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Episode-12-Gottlieb system 1 breakdown part 2 Dave Humphrey of ni-wumpf

THE PINBALL RESTORER’S PODCAST·podcast_episode·54m 35s·analyzed·Aug 28, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

David Humphrey traces Neewumph's origins from pinball restoration passion to pioneering aftermarket System 1 CPU boards.

Summary

David Humphrey of Neewumph recounts his journey from childhood fascination with fixing things to founding the first aftermarket CPU board company for Gottlieb System 1 pinball machines. He describes discovering pinball in the 1990s, accumulating System 1 machines, realizing the original chips were becoming extinct and unobtainable, and partnering with electrical engineer Pete to design and manufacture replacement Z80-based MPU boards starting in 1994-1995. The conversation covers his technical development process, early business formation, and deep appreciation for Gottlieb's artwork and game design philosophy.

Key Claims

  • Neewumph was the first company to enter the aftermarket board business for pinball in 1995

    high confidence · David Humphrey directly states this in the podcast, noting 'Neewumph just won in 1995. It was the first company to be in the aftermarket board business.'

  • Original Gottlieb System 1 LSI/Sparta chips became extinct by the 1990s with no replacement supply

    high confidence · Humphrey describes attempting to purchase a 1753 chip from Gottlieb's distributor for $95 and learning chips were critically scarce, driving the need for replacement boards

  • The original Gottlieb System 1 code was only 512 bytes

    high confidence · Humphrey directly states 'the code chip is 512 bytes of code. It's nothing. They had a whole game in 512 bytes of code.'

  • Neewumph sold approximately 50 boards in their first year of operation

    medium confidence · Humphrey states 'we did sell a lot of boards. We sold, I think, I don't know, 50 boards in a year.' The uncertainty ('I think, I don't know') lowers confidence.

  • Steve Young (Gottlieb) required Neewumph to not use original Gottlieb PROM code and instead write games from scratch

    high confidence · Humphrey recounts conversation with Steve Young: 'You're not going to use the PROMs? I said, no... Well, I could use the damn thing, so if you do it, I'll buy it. You can't use Gottlieb stuff.'

  • Humphrey had written 300,000-400,000 lines of code for a Dungeons and Dragons game by 1993

    medium confidence · Humphrey mentions 'I'd written 300,000, 40,000 lines of code for this Dungeons game I'd written' with slightly unclear phrasing that could indicate either figure

  • Gordon Morrison was a contracted artist for Gottlieb who was approved by Marvel for licensed titles like Amazing Spider-Man

    high confidence · Host confirms 'Gordon Morrison, he actually wasn't in the building. He actually was contracted for Gottlieb' and 'he was trusted by the Marvel artists to do... they approved of his artwork'

Notable Quotes

  • “You can buy these things? I thought there were some magical, you know, you're young, you know about how the world runs. and I still don't.”

    David Humphrey @ early in childhood narrative — Establishes Humphrey's innocent discovery of pinball machines as purchasable items, a formative moment in his journey

  • “I just wanted to work on them... the satisfaction of while you work all this time you overcome all these challenges and look it's done and you can play it that's the best part”

    David Humphrey @ mid-interview — Core motivation for restoration work — the challenge and playability reward, not profit

  • “I said, what do you mean one chip? He goes, there are these chips called PAL chips, program array logic... I said, whoa, I don't like that idea at all. That's just like vapor.”

    David Humphrey @ board design section — Documents the technical learning curve and skepticism during the Z80 board design process

  • “Pete, let's name the company Tycon, T-I-K-O-N... But Dave, the lawyer says we have to have two or three different other names in case the first one's taken.”

    David Humphrey (recounting conversation with Pete) @ company naming section — Shows the origin of the Neewumph name through a legal/trademark issue; the lawyer rejected Tycon and selected Neewumph instead

  • “I really don't want that i love i love the artwork can't have that happening”

    David Humphrey @ motivation for creating replacement boards — Highlights the emotional driver — preserving the aesthetic/artistic legacy of Gottlieb games rather than profit

  • “Well, I could use the damn thing, so if you do it, I'll buy it. You can't use Gottlieb stuff.”

    Steve Young (Gottlieb, quoted by Humphrey) @ licensing discussion — Key constraint that shaped Neewumph's business model: must write new code from scratch, cannot reverse-engineer original ROMs

  • “I said, oh, I can fix this. So I did. I replaced the 5101. Even then, it was hard finding those chips.”

    David Humphrey — Documents the chip scarcity problem that would eventually drive the creation of replacement boards

Entities

David HumphreypersonNeewumphcompanyPetepersonSteve YoungpersonGordon MorrisonpersonAlanpersonGottliebcompany

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Neewumph's founding (1995) directly driven by extinction of original Gottlieb System 1 LSI/Sparta chips; Humphrey and Pete developed replacement Z80-based CPU boards to preserve games rather than see them scrapped

    high · Humphrey discovered $95 price for single 1753 chip made restoration economically unsustainable; realized 'epic games were not long for the world' and decided to design replacement boards

  • ?

    design_innovation: Neewumph boards used PAL (Programmable Array Logic) chips to compress multiple TTL logic layers into single chips, enabling self-test menu with alphanumeric display capability — a technical innovation that improved troubleshooting

    high · Pete introduced PAL chip concept; first board design used five PAL chips to replace multiple TTL layers; enabled character graphics and self-test menu display

  • ?

    product_strategy: Steve Young (Gottlieb) required Neewumph to write all game code from scratch rather than use original Gottlieb PROMs; this shaped Neewumph's business model as a code-writing operation rather than PROM duplication service

    high · Humphrey recounts: 'You're not going to use the PROMs? I said, no... Well, I could use the damn thing, so if you do it, I'll buy it. You can't use Gottlieb stuff.'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Neewumph (1995) was the first company to enter the aftermarket pinball board replacement business; established template for others to follow

    high · Humphrey explicitly states 'Neewumph just won in 1995. It was the first company to be in the aftermarket board business. And we didn't know what we were doing. And, of course, no one else was there to show us.'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.164

0:00
You're looking at the total of the M.O.M.A. machine, my golly. You are in favor of the M.O.M.A. machine. Up right, you're looking at the Joker poker M.O.M.A. machine, my golly. Probably 1980s. Morning.
0:18
Morning. The only thing worse than a multi-universe mishap is a two-part episode listening to the city talk about M.O.M.A. Welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast.
0:36
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Lestrude, and welcome back to part two of the Gottlieb System 1 breakdown. Side note, just a correction. I referenced Classic Arcades a lot in the last episode, and I actually meant to say it was Pinball Parts off of eBay. That company also has a website, and they sell to Marcos. They're the ones who make those plastic sets for most of these games. So my apologies on that. So I just want to get the correct information out there. And, you know, here we are moving forward. And, yes, I can be corrected. I'm not trying to talk out of my butt. It happens sometimes. But here we are into part two where we are featuring David Humphrey, the creator of the company, Neewumph, that manufactures the replacement MPU and driver board for Gottlieb System 1s. He was going to give a little background about how he got into the hobby. The fact that those spider chips on that board were extinct in the 90s were extinct. So when I say like the better part of three decades of extinction, yes, that is true. So without further ado, Mr. David Humphrey. Pardon, folks. Got to do a little shilling and grilling before we get into this. So a word from the companies I prop up. I heard he got it from Shea. Shea Arcade Group, your hard-to-find backlash reproduction specialist, featuring titles from Gottlieb, Valley, Williams, Chicago Coin, and Genco. Traditional and modern reproduction techniques and results of the highest quality. Find out more at SheaArcadeGroup.com. Pinside. Pinside, the largest pinball community on the Internet. Whether you own 60 games or half of one, join and start connecting to fellow pinheads, browse the marketplace, repair forums, game database, rank yourself against other players, and stay on top of the latest news in pinball all at Pinside.com. Crazy to follow news. Wolfpack Technologies, featuring DIY LED display kits for Bally, Stern, Williams, Data East, and Gottlieb. Easy to follow instructions and designed with the novice solderer in mind. Find out more at WolfpackTech.com.

Stan Lee owned a Gottlieb Amazing Spider-Man pinball machine and kept it in his office until late in life

medium confidence · Host states 'Stan Lee, a guy had that machine, and he had it in his office until kind of his final days around, with his formal involvement in Marvel' — sourced from host, not primary confirmation

@ early restoration work

  • “The logic was simple... I wonder if I could do that. so I put through the software just a mental challenge”

    David Humphrey @ decision to write System 1 replacement code — Reveals the intellectual challenge as primary motivation, not market opportunity

  • “Gottlieb... They came up with the pop-bumpers and all this and the flippers and all of that. So I always loved the Gottlieb stuff”

    David Humphrey @ game design philosophy discussion — Articulates preference for Gottlieb's innovative design approach over Bally's perceived 'cookie-cutter operation'

  • “There's the collecting bug and then the vending bug... There's a third bug, which is you're addicted to the challenge of bringing it back.”

    Matt Lestrude (host, paraphrasing Todd Tucky) @ restoration motivation discussion — Identifies the 'restoration bug' as distinct from collecting/operating motivations — resonates with Humphrey's stated drive

    • Bally
    company
    Williamscompany
    Gottlieb System 1product
    Pinball Restorers Podcastorganization
    Matt Lestrudeperson
    Shea Arcade Groupcompany
    Sinbadproduct
    Stan Leeperson
    Paul Farrarperson
    Greg Ferrerperson
    Black Holeproduct
    Close Encounters of the Third Kindproduct
    Amazing Spider-Manproduct
    Z80product
    Monty Python and the Holy Grailproduct
    Lucky Handproduct
    Pinball Partscompany

    personnel_signal: Humphrey's trajectory from 1970s-era government systems design (Navy acoustic research, supercomputer sales, chip design work) directly enabled technical capability for creating replacement boards; programming experience predated pinball involvement

    high · Humphrey describes Masters degree, 14-year-old programming on IBM 360, COBOL training, 300,000+ lines of code written for arcade game before pinball project

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Humphrey expresses strong aesthetic and design preference for Gottlieb's innovative approach (pop-bumpers, flippers, varied rule sets) versus Bally's perceived 'cookie-cutter operation' despite both manufacturers' quality

    high · Humphrey: 'I like Gottlieb better... Bally had a pretty cookie-cutter operation... Gottlieb... They came up with the pop-bumpers and all this and the flippers and all of that'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Humphrey identifies as restoration/challenge-driven rather than collector-driven; sells restored machines after completion (e.g., Sinbad to friend for 20-year use); motivated by artwork preservation and playability achievement rather than ownership

    high · Humphrey: 'I had no interest in in collecting and i had no interest in in selling it i just wanted to work on them... the best part you can play it and i wouldn't play it for maybe a week before i put it you know and stand it back up and go away'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Steve Young maintains strict quality control over Gottlieb artwork reproductions through Shea Arcade Group; requires advance approval of full production batches (10-20 pieces) before proceeding, preventing beta/iterative approach

    medium · Humphrey describes: 'you have to have it ready to go for the final approval... you have to make the number fluctuates between 10 and 20 pieces of something because they want to guarantee consistency'

  • ?

    community_signal: Humphrey describes restoration community as passion-driven rather than profit-motivated; mentions other restorers driven by 'love of the game or the love of the challenge' rather than money; basement gatherings of friends playing machines

    medium · Host states 'the guys I've met in this hobby are driven by passion of the love of the game or the love of the challenge'; Humphrey confirms: 'There is a money side to it, don't get me wrong, but the guys I've met in this hobby are driven by passion'

  • ?

    product_concern: By early 1990s, original Gottlieb System 1 LSI chips (Sparta chips, 5101 memory, 1753) were extinct or nearly impossible to source; single 1753 chip quoted at $95 (higher than cost of complete used game); created urgent need for replacement solutions

    high · Humphrey describes chip hunting: 'those LSI chips, the Sparta chips, there was no fixing... by about the umpteenth game... I had run out of spare parts'; $95 quote for single 1753 chip

  • ?

    technology_signal: Humphrey's greatest technical challenge during board development was synchronizing Z80 CPU boot sequence with power rise time and capacitor timing — required deep understanding of electrical timing and signal synchronization

    high · Humphrey: 'the biggest challenge I had faced yet, to get the frigging Z80 to start up... You've got to sync up the power rise time with this capacitor so that when the clock actually synced up with the rise, it had to hit a certain level'

    • 3:17
    personality traits and mine was to fix things you know I was when I was a kid I just think about everything and um most of the time they didn't go back together well you know those Timex watches just they're really small even though your kids hands are really small I think I maybe made one work out of three um but that's part of the personality that some people have and for pinball I think one of the things that that I never played pinball when I was a kid I didn't have any money putting a quarter or a dime into a pinball machine was not going to happen.
    3:51
    But my friends up the street from us, he was a doctor, and he brought home a pinball machine for his family. I think it was a Bailey Odd's and Evens. And I looked at this and said, oh, my God, you can buy these things? You know, I thought there were some magical, you know, you're young, you know about how the world runs. and I still don't. But in this case, back then I thought there was some kind of magical place these things went when they were decommissioned but didn't go to people's homes. And this was the first time that I'd ever seen a pinball machine in someone's home. And it was fun. I didn't go nuts. It was a good game, but I was impressed that you could do this. So fast forward.
    4:35
    Oh, well, a few years and I wound up in college. And yes, I think at that time I really loved it. It's still the Yams, in the Skeller we had Jacks to Open. Boy, I loved that game.
    4:49
    Actually, it was Lucky Hand. It was the out-of-ball version of Jacks to Open. I've actually played that. Great game. I've never found one. I've got a Jacks to Open, but I do not have a Lucky Hand. Not important. It was a good game. It was the one I would play with asteroids.
    5:06
    But my real interest back in college was playing foosball. and I wound up playing with this guy who was just incredible. And if it weren't for him, I would have never gone anywhere. This guy had come from Greece. And in Greece, if you run to Greece, they have foosball tables that are quite a bit larger than American foosball tables. They're about eight feet long. And the men are probably about nine inches tall and they're heavy. And you've got to have a hell of a wrist to play. And this guy played on defense and I played on offense. and we dominated the table for many miles around. We had guys coming in from Ohio to play us at foosball.
    5:45
    That was the only team. I mean, I say Ohio, the only team that actually beat us. I mean, we played all the guys from Albany. This is, you know, New York, so we did really well. And this guy, I played with him for two years, and he was a couple of years or so ahead of me in college, but he was so strong. He would play foosball, And I would say we snapped a rod on a foosball table about once a month, maybe every six weeks. Countless men would be, you know, snapped off. But he was extremely powerful, just powerful. And when he graduated, I finally calmed down and left college and had to run the working world. The same place that I'm working now, not the same place, I'm sorry, same idea that I'm working now. I design systems for the government.
    6:33
    in the Navy are doing acoustic research. And so I knew enough about programming. I went to college to get, you know, a robotics degree back in 1970. I don't know, I was one of the only people that were doing, you know, robotics with the Japanese. I don't know what I was taking. So I took my time. I graduated a couple of degrees and a master's and all this garbage. But really, it was just like playing. And so they put us in this top secret lab to design systems for the government. And I wrote up a bunch of systems. And from there, I'm trying to get to the pinball part. I apologize. It's a background in terms of technology. No, it's great. It's great. No, this is great.
    7:17
    It went from government secrets to pinball. This is the greatest story I think I've ever heard. No, no. Well, you know, it does give you an idea of, I've been, I think, at 14 years old. I was on an IBM Model 360.
    7:34
    They had offered to the Boy Scouts this Explorer post. You know, the Explorers are supposed to be the Boy Scouts, the groups that basically do wildly creative things. And these guys, some guys, some programmers at the Utica Mutual Insurance Company I decided, well, I'll start an explorer post for kids in high school to learn COBOL, of all things. Why you would teach a 14-year-old COBOL the most arcane language there is, we didn't join. And, of course, at this company, I also learned that some companies have game rooms, and this company had a shuffleboard game. them like wow there's a whole lot different than i i thought it was in high school uh but be as it so working on computers for a really long time and um went from labs down in connecticut to labs uh in boston you know cambridge mit uh mcligan lab sorry um and while i was at a uh where was working at this time uh this is like 1990. oh i guess i was still selling supercomputers working with a company that was selling supercomputers um then i stumbled across in a paper you know a thing called the one advertiser up here in new england um the ability to buy a pinball machine and uh it's like oh it flashed back to when i was in in school like wow i could try that I wanted $400 for a Sinbad System 1 game. And I went up to see the arcade operator who had the game. It was broken. Of course, the memory was gone.
    9:27
    Yeah, 50-101 was the shot. So I said, it's working fine. I'm okay, really. So I took it home, and of course, it wasn't working fine. But, you know, I was really enamored with Sinbad. It really was a great game. almost as good as that lucky hand. But I quickly figured out what was going on with the memory not being stored.
    9:54
    I'm like, oh, I can fix this. So I did. I replaced the 5101. Even then, it was hard finding those chips.
    10:05
    22-pin sockets. I wound up with, I think I still have like 222-pin sockets. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. But those which you put into to sock these old sea moss if you want to lunch. Fixed that and said, wow, this is great. Having fun. My friends liked it too. So I was, what do you call it, supported. Probably more like egged on is the right word for it. My friends came to the basement, drank tequila, and played pinball.
    10:39
    And I can't remember what my second game was. I think it was Cleopatra or something. And these are the games that were inexpensive, right? The first game was expensive, you know, $400 to me. And I quickly realized, well, you're an idiot. You overpaid for your first game. But you learned quickly. I think the next one was $125 for Cleopatra.
    10:58
    And then I came up to, I bought a couple of games. And I would say, you know, how people say you're hooked or you're addicted. certainly I would say that was the case for me but I didn't really care about the games I loved the artwork I loved just the pictures that these guys had put on these games I had collected comic books for a long long time and really just loved it so part of my restoration of the game was not so much electronics but certainly the ivory painted play fields and not the cabinets not the back glass but one of those play fields looking nice and got to the point where in two years, I think I put together a whole lot of games, but amongst them, 11 system-on games. Most of them came from this guy whose name slips my memory because it's the guy up in New England, the aardvark, Alan. Gosh, I've got to give Alan's last name.
    12:05
    I met Alan at his apartment, and he was overboard. I thought that having three or four games like I had was a little much, but Alan had stuff in his kitchen and in his bathroom just overflowing. He said, listen, I think I bought a game from him, and I bought about a dozen System One CPUs that were broken. Because at this time, after four or five games, I began to realize these boards break and they don't come back, right? Those LSI chips, the Sparta chips, there was no fixing. I was like, I figured out which ones were memory and which ones were program ROM chips and which ones were output chips and all that and the CPU and all that.
    12:52
    And learned how to, I actually got some sockets for the Sparta chips as well. So I had all, I had everything you could do to fix these boards. But after, you know, five or six games I had run out of spare parts. I met Alan and he supplied me a few more System 1 CPUs for scavenging parts. But it really came apparent by about the umpteenth game. And I would sell them. I gave my first Sinbad to my buddy down in Connecticut and we played that in his garage for 20 years.
    13:23
    It worked. And so I didn't keep them all, but I kept the ones that I really worked hard on, right? Because you're never going to get the money back from the amount of effort you put into repainting the play field and restoring the CPU and making everything work i had no interest in in collecting and i had no interest in in selling it i just wanted to work on them i just like you know the satisfaction of while you work all this time you overcome all these challenges and look it's done and you can play it that's the best part you can play it and i wouldn't play it for maybe a week before i put it you know and stand it back up and go away and move on to the next time um I think a lot of guys are like this. I don't think it's just me.
    14:05
    No, I've gotten to talk to, and I've been fortunate to talk to some of the other guys who fall into this. And you're right, the challenge, that has been the biggest.
    14:19
    I would say Todd Tucky once said there's two bugs. There's the collecting bug and then the vending bug. And he got a bit more on the operator side at one point. He had had his game rooms do pretty well. I would say there's a third bug, which is you're addicted to the challenge of bringing it back. And to your point, the best moment you have is when you take a dead-to-right game and it functions again. There is an absolute thrill. I mean, that's why I fell into this. That's why I fell into restoring games. and other people I know have too.
    15:01
    There is a money side to it, don't get me wrong, but the guys I've met in this hobby are driven by passion of the love of the game or the love of the challenge.
    15:14
    I'd have to agree on that. And I don't think the money was that big a deal back then. You have to remember these games, by the time I was smart enough to buy my second and third game, they were $50 games. at this point my buddy who I went to high school with was living in New Hampshire and he and I would cruise around and get video games as well because if you can restore the electronics on pinball machines well fixing a Defender board set is not a big deal or a Pac-Man board set I was a wizard of repairing those things but after I don't know how many games I think it was around 8 or 9 I realized that there was an end in sight. I called up Godley, their small business, or the distributor here was. I said, I need this chip, the 1753 chip.
    16:05
    Do you have it in stock? And they said, oh yeah, we've got one left. Grand. Fantastic. How much? $95 for a chip. I said, wow. I think I bought the game for $30. I don't think I could do that. So it was at that point that I realized at Epic Games were not long for the world. And I wasn't really sure what to do about it. But, you know, after not worrying too much about it and a few nights of drinking tequila, I was like, I thought I could write the logic on this because it really is very simple. So I sat down on my PC and this is when I, I think, in 93, by this time I had written my own arc a Dungeons and Dragons game at sea. It didn't do any graphics, but I'd got it on the internet and people gave me $10 for my... I'd written 300,000, 40,000 lines of code for this Dungeons game I'd written. So programming was not a problem.
    17:04
    Programming, so I put together this... How difficult would it be to stick a PC in a pinball machine? That was the limit of my brain. I didn't even think of the I.O. It was more like, okay.
    17:18
    The logic was simple. My challenge at this point was, if you look at the chip on a system on a game, the code chip is 512 bytes of code.
    17:34
    It's nothing. They had a whole game in 512 bytes of code. I'm looking at this and going, I wonder if I could do that. so I put through the software just a mental challenge and I showed it to a buddy of mine because he was one of the guys coming down to the basement to play games this time I think I had a flash did I have a sharpshooter too? I don't know, a bunch of games and I said Pete look at this, this is kind of cool but my question to you is you know how to design hardware can you make boards for this? I've never made boards. And he looked at me and said, yeah. Now, I should back up one step because Pete, at this point, he went through electrical engineering. I went to college for mechanical engineering. We both were in this, you know, school in upstate New York that I guess was a pretty good one.
    18:33
    And we, you know, we always sparred between science and intellect. And he said, Dave, I designed the inside of chips. you know he's a guy that does chip design he lays out path links within the chips and and you know we put together ibm chips hardware chips for ibm and he goes i you know i don't really do this kind of simple stuff um but i'll figure it out and then i'll go looking for the next share or whatever we can do to lay out a board and do the code and i said cool so didn't think too much about it and i wasn't really you know hell-bent on putting a pc into a pinball machine besides i've already figured out that i could probably code one up in 512 bytes that's cool enough and he said well if you know if you tell me what you want to design it with
    19:27
    i'll i'll lay it out and i said what do you mean design well what cpu do you want oh oh that's easy yeah a friend of mine used to think in the 70s and the 80s the coolest thing in the world is the 80. We'll use a Z80. All right, good. And that's when I started learning about how to get a Z80 to actually boot. You've got to sync up the power rise time with this capacitor so that when the clock actually synced up with the rise, it had to hit a certain level, and then you could reset the CPU. And that was the biggest challenge I had faced yet, to get the frigging Z80 to start up. So he went away. He said, okay, I'll design this simple PCB for the Z80 to make a board out of. It comes back to my house in the next party after we drain half the keg. Not just us two.
    20:20
    He's got this 4x4 breadboard with about two inches thick of brown wire soldered to chips. and he says, if you figured out how to program the code on an EEPROM,
    20:39
    I have the hardware ready for you. And I said, I have. I've got this MS-DOS hosted version of CPM and the CPM is based on the V80. And I'd learned how to code zero boot the firmware so that I could actually get it in a piece of chip, in a silicon and stick it on a board and have it run. of course didn't work. Nothing worked. All it was supposed to do was, you know, as the CPU is booted up, it was just supposed to flash an LED.
    21:10
    Okay, see if we can get past that. The rest of it's downhill. Nothing, nothing happened. So he, he takes it back that night and he digs through by hand this, this inch deep of brown wires, all the same color. He finds this, this wire that came loose. So I found it, and it came back the next party. And after twinkering and scoping, we really didn't have too much for electronics. I think I had a scope.
    21:40
    And we found what the code had to do, and sure enough, got the thing to blink. And at that point, I was like, ah, we can do it. Everything else is easy.
    21:48
    Advertising. Wow. So people need help figuring out what to buy, and then you help them? C.P.R. Classic Playfield Reproductions. your premier pinball hobby reproduction parts specialist, featuring playfield, plastic sets, and back-class reproductions from Valley Williams and more. High-quality recreation achieved through both modern and vintage manufacturing methods. Find out more at ClassicPlayFields.com. Aziz Light! Comet Pinball, the world's largest collection of pinball LED lighting, back box and playfield illumination, featuring star post lights, flashers, blinkers, non-ghosting, matrix kits, button illumination, flex skits, and much more at comicdimball.com. Now back to the show. So we started laying out. He did the whole board layout. And he came up and he told me these things that I didn't know or understand. He goes, you know, I can put all that TTL logic into one chip. I said, what do you mean one chip? He goes, there are these chips called PAL chips, program array logic. It's very similar to what I use in doing, you know, Gatorade logic for some of these chips we use for IBM.
    22:57
    And I can put into one PAL five or six TTL chips. I said, whoa, I don't like that idea at all. That's just like vapor. I can figure out what the thing is when it goes away. But he convinced me because I really am not a board designer. So we came up with our first board design, which had, I think, five PAL chips, which was basically compressing all these TTL logic layers for taking the control lines out of the CPU, the Z80, and then re-addressing to the select lines for either the EPROM or the memory, whatever, to feed the CPU the data that it needed. And then, of course, these PAL chips we talked about allowed me to – you asked the question about how did we come up with character graphics well we obviously had to do numbers but I had enough memory in these power chips to hit another line on the power chip and the line would toggle up and toggle down and the line basically said make the chip do normally digits output but if the line is active make it do alphanumerics and we only had enough memory to actually do I don't know six characters seven characters whatever group.
    24:15
    That was our first hardware boot up programmable array stuff so you could basically get into the self-test menu and it would say words on the screen.
    24:31
    It really helped troubleshooting the board so it was very necessary. To make a long story short, we got that done pretty quick. We got our first board and got it up. And in 94, I think, we had a board that could be used for this. And I was like, this is really cool. This is fun.
    24:53
    And Pete said, well, you know, we can sell them. And I said, we should, because I really love these games, and I don't want to be through it. I just, you know, I could, Alan, you know, Davidson, I think it's Alan Davidson. He's going to kill me for not remembering his last name. he was like you know these are just going to get thrown away uh some of the playthroughs are great but without a cpu it's just useless and i said well i really don't want that i love i love the artwork can't have that happening so i approached steve young and i said um what trouble would i get in if i were to you know put together a new cpu for these system one games and he said what are something I'm doing.
    25:33
    You know how it's even. I'm going to, you know, write up the games and code. Oh, you're not going to use the proms? I said, no.
    25:46
    I don't even know how to decode those 512-byte chips. I said, I'm just going to write it up, you know, from scratch. Well, I could use the damn thing, so if you do it, I'll buy it. You can't use Godly stuff. And I said, okay, good. Then we can, We formed a long friendship. I do love Steve and Gloria. It works for them.
    26:07
    And so I learned the rules, you know, got the, was very private with their code and stuff. And I was just playing around. It really wasn't anything. By 95, we had, you know, signed the deal to, you know, make a limited liability corporation. And Pete met me in the parking lot somewhere on 128th down in Boston. He was like, Dave, we need a name for the company.
    26:36
    I said, oh, great. We used to have a trivia team back in high school called the Infest Knights of Ni. Of course, the Knights of Ni in Monty Python. Our team, we played against the college, Hamilton College up in the hill.
    26:51
    The name of our team, Tycon. I said, Pete, let's name the company Tycon, T-I-K-O-N. Okay. Okay, okay. But Dave, the lawyer says we have to have two or three different other names in case the first one's taken. I said, Pete, no one knows the first name. He goes, no, that's what you told me, Dave. You gotta find other names. I said, all right, fine. And I we struggled to find two other names But Niewampf we are the knights who say Knee Pang and Kneewumph Kneewumph was the second And I can remember what the third one was So I signed that. I said, here, take this back to the lawyer. And the lawyer comes back and says, good, you're the new company, Kneewumph. And I said, what the fuck?
    27:34
    Oh, that's great. Pete, what did she tell you? Where did she get the idea? He goes, well, the name is too close to Nikon. I said, I've never seen business. So we have very different ways of running a company.
    27:50
    But, you know, we got this. So we wound up with Neewa, which never really bothered me. Except we can't, no one can spell it. And even we can't. Years after that, we got the manual, the, what do you call it, the script for the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie. And, of course, we spelled it wrong. I think Monty Python spelled it N-E-E-W-U-M. Oh, no. I think Nemo. So, who could tell? So, it didn't really.
    28:20
    So, okay. So, Nemo just won in 1995. It was the first company to be in the aftermarket board business. And we didn't know what we were doing. And, of course, no one else was there to show us. And a year after we released it, I was like, this is easy. I'm going to, you know, we did sell a lot of boards. We sold, I think, I don't know, 50 boards in a year. But that wasn't the point. The point was just have fun. And I met up with Dave, like you said, who did the ultimate. I said, Dave, I'm going to find you a Bally CPU also. He goes, well, it's okay. More the merrier. This is what I'm doing. And those guys make great, great hardware. The driver boards are just fantastic. And we never, actually, I did do the Bally board, the next revision. but that's a time for different interview.
    29:10
    So that's how I got started in pinballs, and it was just a mistake. Well, no, it's not a mistake. It was just fun, just the artwork.
    29:20
    And then, you know, the fact that I did love system ones. They were so simple. And yet the guys who designed these games, I think, put the effort into – Oh, yeah. And Chris Ian, and then Gordon Morrison, the artist.
    29:37
    They laid out the play fields just well, just in a way that was really entertaining. You know, Bally had a pretty cookie-cutter operation. If you play Playboy and Star Trek, they're all different, don't get me wrong.
    29:56
    But I don't know, I like God Leaves better. I think may have been shooting themselves in the feet repeatedly because they would do things different they put in what was it Pink Panther no no it was the other one James Bond you don't get to play a game based on five balls you just get a game to play some time you're going to keep playing until you run out of time you can earn more time and of course no one bought into that garbage but it was cool They would do all these different things. Of course, you know the Styrian story. They came up with the pop-upers and all this and the flippers and all of that.
    30:36
    So I always loved the Goblin stuff, and I had all the rest of the games, you know, Williams and Dali as well.
    30:44
    But the Goblins were the ones that we enjoyed. So that's how I got into it. Got a little bit of background in programming. Really loved the artwork.
    30:56
    And just didn't want to see him die. Just scrape it all off and start over. Outside Edge, creators of the Playfield Hardtop. Playfield artwork recreated and printed in reverse on a self-adhering polycarbonate sheet. This is not a vinyl overlay. This is a high-quality revitalization product that brings your faded, damaged, or planking Playfield to good as new. Laser-cut to fit and easy to install. A wide variety of games available for Bally Williams as well as Stern with a growing list of titles. Find out more at OutsideEdgeProducts.com. No, and that's a huge thing. And when you talk about the artwork, because Gordon Morrison, he actually wasn't in the building. He actually was contracted for Gottlieb. But when it came to their licensed titles, when they did like Amazing Spider-Man, And he was trusted by the Marvel artists to do, they approved of his artwork. And at the time, Stan Lee, a guy had that machine, and he had it in his office until kind of his final days around,
    32:10
    with his formal involvement in Marvel in his old age. And you're right. There are a lot of artists that have had very signature styles throughout their history in pinball. I can recognize a Greg Ferrer's piece. I can recognize a Paul Ferrer's piece. Oh, yeah. Oh, Paul is my favorite artist. He's just the most wonderful artist. Is he the one that did Barracora? I can't remember. No, that was someone else. But, yeah, these guys are just amazing artists. And I used to draw when I was a kid, and that, I think, was what got me going into looking at these pin moments. But, yeah, you're absolutely right. The artwork draws you in. And Gordon Morrison had a unique style because I see, like, certain games you could tell that were – he would go from the cartoonish, but when he ratcheted it up a notch, like with certain titles,
    33:07
    they would just look amazing. And when you look at back glasses, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, just the screening for all the mirroring, that all had to be done. I mean, like, you know, and modern companies struggle to recreate these cost-effectively.
    33:30
    And at that point, it would have been great to just be a fly on the wall and see the art production side of this. and well you can get to Steve Young's back room and you'll see it he's still got all of the three layers of the art so if you get a chance to interview him go back and look at some of these things I've got down below here I've got the design paperwork for Black Hole partly because I'm trying to figure out if there's an easier way to decode the chips to help me write the code for the Gotham System 80Bs.
    34:11
    I didn't get very far with that, but he's got everything. He's got from the day we started running errors to the so you have to get a chance to be able to, yeah, I think he's got the layers for the backlash as well.
    34:32
    And I do know that he's granted some licensure. Shea Arcade Group makes a bunch of these. And it is hard because he approves these products, and he's not difficult to work with. It's just that you kind of have to have – it's just like when you order from him. If you call him, you need a part number, and it's cash or check. And you have to send it to him first, and then he sends it back. and then so if you make a product for him and i have heard varying numbers and varying stories but it's consistent in one aspect you have to have it ready to go for the final approval like in other words like it's not a beta piece you hand him and then you get to come back and make 10 more 20 more you have to make the number fluctuates between 10 and 20 pieces of something because they want to guarantee consistency. And that's been the only real challenge with dealing with him. And that's not a bad thing. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. But, yeah, when you get him on the phone, he's not a bad guy at all. He is just very to the point.
    35:54
    He is. He's a good chance. Anyway, I'll stop there. Oh, yeah. um so okay so you made the driver board as well and thank you thanks and thanks again um i know that uh the pandemic was uh was kind of cruel in part supply oh jesus christ we're still not out of that uh we lost some of the distributors too uh kate i think no case well no case is gone anyway yeah pandemic really screwed up yeah it did um and k's um yeah and i'll put this in the news segment actually, K's Arcade, it came Todd Svek with Big Daddy Enterprises, he posted it, it's not official but official, K's Arcade is hung up and I was a little disheartened by that, but some guys if they can't get the stuff, the business can't keep going, and for some of these guys, they're retiring out I mean, there is a degree of that, you know, Steve Young's not getting any younger, just saying, you know, despite his name Oh my god, Steve, god he talked to us I think, what year is he, 2000 2022. I think it was 2003. It's been going a long time. He goes, Dave, if you want to take over the business, Gloria and I could hang up. And I said, Steve, I could never possibly do what you do.
    37:11
    There's just no way. And here it is. This is like 20 years later and he's still doing it. And I haven't tackled him to see what he would do to shift it to somebody else. But I don't know how he does it. I don't know. Keep going.
    37:29
    It's fueled by, well, most of these guys, it's fueled by coffee and stubbornness, but yes. Well, for Steve, yeah, I think that might be the case. Ah, yeah.
    37:41
    There are those guys. But so when you made all these and the features that you've added, because you said you've made these from scratch, when it came to the game rules and code, You did things like where if it doesn't detect a hit anything and just drained, it doesn't affect the number of balls. Well, the ball said, we've played all the games, right? We know how to ball with the ball said. We know what different manufacturers have put in the games that you really appreciate as a player.
    38:13
    So our first, in the 1995 version of the board, we were purists. I did not want to have anything different than what Gottlieb did. I did a few fixes, very minimal. There were three fixes, I think, for all the games. But it was, you know, very, for me, it was like I just, my goal had been, can I actually code this up in 512 bytes? And we did. Each of our games, I managed to code in 512 bytes of code.
    38:42
    And after, I think when we first released the board in 95, I think we had nine games coded. The Steam didn't even have the full complete product. I said, Steve, I'm not going to be able to make 16 boards. But if you want it, here you go. These nine games. I haven't got the other five games to code the board up with. I said, that's a problem. I'll just sell what we got. And then we finished off, I think, two years later, all of this system, 80 games.
    39:11
    And after that, it was some of the stuff we wanted. Obviously, I wanted free play. So free play went in right away. I think that was actually in the first release of the game, the board.
    39:27
    And then I wanted to be able to see the highest score to date, not just one of them. I wanted to see all four because Valley let you see all four of the highest scores to date. Gottlieb had one. That was it.
    39:40
    I felt that the fact that Valley could do, you know, a little forgiveness on the tilt based on the location, right? Every place you put a pinball in the game is a little bit different. So, you know, the one tilt you're out, you know, relies on the operator setting that plumb bob just the right depth.
    39:58
    So I like the idea of putting in, you know, an adjustable tilt. Okay, one tilt and you're out. That's great. But what if we let it be two or three and then tell the player you're screwing around? Some of these things came later, you know, on the next rev of the board. In 2000, I redesigned the board, you know. In five years, things had changed so dramatically. Z80s weren't even being made anymore.
    40:25
    And the 8279, which was an IO controller used in every keyboard back in the 80s, wasn't made, hadn't been made for 10 years. So I knew I had to redesign the board. And then Pascal had put a board out in France, which had a lot of different features. He had put these out like in 2000 or 1999, I can't remember when.
    40:45
    And he leapfrogged the technology that we had. He didn't, not only did he have, you know, alphanumerics for the self but he put a bunch of stuff in there So that great you great Now that I got more space on a new CPU with more memory
    41:02
    the sky's the limit. Grab the stuff that Williams did, Ballet did, the ability to do ball save. I love the fact that in some of the Ballets, if you press and hold the start button, you can just end the game and restart a new game. so put all this stuff into it that wasn't there before.
    41:29
    And with that music, folks, it is time for some news in the realm of pinball restoration, and I'm just going to cut to the chase and just get to the bad news first. One, Great Plains Electronics, his wife passed away, and that happened literally the day after I had announced on my show that, in my little news segment that he was taking a break or stepping back for a minute. Sadly, he has decided not to continue the business and to retire this business. It is being sold. It is for sale. Not necessarily sold, it's for sale. They will continue to operate until they are sold. They are just not ordering new inventory, but they will fulfill orders with what they have. So if you can get your order in, great. If you're looking into buying them, go ahead and contact. It's worth a shot. there's that also Big Daddy Enterprises Todd is taking a break but he says he will be back and I'm looking forward to that he said there's a multitude of factors and sometimes in your life you have to take a break even from your passions or your hobbies and just enjoy a little bit of the time so I'm hoping that he gets the break he deserves comes back refreshed and we get to go right back to repairing games based on his parts In the meantime, for both of these companies being taken out of the equation, I will have to say that your best options now are DigiKey and Mouser to get electronic components or to repair your games or to get connectors and make your games. Always be aware that Pinball Life and Marcos are also stocked in a lot of parts. So please just do a little bit of cross-referencing, reach out on the repair forums, as well as like a pin wiki. You should be okay. Now, into the positive end of things, CPR is back at it, making Black Knight after 14 years. It's now available, as well as The Six Million Dollar Man and Phantom of the Opera. So, that concludes Pinball News, and I'm back to the show.
    43:29
    And, you know, we added in things that I still haven't told people about. which is like in the last revision of the board, I think there's 16 system one games.
    43:42
    And seven of those in the current release of the new board have bluebirds in them. Bluebirds meaning when you achieve everything you can on the game, the board, if it's the game, will go into a bluebird mode. It'll start flashing. the flippers will go up and down if you're holding the flippers down they'll go up and down, the lights will flash and the game will say you're in wizard mode and then you are going to be forced to find something on the playfield that's flashing and then you have to hit it so it's a sequence of flashing lights in the playfield that you're going to hit and then you get this I think it was 50,000 points for wizard mode success but the first time I put this out it took I think nine months eleven months before someone called me the board's all fucked up and I said what do you mean I was playing this game I was doing great and all of a sudden it started to flash it put you to wizard on displays what the hell is going on like oh he found the bluebird so there's I haven't finished all the rest of the games some of the games really can't do that on, but the other ones were fun. A skill shot wizard mode is great. That is great because a lot of the Gottlieb games, because like, okay, for instance, I own a pinball pool. You know, that comes to, if you put it on five ball, the targets drop independently. If you put it on three ball, the corresponding target drops. Well, I can't imagine in a wizard mode, so I'm going to have to dig on this because I want it to be like, okay, how am I going to aim and hit a specific target? I'll have to look that one up. Pinball pool, is that one of them? Yeah, well, you also have to, of course, flip that hardware piece of wire into the play field when you switch from black ball to three ball.
    45:46
    Yes, yes, yes. And for anybody who doesn't know where that is, Todd Tuckey for TNT Amusements did show how to change the setting on pinball pool from 2003.
    45:58
    Important stuff. important stuff because if you've not got the manual you're in trouble um if you want the manual
    46:07
    if you want the manual steve young 20 bucks yep yep that's exactly it i've got all the manuals i'm pretty good i uh
    46:18
    i don't know if i answered all your questions so you had a couple lined up you know how did i get into it oh no you you've you've actually you've actually gotten through almost all of them um The only thing, too, is the one thing that I love that you did, and Pascal did this, too, was add the attract mode because Gottlieb System 1s didn't have one. They just flashed a score. That was it.
    46:41
    Well, Pascal, that was one of those Pascal beat me to. We put an attract mode in there. And I wasn't really sure if there was, if you go to the system, you learn pretty quickly there's an attract mode there. And some of those are pretty complex.
    46:56
    Like, what was it? Ice Fever. Ice Fever is a System 80A that I managed to finish up. And as I realized it, the attract mode is an extremely complex algorithm as to how things are being lit up. So it was Ice Fever that got me going into GLI-1. I'll do attract mode.
    47:18
    I'll have to have a simple, generic attract mode. And that's what went into the System 1 games, which was just lightning in every sequence.
    47:27
    But in the system 80s, there's a few, you know, the specialized attract mode that they put in that I really struggled to match with. It was fun. But Pascal definitely beat me to that. He came out that first.
    47:44
    And there are guys in the hobby. I have noticed that when it comes to flip products, which is Pascal supplies to them,
    47:53
    there are guys who are reluctant to order that product because it comes from overseas. and there are other products too. But it is nice in regards to on the state side because people, sometimes these original MPUs don't go bad. I still have a few that are completely functioning, but I have since retired them. I have already rebuilt the power supply. I have already fused the small transformer and I have already repinned the displays, all this stuff. Yep, so when the MPU dies, I just go to you and I buy another MPU and put it in. Yeah, I've got a collection of the old system ones, CPUs, too. I don't know what to do with it, but just like you. eBay.
    48:43
    Yeah, maybe so. With the parts supply, I should have sold them off. These poor guys didn't need them.
    48:50
    There's always somebody that's willing to get it. I have heard of a few guys that still have the test fixtures. and you're right, those spider chips I have seen what happens when those come up on eBay last time I looked at it they were $200 to get four of them wow, that's great that's cheaper than what Caldebon charged me for one I think it's because nobody knows what they know, unless you're dead set on repairing the original MPU you know like that when they know the other options are out there i think the price has fallen a little bit but now now i know that you are you're currently out of stock but you're going to be getting stuff in um and i i hope i hope that um everything tests out okay in that because i know that you've been facing that challenge i know that other people have been facing that challenge when receiving boards, populated boards from your suppliers because supply chains have hit everybody and pinball is definitely not exempt. New Sterns use the same chips that go on an F-150 and yes, they're the last on the waiting list of companies to get those chips.
    50:11
    It's just to give an example. All right, well, just to wrap it up, do you plan on doing any events? Are you going to go to pinball expo or anything like that um or do you do like the fantastic i haven't been to the expo yet and someday i'll probably go uh and i've just missed the last couple of you know events um logically i'm busy right i run the security for a large company and this is the in 2023 is the year of the breach you know there's just been attacks throughout the world attacks against you know so last few months i've been dealing with how to protect the telephone companies from a group in the uk trying to break into systems to do sim swaps to steal cryptocurrency so
    51:02
    they uh they've been going against my company who has a lot of um access to telco systems so they've been breaking into my system like jesus christ Well, as soon as things calm down, yes, I'll have some fun. But I basically missed all the shows this year.
    51:21
    I'm kind of a bummer. A lot of what was attractive during these shows was, like I said, what caught me on the list was just tinkering. There's nothing to take around. I'm not going to buy a $10,000 pinball machine.
    51:36
    That chip has passed. I'll buy a 20-hour display. So there's that. I need that. They're all guys. A bunch of stuff. I think I've still got, after the fire, I think I've still got 60 games that are in need of restoration. So when that time comes to unpack that, pull all the mouse droppings out of it, I'll probably have to start going back to the show to get parts.
    52:03
    But it'll be a while. That's when you run into Junk Jeff, Pinball Wizard, Mayfair. Yeah. Yep, I know all these guys. Mayfair is a distributor.
    52:17
    Todd, I think, is a poor guy. He used to look into boards. He doesn't distribute. He buys them for himself.
    52:23
    But yeah, I miss these guys. Todd and I used to go to auctions down in the East Atlantic Seaboard to buy out these warehouses full of... And we'd go run to each other. Now I could never have the pockets he's got because he's got a place to put these things. But yeah, a small lot, 10 games in a row.
    52:46
    Yeah, that thing has passed also. But those are the fun things to do, which is finding the diamond in the rough.
    52:55
    And then you're not gambling your retirement savings away on buying a pinball machine. And that's true of every hobby, right? If you were in the jukebox business back in the 70s, you could have bought a 10-15 without a problem. And of course, by the end of the 70s into the 80s, they were hen's teeth. It was very hard to find. And Pinball went through the same thing, which is, I think, just the way things are.
    53:27
    Cycles in favor, cycles out of favor. Yeah? I don't know. What will be the next arcade? I mean, all these video games that I would have been convinced you were never going to be a collector's market for it, and I was proven very wrong. I did lose my two Dragonsnare games. Those went up in smoke, but those were great games for a different reason.
    53:53
    Anyway, I think we've – well, I'll let you go, my friend. I'll let you go, and thank you. I'll get this out, and thank you, Dave Humphrey. I really appreciate the time. Take care.
    54:07
    Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes my interview with David Humphrey of Neowulf. And I hope that you guys all enjoyed. And I'm cranking out more episodes. Sorry about the delay. But I'm back at it. I'm going to keep doing this. And I can't wait to see you all at Pinball Expo. But until next time, keep it flippin'. This has been a Ruby Butt Production. Ruby, get out of the litter box!