum pulse length is 255 milliseconds, so it's an 8-bit pulse. And the problem is, 255 milliseconds is about a quarter of a second.
    3:11
    So, if I were to chain multiple pulses, the problem is that the game wouldn't execute them that way.
    3:22
    And so, I had to figure out something different. And I turned to the custom pinball folks. there is a development channel and the custom pinball forums as well and I just asked the question what do you think I should do? I have to turn this thing on for a couple seconds at a time and I was given a couple different responses one was to enable the coil and when you enable the coil the P3 Rock will just keep it on until you tell it to disable.
    4:03
    Well, the issue with this is that, of course, you can burn your relay if your code doesn't disable it. And so I liked the added safety of pulse, but I wanted to be able to expand the pulse width to something much larger than 8 bits.
    4:23
    I was dissuaded from doing that. But another suggestion that they gave was to specify a pattern or a drive pattern that would keep it on for a specific amount of time. There's a separate method that you can use to drive lamps, which are just fancy coils.
    4:47
    And I tried this, and I couldn't quite get the desired result. See, my goal was to use a minimal amount of switches. And even though that was my goal, I still had wired up about 70 switches.
    5:04
    So, you know, you can tell from that description, it's fairly complex. I mean, that's a pretty big harness running to those switchboards.
    5:15
    So I needed to make sure that any switch that I added to the system was indeed crucial. Otherwise, it's going to add to the complexity needlessly. And what I was hoping is that if I can time, if I know that the shutter is open and the balls are dropping,
    5:36
    then what I can do is measure the time that it takes for that relay to be active for the shutter to close fully. Well, I couldn't think of a way to do that and get reliable results. So what I ended up doing was wiring up another switch. This is the motor run-out switch. So it's one of the switches which changes state every time the motor completes half of a revolution, in this case.
    6:07
    So when it opens fully, that switch closes. When it closes fully, that switch also closes. So in this way, I can measure that along with the state of the shutter switch that tells when the shutter is fully open and determine exactly what position the shutter is in.
    6:31
    So that takes care of that. Then I had the lifter to contend with, and the lifter was much more problematic.
    6:40
    I'm not using all of the trough switches. trough switch number 8 is essentially wired directly to the lifter motor.
    6:50
    And the issue was it didn't run to the Jones plugs at all. And at the time, when I first started this wiring, my plan was to use the existing wiring exactly as is. So with as few modifications as possible, I would be able to run this system and swap in playfields without having to do a whole lot of rewiring for each. I realize now that that was absolutely foolish. I assumed that Bally's wiring didn't change all that much.
    7:27
    If you think about it, you have a similar number of switches per playfield. Even if you've never seen a bingo, just know you've got a shooter lane switch, You've got a gate switch as soon as it comes out of the ball gate. You've got 25 holes or 20 holes or 18 holes or 24 holes or whatever it is. The number of holes on the play field And then you got trough switches You may or may not have rollover switches You may or may not have other switches which indicate certain other things But you always have your holes, your shooter lane switch, and your gate switch. You can always count on those things. So, again, conservation of switches was key.
    8:25
    but I wasn't able to count the balls in the same way that the bingo did, because I didn't have trough switch number eight. Now, the trough that I'm using comes from a Silver Sails, and Silver Sails is a Magic Screen game, and it has eight balls, so, you know, that fits the template perfectly for pretty much every bingo. You know, you have somewhere between five and eight balls. well that's not a problem I can measure all that but what is a problem is that I don't know exactly how many balls have been lifted I can look at how many balls are in holes but that actually doesn't tell me the whole story because a ball could be in play and I don't know if it's time to lift another one or not and so what I need to do is keep track of the final trough switch before number eight, and that's trough switch number five, and just watch for the state of that to change.
    9:35
    Now, what happens is that I'll actually tick up the ball count any time a ball leaves the ball gate,
    9:44
    and that is pretty straightforward. So a ball is lifted to the shooter lane, and it does not immediately tick up the ball count. Now, the reason for this is that if I were to increase the ball count at the time that that ball was lifted,
    10:04
    which is how the game actually functions, then I would be in trouble for games where I needed to... When I say the game actually functions, I mean the EM bingos. That's how they function. One of the switches on the lifter motor actually increments the timer. But if I were to do it in that fashion, I would be in trouble, because when ball four is shot, that's when the game is supposed to start looking for replays, looking for winners.
    10:42
    And if it did it when the ball was lifted, that would throw the whole timing off. it would mean that you would have a little bit of extra time in order to get your winner scored before shooting. And that's crucial, because in a bingo, time matters. If you do things out of order or too quickly, that means that there's no penalty or reduced penalty for tilting, which is death. I mean, it's important that tilt does exactly what you think it should. it should end your game. So I have to be very careful about ball count. So the way I'm doing it is actually kind of tricky, and we'll see if it holds up in these later games. Right now I've tested Bright Lights and Broadway 51, both of which are incredibly early games. I've also tested Coney Island, but not super thoroughly. So it's holding up for that, and I'll talk about how I had to extend the ball count here after I, you know, finally get through how it works in general. Okay, so ball number one is lifted and then shot. The ball count increments to one and it lifts number two. Now the lifter knows to stop when the ball hits the shooter lane. This means that the lifter doesn't stop when the ball lands in trough switch number one. at first I was going to do that but I'm running into timing issues just because the relay is told to stop holding doesn't mean that it actually releases right that absolute second because you've got mechanical nature kind of going on there as well as the computer controlled flow of current to that coil. So, um, I can't trust it, basically. So instead, what I do is I cut off the lifter motor as soon as the ball hits the shooter lane. Now, this is dangerous. I've run into a situation where there's a problem with this, but for the most part, it works really, really well.
    13:00
    Um, when the ball, the next ball is shot, it increments the ball count to number two, It lifts ball number three.
    13:10
    You shoot the next ball. It increments the ball count to four, but also it closes trough switch number five, which is normally closed.
    13:21
    At this point, after you shoot the ball, it increments the ball count to five. The final ball is lifted for bright lights or Broadway 51.
    13:33
    And trough switch number four closes. So in this way, I can watch trough switch number 5 for a change in state.
    13:44
    And because the P3 rock scan switches so quickly, it's 2 milliseconds, I'm actually able to determine the state change on trough switch number 5 and use that to determine if a ball has been returned. Now, if trough switch number 5 is still open, then that means it didn't lift all the balls. So, how do you handle this? Well, the EM bingos had a lifter override button. This is a button directly below the shooter rod that you would push, and if somehow the timing was confused or something happened to prevent it from lifting one of your balls, then you could push this button to try and force it to do so. now the bingos I just have to hand it to Don Hooker every single way that I possibly can they were so clever he was able to determine in hardware EM only how many balls were lifted and if the player was trying to cheat if you're trying to push that button and you don't deserve it then the game won't lift it for you it's very impressive. So I'm doing the same thing with the computer. It's not as impressive, you know, because I'm actually keeping track of the state of the game in a much more concrete way. You know, I'm able, I can implement all kinds of checks based on the balls on the play field, as I say, that Don Hooker was not able to do, at least with the number of switches that he had implemented. Now, he could have done something slightly different, but honestly, it's almost absolute perfection, what he did. So, the ball count and the lifter are entwined.
    15:45
    And in the earliest bingos, there was a ball count unit. And when the ball went through the ball return it would actually step the unit down which would tell the game to lift another ball But later on around Palm Beach or Palm Springs one of the Palm games
    16:05
    Bally implemented trough switches. And these were a much more reliable way to do ball count and ball lifting. It was also cheaper. So again, the issue that I have is that I don't have eight trough switches. I only have five, which are active at any given time. So this means that I'm already blindsided. I don't know anything about the game other than if more than three balls are lifted, I know that for sure. But if two balls are lifted, I don't really have any idea. They can both be shot at the same time, you know, bouncing off of posts or pins or other balls, and I have no idea. You can't measure that. It's rolling. So,
    17:03
    this is tricky, and doing ball returns is very tricky, but I think I have a pretty appropriate solution. So what I've done is I've implemented what's essentially a mode. It's not really a mode in PyPyRock game. It's a function that executes every millisecond. And what it does is it checks the lifter status. Should I be lifting a ball? Hey, should I be lifting a ball now? How about now? How about now? So I've programmed it so that it knows, and it will either lift the ball or it won't. And the lift or override switch works exactly the same as it would in an EM bingo, and it knows, hey, there's not a ball in the shooter lane. My ball count is not incremented to five. Yeah, I can go ahead and lift it.
    18:01
    Now, what's fascinating is in a situation where I've confused the ball counter and I've had to use the manual override,
    18:11
    in some instances, the game will figure it out. And in some instances, it won't. And that's the same thing that happens to EM bingos, too. So it's kind of fascinating.
    18:24
    But where I'm going with this is later games get much more complicated. Starting with Coney Island, Bally added extra balls. And with this feature, you could get up to three additional balls if you paid additional money. Well, the problem with this is that I have to lift all five balls. You always get those.
    18:48
    But if you want additional balls, not only do I have to check the portioning, and if the portioning functions return that, yes, in fact, I should step up the extra ball unit, I have to check the position of the extra ball unit to know, oh, I need to lift another ball, and then do so.
    19:14
    It's much trickier than it sounds, and I think I have a good implementation now. One issue that I have is that trough switch number four is dead. I had to rewire several switches in the end to get them working.
    19:34
    The switches would have continuity all the way to the Jones plug and all the way to the board, but when they changed state, it wouldn't actually change state. And what that tells me is that there's another switch somewhere in between, be it in the shutter switches, the shutter motor switches, or the lifter motor switches, that's preventing it from working. So I ended up rewiring trough switch number one. When I did that, trough switch number four ended up dying. So those were connected in some way, and now in order to fix that, I'll have to run new wires to trough switch number four, which I'll end up doing at some point here, because for extra ball games, the first extra ball can't be lifted automatically because it doesn't know that trough switch number four has changed state.
    20:36
    That's a bit of a problem. But longer term, another issue that I have is that later games... well, let's take Miss Universe, for example.
    20:52
    Miss Universe is a three-ball game. Well, I don't know how many balls have been lifted until the fourth ball has been lifted. I don't know anything about it other than that. So what I'm going to have to do is extend my trough so that it has additional switches. And if one day I decide to implement some solid state style bingos, which have up to 10 balls, then I'll need to add additional trough switches anyway.
    21:24
    But I'm thinking, because 20-hole bingos had more trough switches, I believe at least one more trough switch, I may be able to get away with using one of those. so I'll have to find a 20 hole parts game with a usable trough but aside from that the game is working very well indeed and that is way down the line so all that said, I backported all these hardware fixes to all the other games and now what I'm doing is working on a new game. And this new game is Bally's Stock Market. This is a 1970s Bally 6 card, and the reason I chose this game is because cards are not awarded on a random basis. There's only one additional feature to contend with, and that is corner scoring, which I already have an implementation of in both Spotlight and Palm Beach.
    22:32
    And the randomization is not quite as hairy as something like Light Align. Now, what is different about it is that this is the first game that I'll have implemented that uses a player-controlled collect scheme. It's the first six card I'll have implemented with player-controlled double or nothing.
    22:56
    And that is controlled by the randomization functions for the game. So I'm working on the implementation for that, and that's going very well indeed. I'm very excited.
    23:11
    I'm starting to get more and more excited about the potential for this game. There are things that I want to try and things that I want to do, which I wouldn't be able to do with an EM game. when I'm restoring a single game there is a definite end to it but for this there are many exciting twists and turns that I can take long diversions if I want to and it's all within the bounds of possibility so it's very exciting and I'm just having a blast I've restored a bunch of games I fixed a whole lot more But there nothing quite like the thrill of wiring up a game from scratch almost firing it up and playing There something about that thrill of creation, which is something that you don't get just from restoring a game, But if you have the ability, the facility, to make your own, I highly, highly recommend it.
    24:27
    And though I am not actually making my own games here, I am doing everything but. And it is a whole lot of work, but there's a whole lot of satisfaction at the end. been playing the heck out of Bright Lights and Broadway 51 and I like it quite well indeed now I do have a race condition in my scoring functions if you have more than one winner at a time say a winner on two cards at the same time those score independently the way it works on an EM is that the searching is completely paused while it goes and ticks up the winner. I can't quite do that at the moment. I'm sure I could with additional tinkering. I just haven't quite gotten there yet. So what happens is occasionally it gets very confused and it will give you either too much or too little score. Sometimes it doesn't see a win at all, but this only happens again if you have multiple wins at the same time, and it has something to do with kind of the order of operations there.
    25:53
    So, stock market is next, and then that opens the door to games like ticker tape, one of which I have a physical copy of, so that'll be very easy to implement. and High Flyer Dixieland and even some games of which there are only one copy known to exist. So I'm very excited to work on some of those because there will be no other way that the vast majority of people will be able to even think about playing one of those.
    26:31
    So that's the progress. as you can tell, I'm fairly excited. And next time, I should have even more games complete. I'm starting to think about artwork, and that is a daunting task indeed, because what I would like to do is very, very complex. But it likely won't happen in quite that way. I think I'm going to have to tone down a bit of what I was initially planning to do, and then we'll see where I end up.
    27:09
    So, let's move on and talk about today's featured game. And that's a game that I didn't know existed until earlier this week.
    27:23
    And that's Bally's Miss California. Miss California was made in 1952 and yes, it's a bingo so what is Miss California? well, it's actually a rethemed Atlantic City is implemented in the multi-bingo but Miss California is not and Miss California is exactly the same game as Atlantic City, except it was themed for the West Coast Atlantic City is in New Jersey and they removed the extra ball feature so apparently in certain jurisdictions or maybe California in general gambling for an extra ball was illegal at the time and perhaps again it was just a particular area in California but otherwise the machine is identical to Atlantic City.
    28:28
    The back glass is screened. It's not scraped and repainted. And it does have the Bally name on it. And so I think that this may have been a limited run for a particular area that Bally did.
    28:44
    Pretty fascinating stuff. And one that I can implement in the multibingo very easily. And so I shall. Now Atlantic City is actually a fantastic player. It's a three-card bingo with corner scoring.
    29:03
    Each of the cards can be doubled independently. And then on your first three coins, the center number of each card could be spotted randomly.
    29:14
    Aside from this, if you input multiple coins beyond that, more numbers can be spotted, up to six in total.
    29:23
    And this makes the game crazy appealing from a play perspective, because if you have three cards with six numbers spotted on them, it's quite likely that you can put together a hit. Now, the game does tighten down with each additional spotted number, and it becomes more and more difficult for the game to award you a new spotted number, but it is really, really interesting. This one has been tweaked to work with the multi-bingo Atlantic City, that is, not Miss California, but I have not tested it yet, so I'm looking forward to testing it because the possibilities are actually quite nice from a play perspective.
    30:11
    So this game looks really cool, And I honestly like the removal of the extra ball feature on some of these games and like the six cards because it really makes you earn your hits in a way that the extra ball feature kind of takes away. Now, if you were playing this for money, of course, the extra ball is a big loser because the vast majority of the time you're getting nothing. but if you're playing it at home the extra ball feature, especially if you have your game on free play it's a little too easy to just keep pushing that button so this gives you a real challenge, I think so if you'd like to hear more about Atlantic City I've done an episode on that episode number 268 so check that out for more information but know that Atlantic City looks like a fantastic game and I hope to report on that next episode well thank you very much for listening my name again is Nick Baldridge you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingos line that's 724-BINGOS1 724-246-4671 you can listen to us on iTunes Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS on Facebook, on Twitter at Bingo Podcast you can follow me on Instagram also at Bingo Podcast you can listen to us on Google Play Music or you can listen to us on our website which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time