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#106 Centaur re-examined. - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 38m·analyzed·Jul 18, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Classic Pinball Podcast discusses Centaur troubleshooting, relocation updates, and field service stories.

Summary

In this episode of The Classic Pinball Podcast, hosts George and Dr. Dave discuss troubleshooting a Centaur machine that has been experiencing recurring electrical gremlins. Dr. Dave had brought the machine to John Day (an electrical engineer) for diagnosis, resulting in successful fixes to the ball serve mechanism and multiball, though a trunk-up issue related to 5V/12V reset circuit problems persists. The hosts also share personal updates about George's relocation to Virginia, field service stories involving System 9 and electromechanical games, customer interactions, and reflections on the collector community.

Key Claims

  • The Centaur's ball serve mechanism and multiball now work flawlessly after John Day's repairs

    high confidence · Dr. Dave discussing ongoing Centaur repairs with John Day, stated: 'The orbs multiball works like it should 100% of the time, not 99% of the time.'

  • The Centaur's trunk-up failure is caused by a reset circuit voltage problem where 12V is actually reading 15V

    high confidence · John Day's technical diagnosis via email: 'the reset circuit fails to hold the 6802 chip in reset during power-up...I noticed that 12 volts is actually 15 volts in this game.'

  • George is relocating from New Hampshire to Virginia in the Free State area (Fairfax County region)

    high confidence · George's direct statement: 'We are pinball moving...to an area in Virginia called the Free State.'

  • George has 12 pinball machines in storage in New Hampshire that he will move to Virginia

    high confidence · George: 'I've got to come back to New Hampshire to get all my pinball machines that are in a 10x10 climate-controlled storage unit.'

  • A customer's grandfather owned Paragon The Park arcade at Nantasket Beach, Hull, MA

    high confidence · Email to Dr. Dave from customer: 'my grandfather owned the business...His grandfather owned Paragon The Park...he died in a car crash in the 1950s'

  • Dr. Dave received an electric shock of approximately 45 volts from a coil while working on a High Speed pinball machine

    high confidence · Dr. Dave describing field service incident: 'Well, it was actually 45 volts. It was a coil voltage...It hit my head and then through my arm.'

  • John Jolly purchased a Firepower 2 (Williams System 7) for $300 that has a defective 40-pin MPU connector causing resistors to overheat and fall off the board

    high confidence · Dr. Dave recounting email from John Jolly: 'The CPU board...got really hot when I turned it on and the brown tube things got so hot they were falling off the board...His board, this stupid 40-pin connector that connects to the MPU, to the driver board that Williams saw fit to use.'

Notable Quotes

  • “The orbs multiball works like it should 100% of the time, not 99% of the time. The only last one he's having trouble with is that every so often you turn the game on, and it goes dun, dun, dun, dun, like that, and then doesn't trunk up all the way.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~5:00-5:45 — Status update on Centaur repair progress, showing partial success but persistent electrical gremlin

  • “I think the reset circuit fails to hold the 6802 chip in reset during power-up. Very confident that this can be solved by adding an MCP121-450E-T0 between the 5-volt ground and the MCU reset signal.”

    John Day (quoted by Dr. Dave) @ ~6:30 — Technical diagnosis of root cause of Centaur trunk-up problem; specific component solution proposed

  • “I felt like, like, through my head and through my body, this electric shock. It was a coil voltage...45 volts. Still enough to get your attention. Get attention. Get me awake.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~35:00 — Safety hazard incident during field service work, demonstrates real-world risks in vintage machine repair

  • “We are pinball moving, you'll like this, to an area in Virginia called the Free State...We're moving to what I would call horsey country.”

    George @ ~10:30 — Personal life update with historical and cultural context about relocation destination

  • “Is this a pinball machine or a fireplace? You could if you wanted to. You could cook a sandwich on it to cook your toast.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~48:30 — Humorous but serious assessment of overheating resistors on Williams System 7 CPU board, indicates potential fire hazard

  • “A tie beats the dealer. So you get the multiplier for that.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~22:15 — Rules clarification for Blackjack EM machine, illustrates game-specific strategy differences

  • “I'm not giving it away because good luck finding one of any of them, never mind this one.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~21:30 — Collector mindset and secondary market pricing philosophy for rare EM machines

Entities

Dr. DavepersonGeorgepersonJohn DaypersonCentaurgameJohn JollypersonFirepower 2gameHigh SpeedgameSorcerer

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Extended diagnostic process for Centaur machine involving comparative analysis with similar machines, circuit-level voltage testing, and specialized component replacement (MCP121-450E-T0 voltage supervisor chip)

    high · John Day's technical diagnosis: 'I scoped out the reset line, the 5-volt, 12-volt signals...the reset circuit fails to hold the 6802 chip in reset during power-up...I noticed that 12 volts is actually 15 volts in this game'

  • ?

    product_concern: FAST Pascal boards shipped with manufacturing quality control issues including backwards diodes and missing fuses

    high · Dr. Dave: 'one of the diodes was backwards...during manufacture...we should have caught this in QC. I don't know why we didn't'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Field service technician experienced electrical shock (45V coil voltage) while working on High Speed machine due to improper grounding and missing ground prong on power plug

    high · Dr. Dave: 'I felt like, like, through my head and through my body, this electric shock...It was actually 45 volts. It was a coil voltage...It hit my head and then through my arm. My arm was contacting the ground rail of the field'

  • ?

    product_concern: Williams System 7 (Firepower 2) experiencing critical 40-pin MPU connector failure causing continuous power draw to resistors, leading to extreme heat, component failure, and potential fire hazard

    high · Dr. Dave describing John Jolly's machine: 'His board, this stupid 40-pin connector that connects to the MPU, to the driver board that Williams saw fit to use that no one else did...they lose communication...The lights instead of being pulsed every few seconds are on constantly, which makes the resistors go on there, cook, get really hot, melt the solder'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.476

0:00
Oh yeah, alright, well gentlemen, I want to tell me to you, well gentlemen, gentlemen, And I hope you like the town in June Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and I'm joined by Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Well, folks, last broadcast, at least for the time being, from New Hampshire. And in person, the last broadcast for who knows how long. Yeah, we're going to experiment over the next couple months, folks, so you're going to need to be a little patient with us as we get our new bearings. But with that said, I want to talk a little bit about our last episode with John Day. John, first of all, thank you for sharing your game room and your basement and your wild Target Alpha game. I've told a couple of people about that before it's being published. And as everyone heard, I was quite astonished at what you did with that machine.
1:38
Dave, you have something to say about John Day. He's been, while we were there, we didn't talk about this, you brought the infamous centaur. I brought the red-headed stepchild centaur to him. Yeah, because, you know, it's like, I've had enough fun with this thing. I've got it so close to being done, but the last 2%, it just will not stay 100%. It just doesn't work. Well, everybody thought we put this to bed. I thought it did, too, until I played it one day and then... Until you didn't. Until I didn't. The gremlin's ready its ugly head again. There's a couple gremlins. So is there an update? There is an update. So over the past, however long it's been since we last dropped that off, a week or two? Yeah, it's been at least two weeks. Okay, so he's had it. So, you know, he's in his spare time. He's an electrical engineer, John Boy Genius there. And he's got a scope. He's got all kinds of stuff. He knows how to build circuits. He knows everything about it. So he is the man for the job. I even told him, it's like, you know, if anybody can kill these gremlins, I think these gremlins have met their match with you, John. I think you're going to be able to, you know, take this all the way to the goalposts, you know, and take the ball and run. So we've been texting back and forth. It's like, oh, I think I got it this time. I think it's this and this. I think it's, you know, a new regulator will do it and this and that and some other stuff that he started doing. And he compared it to another Centaur. He went on site for someone else's Centaur, a friend of his. He compared some of the assemblies. And he lubricated and adjusted the ball service assembly to the under ball trough thing that shoots the ball for Centaur under the top of the field. Did all that. That worked for most of the time. And then it failed again. So a couple times of that. So now, fast forward, he has the ball drop serve thing done. So now it constantly serves the ball. It's supposed to. The orbs multi-ball works like it should 100% of the time, not 99% of the time. The only last one he's having trouble with is that every so often you turn the game on, and it goes dun, dun, dun, dun, like that, and then doesn't boot up all the way. You turn it off and on again, and it comes up all the way to boot. but every time you, right now when you turn that switch on are you going to boot up all the way this time sent out or do I got to turn it off and on and this thing has been like this since the customer gave it to me way back when and again he told me after the fact, oh yeah that's been a problem way back when and I was like okay, so I know it's not nothing I introduced into the game so fast forward to we go back and forth, he tried different things and John said I think I got it I think I'm going to do this to the circuit and he thought he had it He said, I let it stay out for a full couple days, turn it on, it worked great. I think I got it solved, but let me keep it a little longer. I said, go ahead. And then he said the other day, arg, it's still doing it. And I said, sent out the gremlin king that keeps on giving. He said, exactly.

  • Pascal (FAST board manufacturer) experienced customer service challenges and threatened to stop responding to customers making complaints in all caps

    high confidence · Dr. Dave: 'He says, in the future I will not be responding to you. If you're going to yell at me in all caps or something, don't want to work with me for little problems.'

  • A FAST Pascal board shipped with a backwards diode in the extra ball light circuit

    high confidence · Dr. Dave recounting Pascal's email: 'one of the diodes was backwards...during manufacture...we should have caught this in QC.'

  • “You're 40 minutes away from me. I go, have at it. Five hours. And you've got to transport two of them. And mine works well. Right. So, you know. Have fun.”

    Dr. Dave @ ~18:30 — Negotiation stance reflecting collector confidence in machine condition and unwillingness to lower price for convenience buyers

    • game
    Solar Ridegame
    Royal Flushgame
    Blackjackgame
    Bow and Arrowgame
    Pascalperson
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Paragon The Parkvenue
    The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
    Stefanperson
    Gregperson
    Winchester Mystery Housegame
    Skateballgame
    ?

    community_signal: Tension emerging between aftermarket board manufacturers and inexperienced customers who blame manufacturers for failures caused by poor wiring, alkaline battery damage, and user error

    high · Dr. Dave discussing Pascal: 'He's getting a lot of guff from a couple of customers...People blow up their boards and they're blaming me...You've got to do your due diligence. Do you have any rotten wires? Do you have any alkaline damage?'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Professional movers lack understanding of pinball machine geometry and installation requirements, treating them like pool tables by leveling playfields, which breaks gravity-dependent gameplay mechanics

    high · Dr. Dave: 'they think a pinball machine is a pool table. It's a level playing field. So they make all the things level...they take the legs that are tall and put them in the front, the legs that are short in the back...It relies upon gravity. It relies upon an incline to work. That's how the ball—the ball doesn't have a motor on it'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Experienced collectors hold firm on pricing for rare machines and are unwilling to negotiate significantly, prioritizing machine condition and fair value over convenience-based discounts

    high · Dr. Dave on Paragon pricing: 'I said, you know, average price is $2,500. He countered at $2,000. I said, yeah, I said, maybe...I know what it's worth. If you're interested, come look at it. If you're not, don't waste my time...I'm not giving it away because good luck finding one of any of them'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dr. Dave appeared on local television program (Chronicle) in late 2019, now receiving inquiries from viewers years later due to rebroadcasts, demonstrating the lasting reach of media coverage in niche communities

    high · Dr. Dave: 'That was recorded in, I think, October or November of 2019. It got released in January 2020...It's been out there for a couple of years...It's a feel-good story. It's a cool story'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Technicians budget extended multi-day field service for restoring multiple machines from storage, with realistic expectations about completing core work in initial visit and returning for finishing touches

    high · Dr. Dave: 'So he has two games...I'll day spa them both. But it's going to probably be...I really doubt it [one day]. I'll try, but I'll hit all the high points, but I'm going to have to come back again...So he has a little more budget left in the budget for me to come back'

  • ?

    business_signal: Technicians purchasing FAST Pascal boards in bulk quantities (four at a time) due to high demand and component availability concerns

    medium · Dr. Dave: 'I buy them four at a time. And I said, okay. So before this account came up to go out there, I made sure I got four more'

    • 4:29
    He said, exactly. I'm going to try one more thing here. This has to fix it. So today, he said, well, centaur failed to boot again this morning after my other little circuit things I tried with it. It keeps continuing to give the gift that keeps on giving. But the multiball fix I did is flawless. That's working great. That's a good thing. He scoped out the reset line, the 5-volt, 12-volt signals. I understand the root cause now because the reset circuit fails to hold the 6802 chip and reset during power-up. Very confident that this can be solved by adding an MCP121-450E-T0 between the 5-volt ground and the MCU reset signal. I noticed that 12 volts is actually 15 volts in this game. That would contribute to the problem in that the higher voltage will cause the MCU reset to release earlier, suggesting adding this MCP device to the reset circuit, which I said, yes, go get them, John. Do whatever it takes. It's funny that you mention that, because my skateball would do that every once in a while. And all I would do is shut it off, turn it back on, and it would work. Okay, so it's a value problem. It's a certain value game. But it didn't do it all the time, just every once in a while. And, again, because I don't have any pinball machines, and it's been very strange. You know, everybody's heard that I'm moving, but it is really weird not having a machine. Yeah, because you used to have it. I even had a whole basement full. Now I don't have a whole basement full. It's a barren basement. Dave hasn't been down there, but you'd be shocked. There's some stuff down there, but not a lot. Just stuff that the movers are going to move. But you have space now down there. So you have space. Well, I mean, I'll be gone in under a week.
    6:28
    Yeah, it's odd. So that was a John story. I think John is on the case. I think finally I'll be able to, hopefully, if he fixes this thing and it's all good and he's going to play another couple hundred plays on it and a couple hundred more turn off and on things and it's good, then I'll be able to take a nice video of it, put it out there, tell the customer it's ready and, you know, pay John what he needs for all his hard work he's done on it and, you know, pass that right along to the customer. And then, you know, there you go. But it's going to be a nice centaur that's fully working when it's done. So bear with me for two or three minutes. I want to kind of let people know where we're moving to. Yeah, go for it. Without pinpointing it. We are moving, you'll like this, to an area in Virginia called the Free State. I like that. The area that we're moving to was owned by a British lord, Lord Fairfax. I didn't realize this. Fairfax, Virginia. Well, that's the part. In the 18th century, he owned over 5 million acres in Virginia. And when we defeated the British, people then started migrating to this area and basically squatting and not paying restitution to the British because we had defeated them. Sounds fair. Yeah. So moonshiners. To the victors go the spoils, George. Correct. But here's the really weird thing. I didn't understand this. The British hired German Hessians for their army. Yeah, I remember that. Reading that history, yeah. It states that a thousand captured Hessians did not go home after the war. They live and flourish today in the most aristocratic county of the most aristocratic state in the Union, according to those considered verdict of the inhabitants. As Yosemite Sam would say, I'm a Hessian with no aggression.
    8:45
    So we're moving to what I would call horsey country. And next door we have a farm with horses. All right. We have a couple doors down, people who are growing or raising steer.
    9:01
    Are they growing marijuana? No, not yet. Not yet. And the other thing that was described to me by a person who owns a business nearby is that there are people who do fox hunting.
    9:19
    So I'm telling my little nature slash animal story. We're going to have fox hunting in my neighborhood. But the poor little fox is so cute. Everybody keeps asking, so do they actually hunt a real fox? I don't know, but I'll bring you... And the hound dogs are there.
    9:37
    You've been watching Bugs Bunny. Yeah, exactly. So, I'm looking forward to it. It's totally different than where we live right now, but looking forward to it. So, we're moving to the free state. Yeah, you know, you came to... And it wasn't free. It wasn't free. It's not even close to being free. You thought that live free or die meant something up here, George. They were just fooling. They were just kidding. Well, a couple of my friends said to me, you have no income tax and you have cheap booze. Why are you moving? I go, well, time for a change. Yeah, this has been infiltrated up here a little bit, I think. That's my update, folks. No pinball for the foreseeable future. We don't move into our new homes until sometime in September. I've got to come back to New Hampshire to get all my pinball machines that are in a 10x10 climate-controlled storage unit. it wasn't fun putting them in it's certainly not going to be fun dragging them out why don't we change gears and do a segment called What's Up Doc alright
    10:59
    Hey, look out! Stop! I'm going to fight someone with a low shotgun. What's up, doc? We can certainly do that. That's what's cooking. What's up, doc? All right, so, Dr. Dave. We can do a Dear Dr. Dave. Want to do a Dear Dr. Dave? Sure. I got a Dear Dr. Dave. I still don't get any emails from anybody. I'm going to check right now. Go check. I have not gotten an email from anybody. I don't understand why. Dear Dr. Dave, I saw you on Chronicle. I wanted to see if you had any... Again, Chronicle again. I'm laughing because I had several people approach me going, You know, I saw you... I go, Yeah, on Chronicle. They're like, Yeah. I go, It's been out there for a couple of years. That was recorded in, I think, October or November of 2019. It got released in January 2020. But it's fine that it keeps coming around. You know why? Because it's a feel-good story. It's a cool story. When else do you see that kind of story? It's not around. So it beats all the... But you got phone calls for people to buy stuff right before Father's Day, right?
    12:04
    Didn't it come on like a week before? Yeah, it did. It did. No wonder that makes sense. Wait, didn't you say you had a phone call? These women wanted it for their husband. Now I get it. Hello. Right. It happened like the Thursday, you know, like 10 days before Father's Day. Okay. Of course. I'm guessing you didn't sell anything because you don't have anything to sell. No. Well, no, I have something to sell, but, you know, sticker shock. they'd probably think, oh, it's a couple hundred dollars. No. No, thousands, thousands and thousands of dollars for a store-bought mobile machine. Unless if you want to play it, if you want to hang some clothes on it, you know. Right, if you want a table. If you want a table, there's plenty of money. If you want a light table. Yeah, for cheap money. But you ain't going to play it. Much, anyway. So, yeah, so I got contacted by a bunch of people. You're on Chrono again. Oh, cool, cool. I was really hoping. We were at a nice restaurant at a bar having dinner, and when I got contacted by people that was on, I just missed it. I would have said, hey, can you put a Chronicle on at the bargain? Great. I mean, generally seeing myself on TV would be cool. Hey, that's you. So this is, hi Dave. Hi, Dr. Dave. I saw you on Chronicle and wanted to see if you have any pinball machines from the old Paragon Park arcade.
    13:14
    Paragon Park is an arcade in South Shore. Where? Hingham. Yeah, near Hingham? I just guessed. Yeah, it's near Hingham. No, not Hingham. No, Nantasket Beach. Okay. Nantasket Beach. That's where it was. So I remember going there. My parents brought me there as a kid around like five years old, and I even had pictures from the place. I don't remember playing pinball machines there. I probably did. I have no idea, but I do remember the place.
    13:39
    So this guy said, my grandfather owned the business. His grandfather owned Paragon Park. Really? Yeah, which appeared to be very successful. Unfortunately, I never met him as he died in a car crash in the 1950s when my mother was like seven. The business was too much for my grandmother to handle, caring for three young children. I've always loved pinball machines for this reason and was wondering if you have anything from that era. Hull. There you go. Bingo. I'm looking it up while you're speaking. And then Cascade Beach is in Hull. Yes. Do you have a retail establishment to visit and see inventory? It's my appointment only. Basically, it's in my personal game room. But also, I basically have a portfolio of everything I've done on YouTube. So you can look and see what I do there. So all my best. Thank you, Greg.
    14:26
    So that was pretty cool. That was pretty cool getting that from him. I'm looking at their website. Yeah. Did you know that there is still a carousel there? Yeah, the old Paragon Park Carousel. Built in 1928 by the legendary Philadelphia Toboggan Company, the Paragon Carousel has been operating on beautiful Nantastic Beach for more than 90 years. Yeah, I think I went down there 20 years ago and saw that. I thought you were going to say that this guy wanted to buy a Paragon. And then I was going to raise my hand and say. Yeah, I know. Yeah, bingo. Yeah, because he probably saw my website probably and saw the Paragon machine is right there prominently displayed on the front page of my website. So that's kind of interesting that it's Paragon. But yeah, it could have been. Actually, I did have a Paragon for sale and one of my own, too. But it could have been yours as well. I knew you were going to sell yours at some point. No, John pointed somebody in my direction. I never heard from him again. Okay. So I don't know what that's all about. Did you discuss their prices at all? Oh, yeah. I said, you know, average price is $2,500. He countered at $2,000. I said, yeah, I said, maybe. I said, but, you know, I'm not going to do it over the phone. I go, or, you know, online. Come and see it. Right. Never heard from him again. And all I kept hearing was, well, there's this guy in New York State who has two of them for sale at the same time. And I can make one really good machine. I go, you're 40 minutes away from me. I go, have at it. Five hours, six hours. And you've got to transport two of them. And mine works well. Right. So, you know. Have fun.
    16:06
    Negotiation went very quick. It's like, look, I know what it's worth. If you're interested, come look at it. If you're not, don't waste my time. Right. Yeah. a lot of the collector community they're a little tight and they got I don't know, it's weird if you're going to call me folks, warning I don't need to sell it I'd like to sell it but I don't need to sell it so there's a I said to them, I'm not going to give it away it's in nice shape, it's not a piece of crap no, it's not anyway, that's nearly here and there it's probably going to Virginia the other one is from his other dear Dr. Dave actually dear George and Dr. Dave this is from Stefan from Germany him again? I think this is the same thread I don't know if you highlighted this part of the thing I thought it was interesting the one that he said let me think here yeah he did this thing age versus wisdom enthusiasm we talked about that before but the one part I don't think you mentioned the part that said by the way I am totally with you both on bow and arrow one of the best multiplayer EMs to my honest opinion you mentioned bow and arrow I must have missed that so I was like yeah it is and I thought Captain Fantastic back then was a great game has great artwork but bow and arrow no I love your bow and arrow and you have a really nice one in fact the bow and arrow I was going to take down that really rare blackjack EM I have I might actually anybody out there wants a really nice blackjack EM If you want to pay up a bit, you're not going to find the next one. I'm tempted to. We can talk about moving it on, but, you know, again, like George, I'm not giving it away because good luck finding one of any of them, never mind this one. Right. But I think that Bow and Arrow is a better game. I think I'd have to put that there instead. Now, I'm in the minority with some friends of mine who say, oh, no, no, Blackjack is much more fun. That's all they do is play that game and they come over. They just play Blackjack. They don't like to play anything else. play that game. They like it so much. Because you're trying to beat the dealer. I mean, there is a strategy to the game. Yeah. Which is kind of unique to pinball, I think. Yeah. You know, everybody knows how to play 21. Right.
    18:22
    And it shows you right on the field. I mean, it's kind of hard to miss. On this game... You can teach somebody to play the game in about two seconds. True. On this game, a tie beats the dealer.
    18:33
    Is that because of you or is that just... Yeah, because of the way the game is. Okay. A tie beats the dealer. So you get the multiplier for that.
    18:41
    Yeah, that's how that works. Let's see. Oh, so the... We'll do a couple stories from the fields. Those are the Dear Dr. Dave and Dear George letters there I got so far.
    18:51
    Stories from the fields. So the other day we were working at... This guy had two games. The Sorcerer, which is a mid-'80s Williams. System 9. They didn't make very many System 9 games. He usually made System 3, 4, 6, 7, and 11, typically. 9 is not a lot. Sorcerer and one or two other games, System 9 games. Kind of an in-between game, which is where they went into the System. System 11 is high speed. So he had a Sorcerer and a high speed. He got them both from his parents out in Ohio. He got them shipped here. Hadn't been working in a long time. And so I'll day spar them both. But it's going to probably be, so can you do them in one day? It's like, I really doubt it. I'll try, but I'll hit all the high points, but I'm going to have to come back again. So I did the whole thing. We were there about six hours. We got most of everything working. We got it working good enough that they can play it. I said, I really need to come back. They're playing, but they're not playing strong. They're playing okay. And I'm not going to let them get it. Right, but to them, it's playing better than it has, which it's not. Yeah, but I said, I really need to come. So he has a little more money left in the budget for me to come back and do some finish-up work. He needs to rebuild flippers on there. I need to rebuild basically six flippers, three on each game. and some other stuff. Plus there's some hack wiring there as well and some other stuff needs to be addressed. But we did the lion's share of the day. So when we're just about to leave, I'm like really hot in the basement there. My head's all wet, that kind of thing. And I think there was something, oh, I know, the lockdown bar at high speed wasn't quite right. It wasn't locking the lockdown bar in. Oh, can you fix this while you're here before you go? You know, yeah, sure. So we picked the playfield up. I was holding it up like this with the game on, and I was down here with the locked-in bar, somebody taking the part and kind of putting it. It was out of joint. It was out of sorts, and I had to put it back in the joint. He let the plate go down a little bit. All of a sudden, I felt like, like, through my head and through my body, this electric shock. Like, what the frick was that? I thought it was like 115.
    20:51
    And then it's like, oh, I'm sorry. It's like, yeah, another thing I want to do or you can do is there's a third prong on that plug. It doesn't have it on there. So I thought maybe I wasn't grounded right.
    21:03
    You were the ground. I was the ground. Then I thought of a layer. It's like it wasn't 115. He's going to replace it anyway. I said, I can do it now. He said, oh, no, I'll do it. I'm going to do it. So how much was it?
    21:12
    Well, it was actually a 45 volts. It was a coil voltage. It was 45 volts. Still enough to get your attention. Get attention. Get me awake. I'm awake now. So it got through my wet head. That was a great conductor. It hit my head and then through my arm. My arm was contacting the ground rail of the tiger. It's better than when I thought you were going to say what happened. What? I thought he dropped the play field and your fingers were there. I'm looking at your hand and I go, he's got all his fingers. And I'm a piano player. I wouldn't do that either. Right. No. So that was exciting. That woke me up. So that was good for the ride home. I was totally awake for that one. So that was good.
    21:47
    Let's see. Better than a five-hour energy drink? Better than a five-hour energy drink. Way better. So next up we had another two-for-one kind of thing. But, again, this is a double-day spa. So I went on two different days with this one. It was a solar ride and a Royal Flush. And had them forever. Again, these ones were moved from, I think, Ohio again for a different customer. And, you know, the solar ride needed a Pascal and this and that. So I've been, I'm almost out of Pascal. I buy them four at a time. And I said, okay. So before this account came up to go out there, I made sure I got four more. and put it in there. And I just noticed that everything worked great, but the extra ball light never came on. I was like, that's weird. I've never had any problems with these. His boards are flawless. It's like, maybe it's my wiring. I'm looking at it. And I own things out. No, everything's there. So it's like, okay, maybe I'll go back and I'll come back later with another board. I came back the next day with another board. So I came back with two more Pascals just in case I put the other Pascal and it blew it up but now I had no display it's like what the first going on here how is it you know so kind of found out the the shoes was missing on it say okay maybe they dropped off the package somewhere so then I said okay I put the other board in it finally it worked for that one so I emailed Pascal say hey best going you know I get in that and before I emailed him I talked to him regularly because I'm a good good customer he's a good guy he knows what he's doing and I looked at his website and I guess he has a he has some customers that, let's say they're very green, some of them, and he says, in the future I will not be responding to you. If you're going to yell at me in all caps or something, don't want to work with me for little problems, whatever, then if you're not going to work with me for little things, whatever, I'm just going to have to move on. I'm not going to acknowledge. He's getting a lot of guff from a couple of customers. Oh, because people blow up their boards and they're blaming me. Right, exactly. Or they don't know what to do and they blame him, and it's not him. It's not his board. Everybody thinks that, oh, I'm buying this part. It's going to be like the magic wand. No, no. It can be, but you've got to do your due diligence. Do you have any rotted wires? Do you have any alkaline damage in your wires? Do you have bad this, bad that, bad coil diodes will wreck it too? All kinds of other things can happen. How do you think I'm going to feel moving 12 pinball machines 500 miles, taking them out of the U-Haul, moving them around the house on a cart, and then setting them up. Let's take a bet. How many do you think are going to work? And they all work perfectly here, right? For the most part, everything worked.
    24:26
    You'll have one problem child. I bet you it is going to be fine. Yeah, I know what the problem child is going to be. What's it going to be? You know which one it's going to be. Centaur?
    24:35
    That's when I call John and go, when are you coming to visit? Right, no kidding. he'll take all your centaur woes actually Dave when are you going to stuff John and Lisa in the car and come visit there you go that's what you're doing so I talked to him and he said he was so apologetic super nice guy so I read that stuff on his website people are having a hard time so I don't want to give him a hard time I want to be treated too because I understand running a business and things can go completely sometimes with no fault of your own. So I basically said, hey, you know, out of the four boards I just got from you, I have two swallows with two of the boards. You know, I just want to see what we can do about it. You know, one is missing a fuse, but I have the fuse in it, so I put the extra fuse in it, so no big deal. And the other, then I had it in the spare parts. And the other one is like, the light never works. So I said, take some pictures of that. I'm terribly sorry. It's inexcusable. I'm sorry. You know, it's like, no, no. Dude, don't worry about it. You're fine. I'm not complaining. I just want to fix it. And he's totally cool. So he's totally like, he's beating himself up. I say, no, don't worry about it, dude. You're a cool dude. So he said, oh, I found the problem. The picture you showed me during manufacture, and he said, we should have caught this in QC. I don't know why we didn't. But one of the diodes was backwards. And I looked at it and I was like, yeah, this diode for that light on the board is backwards. So I basically said, I can handle that. I unstyled it, flipped it around. Works great. And it's like, hey, works great. We're all set, Pascal. Oh, no, no. For all your trouble, I'm going to send you extra fuses. I'm going to send you some transistors. I'm going to send you a little care package. You've been so nice. You're a sweetheart. So, totally cool guy, Pascal. Really cool guy. You've got to do business with. And a superior product. So, he's a stand-up dude.
    26:24
    Let's see. Oh, also with the Sol Ryan Royal Flush. So, again, movers move those games in this person's house from Ohio.
    26:33
    Movers, you know, they pick things up, they put things down. Other than that... Trust me, I understand, and they're my games, and I still... Well, let's put it this way. They do a couple of bad things. Well, that, but I'm saying, when they set things up, they think a pinball machine is a pool table. It's a level playing field. So they make all the things level. Yeah, but this isn't the first time. Or they put... I know, all the time. Or they take the legs that are tall and put them in the front, the legs that are short in the back, so, oh, now it's level. We don't have a pool table. It's a pinball machine. It relies upon gravity. It relies upon an incline to work. That's how the ball – the ball doesn't have a motor on it. It has gravity that kind of pulls it down the field, you know. So I thought that was like – There's a reason why they're moving it, not repairing it. Yeah, exactly. And they can have at it. It can be their back, not mine.
    27:31
    Okay, then we can get into coming up. So I've been... Are we talking about John Jolly? Oh, yeah, Jolly. Okay, John Jolly. No, no, no, I don't want to... Let me go... No, take it away. Let's not do the road trip thing. We're still going to do on Dear Dr. Dave letter stuff again. But we're going to... John Jolly. He sent me an email, subject line, I hate myself. That's a subject line. What did he do to his game? Nothing. He decided to buy another game. He bought an additional game. He didn't really. He bought another game? No. And he tries to buy it, you know, cheap. He tries to, you know, he wants to see what he can do. And, you know, he's a wheeler dealer. He wants to see what he can do. He bought a Firepower 2. He bought a Williams.
    28:21
    Oh, you love that. System 7. Oh, you love those. Yeah. I mean, I'm good at them now. But even when I'm good at them, they still give me, you know, fits. even if I know what I'm doing with them. So he said, I got the game for $300. That's a deal for Firepower 2. The CPU board with the batteries on it got really hot when I turned it on and the brown tube things got so hot they were falling off the board. Those are resistors. They were falling off? Yeah. I've seen that happen before. I didn't know what I was doing years ago with a Williams game. I turned on a Williams Defender. turn it on. Is this a pinball machine or a fireplace? You could if you wanted to. So what happens... Have you seen components fall off again? Oh yeah, in the Williams game? I know exactly what this is. His board, this stupid 40-pin connector that connects to the MPU, to the driver board that Williams saw fit to use that no one else did back in the day. Any of those connectors get rotted at all. They lose communication. The game locks up. The lights instead of being pulsed every few seconds on constantly, which makes the resistors go on there, cook, get really hot, melt the solder that they're soldering, and they start flipping down and melt off the board. It gets so freaking hot, you can cook a sandwich on it to cook your toast. Did he do this when he got it home, or did he do it when he was buying it? When he got it home.
    29:47
    Question, should I put it in the fire pit? Yes. Sounds like the decisions made for you, put himself in the fire pit already.
    29:59
    He's lucky he didn't burn the house down. I know. I put $1,500 into it if I could. No, no, he said he would. He said, I would put $1,500 into it with you if I can get it to play. Making it looking good is not really a problem. What's my next step? So, basically, if I could kind of, you know, throw technical expertise and make it, you know, rebuild stuff or rebuild that, he'll take care of polishing, re-rubbering and all that kind of crap. So we'll probably do some kind of thing with him anyway. Plus I can go down and get some more... No, no, no, no, no. So let's not go past this. So, as I said, I'm moving at the end of June. But I do want to come back because I have my friend Jim out on Cape Cod.
    30:45
    My thought was we should arrive at a date. You can go to your mom's. I can go to Jim's. Sure. And then we all can go over. and Steve John. So John, I need to invite my house guest and one of my best friends, Jim. But he's a native down there. I think you'll like him. I'm more than happy to bring the beer.
    31:10
    I still have those beers in my refrigerator. John likes beer. I think he likes the grippa. The grippa. Do we have more grippa? Let's give him the grippa. I got to get rid of it. I can't bring that with me. I can't bring it all the way. I'm not bringing it all the way to Virginia. Why should they bury it in the backyard? No. You know what some people do? I think they take a St. Jude statue or St. Anthony statue, one of those saints. They bury it upside down in their backyard in the silver house. I've heard that before. Doesn't this sound the thing to do? It sounds kind of wrong somehow. I'm not burying anything in the backyard. Well, you know what I was saying? You could have buried it. I was going to say that when you sold your house, you'd bury a gripper in your backyard. Maybe they sold your house for you. They could have made a silver gripper. No, I didn't do that. Didn't do that. So, anyway, we need to come up with a date this summer for John. Maybe, John, you're going to hear this anyway. So, call us and tell us when.
    32:06
    Where did you go? I want to go. I really want to go. I want to go, and especially I want to do a little thing. Oh, come on with me, and we can farm some oysters. Like, all right, let's check it out. Right, but we're going to have to play pinball. So, he does have a working pinball. Oh, yeah, he does. Yeah, he's got an old Chicago. He's got a firepower, too. Well, it's not going to work until I get it working, though. That's the problem. He's got a machine. We'll go down onto Main Street. We'll go to the arcade if it's still there. They have an arcade in Main Street? In Hyannis, yeah. There used to be. Now it's not there anymore. Well, if it's an arcade, it's kiddie gambling now. No, they have pinball machines. I don't know if it's still there. How long ago? Probably pre-COVID.
    32:45
    Oh, that's Jen. Okay, that's Jen. Oh, that's Jen. I'm not sure about that one. That'd be interesting. They've got to be at Rant Games, though. So what? Okay. Pinball is better than nothing. All right.
    32:56
    All right, so that's enough of the e-mails and so forth and the Dear Dr. Dave session. So what is coming up? So coming up, again, more road trips. We're going on road trips. We're going to be getting calls left and right to go to Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire.
    33:16
    When are you going to book Virginia? When I move? When you move, yeah. That's going to be a long trip. So we have to keep finding. 500 miles. No, from you, 500 miles. Okay, that's quite the, yeah. Yeah, it's more than a day trip.
    33:33
    So to do these long hauls, it's like a game. You know, you're going two hours and you're spending like six to eight hours in sight and two hours home. It's too much, you know. I don't feel like you're falling asleep on the wheel. So we've been doing like Airbnbs. We've been doing hotels. so this time around we're going to be going to Hatfield which is up in Western Mass, about two hours away and some people actually nicknamed that Lidsville it's a cuckoo cuckoo so this person has a nitro ground shaker, Bally, 1980 in Aladdin's Castle which is 75 EM and then so two days for each of those We're going to stay at a place in a hotel this time near a country club in Holyoke. So it looks like a real nice place, and the price is right. It's a good cheap price. It's called D Hotel. Like D Hotel. It's like D Hotel. You know, D Hotel.
    34:37
    D as in the letter D. Yeah, D. Yeah. My boy D run it. He run DMC, man. what could go wrong George it's going to be fine come on so then from there I'm not even sure we're going to make it to the next podcast with comments like that we might be decommissioned delisted de-dead so then I could make some comments, but I'm not. You could. But I'm not.
    35:21
    So then I got a call from another guy. This guy is in Vermont. He's about 45 minutes north of Hatsfield, and he has a firepower that he wants to get a day spa on. And I've been talking back and forth with him. And the cool thing about his firepower, he has a prototype firepower. It has the ones with the two sets of three drop targets on it, not the stand-up targets. So it's a prototype. I've never worked in the prototype one, so that's going to be very interesting to do. And I also did some research on that. You can convert any firepower to a prototype version with three drop targets on each side. The reason why they didn't make it at the prototype version is because the Notorious Williams drop targets were not reliable. They were sitting there right in the front of the play field, and they need to be working right for the game. Right in front of the flipper? Right in front of the flipper. Right in the center. They're going to get bashed. Bashed. Okay. So they decided not to go there. I read an article by Ted Estes, who was there at the time, knew the whole story. And I found out that's why they just did the stand-up stand-up. Why do I know the name Ted Estes? I bought a Stern Viper Backglass. Didn't he live in a rancher?
    36:30
    No. No, I'm thinking of somebody else. Never mind. No. Somebody else. He worked for Williams or Bally. I think he worked at Bally Williams, something like that. and he's definitely one of the players and he's a software guy for them but I actually bought a Stern Viper Mint Newell Stock Backglass from him years ago I still have it, it's a great wall hanger it could go in a game but the game's not that great so as a girl, sort of a naked metal girl with a snake around her very nice I'm sure it would pass the mom brigade maybe not so this guy has this game he wants me to do the day spar on it and then I said okay great but I said it's going to be a little while can you wait a little while oh yeah no problem maybe you can then I think wait we're out in Hatsfield maybe we can swing it I'll try to get another hotel date the next day we can stay one day longer and hit this place too while we're out there why not get it all done instead of putting more miles on the car and wear and tear let's get it all done You went to Vermont? I didn't do it. No, it's coming up this week. Tomorrow is it. Where in Vermont? It's called Jacksonville, which is like Wittensville, something like that. It's like lower Vermont. It's lower. Never heard of it. It's right over the border. Never heard of it. It's right over the border. So basically I contacted D Hotel. I said, hey, can I stay an extra day or two? Oh, no, we're full up. We're totally booked. They're totally booked this weekend. Graduation. Must be. It must be. They're near Amherst. Too late. Okay. So, the end of June. That happened a month ago. Okay. So, whatever it is, I guess it's popular. It's one of the cheaper hotels. It's a nice hotel. It's a spa. It's a hotel and spa.
    38:22
    It's a weekend. It's right near a country club. It's a weekend. That's why you can't book it. It's summertime. Right. There you go. Yeah, summertime. Just started. That's what it is. Right? Yeah. What else would it be? It's got to be. So, I said, okay. So I reached out to this guy and said, hey, if I can get out there Friday or Saturday, the guy in Vermont, I can do your thing. He said, but I'll tell you what, I'm having a hard time finding a place. The places are expensive I can find. The hotel we're staying at in Hatchfield is already booked up. I can't get there, so we might have to wait until late summer or early fall to get out to this. So here's what he said back to me. He said, well, I was really looking forward to a working machine from you. Here's some more pictures. Let me know if there's anything else I can provide. and then he said, in regards to staying somewhere, you can stay at our house, honestly, no problem.
    39:09
    I'm actually, I'm a chef. My hours are sporadic at best, but definitely would be working Friday and Saturday, but please, you're welcome to stay at our house. Let me know.
    39:18
    So it's cool. I'm thinking of taking this guy up on his offer, and I think probably because, you know, I don't know if you really know me, But I think because people see me on TV, on Chronicle, that kind of thing, it's like, okay. There going to be a story I don think he an ex There going to be a story There going to be a story The person who buying our home came by He buying my snowblower among some other items And we got to talking about looking for houses.
    39:52
    And he said, I went into this one house and not knowing what was behind the door, I figured it was a bathroom and he opens up the door and the bathroom is completely gutted there's no floor and he can see down into the floor below so he's up on the second floor they had a flood and the guy just turns to him without him even asking a question he goes, as is so basically they were selling the house with a bathroom that was gutted no floors, no nothing and just basically said, you're on your own. That's how the house is coming.
    40:34
    Well, it's probably a deep discount. Right. But he said, we went into homes. He goes, we're excited to move into your home. I'm like, huh? He's like, your house is immaculate. Your house is, compared to what we looked at, he's like, we're excited to move in. I'm like, is it really that bad? It is that bad. When we first looked at houses years ago, they were showing us places that we'd go into the bathroom there was like the toilet was thrown to the wall because they felt like it kicked out. There was like a bathroom and it was screwed up just like that. What are you showing this crap for? I want something to turn the key and go. That's exactly what he said. He goes, we don't have to do anything. I'm like, well, you do have some things to do.
    41:17
    You'll figure that out when you get here. Right. I think they were just overwhelmed. I think they were like, wow, we like this pass. We're not going to have to do a lot. Well, meaning there's no bathroom with a hole in it. going to leave the basement the colors it is. It's like early American dungeon. Yeah, but still. Right, it was a game room. There's no damage. No, no, no, no. Yeah, so that's fine. It's more like just taste. The taste is like different. I just found it interesting how he goes, we had no intention of buying your house, but as soon as we saw it, my realtor glommed onto him and said, here you go, let's go for a ride. And two days later, it was sold. Wow. right I'm happy that's awesome I'm happy let me see while you're looking up something I want to talk about our episodes okay so I still need somebody to explain to me and I plead to the audience and nobody writes back I'm going to do the bottom five of our top ten okay at number six fun spot rising through the ranks at number seven.
    42:31
    Whodunit. We only did that. Really? We only did that show a couple months back. It's that cab special thing I did to it. That's why. It's a nice toy. But why?
    42:43
    Why that game? Does that game have that big a following? Not really. Then why is it one of our... It's not becoming... I think because my YouTube channel has it on there and I put a link to the podcast on the YouTube channel maybe. And also we put a link to it On the pin side. Yeah, but you'd do that. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. Okay. People like that game. Number eight is Quicksilver. Okay. Number nine, it broke the top ten. Okay. Keith Elwin. All right. There we go. That's appropriate. And then Dropping Like a Stone. Eric Stone? Nope. Oh. Jersey Shore. That's been in the top ten for a long time. That's number ten now. So, you're helping, folks. Elwynn's rising, but I don't understand why whodunit gets... I mean, they're far off the top. It's a cool cab I made. That's why. I guess. It's just weird. I don't get it. When customers reach out to me and say, I want to get this kind of thing done. This certainly doesn't work.
    43:42
    I've been doing this for a while. So I kind of have a sense of what things are going to cost and how it's going to roll and what the cost is going to be in the ballpark. So when I get a ballpark, it's pretty accurate. It's going to fall within that ballpark. so sometimes the customers say well that's good but I only have this much budget and the budget is maybe you know two half of what you want half or two two half or two thirds and it's like well oh no it's but it's fully working it just says one flipper doesn't work you know but it's fully working saying so you have pictures of it I look at the picture and I go yeah it's I could probably keep it to there but I'm not going to do everything I need to I need and want to do I really don't but I go against my gut and I go against my better judgment once in a while so I said, okay, I'll be a huckleberry so I go down there, work on the thing I stay within their budget right to the end of the budget and I said, okay, everything's working out, it's great but I haven't got to do, I need to do I could do a lot more with this you still have original boards in this, not the new boards I want to put in here and they're working, but, you know fast forward a week later hey, this game's doing this now can you come back out so I haven't had a conversation with them yet but I'm going to say okay remember what I told you before about the budget I said what it's going to cost you're going to be right at it again so here's where we are you gave them a little bit of time to save some more money well I don't know if they're expecting me to do a freebie I don't know that but I need to have the conversation and I'm going to say listen I'm going to be down your area again which I'm going to be at about a month. So when I'm down there, I'm going to save on, you're not going to have to pay travel fee for it. I'm going to give them a little bit of break on labor because I'm just going to throw a board and they're going to pay for the board. And they'll still be okay. And on top of that, they got the game for free. They got it for free on the side of the road. It's a supersonic. They got it on the side of the road 30 years ago. It doesn't owe them anything, you know? So they can afford to put a couple more hundred bucks into it. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to tell them, it's like, you know, here's what it is, you know? And here's why it is. And this is why. But I need to have a conversation.
    45:53
    So that's where that goes. So going forward, when I say what it is, I'm going to more stick to my guns. Like, well, this is what it needs to be. And I don't want any hard feelings if I do this in your budget. And then you come back and it doesn't work. I don't want that. It's tough to refuse money, but. But I don't want the headache. I want nice. So you should say, hey, it's going to cost X when you got X, call me. Yeah, exactly. Because you don't, who are they going to call? Yeah, exactly. Who does what I do? Who does what Maureen and I do? Nobody. Well, and that brings us to the next thing. Folks, don't buy a jukebox.
    46:33
    As I've been calling it, the box of rocks. Try to get somebody to repair it, number one. Good luck. I read the thread on Pinside, and it is so true. I have a 1964 Seaberg jukebox, right? And it said, well, do you realize that most of the technicians that would work on that machine are probably...
    47:02
    This will be a little bit more polite. They're probably older than 80 years old, but yeah, you're probably right. They're pushing up the daisies. Right. And then the thread goes on to say, well, if you repair pinball machines, you could probably end up repairing. I'm like, no. No. It is not even close to being the same thing. I looked at it and I said. You've got to be a hi-fi guy. You've got to be into that kind of stuff. Well, I get stereo equipment, but I don't repair. Hi-fi tech. That's what you've got to do. Right. So, no. So, I've been trying to get the thing extricated from my basement. I have a bulkhead with six steps.
    47:44
    That's been a nightmare up until I told Dave just before we came on air. A prop company, non-profit, contacted me and is going to bring the guerrilla patrol over and haul it out of my basement tomorrow. So I'll let you know how that goes. But like I said, it becomes a box of rocks if it doesn't work. Nobody wanted it. Nobody wanted to remove it. I can't find anybody to do it. But the Savior is going to be here tomorrow. And for free. For free. Free. Is it called McGilligurla Movers?
    48:20
    I'm waiting to see the size of the people that are going to move this thing out. They said, we move pianos. I'm like, okay, piano movers?
    48:29
    Right. Guess what you need? I hope two or three of them come. I'm going to take video. Oh, yeah. I want to see how they do this. If they do it with the straps, you know, the harness. Maybe it'll have that special, you know, super-duper thing that Pixels and Pins has there with the special. What, the Escalera thing? The Escalera thing, yeah. Try renting one of those.
    48:54
    Can't. You can't. I tried. I was going to go as far as to get a forklift and put two straps on it and strap it around and just pull it right out of the thing. Yeah, sure. Try to rent a forklift. Then the farmer, somebody suggested, hey, go see Farmer Joe up the street. The tractor. Maybe he has a tractor with the fork attachment on it. Now, these other people came into view, but just beware. Everyone's like, well, how did it get into the basement?
    49:25
    I was standing off to the side while two people were holding straps and one person was in front of it. Oh, boy. Easing it down on ramps. I thought he was going to own my home because he was going to get run over. He didn't. They're like, oh, so you had nothing to do with it? No. Did you ever think about getting it out? Well, no, you don't really think about that when you put a 400-pound box in your basement. Oh, it's like a refrigerator. No, it's not. What do you say the two best days are the first day when you buy a boat and when you sell it? The same kind of thing with the jukebox, right?
    50:00
    Sort of. The best days? I'll never do it again. And I loved my jukebox. Most people didn't, but I liked it. I was going to get a jukebox. I'll get a nice pretty one. You know, the one that looks like this. You know, pretty ones. From the Jetsons. Right. Well, pretty ones cost pretty pennies. Oh, yeah. You know, like a trash can one. Yeah. I mean, if you go out onto Pinside, you look at the jukebox threads, people have some beautiful, beautiful machines, and people know how to fix them.
    50:25
    I happen not to be one of them, so no more jukebox. We're going back to vinyl and CDs. And again. Really? You're not going to just use Pandora or something?
    50:38
    Turn around. Look at the boxes over there. There's five boxes of CDs. All those boxes, not the ones in front, those five behind. Yeah. Yeah, it's all CDs. And then open up the cabinet over there. I've got 15 or 20 feet long of albums. I'm not moving those. The movers are moving those. I'm going back to old school. No, plus, I live in a remote area. We don't get cable.
    51:05
    Can I tell you about the line of sight I have to get to the radio tower? You're better off, actually. To the radio tower? You're better off with no TV. Right.
    51:15
    I want to move where you are, George. It's like paradise to me. I like it. We'll find out. Sounds great. Jack kept saying to me, you don't like it. I said, I've lived on a cul-de-sac for like two-thirds of my life or more. I go, and now you're moving me to, you know, eat nowhere. I mean, it's okay. I'm fine with it, but it's just different. You gonna get some chickens? No.
    51:44
    Did you see some chickens that are across the street? No. The house we were talking about earlier? They have chickens too? Ask me to bring up the picture after we're done. Okay. If that chicken coop's not 20 feet long, call me a lot. Wow. They must have 100 chickens back there. A rooster? No rooster. I'm not sure it's them or somebody else. You'd know if you heard it. No, there used to be a rooster. I think somebody took care of it. Yeah, probably did. Sharpshooter. No, it's a little ways away. But, no, I don't know what we have in our neighborhood, our new neighborhood. We do have cows and horses. I have not seen chickens yet but that wouldn't surprise me life is changing sounds good maybe we'll find out I'm going to be moving in for like a million years everything that's got to be moved out yeah has to be moved in and put in the right spot and put in well all the stuff that's in the pack rat is going in the basement right and Janice is like you're not doing that by yourself you're going to hire some people I go okay we'll see I'm hoping there's some people who like krispies because I like handing them out and not rice krispies no no not rice krispies green krispies with a little band around them got it what else we got is there anything else I think I hit all the high points well moving forward we're going to try something a little different I think we'll I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands because I don't have a house I'm going to be in an apartment I don't have any of my things so I'm going to be looking for things to do so I think you're going to hear from me and we're going to try a couple of different experiments we're going to use the podcast software I have we'll try that you'll have time to do that you'll have time to experiment so we will talk weekly maybe we'll do 10 minutes of recording we'll identify how we're recording then maybe we'll do the Zillow call like we're doing and then I'm hoping when it comes to oh do you have any news about Pintastic anything going on there I've heard zero we haven't published the June episode yet so I'm sure we'll hear from Dave Marston pretty quickly after what we said in the last episode okay we will you will I will okay what are you guys trying to say I have no idea what you're saying so oh I know it was we want John to do a seminar oh yeah definitely it would be great you could give us some feedback on that too guys I mean John you know John did a really good job at the beginning have you listened to it already no I have not okay so So John really did a great job, but he's a straight man. And you and I just kind of sat and listened. I interjected a couple times. He shut me down. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to shut up and let him go. And then that stopped. About an hour and change in. And then the fun began.
    55:05
    And then it was like our regular show. Off to the races. If not worse. Off to the races. So that was a fun. And I started thinking. I'm like, you know, I haven't heard other people do that. every once in a while, but we should try to do that more often. If somebody's got a big collection, but they have to have the personality too. John can just, John can talk about eggs for three hours. I mean, John can take something infinitesimal small and turn it large. He's just that kind of guy.
    55:37
    So, yeah. So there's that. So we'll see how people view the recordings because we're going to have to do it for a couple months until we get together in September. And then I'm hoping, I'm praying, that some of our fellow podcasters will be at Pintastic and that we can... They will. They're probably going to podcast for a minute. Right, but I want to learn... Okay, show me how you do it. Might be trade secrets. I'm hoping they're... Maybe. I'm hoping they're not like that. Because I'm clueless. I don't know how to make us sound better. I love doing it this way. It's hard doing it not seeing you. We react better. And I think people say that about our podcast. Because everybody else does it the way we're going to be doing it. So we'll see.
    56:33
    It's better in person. No, it is. It's going to be a little hard. It's going to be a little hard to do there.
    56:42
    You got anything else? I do. I'll say going forward, we've got a full dance card going forward. So here are the games we're going to be working on coming up very shortly. We're going to be working on, again, that prototype Firepower with the drop targets and the stand-ups. Working on a Nitro Groundshaker, Aladdin's Castle, both are ballets, Amada Hari,
    57:07
    Sharky Shootout, one of the first official stern of the Sega thing. World Cup Soccer 94 that's like the game I picked up a little while ago I'm going to work on that we have a let's see a whodunit another whodunit come up I'm going to work on that a Dale Jr another game we've done that one Time Warp a lovely Williams game I believe that is a System 6 I think it's a System 6 could be system 4 I think system 6 and going to be delivering that Gorgar I got restored to the guy who works for channel 5 up to New Hampshire, I actually put that upstairs in my game room right now, beautiful Gorgar the best Gorgar we've done and that came out really nice and what else yeah I already got that one Carol Mauer over there is trying to give me some pointers but yep, we got that. Numbers in the real.
    58:11
    Oh yeah, that's true. Oh, I didn't say that. Good point. Yeah, she has a good point. So the Solaride and Royal Fush we were talking about earlier that they leveled like a pool table. I noticed something different on those two. These seem like they, these games came from either Ohio or Chicago. Right around there. But they seem like they were prototypes as well because they had serial numbers stamped into their the wooden rails on the game inside the playfield. Stamped on that. There was no serial number on the side of the cabinet. There is no serial number little tag that Gottlieb does, a green tag on the top apron.
    58:43
    Because there's sample games. I think some of these games are samples. Do you think, like, they put it out on Ralph? Yeah, Ralph's the only kid. Yeah. So Royal Flush was like that, and so was Solar Ride. So it's a differentiator. It's a way to say, hey, this game's a little bit different. Right. But it played the same. It was a sample game to see if they're going to make more.
    59:03
    Then I have Flash Gordon. That one's about done. That's going to be going to its new home in late July.
    59:13
    And then what else? Well, let's go back to the other game. So what is your customer saying about Centaur? Is he calling and saying when he's going to deliver it? He's fine. Does he listen to this podcast? I don't know. But I know. See, way back when I said I think we're almost months ago. I said I think we're about done. Dave, this is like an ongoing story. Oh, I know. I know, it's infuriating. And he's waiting for a long time, but when I told him that I got it just about done, except for these couple gremlins, he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I know what that is. Yeah, oh, the things that I didn't tell you. It's like, yeah, I don't mind waiting as long as it takes to get those gremlins defeated. I'll wait even longer, I don't care. So he is giving me carte blanche to fix the gremlin. The pressure's not on. No, no, no, because he wants it right. It's going all the way down to Maryland. so he wants it right before it goes and I want it right too so no problem there and I think and then the other game in Long of the Tooth in about three years is a game I had from Ohio it's a Knight Rider I'm going to do a playtip swap on I've got to get that going pretty soon this summer, in July time frame I'm going to start digging into that get that started so I want to get all the long tooth stuff, you know, finally finished with that, then the other things that are going to be after that will be a 9-volt playfield swap, another firepower playfield swap. So you've got a lot of business. I've got a lot of business. So I want to pose a question to our audience.
    60:53
    I talked about it in the last episode, but we never got to it because we just went way too long. There were two machines in John's collection that I said we would probably play and we never did.
    61:09
    Adam's family. The Ram games. Adam's family and the Twilight Zone. So I'm going to put it out to the audience.
    61:16
    Do you want to hear us do a review on those games? My thought is I'll be back in September. Maybe John will be polite enough either before or after Pintastic not during that we go over to his house and do a review with him on those two games.
    61:36
    He probably will. Yeah, I know he probably will. But we should do it. Yeah. Because we're going to be there and then I can kind of put a couple more live shows together that can be published later in the year. Good idea. Well, we're going to have to take advantage of that. Yeah. Because we usually don't. We usually get preoccupied in doing other things and then never get around to recording. We've been pretty good with Fantastic. the other one too we should do and uh did you go with me? no oh Jeff went with me I went to Stu's house he has all his really old 1930s and 40s stuff I don't think Stu's liking me right now because I keep bugging him about that Escalera I pleaded with him this week oh I pleaded with him he's got the other one whatever it is and I basically pleaded I'm not with Zen I'll compensate you can you come up with the thing and drag my crickets now I know he runs a restaurant he's a busy guy I mean I had no choice I had to fish so if you're hearing this look understand my back was up against the wall I think everything's solved and I'm happy with it now what would happen if that was you couldn't get out what would the new owners do would they say do you own a sawzall I talked to my friend Jack before we got on before we started recording he's like you got the saws all rubbed up? actually I don't you can rent one I'll be able to get a hammer a sledgehammer I would bust this thing apart what would be my choice and people are like it doesn't weigh that much have you ever seen the size of the mech in that game It's all cast iron. That thing, if it doesn't weigh 100 pounds, it's got to weigh 150 pounds. It's built to be in biker bars with drunk bikers. It has to take a punch, you know.
    63:37
    I don't think you could do any... I think it would be really hard to break it apart. I bet you it would. So, I'm grateful it's going to be reused. I'm grateful.
    63:49
    But, never again. as Janice said, you have some hobbies. I go, yeah. Maybe I should take up like watch collecting or... Stamp collecting. Right. Something that you can put in your hand and doesn't require people to move you. I'm not even going to tell you about my antique Jeepster. I'm not even going to tell you that story. That was horrible. It's still in my garage.
    64:16
    It was supposed to be out of here a week ago or so? Yes, it was supposed to be in Virginia a week ago. It did leave, and then it came back. It did, right. It was like a bad rash. It came back. And I don't like bad rashes.
    64:29
    Destroy Centaur. Welcome to part two of the classic pinball podcast, Centaur Reexamined. Today I'm joined by Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. and our good friend, revisiting us in back-to-back episodes, John Day. Hey, George. How are you doing? Great to hear you.
    64:59
    I'm doing great. Guys, this couldn't be more timely. We've got a lot to unpack here today. Dave, why don't you start with a recap of the issue you had with your customer, Centaur, and John, jump in wherever appropriate and talk about the repair. Alright, issue well let's go with issues, plural, plaguing this thing so as we last left our heroes, they were beating their head against this beast of a centaur and I just spent tons of time and I got it all restored as we talked about spent plenty of time on it and I could not get these final little gremlins to behave. One being, every so often, you turn it on, it doesn't boot up all the way. It just does this little boom, boom, boom, and it doesn't come up all the way. You've got to turn off and on, it comes up. So that was one. I had to get that fixed. The second one was sometimes the multi-ball wouldn't work. It would try to shoot the ball, but it wouldn't. It would miss. That was sporadic, too, so something going on there. So it just wasn't, when it played, it played well, but it was not quite reliable. I'd say, okay, I've had enough fun with this. Let's bring my friend John Day in, who's an engineer extraordinaire. Let's have him take a whack at it and see what he can do with this thing. Wait a second. You're not going to use that corny acronym you always use? Which one? We'll deliver no wine before it's time? Yes. It was so no wine before it's time. Exactly. A phrase. What about the acronym? Phrase. Yes. Friends. Well said. That's right. Yep. So enter John Day. Brought it over here. He's had it for, he wants to, you know, he had some fixes for it, but he doesn't want to give it the good, you know, tryout to make sure it's good. So he played and played and played and played. So he's had it for close to a month, right? Yeah, it's been about a month. Yeah, yeah. It's at least that, guys. Yeah. This all started, we got to, again, a lot to unpack. This started with us doing the show with John, which I think was recorded sometime in early June.
    67:13
    Then Dave came to my house about a week or so before I was ready to depart New Hampshire. And now I'm here in Virginia.
    67:25
    It's after the 4th of July. We're into the second week of the month, and we're recording again. So we're doing something a little bit different here, folks. with the part one and part two, but I think it's all timely. I think everybody will get it once we kind of put it all together. Yeah. Sounds great.
    67:43
    Sounds great, yeah. Yeah, so Centaur was quite a fun visitor. And, Dave, I remember playing it at your house. You had us over as guests, and you had mentioned that the game had a couple of gremlins. And you and I kind of tried to tackle them a bit when I was first visiting, but it still just was not clear, like, what the root cause of either of those were. Right. So I was glad you brought the game here because, you know, it's always fun to take on a new challenge. John likes puzzles and challenges. Yeah, I do kind of like challenges, especially of the electronics and mechanical variety. So it was a lot of fun. And Centaur is such a fun title. Yeah. And just as you said, Dave, I mean, the game played beautifully. You know, it's got a new play field in it, you know, flippers. Game played, like, flawlessly, except it just didn't turn on. Right, exactly. You throw it on, it doesn't work.
    68:31
    You need that to happen to play the game. Yeah, it seems kind of important. And then multiball, and I never realized how important multiball is on Centaur. You know, you sort of think of multiball, especially in classics, like that it's sort of an add-on-like thing, you know, like a novelty. But on Centaur, it's like that is the fun of the game is getting, you know, getting the orbs lined up and getting multiball, and it's a super, super fun game. That's the main objective of this game. See, I think it's only five-ball, multi-ball game Valley made. Exactly. It's so very important to get that going. Exactly. So, you know, and I had not really realized that, you know, until I got, you know, a fair number of plays on your copy. And then I really, you know, understood just how important multi-ball is and just how frustrating it is when the multi-ball doesn't work. Then you're like, and it's just sitting there and the game's knocking and it's trying to send the multi-ball out, but it can't. And you're like, this isn't very fun. Right. It's one of those things you've got to address it. And it's often good when there's really weird problems like that to get a second set of eyes and stare at it. So anyway, so the interesting thing is this game kind of plagued me, too, for a while. So I thought I understood the issue. And the neck is pretty complicated on Centaur. If anyone has never seen the underside of a Centaur, it's unbelievably complex. It's amazing they actually worked somebody from the factory up the floor. Exactly. You have no idea right now I'm crossing my fingers and saying, please, please, after I move my game, work. Yeah. Please. It is super complicated. Because I've looked at it and I've played with mine and we'll come back to this, but I'm wondering what the reimagination of this mech is. And John, we have a little bit of time to think about what you would do if you had the opportunity to reimagine that in the new Haggis game. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think if you look at the way a modern, like, Stern game does it, WPC or Stern, you know, like anything from, like, Attack from Mars and newer, that mech is gloriously simple and reliable and incredibly well engineered. I don't think you can beat it. So I would just copy what, you know, if you could. I don't know what the patent situation is, but, you know, but like what the WPCs did and what Stern does. I mean, that neck is beautiful. There's only two solenoids involved in it, one that upkicks it, and a second one that, you know, throws it out. But they still have to shoot it up into that hidden passageway in the center. I think if you reimagined it, I would probably get rid of the hidden passage. That's what I would do. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Okay, and just have it automatically shoot the ball. I would just, I'd turn it into a modern, you know. Okay, shoot her from the actual shooter lane right there. Yeah, from the shooter lane, yeah. That's what I would do. That's the fun, though. It's the mysteries. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, the flap. It's like the old days. The flap. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess so. But, you know, that mech is just so complicated in its current implementation. You're going to jinx me. Yeah. What they should do is kind of do a combo. So do the WPC stern way to handle it by shooting it through the shooter lane. or to send it to the shooter lane, shoot it up a path up the thing, and then have another, I don't know, another mech, when it goes there, shoot it up like a buck or something. Yeah. Yeah, you could do a buck, I guess. But, you know, it starts getting really complicated. You have to have a diverter now. You're probably going to get all bucked up, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess we're going to find out. Well, I'm going to – so here, I'm actually going to say something incredibly ignorant now, okay, and that is, you know, I always played the centaur that Mike had. So, you know, I played that in New England Pinball League, you know, league events. And I always enjoyed the game. And never really, like, put two and two together when it threw out multiball that it was, like, appearing from nowhere. You know, I never really studied it that much. I mean, I had never worked on a centaur before. And so I was like, yeah, you're playing the game. And all of a sudden there's, like, I don't know, there's another ball here. Where did these come from? I never really – I didn't really give it a lot of thought. And I think that may be true for a lot of players, too. So I think when you're playing like a modern WPC or a Stern game or whatever, you get the same effect. Like all of a sudden there's just another ball there. Right. Like you don't really notice that it came from the other shooter. Yeah, that's true. So I don't think the lot would be lost with Haggis to just go with, you know, a modern Stern or WPC style multi-ball with the auto shooter. I mean, it's just such a simple deck and it works so reliably and it's so easy to, you know, to adjust and stuff like that. I'm an engineer, so I will tend to go for the simplest, most reliable, robust mechanism. And what is in the current valley centaur, I would say, is not simple. Right. I'll say that. And, yeah, once it's all set up, I think it's probably fine. Yeah. But I think it's the game's age and things get out of adjustment. You do a play field swap and everything. There it is. Okay. Or you move them 500 miles. What's that? Or you move them 1,000 miles. Oh, a thousand miles, yeah. In the back of a U-Haul, jostling all over the place. Exactly. I mean, you may be fine, George, so don't rule it out. Yeah, everything's all socked down in there and not moving parts over from one place to another. It's not over until it's over. It may plug in and work just perfectly, so don't worry about it. If it doesn't, I'm sure it'll be fixable. And between Dave and I, we can give you some advice on how to fix it. Exactly. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of FaceTime video. Yeah, there you go. So getting back to the mech itself, so if you're not familiar with how the Centaur, and I was not until I saw this game, but the way it works is there's two independent brawl troughs. So there's the conventional ball trough that you have on a classic valley that, you know, that kicks it, you know, up and then over sort of a ramp, and then it falls onto the shooting lane. But then there's a hidden trap door. So it's like a little trap door that pops up. whenever there is less than four balls in a second trough, which is below the play field. And so what happens is every time the ball kicks out, if there is four balls in the lower trough, then that trap door is closed and the ball makes it into the shooter lane. If there is three balls or less in the lower trough, then there's a spring that opens up this trap door and it literally captures it. It steals the ball as it's flying in the air and throws it into this lower trough. And it's another whole trough that's reproduced with switches to know how many balls are in there, to know, you know, the current status of the game. But it doesn't end there in complexity. So now you have this lower trough, and then the lower trough has a linear solenoid, similar to the linear flippers, you know, with a bushing. And it's got a little, like, a hand that's, like, grabbing the ball. But it's very fragile, and it's very, very small. So the finger is only maybe a tenth of an inch long. And so that finger, like, stops the ball from falling forward, and then it has a backside that kind of advances the ball through the draw. Like Funhaus has that. On Funhaus, they have that at the top there when you're throwing the ball around for multi-ball. Yeah, yeah. It's a very similar mech on a Gottlieb, like Black Hole. The black hole multiball works in a similar way, although the Gottlieb, I think, has better tolerances than what was in this game. So what happens is when you get a multiball event, then that solenoid triggers, and it moves one of those balls forward in the trough, and it ends up in a lower launch pathway. So there's this very intricate, almost like a wire ramp, similar to what you have on a modern ramp game, but imagine that in 360 degrees. So that entirely encapsulates the ball and it drops into that. And that is like the whole play field length. Yeah, the whole length of the play field. Then there's yet another solenoid that kicks the ball out when it's there and then kicks it along that path. Then there's a switch at the end of the path. So it knows when the ball has gone past that point. So it knows the ball has advanced. And then it finally makes its way through the trap door. And so what was happening in the game when multi-ball wasn't occurring is the balls were either, and there were multiple problems, and that's why this thing was so difficult to diagnose. And, you know, one thing is the game had a ton of plays on it. I mean, it was really, really abused. I mean, the play field was all down to wood, as you showed me. Yeah. And so the the the bearing, like the pivot for which that first that first like hand advanced solenoid was pretty worn. And so it was like it was kind of getting sort of jammed when it was moving. And also it didn't have a lot of good tolerance with respect to holding the ball. So I didn't have that part, but I had a valley regular flipper bushing. Yeah. So I was able to, like, machine that down, you know, cut it. Yeah. And then, you know, machine it down, nice surface to make it the same dimensions as the original. Put that in and then played about 50 multiballs. It all worked perfectly. Awesome. And I'm like, solved. Got it. Solved. And then on the 51th multiball, it didn't serve. Oh. Welcome to my pain.
    77:58
    So it's back. So more research and discovered that the way the software works is that there is an end switch, which when the ball is sent from that below playfield level wire form, that it detects that the ball is gone. Well, that switch was kind of erratic. Like it wasn't. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Well, if that switch ever didn't detect, then you would get this clunking where it would try to resend the ball three times. But there's no ball to send because the ball has already gone. So I contacted you. I didn't have that switch. Fortunately, Dave, you've got the man of all parts. You had one in stock. Yeah. So we put the new switch in, put a cap across there just for good flavor, and then played a bunch more games and thought it was fixed until it started jamming.
    78:55
    So, again, saw a multi-ball fail a third time for a third problem. To Bob Marley, the jammy, said, we jamming?
    79:05
    This sounds like the engineer's name is Rube Goldberg. It was It like that We jamming And so this jamming you couldn really figure it out because you lift the play field to look at it and nothing appears to be jammed And then you put the play field back down and play it and it would be fine And then another 50 or so multi-balls in, it would, like, stop. It would stop. Like, you would tell, it would do bang, bang, bang, and then you didn't get the multi-ball you were supposed to get, and it would be jammed again. And then you'd finger it, and you could tell that, like, it can't advance the ball for some reason. And then you lift the play field again, and it's fine. It was doing that. That's how mysterious this problem was. So what I did is I put my cell phone under there and recorded it. Oh, I've done that before. And then, you know, recorded the mechanism to see, like, how it was jamming, and I could see it. And then eventually I really, really studied it and discovered that the trough was right at the tolerance, like the spacing for the ball, was exactly at the width of the ball. So it's super tight tolerance, super tight error. And so like if the ball, you know, the ball might be a millionth of an inch thicker on one side or the other. And if the ball just sort of landed in that area, it would get caught in the trough. And then you'd lift the play field and the ball would shake. Right. And then that's why it wasn't jammed. Right. It wouldn't come through again. Right. So that was probably the major root cause of the issue. And the other two things were probably, you know, ancillary problems. But that, I think, was the true root. So I was able to basically drill out the – so this was a CPR play field, I think, that you put in, Dave. So no doubt, like, the holes for the CPR were slightly off. Right. And, you know, it's one of those things that, like, it plays fine most of the time. You'd never see it. So ended up ovaling out the holes to mount the mechanism so they can gain more tolerance. Okay. And then put it all back together. Now it's got about 20 thousandths of tolerance. You know, the spacing is now about 20 thousandths wider than the thickness of the ball. And have not seen a jam since then after probably 300 multi-ball sessions now. So I'm hoping to call that fixed at this point. And, Dave, you played a multi-ball session when you came over this morning. Did. Played wonderful. Yeah, played great. Played great. The game's beautiful, by the way. Yeah, thank you. It's really awesome. It's wonderful. But that's not all. No, it's not all. Yeah. There's more.
    81:32
    There's more. Yeah, it's a game that keeps on giving. It keeps on giving. There's multiple gremlins in this thing. We had to bring over a priest to do an exorcism at some point as well. But we were going to go there, but we didn't have to. There's a near here, so.
    81:43
    Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the other one was the turn-on feature. Yeah, power-ups. So that was a really weird one, too. So the game would, like, you know, you'd turn it on, and you told me about this, and I was like, and I remember telling you, Dave, I'm like, I've never seen it not power up. It's always been fine. Right. And then you gave me a clue, and you said, let's sit for a couple days. Yeah. And so I let you sit. That doesn't work, John. It doesn't work? No. Don't you remember? See, again, you haven't heard part one. Ah. I had the same issue. I have the same issue with a skateboard. Oh, there you go. Oh, all right. We have the same issue. By the way, we know how to fix that. Again, I've had the privilege of listening to part one before this recording. And whatever that multi-letter, multi-number part that you used, and Dave, you didn't know what it was at the time. I'm sure you do now. Yes. Explain to the audience what was done. Yeah. And try to dumb it down a little bit because I was lost at the part number. And how it's inherent on some valleys out there. Valleys out in the field are going to all have it. Some of them are going to have it. Yeah. Now, is it just because of the original valley MPU, or is it all MPUs?
    83:00
    Well, the challenge is a lot of the aftermarket MPUs have copied the original circuits. Right. So, they'll tell you the whole story. So, let's just pay the whole deal so you'll get to figure it all out. Yeah, yeah. I was enthralled with what he was telling me. It's, like, amazing. That makes total sense. So the issue is this, that microprocessors, you know, there's like a 6800 series microprocessor in there, and that has a reset signal on it. And that reset signal has to be asserted any time the processor voltage is below 4.5 volts. It could be 4.75 volts, but something like that. And if it's allowed to execute code, like whenever the reset is not asserted, then that microprocessor can start running software. And if the voltage is too low, it'll do crazy stuff. It'll lock up. It'll damage its game settings. It'll do all kinds of insane things. So what is common, this is a known issue, and so you design what's called an external reset circuit, and Bally designed that on the original 17 and 35 MPUs. But Bally was very concerned about losing the game settings. So they designed the circuit so that if the 12 volts goes away, in other words, you turn the power off, that it holds the processor and reset before the 5-volt supply of the MPU disintegrates, so that the microprocessor is never allowed to run whenever the game is turned off. In other words, the microprocessor, as soon as you flip the switch, the 12-volt goes away, and then the microprocessor is held in reset. and it prevents it from damaging game settings like the number of credits that you have, the various feature settings you might have in the game. The problem is they never designed that circuit properly for PowerOn, and they created what's called a race condition.
    85:03
    And so the 12 volts comes up, and then there is a 5-volt regulator, which is part of the 12 volts, And the 12 volts basically may be present, and depending on where it is in the AC power line phase, it can be present too early or too late. And then the 5 volts might not be completely stable yet, and the reset circuit that they've designed does not guard for that. And so the microprocessor is allowed to run code when the voltage is too low. And if you allow that, the game may not power up reliably. And that's what was happening on your Centaur, and very likely what's happening on your Skateball. So, Valley and Williams kind of figured this out later on. And so, games like WPCs, if you look at those, they all have 4.5-volt reset circuits that are on the 5-volt power supply. So, they, you know, clearly the designers a decade later recognized that this was an issue, And they addressed that on the WPC games. But on the original, you know, 1980s, you know, the Centaur, for example, it had this strange circuit that does not always guarantee a proper power on reset. And, again, it was basically made, okay, good enough. Right. Good enough. But you also told me something that's interesting, too. On the other side of it, when you power it down, they actually did pay attention to it, and they kept it held longer so that it wouldn't mess up the volatile rim? Correct, yeah. So it was always – so they focused on – because there's two problems with resets. There's when you first power the game up and when you power the game off. Right. So there's actually two problem reset problems in the game, and they focused on the power down. So the circuit is all designed to basically hold the processor and reset when the AC power goes away to guarantee that the RAM, you know how you have a – Or your game settings. The game settings. It's basically the NV RAM or it's the RAM that is powered by a battery. It's one or the other. And it's to guarantee that that RAM is not – its contents are not corrupted. That's exactly right. It's all an anti-corruption strategy. So the circuit is completely designed to prevent from corrupting the RAM. And I get it. I mean, they have to do that. It's properly designed to do that. It's actually very, very well engineered to do that. But the problem is it's not – it does not – it creates a race condition where on power-up it doesn't – it can't in 100% of all cases, at least on your Centaur, that there were situations I captured on my oscilloscope that the reset was not held low when the voltage was below 5 volts, and so the part didn't reset correctly. And he was showing me on the graph and on the oscilloscope graph that it all depends when you turn that game on in the AC waveform coming into the house. Like, where are you turning the game on? Are you on the high part of the form coming in? Exactly. Are you on the low part coming in? It all depends on luck of the draw when you turn it on as well. That's right. With the way it was set up originally. But now after John did his little thing with it, now it doesn't matter when you turn it on. It's always going to be good. Yeah, yeah. So it was, and you described it very well, Dave. It was luck of the draw. It would really depend on where in the AC waveform you turned it on as to whether the game would probably reset. And another thing, too, is like you were telling me, is you left it off for a couple days. The cap would discharge for your filter. And that's another thing. That's where the race conditions are. They're all racing to get to the same finish line at the right timing. and it takes a while to charge that cap up, the things weren't quite ready, and it wouldn't reset. You try it again, now the cap is charged, now things are going to be fine. So that's why you let the game off for a couple days. You have a potential, you have a lot more chance for a problem. It's also why when you turn it on and it doesn't boot, and then you turn it off and turn it on again, then the capacitor remains charged. It's all charged. It's all good to go. So that's when the 5 volts is already there, and you're causing a reset pulse. And that's why on your Centaur, it would always work if you turned it off and turned it on. It would always restart, and that's because the capacitor was charged, the 5 volts was stable, and then you were creating a reset pulse by killing the 12 volts. And describe the other thing you found, too. If the transformer, luck of the draw, the transformer, you got one that's a little bit hot, meaning a little bit higher voltage than the 11.9 and 12, then that also. Yeah, I don't know that with 100%. That's a theory, David. Okay. So I'll say that that's a theory. I don't know that with 100% certainty. All I know is, because you were asking, like, why is this Centaur worse than other games? And now we're discovering that George has a skateball. Right, but it's only one, and I have 12 games. It's the only one that does. Exactly. Every other game, it works correctly. It's weird. Exactly. Yep, yep. And so it's because the circuit is not bulletproof. So what's the fix? Is there a fix, or you just live with it? Oh, no, no. We have a fix for it. Yeah, we have a fix. It should be 100% bulletproof. So are you coming out with a new add-on? We have an app for that. Yeah, we don't have an app for that. Yeah, we have an app for that or a chip for that. A chip for that, yes. We have a chip for that, exactly.
    90:23
    So anyway, so what I ended up doing is there is what's called a CPU supervisor that's broadly available. It's called an MCP121. Yeah, that thing. Yeah, MCP121, and you can get it in different voltages. There's a 450 version is the one that I use, which is basically it sets the voltage at which it resets. And that is an independent supervisor. It's called a CPU supervisor. And what it does is it's looking at the 5-volt power supply, and if the 5-volt power supply is below 4.5 volts, it generates a reset signal. And then when the power supply is above 4.5 volts, then it waits 120 milliseconds, and then it finally de-asserts the reset. So what it does is when you're powering up the game is that it resets the microprocessor guaranteed. And then once the voltage is above 4.5 volts, which is the minimum voltage, then it holds it in reset for an extra 120 milliseconds just for good measure. And what that does is it makes sure the 5-volt power supply is perfectly stable, the game is stable, everything is wonderful, and then it finally lets go of the reset line. And it guarantees just a rock-solid reset signal to the microprocessor for the power-up. And so, and it turns out it's very, it's a little three-terminal device. It looks like a pretty easy install. Yeah, that's all it is. It looks like a transistor. It's just a TO-92 package. Drill a hole in your MPU, put this in there, attach a couple wires here to two spots and done. Yeah, yeah. All you have to connect is, I drilled three holes in the MPU just so you could stick the leads through it so it looked, you know, professional. and then you just connect one lead to ground, one lead to five volts, and the other lead goes to – there's two transistors that are part of the power-up circuit. It goes to the base of the transistor of the first circuit, and that's it. And then it works solid. I haven't seen any power-up problems with it since. In fact, when I had you come over, I think I hadn't powered it up in two or three days. That's commonly when it will have an issue, but I haven't seen any issue. I've probably power-cycled it 50 times since installing that circuit without an issue.
    92:33
    And by the way, the WPC games do this. So if you look at a WPC game, it has a 4.5 volts voltage detector. It's not an MCP-121 just because that part I don't think existed in 1990. They probably would have used it if it did. Right. But they have a discrete circuit that works like that. And I think WPCs need 4.8 or above. Right. But I think the Bally's are less, they need more like load to load for. I think it's four and a half. I don't know that I would trust them below four and a half. You'd have to look at the specs on every IC in that part. I just remember the WPCs, you know, they're very particular. So the WPCs are particular because, and I'll explain that. So the reason WPCs are so particular is that they, it's this reset circuit. It's kind of ironic. So the reset circuit guarantees it powers up, but it also can cause a gain reset while you're playing. Yes, if your 5 volts is – Below 4.8, 4.8 volts. Yeah, so the issue is on WPCs is that the threshold voltage for their reset circuit is around 4.8 volts or 4.75. Yeah. The threshold on the one that I put in, your Centaur, is 4.5 volts, so it's got more margin. Yeah. But the – and the issue is that as the game ages, you know, then two things can happen. The threshold might change a little bit. Right. and put you closer to the supply voltage, which would cause a reset. But the connectors start oxidizing, so you get a voltage drop across the connectors. That's very, very common. And then the regulator itself, the 5-volt regulator, can sometimes shift. Like its output voltage could shift a little bit lower than when the game was new. So on WPCs, it was only 200 millivolts of margin, not a lot. And as the game aged, you know, most likely it's the connectors usually, but the regulator can do it too. And that's why a lot of times, you know, we put in those PU5. Yeah, the PU5. That's actually what I put in Centaur debugging. Yeah, originally you were going to say this, you know, your first step was like, well, let's change out the 5-volt reg with PU5. And when you did that, though, things actually got worse. Yeah, it got worse because it's a race condition, and it turned out the race went in the wrong direction. Wrong direction, right. You want to even things out. You made things even more worse. It actually exacerbated the problem. Right. And I've put PU5s in many Valley games. You know, I've probably put half a dozen of them. But it probably made you realize, like, okay, I'm making it worse over here. Why is this making it worse? I mean, did it point you to something over here? It did, yeah. Well, so I put my oscilloscope on it. So I had never scoped it out before that. So originally I just was like, you know, maybe this 5-volt regulator is lazy. It's lazy coming up. It's 40 years old. I'll just put one of these PU5s in. I know that those are snappy. They come up very quickly, and so I figured that would probably change the power-up sequence. Because I was always suspecting it was a race condition. I knew it would change the timing. Right. So I put that in your Centaur, and then it was worse. It was failing probably every three power-ups or every five. Maybe it was every ten originally. So it was definitely worse. It was demonstrably worse. So then I connected an oscilloscope to the 12 volts, 5 volts, and reset line, and then could capture the race condition. Right. And I captured, you know, a failing boot and a passing boot so I could compare the two. And that's when it was very, very clear what the problem was. And especially, so the failing boot, you said, okay, like we said, you let it sit unturned on for like a couple days to make sure that cap was totally discharged. Exactly. Better chance of it failing. That's exactly right. And that's exactly what I did. I just let it sit for, you know, I think if you let it sit for like an hour, you're fine. Oh, an hour. Or even half an hour is probably enough. You just got to get the 12 volts. You just got to get the 12-volt cap fully discharged. Yeah. And that might take, maybe it only takes 10 minutes or 15 minutes. Okay. But it's probably that order of magnitude. Because the thing about it is, like, if it doesn't power up right away, your initial reaction is turn it off, turn it back on. Right. Guess what? The capacitor's charged now. Right. And that's why it always boots. Exactly. The second time because the 12 volts goes away. It generates the reset signal. Life is good. Right. So you're kind of guaranteed that would always work. Okay. So you can look the other way on this problem if you really wanted to and know that if it doesn't boot the first time, just click it and you're all set. You know, just turn it off, turn it back on. You know it'll work. the second time. You could look the other way if you want to. But if you really want to make the game perfect, which this game deserves. This game deserves you for it. It really does. I spent so much time and everything else on this game. I wanted to be 100%. So it's going home today?
    97:06
    It's going to its temporary home back to my place today. Yeah. And when's your customer coming to get it? I don't know. I've got to figure that out. I've still got to make a video of it, play, and all my usual stuff on my YouTube channel. So I'm going to do all that. Nice. And then I'm going to give my customer his video of it playing, his whole gig, and then, you know, when can we come pick it up?
    97:29
    So, George, I'm actually a big fan of Haggis Pinball. And I'm, like, really excited that they're remaking some of these classic games, you know, like Fathom and now Centaur. Unfortunately, I've not yet found a Fathom in the wild. So I haven't actually, you know, one of those Haggis Pinballs. so I have not been able to play one. Now, have you played Celts? I have not, so I haven't found it. So you're like Dave and I. Dave, have you ever played a... I've seen it. I've seen it at shows. Have you? Yeah, I haven't even seen one. I think I saw that Celts or something. Yeah, where? Didn't we see it in Ohio?
    98:11
    Ah, man. I haven't seen one. I know you didn't play it, though. Let's put it this way. If we did, I don't remember, and that's not a good thing. But I guess, you know, I really, I've been following Haggis, you know, kind of since they talked about Fathom, you know, reimagined or redone. Huge fan of Fathom. Wonderful game. Beautiful artwork. Fun to play. Just, it's great. But it's unobtainable at this point. You know, the price points are just so high on beat-up games that, you know, it's kind of outside of my budget. And so I've kind of given up on getting one of those. But I'm very happy to see it rebuilt, you know, and having them redo it again. Because it's a great title. There needs to be more Fathoms in this world. So wait a second, John. I'm confused. You don't want to buy a beat-up Centaur from 81 or you find the price point on the new game? I guess what I'm saying is, like, is that, like, you know, Centaur or Fathom, For starters, it's very difficult to find one for sale today, you know, use, even use. There's one for sale on Pinside right now for $6,000. How much? $6,000. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that. So, you know, $6,000, but it's probably beat up. Beat up. I don't know what condition it is. I haven't looked at it. But a lot of, I don't know if it's, but my point is that a lot of people are asking, you know, $5,000, $6,000 for a game with an original play field that's pretty beat, that is going to need full restoration. and it's still a 40-year-old game. And so, you know, it's going to cost me another $1,500, $2,000 in parts to bring it up to, you know, and that's in 100 hours of labor or more or whatever it is to bring it up to, you know, a new game standard. And you're competing against, you know, something like a new in-box Godzilla that you can buy for $7,000 and it's a brand-new game, you know, and it's got rule sets that are, you know, 100 times deeper than, you know, what's in Centaur. And it's multi-ball and it's super fun. So for me, it starts when these games get to be at that price point, you know, I start to have to reflect upon as it makes sense, you know. Well, on Pinside, when you have a collection out there, you can put your collection in there. It automatically will show you, you know, what Pinside thinks your game is worth. Next to every game you have in there, it puts a little, you know, average selling price, whatever. And I started looking. I have like 50 games in there. I started looking and said, okay, what do they think my games are worth? And it's an average. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. story. I couldn't believe when I saw my Stargazer what that was worth on there. It was like $12,000 or something like that. Yeah, like $12,000 for a Stargazer. Well, I guess the question becomes, you're looking at the two new Haggis models that are available. One is roughly $10,200 US, but if you want it in a timely fashion and don't want to wait for the slow boat from Australia, that's another $1,800. So you're at $12,000 for their base model. Yeah. If you look at their higher end model, you're almost at, what, $17,000 or $18,000 with airfare. So that's, you know, those are some stiff numbers. Yeah. The question becomes, are we going to see, Dave, since you own one and I own one, I'm guessing we're starting to see the lift in price on our games because the delta is so wide now that's that's my game was worth four grand i think it's worth a lot more than four grand now which game my centaur oh yeah definitely yeah yeah right that's all i thought it was worth no but now that this other one you've got a comparison the lift from four to twelve that's Eight grand. That's a lot of margin. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to nicely – I still would prefer – now, I should – I'll play – I'd like to play a Haggis one just to see. But my gut is I like originality. I'll still take, you know, what I think right now, a nicely restored original that looks showroom new, fresh out of the factory, versus a reimagined centaur. Because I just like the original thing. The new Centaurs right here, they have a, what's it called? Not an overlay.
    102:28
    What do they call it? Yeah, it's like a hardtop. They've got a hardtop on. It's a hardtop. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of advantages to that. Or someone says it's a plastic playfield. I think it's wood underneath, so my understanding. My understanding is that it's a laminated, you know, thicker hardtop. Like hardtops are $30,000, P-Tag-G. Yeah. And then what they're using looks to be thicker, somewhere in the $50,000 to $100,000. I don't know, actually. I would love to know that number. I'm only pulling this together from watching videos and, you know, some online pictures of the manufacturing process. So the question becomes, are we going to see one in September? I hope so. I really do because I can't wait to play it because I would expect it to play like glass. I really would. I would expect it to be a very fast game. I guess the big question is, I've asked it before and I've got crickets because nobody ever emails me. They email you, Dave. You know, theclassicpinballpodcast1 at gmail.com. Gmail for a reason, guys. George Mail. Right. Non-existent. So, again, you know, are we going to see one? Who's got one in the greater Massachusetts area that would actually bring one to the show? Well, I think the Hagen Centaur is going to be a while. You're not going to see that. About a year, because they're taking all these deposits and so forth, and then you can buy a season pass or something like that I was reading about. Yeah, for like five grand, yeah. Yeah, you've got to wait a while. So are they still trying to fulfill Fathom orders still? I don't know. Yeah, it's still not there yet. Yeah, they're looking for Fathom ones first, but they want to keep taking money until they continue the one they were doing before. to keep the real good. Everything you talk about has been talked about online and more. I don't know. I guess, I mean, my take on Haggis is, first off, I am thrilled that we are remaking the 80 classics because they're phenomenal games, they have beautiful artwork, they play beautifully, and they only made 3,000, 4,000 of them originally in the world, and you've got to assume a third of those probably aren't alive today for various reasons. Maybe more. So there's only a few thousand that exist of Fathoms and Centaurs in the world total. And they're great games. And so I am all behind remaking them in any form you can to get them out there so other people can enjoy them. Because they're great. They play great. The artwork's great. They have a different feel than the modern Stern Pros or whatever. And they're wonderful to add to a collection. So they're great. Years ago, I think it was on Pinside or RGP, but at least 10 years ago, it was talked about. And I think I was one of the cheerleaders for the classics, even more so now, but even back then, big time. I would say, why don't they remake a classic game? There's a market for it. Oh, no, no. People want the deep rule sets. They want more toys. They want this and that. It's like, well, this person talking to these people, they've never played a restored classic. They played a tired old piece of crap, not working classic game. So, yeah, it's a piece of crap. Well, they haven't played a nice restore game, so they have no idea what they're talking about. Right, so it goes back to what John just said. You know, people are looking to belly up and pay more money because it's a non-used 40-year-old game. Right. And I understand that, but it all comes back to, and we've talked about this ad nauseum, Dave, is, you know, resto-mod or revisited or reincarnated, whatever reword you want to use, versus original. I mean, look, there's a world for both. I think the fact that three people who are, you know, pretty heavily into the hobby have yet to play one. Think about that for a minute. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I mean, well, it means that they don't have a great distribution model in the United States. I would love for Haggis to have a U.S. distributor. Well, they do. They do. One of our podcast members of society, Zach Menny and Flippin' Out Pinball. Oh, I didn't realize that. He was now a distributor. He was taking orders. And, you know, this was recorded a couple days before, but I guess Wednesday is when they're going to start taking money on this game. That's great. But I heard they've got to fill up a container ship first full of them or earmark that. Then the shipping will be cheaper. If you don't wait for the container to be filled up, you can buy one that's going to be shipped to you. It's going to cost $1,000 or whatever. Well, you should be familiar with storage units as I am. I mean, I was able to fit, what, 12 machines in a 10x10. So how many machines do you actually need to get into a 40-foot shipping container to get them over here?
    107:20
    Right. I don't know. Good question. I don't know. 40, 50, 60? You're in that right range I could do a little bit of math It's probably 3 across So if you allocate 36 inches Let's say 3 feet So you could probably do 3 across And then 40 divided by 3 12, so 12 times 3 36 I just packed a pack rat 16 deep 8 by 8 So, you know, that would take probably, like you said, three across, maybe four, but probably three and probably at least six or eight deep, at least. So maybe it's more. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's on the order of 40, like you said. I think it's around 36. Right, but it's taking forever for those people. Everybody just, you know, says, hey, I spent this much. I'll spend 1,800 bucks and it'll be here tomorrow. Yeah. It is, I mean, you know, the cost of, you know, shipping something, and, you know, I don't know what, like, Australia currency is versus U.S. currency, because sometimes in currency. It's 37%, I think it is. Yeah, so something there is like $15,000. It's like $10,000 here, something like that. Yeah, the $15,000 number brings you down to around $10,200. Yeah, yeah. So you have to look at currency exchange. All I'm saying is that, and I'm pricing on the base, you know, Fathom, you know, which was somewhere around $7,000 or $8,000. I'm just saying that, you know, that at that price point, that's very attractive for a remade game. Yeah, oh, yeah. Especially with Fathom credentials. Right. And, yep, I realize that it's remade, but I placed differently than the original. But still, it's going to be a Fathom. I'm sure it's going to play great. Yeah. And, you know, I've looked at, like, the engineering looks really good. I mean, again, I haven't seen the game. I haven't played it. And maybe there's a bunch of issues. Are there WPC mechs in it or are there Bally mechs in it? Good question. If they were from me, they'd be WPC mechs. I know that question. I know the answer there. Right. But again. I guarantee you they're not linear. Okay, good. I'll take that. That's fine. But yet again, the three of us have not had that opportunity to do a comparison, which we all want to do. Yeah, yeah. I can't wait to play one. I want to see the mech that kicks the ball. Yeah. I mean, you know, we're all into it. Hey, you know, so I don't know if you read the Facebook posting from Haggis. Did either one of you look at that document? No. I'm going to read the beginning of the press release. Centaur Revisited stands as a testament to our unwavering dedication to the art of pinball, preserving its rich legacy while pushing the boundaries of innovation. We have meticulously reimagined every aspect of the beloved classic, incorporating modern technology and captivating features that will ignite your passion for the game.
    110:22
    Okay. They got the two editions, the Beast and the, what's it, the Orblivion? Orblivion, yes. So, I'm going to come to your little pinstripe thread that you told me about the other day. So, there's 250 units of the Beast and another 50, and I guess you got hand-slapped by somebody? Yeah. Well, that's what some people call pinstripe. I call it something else. They call it poopside. And when I say poopside, it's a worse word that they use for that. And I can see why. Somebody just wanted to swing theirs more than theirs. That's all it is. You know, there's a lot of asshats there. There's some good people there, too, but there's some people there that are in their basement and need to get out in a while. Right. One-upsmanship. Instead of being polite and just saying, hey, your math is wrong. Yeah. It's like, you know, throw down a – Go back to second grade. Learn your math. Yeah, okay. All right. All right, dude. Yeah. Settle down. Sit down.
    111:20
    I just have one thing. I can't justify the $5,000 increase from the beast to the oblivion. Yeah. Even with all the things that are in there. But you get a big topper, George. You get some toppers. They're awesome. Yes. Well, what do they call it? Not the underworld.
    111:39
    Oh, I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, the underworld queen plasma topper. Now, is that woman on the play field? Yes, she's the biker girl. Is that an underworld queen? She's the biker girl. Oh. But she's not an underworld queen. She rides the back of the bike. No, no, no. You're talking about Centauri. Yeah. Centaur. She's the underworld queen? According to Haggis, she is. I never heard that before. I think they made that one up. Okay. Editorial license. They're allowed. Okay. She doesn't have horns on her head. She's just kind of a little S&M view. And she is the focus of that topper. I always thought the horny dude was, you know, the centaur dude was the guy. I don't know. So the centaur dude is the guy. She's, she's, uh. But he's not on that top. on that topper. He's on the cheapo topper. He's not on the expensive topper. In biker vernacular, she's riding bitch.
    112:39
    Anyway. I'm a little confused. I don't understand why you would want a helmet and a leather jacket as part of the package. The only thing I saw... Oh, yeah. If you buy that high-end one, you get a helmet. I'm sure it's customized, and a jacket that's customized.
    113:01
    I'd rather save the money and not have that. The only thing I thought was cool on the game were those internal art blades. I'm like, okay. That, right? Isn't that what they call them? Yeah, but they're so small on these games, it doesn't make any sense. There's no... The rampers are great, because you've got a lot of space for those. For art blades. Yeah, I'm these games. Right, but if I'm digging that deep to say that's the only thing that I liked, that's – They're adding a lot more. They're trying to say, oh, more value, add value. What else can you do to pump this price up? We're going to give you all these – we're going to give a super-duper plasma top of this. I just want to flip the flippers and play some pinball. Yeah.
    113:47
    I'm not into all that either, but, hey, there probably are 50 people who are going to buy. But we're in the minority. things. A lot of people are going to buy this that like all that stuff. Well, and you know, and honestly if that gets Haggis another $25,000 or $100,000 in profit and keeps them in business. If people want it, they'll buy it. I mean, really, I just hope, I just want Haggis to be successful. Yeah, same here. No, no, no. Their charter of bringing these games back to life, new versions of it, I think is admirable and I want to see, I'd love to see 8-Ball the Watch. 8-Ball loves to see Flash Gordon. Flash Gordon would be another one. Those four games would be the ones they're going to – Yeah, yeah. Those are the most popular games. They're awesome. They're such awesome games. There's not enough of them in the world, and I'd love to see more of them. And I love – you know, I know that it's very controversial, you know, the play field that they're doing, but, you know, I mean, I'm a big fan. Oh, the color ones? The color ones, Joe? Oh, yeah, yeah. You're talking about on Centaur, for example? Yeah. Yeah, you know, admittedly, you know, I'm in the minority here. I kind of like adding a little color. You do? Oh, okay.
    114:54
    CPR did that, too. But CPR, if someone did the comparison, CPR colored versus Haggis colored, and CPR is way more clown-chewky than Haggis. Haggis did a better job of colorization, if you want to go that way. I think the Haggis one is better. It destroys the whole point. It does. You want black and white, and you want the colors that pop on the inserts. Right, and you got a little bit of red. I don't know. I mean, the challenge is, like, the game is off, and then it's just black and white, you know, And so you're right when the game is on, you know, the inserts add color. Wonderful. But I don't know. I'm good with adding color. Let me put it that way. Someone at Pinfest brought a centaur, and for all the GDI, they put all red LED everywhere. Oh. It was horrible. It was called the murder edition because it was just like blood was everywhere. It's like, nah, it's not a good way to go. It wasn't a good look. I didn't care for it. It was way over the top. Yeah. I hope the three of us get to play a game together in September, no matter which one of their games it is. Like you, I agree. I don't think you're going to see Centaur for some time. But, you know, hopefully. Hey, Gabe, listen up. Why don't you buy a Fathom? Yeah, yeah. He is buying everything else. I'm sure he's – well, then again, wait a second. He's a ramper. He's a hardcore ramper. He doesn't want to play old school games. He doesn't want to play restored classics. as far as I know.
    116:22
    I've offered to come over to my place years ago, you know, play, and he just likes his ramps. Yeah. I think they're all fun, so he's just missing out on a fun part of it.
    116:34
    Yes, I'm actually on a related note, so I'm working with one of my friends right now on doing a hardtop installation on an 8-ball deluxe. Oh, cool. It's a mutual friend of ours. Yes. So he's got an old DVD that was, you know, just play field like worn down to wood in many places. And doing something that I could never imagine doing, which is putting a palm sander on it. Yes, and the rest of that work right off of there. That was really kind of a strange experience. Right. But, you know, got all that done and, you know, polished all the inserts and everything. So hopefully next Monday we're planning on hopefully finishing that game off. Nice. Next Monday night after work. So I'll get a chance to play that. That will be really fun. And I have a feeling that will play similarly to the Haggis game. Yeah. Yes, just because of the technology. So we'll see. Oh, one other thing on the Centaur that John got rid of these gremlins on that I brought over to him.
    117:26
    I thought we were done with this. No, we're going to revisit again. Revisit in part do. Come on. People like the tech tips. So this is for the people that like these tech tips. This is something that people can experience as well.
    117:42
    So over here playing the game, it was playing great. I noticed all the, this game doesn't have any GI. It has all, all the GI is feature light, so it's all off and on with the computer. So I noticed, like, the GI seems very blinky to me. I don't remember it being blinky. And it's because over at his house, he said that the solar panels around here introduce noise into the line, and that causes havoc on these games, or it can, unless you put a little capacitor, a little capacitor trick, you add capacitors to the reset circuit. No, no, it's a zero cross. Zero cross circuit. So, yeah, the issue is that the way that these valleys work is they have what are called SCR, slow controlled rectifiers. And those get triggered by the MPU at the AC line zero crossing. So we have 60 hertz line frequency in North America, and it's rectified, so it's 120 hertz. So 125, 120 times a second, it goes to zero volts. So what happens is the MPU has a zero cross circuit which is connected to 43 volts in the solenoid circuit And what it does is it waits for that zero cross to occur and then it provides a firing pulse to all of the silicon rectifiers or the transistors that turn on the lighting circuits. And it only generates a pulse. It just generates a pulse, and then the silicon-controlled rectifier stays on for the remainder of the cycle, for the remainder of that turn 20 hertz cycle. The problem is when you have a lot of noise on the circuit, like from solar panels, which are pushing power into the grid, those are generating some small amount of noise. It's not a big deal for anything other than these, you know, zero-cost circuits from these 40-year-old games or whatever. But what happens is the zero-cost tech circuit can get confused by that and fire early. And if it fires early, then it misses that whole cycle. Like it fires too early, and then you get a blank cycle in between, and it causes a dim, and that's what you see as flickering. So what you end up doing is just paralleling C1, which is currently, I think, 820 picofarads. You parallel a 47, a 0.047 microfarad. So the switch cap, all these valuations of the switch cap. It's the same cap that you have on the switch cap, so it's a 0.47 microfarad. So you're going to put switch caps on every light? No. No, it's just on C1 on the MCU. So you just, like, drop it on top, and you parallel solder it in. You just parallel solder it in, or you can remove the original capacitor on the MPU and then just remove that, discard it, and then put the .047 in its place. The C1, that's an optional. Oh, you can. That'll work the same way. Yep, that'll work the same way. Either way. Either is fine. So it depends on what it is. Like if it's Andrew's board, for example, like it's a surface mount part on Andrew's, the Weebly and the Ram guy. On his board, I've had games that have his board in it, and in his case, I'll just solder it on top because it's surface mount, and that would be very difficult to remove and replace. So on his, I'll just dead bug, you know, I'll put a capacitor in parallel with a solder on both sides. But on the MPU that is in the Centaur, which is a through-hole board, in this board I would probably remove the original capacitor, just unsolder it with a HACO, and just pop in the .047. That'd be enough. Okay.
    121:11
    So everybody learned something. We learned a lot of things today, George. Yeah, I know. It's school is in. School is in. Yeah, absolutely. So, any other thoughts on Centaur Revisited?
    121:23
    Oh, the Haggis one? Yeah. Okay. Anything else? I can't wait to see and play one. I could play one. Let me put it that way. I'm super excited to play one. We're all in agreement on that. You know, there's other things that could be fun. I don't know if they've done this or not, but, you know, obviously, you know, nowadays, you know, they're using completely different MPUs and completely different lighting systems. Like, there is no wiring harness or, you know, architectural compatibility between the revisited, you know, the Haggis version and the originals. Mainly because those components are all so obsolete, the old stuff. It makes sense to just redo it with modern components. But because of that, you know, they have the option of doing things like RGB LEDs very inexpensively. True. And having those, they can color match those with inserts or they can have white inserts. Yeah, I wonder if they're going to have clear inserts on this game. So this is a question, right? So there's an opportunity. I don't know if they did this or not, but there's an opportunity for them to use clear inserts and now change colors. That can get very interesting in gameplay. Like, you can extend the rules. You can do much better, like, attract sequences, you know, that are color, that are way better than what you're stuck with when you have a monochromatic option like you do in the original Centaur. So I think there's an option for them to do some really creative things with the inserts that you would not have in a modern game. Right. Where everything's, you know, color-coded. And for the white inserts on this game, you just have a white, there'd be a white light, the RGB would turn on a certain way, it'd be white? It could be anything you want. It could be white, green, yellow, whatever color you want. It's completely adjustable. Similar to a modern stern. You know, a modern stern's been doing this for at least like maybe, since like maybe 2012-ish or so, or 2013, they started doing white inserts that have RGB LEDs. Okay, so they don't have an opaque white insert and they do anything below what they want. Correct. Okay, gotcha.
    123:12
    What's the, what's the, what's the practice game? the Fathom game. Do they do the same thing with clear and white inserts? They definitely did different colors on the upgraded version of it. I don't know what they did on the base game. But this is an option. I think this is another thing with Revisited.
    123:33
    It's got a appeal to more modern or people who collect more modern games. Yeah, yeah. And that's fine. And you can enhance the rule set, like you can really bring, like you can make the rule set much deeper now. You have an option to make a deeper rule set because you can convey what's going on now with color coding or with, you know, flashing it or, you know, color sequencing. There's all kinds of things that you can convey information to the player now through the inserts that was not possible before with a monochromatic, you know. Well, I guess the other thing, John, that they do on their games is they have two LED screens in the apron if I read correctly. So kind of taking a, well, I don't know who took the page out of whose book, but kind of like your game you showed us in the last time we were over at your house. Yeah, yeah. Target Alpha. Absolutely. I mean, why not? You have a dead area, you know, normally, you know, where your aprons are. And why not? And, you know, you want to preserve the beauty of, you know, of numeric displays, or maybe you'd put alphanumerics in there to give a little more information. I know on Fathom they had color RGBs for the displays that could actually change the color of the scoring, which is kind of a cool idea. I don't know if they'll continue that with Centaur or not. With that scoring thing, that reminds me, on the scoring on the Centaur I saw, their LEDs, they didn't use any blackout film. Now, I would have done that. That's why I did some Centaur because you don't see any of these off segments. On their game, you can see everything is these white off segments. It's very distracting for me. I like to see just pure black unless there's a score coming out of there. Yeah, yeah. It really looks great on Centaur. I'm going to give you some of those. Yeah, I'm going to steal some of that stuff from you sometime because I've got a firepower in my basement. I know a noise the hell out of you every time you play it. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'll bring him over. So it's got that issue. Yeah, I think it has a term for the guys. Wolf pack. I put the wolf pack. I really like, by the way. When I got the Gorgar, I just got to restore for another customer from Pinfest. It had those wolf packs in them, and I really like Andrew's a little bit better. Andrew makes a Williams display, too, in red. And I was going to keep her over. It's like, well, I'll be a waste. And I got to say, you know, let's just try putting this blackout display, blackout stuff on top of the film, on top of the Wolfpack. And it looks great. It looks great with the Wolfpack. So Wolfpack actually has two things. Now it has the blackout film. Wolfpack also has this, like, masking thing they put over the whole thing. Yeah, which I really like, by the way. Masking's beautiful. So when you put both those together, now you get the best of both worlds. Yep. I just did a set of Wolfpacks for a Starz for Mike. And they kind of assemble, or you got to assemble them? You got to assemble them, yeah. You got them just full of Weasley? Oh, you do? Okay. So I just did a set for, it was a six-digit, you know, for Stern Stars. And in blue, man, were they gorgeous. Blue is a great color for stars. Okay. So if you ever do a, you know, I would highly recommend if you do an LED conversion, seriously consider blue for that. And honestly, like the brightness is spot on, segment quality, beautiful. Really, really happy with the way they came out. But they do have the, you know, you see the slight white. Like, it's got the issue like you were talking about. But Mike's really – game owner's really thrilled with them. And I have to say I was stunned with how beautiful they were. So, really impressed. Yeah. I wonder if I saw that. Does he look blue or not? I forget. I don't think so. I think last time you were at Mike's house, I think he had the displays. But they're in there now, so next time you visit, you can play them. Cool. So, they really look nice. They're sharp. I'm impressed. If I ever get stars in my collection, I'll be converting to those same blue ones. For sure. And stars, that other game that's been going up in value, They were like under $1,000 for a year, the only one in that game. And now it's been in tournaments so much, people want that game. They want stars. It's a great game. It's mean as nails. I mean, it is just so mean. And, you know, we all like mean games. Short ball times, you know, when you finally have that one good ball, it feels so satisfying. So it's that kind of game. It's great. It's fun. I wouldn't want all my whole collection to be filled with games that are mean. But you need at least one of them, I think, is good. So, a lot of fun. Because my Flash Gordon, that's one of the meanest games. Oh, yeah. Its new owner has that game. So, I am Flash Gordon-less right now. Oh, you've got to solve that. I have one over there if you want to play it. All right. Well, it has those pesky WPC mechs. It has the correct flippers. Oh, the correct ones. Okay. It has the flippers that if they existed at the time, the game designers, in 1980, if WPC mechs existed, I can assure you the designers would have used them. Okay. I'll put it that way. Fair enough. They would not have used them later. But they could have used them. They could use a nice Mata Hari style of the link, and they went with a stupid linear stupid setup. Let's improve this. Let's make it worse.
    128:33
    So, Dave, you sent me a picture the other day. Tell the folks what's on the rotisserie, and it is soon to go out the door. That would be Valley of Rolling Stones. That sounds fun. Yes. And I just did some beautiful – whoever had this game, this game was up in – It came from a guy in Canada, brought it to PinFest for me. I definitely paid a pretty penny for it. I paid way more than it was worth. But the good thing about it, it worked the whole time at PinFest. Nice. So the hold never went down. But once I got under the hood, I was like, oh, boy, oh, boy. I'm surprised. How does this thing keep running? I was just amazed. So connector's a little dodgy in the connector part.
    129:19
    The playfield, someone, it's weird. Someone did a plate swap on this years ago, but I think they used a used plate field. The original plate field must have been really worn out or something. The cabinet is pretty faded. The apron is faded. The plastics are faded.
    129:35
    And the rails were faded. The bumper caps are brand new. He put those in there. And the plate field had some wear on it, but it was decent. I'm worried it's a little bit of touch-up on it right now. But I had to take the rails off. And usually they're all stapled in and screwed in all on the rails. These ones had no staples in it. Oh, that's good. Okay. And he put a couple screws in, but you know what else he did? You know, with the rest of the holes? He put a nail. He just nailed them in. What? Yeah. A regular nail. Why would you do that? I don't know, because if you're a hack, that's what you do. Oh, that's terrible. So I was so surprised. How do I get this out of here? Oh, no. So I had to get, like, a little screw driver and pry it up, and then I used my horse puller things. Oh, yeah. I borrowed those from you a couple times. Those were great. Pulled them out. The rails off of cabinets. Yes. Yeah. I borrowed that tool from you a couple of times. I had to use that. Yeah. And I got them all off of there, and then I made the – yeah, here are the rails here. This is how – nice and purple. Oh, that's beautiful. I love it. Those look great. Do you rattle cam those?
    130:51
    Yeah, rattle cam. They look great. Yeah, Krylon Purple. It looks perfect. And what I did is, you know, these usually have some divots in them. So I'll reuse the old rails if it's decent. And, you know, they get banged out when we exit when the ball's leaving the left or right side. So I take this and I clean them all up, scrape it down with some light sandpaper, and then I'll do the two-part clay kind of epoxy stuff, and I'll layer that in there and kind of smooth it out, and then I'll sand it down smooth, and I've got a nice new surface, and I paint them, and it'll be great. So, Dave, you might want to consider, there's a guy in Florida now that's redoing rails. Yeah. That is out of Florida. I'm very impressed with this guy's quality. He's using solid oak. Okay. He'll do them in any color that you want, and as long as he has the rails in his library, he'll do them. And I just did a set of Paragon with his rails. Super impressed. Quality was excellent. and I think the game owner paid maybe $100 for them. That's not bad. So for that price point, Dave, it's not worth your labor, honestly, if you can get them. It might take you like two, three weeks for this guy to make them, maybe four weeks, but you might consider that. Here's one thing. I did do a set of those rails when Reese was doing them. I didn't want to monochrome. And that brings up the question. Yeah. What happened to Taylor Reese? What did happen? I don't know. I've installed several rails. A million-dollar question. I don't know. No silence. I have a set of the rails in this room right now. Hey, he's been around the pinball hobby for a long time. He's well-respected, and he just flat-out disappeared. I hope he's okay, because the quality of his work was excellent. I think the last couple years of madness kind of messed a lot of people up, and I think he was part of that. I think he freaked out. That's what I'm thinking. He kind of got freaked out by it maybe and kind of, I don't know, went a different direction. I don't know either. It just raises the question, you know, he was, you know, he had a podcast, you know, we've had his partner on, Dave, at one point, and, you know, all of a sudden, they just disappeared. Kind of crazy. Yeah, I don't know. I can tell you the quality of his work was incredible. No, no, it's well known in the hobby, you know. Yeah, yeah. how, you know, he was a good source for a lot of people, and then all of a sudden he went away, and now, like you said, John, you've got this person down in Florida, you know, doing the work. Yeah, yeah. You're going to hear some noise in the background. My wife just got back, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm really glad that this fellow in Florida stepped forward. So where are you finding him? He's on Pinside. He's got a couple posts on it for reproduction. Does he have a website? No, you just contact him through Pinside. Not a Pinside shop or not even a Pinside shop? No, no shop. Just a DM. So, at least he says new rail. What's the one I'm looking for? New rail? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and he was great. I contacted him because I'm going to be doing a Flash Gordon playfield swap next, so I want to get a set of rails. He doesn't have that in his library, so I'm probably going to have to mail the rails to him to reuse them. Oh, okay. Unless someone else, you know, gets them. Yeah, he's library building, like John said. Yeah, he's library building right now. He's looking for certain titles. In fact, with Paragon, you know, I just did that Paragon swap for Chris, and he did not have Paragon in his library. So he was telling Chris he'd have to send the Rails in. Yeah. Chris was not great about it. I didn't know any other solution. And then we were very lucky. Someone else sent Rails in. Oh, good. So he built Chris's Rails and did the other repros at the same time. So now Paragon's part of his library. Nice. Sweet. Yeah, and they're really nice. I mean, they're very impressive, the quality of the work. So he'll try to go original color with them? You tell him what you want. So he's got a lot of color options. So he'll have original. Here's my original spot color. Yeah. I'm going to go with this unless you tell me differently. Yeah. You can go different. Okay. Yeah, I think on Paragon we went, gee, I can't remember what Chris. I think they're blue. They're typically blue. It must have been blue. Yeah. Chris chose it. I don't remember. It must have been blues now. Yeah. You're right. That's original, right? The original. Yeah. I think the color. The navy blue, I think. The color blue he used was definitely a little bit more vivid and a little bit darker. Okay. But it was perfect for the CP. Does he clear them, too? Yeah, they look, I don't know. They're probably just really shiny. I think they're really shiny. I think they look similar to, like, what you just showed me. They're probably not rattle-tinted. They're probably using, like, a real paint, maybe. I assume. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know its process. I don't know. I can tell you that they look to be of, you know, of the same high quality I was getting from Reese. You know, they look of that high quality, you know, really high quality wood, great machining, you know, really. They were beautiful. And I have a couple of other friends. I've got a friend that's doing a funhouse plate field swap right now, and I told him to order the rails from him. And also backing plates, you know how you have those three-quarter-inch plates that are on the belly gain, and they're like six, eight inches tall or whatever? Yeah. He's remaking those, too. Okay. So this funhouse that my friend had was pretty beat up, so he ordered one of those. Nice work. And he ordered those in like a purple or something like that, and they look great. Okay. That came in, so I helped him to put those rails on his play field and stuff like that. Cool. It looked great.
    136:01
    I got two items, Dave, okay? All right. First item. Have you heard of the chatbot Jolly Roger? No. Is that Jolly Rancher? No. Don Jolly with oysters? No. It's right up your alley. it's aimed at scammers oh i like it i like where you're going so listen to this after a telemarketer swore at his son nearly 10 years ago roger anderson set out to cause robo callers telephone fraudsters and scammers as many problems as possible amen basically about time basically this chatbot learns what they're talking about and then just wastes their time. Beautiful. Good.
    136:56
    That's what they need. Then they can get a real job instead of annoying people. So they have the one guy called Jolly Roger. That's, I guess, the main character. But they got like Sassy Sally. Oh, yeah. Like Whitey Bulger. Fantastic. But anyway. Oh, I love it. I thought of you immediately having seen this article. I'm like, oh, Dave Beats. So he's selling subscriptions. I went to look for one. I'm like, this is right up Dave's alley. This could provide endless amounts of material. Oh, big time. Oh, definitely. I do my own chatbot. I'm the chatbot with these guys. I have fun with them anyway. So that's one. And the second is I emailed John and asked him if we talked about this. And I have to ask you now, Dave, did we talk about Junkyard in one of our most recent episodes?
    137:55
    Yeah, I think we did. Yeah, that came up. I did. I think I did. So I have a brewery up the street that has one pinball. Henri, you'll love the name, Henri Brewery.
    138:08
    Sounds French. Who do you think of when We use the word Henri Isn't it Yosemite Sam Oh yeah yeah Henri like the French restaurant You mean Henri Oh okay Henri Ordery. Timmy Sam. Yeah, yeah. Ordery. Yes. Sorry. Anyway, so I got to play Junkyard there.
    138:46
    They have two games. They have a stirring kiss and they have a Junkyard. So I bought some quarters and decided I'll try kiss. Even though I'm not a big fan of it, I said, eh, I'll try. Right. Very, very quick game. Janice just looked at me like, oh, a continuation of the last time you played pinball and I was with you? so I'm like okay ship gears let's go over to Junkyard never played before I just kept racking up wins I don't know what I was doing except shooting that wrecking ball thing that I think is the greatest mech in the world yeah the theme is good I don't know if it's an easy game or a hard game but I kept winning games either by match or by playing well and I'm like Chance was like you want another game play it. You know, she felt sorry for me for all the other games I played where I just got destroyed. I had my moment in the sun. Damn, that had WPC flipper mechs, so that's the reason why it plays so well.
    139:49
    Fun game, and it draws some money too, which they didn't make a lot of them, so I'm guessing it's a fun game. I'd play it again. I'm going to put more quarters in it. A person on Linux has a couple games. That's one of them. I did a day spa years ago for one out there. Like I said, they didn't make like 3,000 something or other on that. Anyway, I'll leave it with you, Dave. One last quick story and then we're going to be done with this episode.
    140:17
    Alright. Well, I'll tell you a story from the field. So, we were down in East Ham, down the Cape, working on a couple games, but one of them was an attack from Mars. Oh, excellent title. One of my favorites. Love it. and he said, oh, I think it was like a flipper wasn't working. I said, yeah, but you had never done anything working. There's no one ever worked in this game you had for a long time. You need a good day spot. So he wasn't sure what to expect, but after we were there for like about six hours, he goes, well, the wife kept coming down every half hour like, are you guys almost done? And I go, no, no, we've got more to do. You'll see once we're done why this takes so long. There's a lot of stuff to do to rebuilding this thing. There's a lot of stuff. So once she finally came down afterwards, she's like, oh, I get it now that she played it. But there's a story there is that I usually bring everything with me I can possibly need for a day spa. Except for this time. I forgot one key thing that happens a lot of times in the WPC games is they blow apart their pop bumper mech. Of course. Okay? And I have a bunch of them. But do I have them with me? No. I don't know why. So, of course, this one had a broken one. The pop-up wasn't, it was just all hanging there. Which part was it? It was the bracket. The bracket. Oh, yeah, the bracket's broken. Yeah, the bracket's broken. It breaks it, yeah. Yep. Absolutely. It was broken. I've seen that before. And so I didn't have it. And I'm going to see, and this guy, so I called around.
    141:49
    And I called around down there and said, okay, someone needs to weld this for me, right? So I called one place, and this was on a, I think it might have been on a, I think it was a Saturday. So I called around one place that's only five minutes away from there. I said, yeah, oh, yeah, I told him exactly what it was. I don't know what it was, how small it was. Oh, it's going to probably be $130 to $160 to weld it. I go, okay, I'm going to try somewhere else. I'll give you a call back. By the way, it's only a $5 part. Yeah, exactly. It's under $10. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I don't think so. There's got to be someone that's going to do better for me that way. Then I called this guy Brewster Welding. and this guy called me back and his name is John as well. John, John Jolly, John at Brewster Welding. I think he owns the place. So I went there. It was like a 10 minute ride and you know, went inside there and this guy is like, I called him up. First of all, I called him up and he said, oh, between $30 and $60. Okay, still overpriced but not $160. So that's where the $30 or $60 for immediately I'm there. Otherwise you drive all the way back to your shop in Walbro, which is a four-hour drive-in trip, which you can't do. So it's worth it. You want it now. You're going to stay overnight at this guy's house. Right, and you don't want the stink eye from the wife. No, I want it not. Well, she didn't even know that part was broken. No, but I'm saying if you went to her after six hours and said, well, I don't have – right? Yeah, well, they'd still be – they're a nice couple. They'd be understanding, but I just wanted things to be done. Oh, yeah, a wrap-up. Yeah, a wrap-up. Absolutely. So he said, oh, I said, you know, I'm going to – well, so now John's – Bruce DeWalding, John there, and he said, oh, I'll weld it right now. I told him, oh, and another thing is that I brought a coil with me because I've had weld – I've seen welding jobs before in this stuff where they put so much stuff in there you can't get the coil to sit right because it doesn't sit flat. So I said, by the way, it goes like this, but this is where the coil sits. And the other thing I was impressed with, he called the coil, but he said, oh, it's a solenoid. They go, yeah. He knew the right terminology. A lot of people call them motors. Yeah, yeah. They say motor. Right? It's a motor, right? He said, solenoid. I was like, oh, right. Cool. This guy knows his stuff. So I said, it goes here, but that's why. He said, oh, no problem. I'll just put a bunch on the outside, not really on the inside. I'll kind of, you know, a very thin bond there so it'll fit. I said, okay. So I said, I'm going to be right back. So I don't have to go check on Maureen out in the car. like if I'm going to go in there, the part's already done, it's sitting on the thing, it's like oh it's really hot, I wouldn't touch it right now but it's all set and I go and I look at it and it's like oh that looks great and I said yeah how much do I owe you, it's like nothing it's like nothing, it's like nah I'm going to give good comments, you know next time you know you can hit me, hit me next time but I like good karma out there so and it's like alright dude you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to mention you on the podcast, you know so I just did, so John at Brewster Welding in Orleans. He's the man. Thumbs up. Yep. That was really awesome. That was great. Thumbs up from a fellow John. Yes. Fellow John. John's a good dude. John, I'll give you last word. Parting thoughts?
    145:01
    Oh, gosh. Well, you know, Centaur, well, since this is Centaur, not reimagined, but revisited. Revisited. Yeah. So, to revisit Centaur, and it was a phenomenal game to have as a visitor. So, I really, really enjoyed having it. So, thanks, Dave, dropping it off. I had it here for about a month or so. Loved playing it. Loved the technical challenges with the gremlins. So that was a lot of fun trying to get to the bottom of those things. And it's a title I've always thoroughly enjoyed. I don't think I really understood it until now. Yeah, you have to really go in depth with the rules and really see what's how it works. Yeah, definitely understood the rule set. And I think for me, there's something about mapping out the playfield dynamics that when you've got a game in your collection or a game that you have, like, access to on a day-by-day basis, eventually after maybe a week or so, it clicks. Like, suddenly you realize that, you know, that's a death shot there. Right. Or, you know, if I hit the ball here, it'll bounce there, there, and there. Right. And it will land at this flipper. So that, like, your ability to predict ball travel is dramatically improved, at least for me. Yeah. After having the game, you know, sort of at my house for, you know, a couple of weeks. Right. And I feel like I really understood the play field dynamics. and that really helped gameplay and made you enjoy the game that much more. So I'll miss having it. It's a beautiful game, and the game owners should be thrilled with it because it plays beautifully. Cool. Yeah, I think you will be. Yeah, I know I love playing. I love playing even more when I put it back up in the house and until he comes, wait for him to come get it. Yeah, yeah, it's a great game. So you need to get your own personal centaur on legs. Yeah, I have a centaur, too, and I've got a centaur. So the centaur, too, I'm going to be doing for PJ. It's just you to go over to him. Perfect. That's my new game. Well, you'll have this one as a reference, actually, which would be great. Yeah. Yeah, it would be good for reference. But we'll see. I don't know if you have the space or time or whatever. Right now I've got Rolling Stones. I'm trying to get that done. I just got a Playboy came in as well as a – what's the modern games called? Jacks to Open. Oh. Jack something. Yeah. With terrible music in the background. Is that a System 80? Yeah, System 80B. Yeah. It's probably going to need it. I think it's called Jack Stolpen. Oh, okay. Yeah. There you go. Well, that's the MPU's fine. Yeah, today. For now.
    147:19
    Hey, John. I just remembered. You got a new game. Tell everybody that you got a new game. Oh, yeah. I do. Give us a kiss. It's the podcast. It's the podcast because I got people coming in a couple minutes. Yeah, no worries. So, yeah, it's my first new inbox. I've never done the new inbox experience. Dave, you did a rush last year. Yes, yes. It was awesome. And so it's really funny. So the fellow that you did the new inbox with, Stu and Ben, who were with you, I did the same thing with my new inbox. Stu and Ben's delivery service. Yeah. So it turned out, I didn't know this at the time, but Ben had a Godzilla on order and so did I. Yeah. And so they came in at exactly the same time. Right. So we collaborated. So the three of us went up and met with Tim at Pixels and Pens. Yes. And picked up two, like, gorgeous boxes that were, you know, beautiful to look at. You got your first unboxing you got today. And did my first unboxing. So my friend Mike came over to help me with the unboxing. He'd never witnessed an unboxing before as well. It was kind of interesting because we were – so I was heading out to Scott's place for kind of quick pinball events. So we literally got the box in my – just barely into my family room. And then I had to get in my car and drive away. So we did not need a box the night that the game arrived. We did it the next day. But it smelled so nice. And it's amazing to have a game that has, you know, zero miles on it that wasn't one that you had to hand build yourself. Right. So the gameplay is fantastic. I'm really, really enjoying it. Like I was saying about, like, getting a game, you know, now that I'm head for a week and now that, you know, I've played so many plays on it, I'm starting to really understand, you know, sort of the feel of the Sturm flippers much better than I've been able to before. Getting a feel for kind of more indicators of the rule set, you know, by the color changing, like, LEDs that are under the play field, kind of give you some indication of what you're shooting for next based on the mode that you're in. It's an incredibly complex game. You know, the rule set is, I think, 24 pages long. Wow. So I'll be studying it for a long time coming, I'm sure. but the game is beautifully put together, plays beautifully. You know, my hat's off to Stern. I think they're building a very, very high-quality product. And Elwin. And Keith Elwin, who you interviewed, I think, a few months ago. And Keith gets it. I mean, his shots are, you know, they're very sweet and very satisfying feeling. And there's a lot of interconnecting, like, you know, paths that the play field has that you kind of discover over time. Yeah. And sometimes you discover them accidentally. You know, you're like, hey, if I hit it off this flipper, it'll go around the pop bumper, and then it will return to the left-hand flipper again. Stuff like that. Some of these things are shots that I've just never experienced before on a pin. So it's super fun. I'm really – I can't say enough about it. I'm really thrilled with it. So not a classic, unfortunately. Right. But I think it has – it harks back to classic in some ways. Okay. Like, the ramps don't – you know, you spend all your time on the street level. Okay. You know, you really do. and it's got a lot of stand-up targets. It's got a lot of, you know, it's got three spinners, right? We all love spinners. Oh, spinners, yeah. It's got three spinners. Great. It's got a hole, you know, pop it in, you know, for selecting your city. Three flippers, you know, really fun. It's got a lot of, like, you know, combination shot pads that are there, which is super fun as well. So I think you've got to give it a shot. I know it's not a classic. I actually like it. Do you have your Japanese mode on? I have put it in Japanese mode a couple times. I have it user selectable. Oh, good. I don't know if you can choose English or Japanese. Okay. until the user can choose. And it's got the Stern Insider, so, you know, sign up for that. And, you know, you stick your phone down. Yesterday I was at – Oh, Dave loves that. I do. Yeah. Stick your phone down. Use your flippers. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's kind of interesting. So, like, yesterday I was at NEPL Finals at Western Mass Pinball Club, which has some phenomenal classics, by the way. So you need to visit, Dave, seriously. Great. And it was kind of fun. You know, I'd be on Iron Maiden and stick my phone down and, you know, on Deadpool and a bunch of other modern, Foo Fighters, all these modern games. And then, you know, you'd be able to look at your scores afterwards, your achievements. So, I don't know, it gives you a log. It's kind of a cool thing. I don't know. You know, is it necessary? No, but I don't know. It adds a different dimension, a little bit of a new dimension to the fun. Well, I'm actually going to be out that way. I'm going to be in Hatfield again. Remember, I had to go to Hatfield, where I called Lidsville, and I did a couple games out there. They did a nitro ground shaker. Is it next to the McCoys?
    152:00
    No, it's not next to the McCoys. That's not where you live now, George. You're not that way. But it's a guy that's about another hour north of there that I didn't get to because my back went out while I was doing a hat field to stay in this hotel and working a couple games there.
    152:14
    Not a hocus pocus. I'll think of it. But definitely there's a nitro ground shaker in a Valley EM. Aladdin's Castle, that's what it was.
    152:22
    And then it was going to do a firepower an hour north in Vermont as well and do three. But my back said no, and I couldn't. But I'm due to go out there again, and I'm going to stay right near Hatchfield at this nice hotel we stay at.
    152:37
    So I'll be out in that area, so maybe they'll be around. I don't know how I can get in contact with them. Well, it's in Palmer, Mass., so you're driving by it on the pike every time you drive out there. It's right off the exit. It's like two miles, maybe four, three miles from the exit. Okay, not that bad. And they have certain open hours, so it's like Friday night. Yeah, I think they're open, like, on weekends. Okay. And then – This is a club or a private collection? So, it's really cool. It's in an old mill building, enormous mill building. Yeah. So, but it's nicely, you know, renovated and such. And tons of parking. It's parked there. And then they have over 70 games. And I think it's owned – I forget the fellows' names that own it, but there's at least two people, and there might be more. So, it's kind of a collective. So they have enormous, you know, personal collection. So people brought to the owner of the club, they bring their games in there and they get free access to whatever. Yeah. So it's their games, I think. It's the majority of, you know, their personal collection that they have, you know, available for the public to pay to play. I think it's $20 to get in, but everything's on free play. You can play as long as you want, whatever their hours are.
    153:46
    Phenomenal collection. I mean, they've got, you know, at least five or six, you know, of the modern, you know, LCD sterns within the last year or two. some really fun, you know, EMs, lots of really good EMs, you know, Gottliebs, Williams, Bally's, you know, of that era. They've got, you know, things like Dolly Parton and Paragon and, you know, I got some great, you know, like, I can't remember, it's not Comet, it's like Comet, but it's a Williams-like, that's it. There's a Williams-like widebody that it's a really unique game. The target, like, slides back and forth. It's of the same era as, like, Stellar Wars. It's almost It was like a Stellar Wars. It was a really rare game. I'd never seen it. It was like, not being able to see, Comet, Com, it was a space-themed game. I forget the name of it. I remember Contact. That's it, Contact. Oh, wow. They had a Contact. I'm going to freaking exacrapate you this stuff. You're going to exacrapate me. Well, that's why you're Dr. Nook. Wow. There you go. So, yeah, it was Contact. That was the name of it. That was one of the lead games that we played yesterday. And I'd never seen it before. Yeah. It had four flippers. It had the Paragon, like, ball get long. I think it was made around Pocorino's time.
    154:50
    It was fun to play. It was great. It had the little shooters on the side of the ball. You couldn't trap the ball. It would get lost in the shooters and then shoot it out. The target moving back and forth. They had a lot of really fun games. I played that somewhere recently. Who had that game? I don't know. I was somewhere. I swear I played that game somewhere in someone's collection. I can't remember where. Yeah, yeah. So it's a great collection. It really is. They got a genie. The first game I ever owned, you had a genie too. And, you know, first game I ever owned. It's a nice copy. It plays great. Does it have a Pascal in it? I think it does. I found out something, too, with the G and some other games and Hulk and some other stuff. They have a Hulk, too. Okay. They got a Hulk. The Pascal board needs a special little add-on daughter sound card, I think.
    155:37
    I think. Oh, I don't know. I think it does. Well, I guess if you don't have the sound board for the game. I guess if you have the sound board. If you didn't have the sound board, you can use the Pascal. Yeah. Yeah, the challenge with that location is it's just so loud. I could not hear any of the sound of the games I was playing. That's the downside to this location, so many games going on. And the heat, too. If you have a lot of people, they get a little hot. But they had a pinball pool. I played pinball. Oh, nice. How did that play? That was really fun. I played pretty good. I like your copy better than the one they had. Yours plays better than theirs does. I probably have more time on restoring it up. I think there's also yours is less tired. Yours is fresh. And I think theirs maybe was restored a while ago, but it isn't quite as fresh. But it still played great. Yeah, it really did. It played great. It was awesome.
    156:20
    John, thanks for coming back again. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for sharing stories and your input outlook, whatever other looks there are. And we'll do this all over again. I hope this came out well. This is, again, another experiment in the Classic Pinball Podcast. But, Dave, send us out.
    156:43
    All right. you've been listening to the Classic Pinball Podcast with George John Boy Genius and Dr. Dave I'm sure John appreciates that Thank you Dave You're welcome John Thanks guys, it's been a pleasure, it's been an honor being part of your podcast Thanks, really enjoyed it Thanks for being on, thanks for fixing my centaur My pleasure, yeah, a lot of fun Nice technical challenge, I'm always up for it So, it was fun Okay, stay tuned next month Don't know where we're going, but we're going somewhere stay lit and tilted the classic pinball podcast amen cheers see you guys bye bye okay that was good
    157:33
    so Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, babe. Babe, right. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. George.
    158:15
    George. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment.
    158:24
    Hasta la vista, baby.