Hey, when the stroinin that I do topcast, it's my mistake. Norm and Shaggy. Hey, this is Kerman, even hot Russian chicks love to listen to Norman Shaggy and Topcast. Hey, this is what's on our air listening to Topcast, or in Shaggy. You're listening to Topcast. This old pinballs online radio. For more information, visit them anytime, www.barvin3m.com slash Topcast. Hey, we're back for another fine edition of Topcast. Here with me today, I've got Eric A. Philanon for Norm, who's missing in action at myA. Say hello, Eric. Hello, Eric. There you go. Norm's back in rehab, where is it the cycle ward? I can always kind of forget. He's missing in action today, so Eric is happy to fill in as needed. Hey, man, brother. Hey, man, brother. So, anyways, we're... We've got some important stuff. We're going to talk about the Denver pinball show, which is actually in Golden Colorado. It's grown as the Rocky Mountain. What pinball showdown or something like that. But we've got some live people that are in call-in and tell us about the show today. So, we've got that, and we've got our usual sundry of stuff, our tech tips and mortes back. And what's other stuff? Speaking of mortes. Mort? Cool. Mort? Yeah, he sounds like a relative of mine. It's almost scary. It is. Alright, well, let's see. It's time for... Morts weekend update. The week's news in pinball. So, we've got Mort's week in pinball news again. Mort, why don't you tell us about the week in pinball news. Tell us more about the Callum of the Zoo show I heard that you went to. This is Mort. Thank you for listening to me on this radio show on the Top Camp. Because these fellows are so nice to let me come in here and talk to you in that you know about pinball. So, now I want to tell you, I'm very, very upset because I want to play pinball at the zoo. I want to pinball at the zoo and there was no pinballs there. I went there. I saw some antelope and some bears and some monkeys. But there was nothing there, no pinballs there. I was in my hometown in Nebraska. There was no pinball there. I hope pinball there never ties is all wrong. It's a lie. It's a big lie. Why do they do it? Why do they? Listen Mort, I think you went to the wrong place. You went to the zoo. It's pinball at the zoo. Callum of the zoo. Get it? Not actually at the zoo, but Callum of the zoo. Well, that's entirely different than it isn't it? Why would they have a conference at the zoo anyway? I don't understand that at all. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, do the monkeys like to play the pinball? I haven't seen monkeys play them, but they are they better than people. I mean, maybe people can't play as well as the monkeys can. You know what I say? You put them in a room they can write a big thing out. They can make a nice story. Maybe they could play pinball better. Did they have their own tournaments? Did they bring video games to the pinball show? Did they like video games better? Maybe the monkeys are better video game players than pinball players. I don't know. And you know, these monkeys will be very, very scary, you know. Because they like to flig in poo at each other. I don't like that at all. That's very scary to me. I saw that monkeys that were doing that. And they were probably playing pinball at the same time while flinging poo all around. They were probably throwing at all those games in their body lights. You know, some of those games with very ugly artwork or games that don't play very well. Well, maybe again, it's pinball at the zoo. Doesn't mean it's actually at a zoo. It means it's at Kalamazoo. Get it? You understand now? All right? Oh. Okay. Well, thanks for letting me talk today. It's been very fun again. And then we'll back to talk with you more. Thank you. Bye-bye. So from Morch, we can update. What are you thinking, Mort? I think he's got a thing about poo flinging with monkeys. I don't know. If you went to the Kalamazoo show, how was it? I liked it. Actually, it was really cool because like Illinois pinball was there this year. And like we really, really missed them because they brought a bunch of stuff that was really cool to buy. And then, you know, but I got yelled at by other people by not going to their booth. Well, wait. Did they bring Big Bang Bar? No. They didn't. No Big Bang Bar. No. But they had a whole bunch of playfields, fun houses and centires and eight ball deluxe and kisses and good stuff like that. Yeah. And you bought some playfields, right? Yeah. I got a fun house first. And there's a second. A fun house second. And what's in between the first and the second? Um, there was some color issues around the black circles. It's like the black didn't take almost. It kind of like was spotted around the black lines that go around the inserts. Was it really noticeable? Once somebody pointed them out, if you really looked hard at it from playing standpoint, you probably wouldn't give a care. But if you're going to do all that work yourself, you probably would. All right. All right. So you were there a lot of games to play? Yeah. I mean, I thought there was. I think we need to get more pins there. But uh, guy, Yeah. The guy doesn't really push to get people to bring pins the best I can see. Yeah. I was trying to kick people in the, you know, where to get them to bring stuff this year. I mean, I, you know, what I thought that you'd get like a mass email from all the guys in Michigan. You know, bring a pen to the zoo, you know, blah, blah, blah. But I never got that email. I mean, it's a new show relatively new. I mean, it seems like it's coming along better and better every year. I guess you're seeing like it went down, but this year it went up like a great deal. All right. So we're going to, uh, we're going to talk to somebody else right now. Hold on. We're going to do, uh, we're going to do this segment. It's time for, uh, play away. We, we, we, we, we. Okay. So Trent's at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Festival out in Denver, or Golden Colorado, actually. Trent, why don't you tell us, give us the, the report from the pinball show on what's going on there. Well, it's actually a pretty decent show. This is the first time ever been out here. Uh, there's lots of great, uh, marketing things around. He's really good at making pliers and signs and all kinds of things. I see you know what's going on and what's happening. How's the beer? The beer. I haven't had any beer yet, but there are a lot of breweries around. Yeah, Golden Colorado. That's the home of course. Oh, well, yeah. We actually went on the brewery tour yesterday. How was it? Um, it wasn't the best for the brewery tour that I've been on, but it was okay. Did you get free beer? Uh, they did give us free beer. I didn't, didn't drink everything that they gave us, but it wasn't bad. Okay. So now how's the pinball show? Uh, the pinball show is pretty good. Uh, a lot of games here. The, uh, a lot of tournament, a lot of vendors, especially pretty decent show. Is it as good as the Texas show? I would say it's just as good as the Texas show. They're probably about equivalent. You know, same amount of tournaments, probably for both of them. Um, you know, a lot of good, a lot of good 90s games, a lot of good 80s games, not a lot of EMS here. Uh, Dean Cunningham's here for Hewman only is here. A couple other ball of vendors. Pretty cool. Okay. What else, anything else? Now, you, uh, you're competing in which tournament? Well, we've had a bunch of tournaments so far. We've had the EMS tournament, which I didn't do so well in. We had to draw your partner tournament where being Rover and I ended up winning. And then we had another foot draw tournament. Uh, we just had to head to the elimination and, uh, you know, one is a winning that one. Now, but you're now, you're still, I checked the ratings as of April. You were still ranked number two in the world. Um, which one of the tournaments contributes towards your, uh, adding points to your standing? Uh, that's a good question. I'm not, I'm not exactly sure if the question for Josh. Uh, the family guy tournament, which is the main tournament, we're still qualifying for this morning. And then, well, the finals that, uh, could be under that. And how are you doing so far? Uh, as of last night, I was still on the board. I was on the board, I was still taking the top 16 ball fires. In what number were you at? So I think I'm pretty good. What is five? What number on the board? Were you Trent? Uh, as at the end of it yesterday, I was number five. Number five. I'm sorry, I missed that. We went to, uh, Lyon's had a really good tournament, uh, Thursday night before the show. You, you used a spectacular place. You know, at 30, some pinballs, on location of Lyon, all over the board, and very good shape. They had 38 people, I think, show for the tournament. Uh, it was a lot of fun. We had a blast. Mostly EMs. It was a big lift. Well, all right, next to it, number three, Lyons is not that big, and there were a bunch of video games, old vintage video games in there. So it was a really, uh, really a lot of fun. What, are, are, are most of those games, EMs at the Lyons classic? Uh, no, there were maybe four or five EMs in the rest were 80s and solid, safe stuff, uh, from DMV stuff. So what, uh, what's our game of the week this year? Or, what's our play of the week? Uh, we're going to go with, uh, card with. We played in the EM tournament yesterday. Yeah, that's a classic got lead card with. Yeah, it's a great game. Okay. Uh, one of the things, kind of a low scoring game, bonuses, bonuses are to accumulate, because you've got to not down all those drop targets. Uh, so what I try to do is, there's four different, three different colors. There's white, red, and green, and you can get them in two spots with three roller-vers and the upper left-hand corner. And there's also three stand-ups around it. You can collect those colors. I always go for the white one, you know, a truck time your flunch and get that white one. What that does is it lights up the three thousand shot on the left-hand side. But that point is down the ball is on the right, whoever, you can just shoot that left-hand shot for three thousand at a, at a go. Second one you probably want to get is the green one, because the green one, if you get it, uh, it lights up a roll over. Once you roll over that, it'll open up to gate. There's a little more work involved. That's why I go for the white one first. When you get that green one, and you've got that gate open, the red one doesn't do too much. So generally, just try to go for the white one and rack up this thousand point. And is that all there is to the game? Uh, basically, you know, you can acutely light the bonus by getting card hands. If you don't get all the drop cards, if you get, you know, all five bonuses, starting at a high one pair for, I think, one thousand all the way up to the roll of blood for, for five thousand. And then, of course, on the last ball, all those are seven. So, we're more going for the bonus on the last ball. And, um, so how did you do in that tournament? The E-M tournament I didn't do so well. I, yeah, one of my first two matches lost my third to, uh, Mike Mahaffey on Twin Wind. Huh, okay. Now, what, uh, what kind of competition are you up against there in, uh, in Colorado? Uh, there's a lot of good guys here. Mike Mahaffey's here. Uh, Keith L. Winfrey, the Denver guys are here. Donovan and Jeff Frank. Uh, a lot of other guys from Colorado, that can format that are fairly decent. Yeah, but I'm talking about, if you look at the standings, Keith is way ahead. He's, he's hundreds of points. Yeah, Keith was here. Mike's here. Donovan's here. I'm here. Yeah, but the guy, I'm talking about the guys, like the second, third, fourth, and fifth. You guys are like within five or ten points of each other. Well, the action's accurate out here. Supposedly they're in Minnesota. Uh, you know, right now. What's in Minnesota? Uh, but, uh, and bread is here. I don't know what bread's right now, but he's here. Wait, wait, what's in Minnesota? Is there a tournament there? Uh, well, supposedly there's a Mayday tournament this weekend. But does that apply, uh, counterpoint? Uh, assuming it does, this Josh is going. Right, right. Okay, so they're gonna, you know, they'll pick up first there. Well, Paul's gonna be there too. So, you know, Paul's not pushover, and there's a couple other local guys that actually pretty good too. Okay. All right. I think on rocks is gonna be there. You know, because I can't have anybody on the show that's less than a rank of number three. Okay. You know, so you, you know, you gotta, you gotta keep your standings up, you know? I mean, otherwise you're just embarrassed to show. Okay, well, I'll win this before you then. You better damn well, win it. I won first place. Okay. Okay. All right, Trent. That's Trent's play of the week. I appreciate it, Trent, with the, with the report, the call in from Golden Colorado, with the Rocky Mountain Pitball Festival. That was our Paul, like, of the week. And now it's time for everyone's favorite. Yay, yay, of the week. All right, this week for Game of the Week. I'm, direct you to the webcam. You can see we have a 1965 Chicago coin, par golf, which is kind of an unusual game. It looks like a pitch and back, but it's not really. It's got like, you know, a golf theme. And actually, of all the golf theme games, I actually kind of like this one a lot. I think it's really well done. You've got, you know, on your, on your, on the score, the point is to get as low a score as possible. And then on the score card, the average is to get as low a score as possible on the, on the whole. Just like golf, which is kind of unlike a lot of other, other games where you're trying to get a higher score. And each one of the holes is pared. You know, you've got a certain part that you're trying to hit. So you actually first start now driving, you know, and then you move to putting. So here we are, we're going to start out as we're going to drive. And you can see that the drive side of the back glass is now lit up. Okay, so, you know, you're basically trying to hit as many yards as possible. And here's the actual game in play. It's kind of like a standard pitcher bat. And then the targets across the back of the play field are, you know, depending on each set of yards. So the single target in the middle is 250 yards. The targets on the two targets on the outside are 100 yards. Okay, then after you get to the number of yards that's for that particular hole, then you put. So you get one bat to put. Okay, and if you hit the center target, you only get one stroke for that putt, which is good. Or if you hit the outside, you could have like four strokes for your putting. And that all adds up for the, for the par, for the, you know, how many strokes you get for the hole. But it's a pretty cool thing. It's not really what I call a mannequin game. It does have a little mannequin, but it's not really part of the game. He doesn't move. Now the other cool thing is the hole in one. I'm the second hole, the fifth hole in the eighth hole. You can get a hole in one. That is, if you hit the 250 yard target, a big, all bell, six inch bell goes off, giving you the hole in one. And it's, it's really cool because then you, you know, it's, it's one stroke for the entire hole. But you only get that on the three low yardage holes. So here we are just playing it some more. You can see it. It's actually kind of a fun game. It's, it's a, a pitch and bat kind of like a baseball, but it's just different. It's, it's something that I, I find it's kind of unique in, in front of the same time. It's, it's really quite enjoyable. That's a really cool game, by the way. Yeah, I think, I think it was really, uniquely done. We've got Lawrence on the Lawrence. You on the line. Can you hear me Lawrence? Good afternoon. We're talking live out from the Justin County Fairgrounds at the Rocky Mountain Timberlost Showdown. Cool. And I've got 10 Nicholas here. He's one, the founders of the event. This is their fourth year. And this event's been running out here since Friday through Sunday. That's a really good turn down. I just want to ask Dan a couple questions about the show. Yeah, do it. It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it. Now is it, uh, the Rocky Mountain Spinball Showdown, is that the official name? Yeah, the Rocky Mountain Spinball Showdown. Okay, good, good. Good. And you guys have done this, so your fourth year, where's it held at? It's a held in Golden Colorado. It's a supper of Denver, Colorado, the Jeff Co. Fairgrounds. Okay. How, how many square feet do they have there for you guys? Well, this year we have about 7,500 square feet. That's pretty sizable. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Okay, we'll tell me about the show. Uh, while we were three days, we have a big tournament going on right now. We just started the finals. A lot of big players here have a lot of top 10 players out here competing. Over 100 games and some pin chats by some pretty, uh, big, big football people. Okay, we had some really good chats this weekend. They had a chat on building custom pinball. They had more of the cabin fever pinball machines. They had a lecture on Valley Williams Board repair. Jean Cunningham was here with Illinois Pinball and he did a lecture on producing the big bang bar. Excuse me. There was a lecture on Electro Mechanical Restoration. And also today they did a pin chat on shopping out your pinball and shopping well what? It's, uh, did Jean bring a big bang bar with him by chance? No, he did not. There was no big bang bar in our show this year. Okay. You know, I was, he didn't bring one to Kalamazoo either. It's kind of hope he would. You know, to kind of increase the interest in the game. Yeah, there were definitely a lot of people that would have liked to see a big bang bar. Did he give any sort of release date? He was telling me when we spoke a little bit earlier, he was thinking sometime next month. He wanted to have him done and released. Okay. Okay. So were any other interesting happenings at the show? We have a couple other rare games. We have a Charlie Park that just came in from Spain a couple days ago. Okay. That was the company name. Spin ball. Spin ball, yes. Right. Right. And how is that game? It's pretty good. I've only got one game on it. So I don't get to play much being, you know, running the place. Right. Right. They keep Dan running the racket here, but there's a lot of stuff going on. They also had a raffle for the children's hospital. Dan heard they gave a lot of interesting prizes away for pinball enthusiasts. What were some of the highlights of that raffle? We gave it away at Thomas Fern trans lights, Steve Ritchie signed some stuff for us. We had some big, you know, 275-color parties and some local arcade's here in Gillian's. We had a lot of stuff going on. Now how far is the Lions classic from, you guys? Lions is probably about, literally less than an hour. They're about 50 minutes away from us. Lions is also one of the exhibitors here. There's about a dozen different exhibitors at the show. Okay. Who are, now who are, what are their exhibitors game? We have Universal Sales, a local company. The coin drops here, another local company. Illinois pinball is here. Forum amusement only is here. Action pinball is here. Lions classic pinball is here. Trying to think, so I don't forget about it. Anybody have a lady there just selling Mary Annette? So it's kind of a little bit of everything today. Yeah, we did. Now where do you hold the seminars at? We have a conference room that is going to the conference room and we run them there too. Okay, okay, good. So it's segregated from the actual show floor. Yeah, you would never be able to hear anything. You have to do the seminar and shout with a megaphone because we're actually outside the pinball. You could probably still hear all kinds of sound from the tournament going on right now. Yeah, you see like, Alentown used to have seminars and they would have it, you know, just kind of like in the back of the show and it did not work. You were literally like yelling for an agent. Yeah, we tried that our first year and figured out that doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work at all. So that's good. I'm glad you guys got that segregated off and you got that all figured out. You know, that's a good thing because you know, if you can't hear the guy, what's the point? Exactly. Yeah, so it's like a good show. And the tournament machine for this show was the new Stern family guy pinball machine. How well has that one been received at the show? It's definitely a difficult machine. We've got scores that have been kept down pretty well. We have some really good players here and they've been having a tough time at it. But it's playing real well. It's held up. They've been holding up real well. Yeah, we had Trent Colin. We had poker tour last year. It's definitely much better. Yeah, we had Trent Augustine Colin and he gave us our play of the week and he's at your show competing in the tournament. And he's saying that it was really good show. It's the first time I guess he's been there. You know, been there. So he said it was really good. So he's quite happy with it. Good show report. One of the other specialties of this show is they have all the different pinballs on free play with numbers on them. Have you been frequently in a pinball nominee for Best of Show? Have they had those nominations turned in yet with the most popular pinballs for the show? Yeah, Dean Grover, who's a former Williams employee. I had a safe cracker here. It's always a proud favorite. So Dean's a safe cracker. We're on Best of Show this year. Okay. So what is what class qualify for Best of Show? Is it like Best Restor or just most fun to play? That type of thing? Best of Show is kind of, it's voted on by people that come to the show. We have ballots and we accept ballots for people to vote on. We have most unique. We have Best of 80s, Best of Top Matrix, all the types of categories. And the best of show is kind of like the, you know, the 2007 Best Car of the Year award. Best pinball at the show award. Gotcha. Okay, cool. All right, is there anything else you guys want to add? What would you say is the most rare pinball machine you had here for the show? I'm not sure. I mean, we have a few that are fairly rare, but I'm not sure what would be. Well, like the first time for this show, any particular pinball machines have never been here before. We had a couple of old Woodrails from the United, like a U-Mayor Zona. We had a few other bullies, you know, we had a melody roll. We have a history pinball exhibit. There's a Rokola jigsaw. There's a Rokola crayon, a slam. I think it's crayon. I'm not positive at world fair. Sorry. World series. World series. Get it right eventually. Yeah, the 1934. So we had a pinball. Okay, and what is the history of pinball thing? How's that work? How's that? We have an exhibit where we put pinballs on display where people would never probably see them. Just to kind of show, when we have a history of them and let people look at them, and they also have some that we demonstrate lines. And pinball showdown get together. We put out some of our older machines and let the public see stuff that they would never normally see. We're talking like the really old ones, like the bath level, some of the other units like that. You mean like the 30s stuff? Yeah, 30s, 40s. There's a hompy dump D, 30s, 40s, early 50s. Cool. Cool. All right, guys. Man, it sounds good. I appreciate the call. Great. Thanks. We're going to head back to the tournament to see how Trent does. All right. Yeah, we're rooting for Trent. Okay. All right. Well, this is a me go sign it off from here. Thanks a lot. The lead is calling in. Thanks, Lawrence. I really appreciate it. Happy to do it. Talk to you later. All right. Well, it's not like a good show. You know, it's nice to have that. And now it's time for TechTickTick. Oh, we, we, we, we, we. All right, Eric, what, uh, what TechTick do you have for us this week? You got anything good? I'll, I'll, I'll lay one down. Okay. That, that I did this week that I thought was kind of interesting. And then while I'm doing that, you can, you can be thinking about it. So this guy calls me with a getaway that he bought off eBay. And, um, the display didn't work. And so I went out of his house and took a look at the game. And the game was reasonable condition. And sure enough, the display didn't work. And I checked the voltages. And the negative voltages for the display, you know, you're supposed to have positive 68 volts, negative 112 and negative 100. Right. And those two negative voltages need to be 12 volts apart. Well, both of the negative voltages were minus 112. So there's like a 12 volt zinear diode on the dot matrix controller board. If that goes bad, you know, you get those two voltages the same. So I take the board out and I test that, that diode and it's good. And I'm thinking, well, you know, sometimes you get parts that, you know, you test them with the diode testing on your digital multimeter. And sometimes they test good, but maybe they're really not. So I pull one leg out to test it out a circuit this time. And it still tests the same. So I figured, you know, I got the thing half out and I got the diode with me. Might as well put it in. So I put the diode in. I figured for good measure, too, there's a, what an MGE, 15, 0, 30. And there too, I figured out what the heck. I'll put a new one of those into it. And I also check all the resistors because there's a lot of the resistors can either go open or go out of spec. And those were all okay. So I do that. I put those two new parts in. I check all the resistors, make sure they're good, make sure there's no traces on the board. You know, I just generally check everything and everything seems fine. Put it back in and I still have both negative voltages exactly the same, both at a minus 112. So what do you think the problem was there? Well, I'm thinking one of two things. If there was a cap in the circuit that had shortened. Yeah, there was a cap. There's like a 500 volt, you know, 0.1 micro-fair, but it wasn't the cap. Okay. Bridged pins where somebody reflowed them. Maybe bridge those two pins together? No, no. You know what it was, it was a really odd. So this really taught me an interesting lesson. So I figured, you know, I'm going to check the voltage with the display disconnected because the whole time I've been checking the voltage with the dot matrix display actually hooked up. So this time I unhook it and I measure the voltages and they're all correct. So there was something on the actual dot matrix board, you know, the display panel itself that was the problem. So you look at these things and they're kind of, this one was a cherry. So on the back of it, there's a bunch of surface mount crap and there's a few discrete components but not a lot. But they're right by the connector is a little diode. A little diode. And I knew it was a diode. I put my meter on it and sure enough it was open. You know, I, in diode test, multimeter, I got like 0.001 on the diode. Open it, open. Or original, short it. You're right on my bad, short it. It was short it. So it's just passing straight through. It's acting like a jumper. Right. So I, you know, pull that thing out. It's a 15 volt, zero diode. And I didn't have the schematic but I could actually read the part right on the diode. And I put a new one in and I turned the game on, checked the voltages. Now they're all good. I had good voltages. Flip the thing over. Take a look at it. And it works. But it is just scrambled. It's scrambled all hell. It just looks like mush on it. So what happened is that the diode, you know, shorted it and passed the voltage through and blew out one of the surface mount chips. So I ended up just, you know, giving the guy a new dot matrix display, you know, the actual glass in the panel. And, you know, that was. You didn't change out the, the road surface mount chip, the 128 pin chip down there, whatever it is. No, no, I didn't do that. Sitting on the guy's, the floor. I'm sitting on his basement floor, you know, with like minimal light, you know, trying to do all this stuff. No, I didn't feel it was. Oh, that's when you bring the display home and replace it with that $2 chip and you got a brand to work and display now. Yeah, $2 chip that takes $100 to install. Yeah, yeah, because they're not socketed. So anyway, that's my tech tip of the week. I thought that was kind of a weird one. What do you got for me? I got a display problem too. I'm working on a game yesterday where the buddy came up from down south or Columbus. And my operator buddy calls me up. He goes, listen, he goes, I got a display that went out, was working fine in the shop. Now it's not working. So I says, okay, check your voltages on display. So after trying to teach him how to put his meter on DC and AC and all that, he goes ahead and checks it and he doesn't have his minus voltage. Neither one. So I says, okay, your power supply is bad, your controller. So he goes ahead and checks the output there to make sure that we weren't getting anything drawn down or it was actually being generated there and just not getting to the display. And it turns out that he wasn't getting an output voltage. Then I say, okay, check your AC input. And he goes over there, he goes, I've got nothing. I go, what do you mean you got nothing? You got to have something. And what came was this? This was a dot matrix shadow. Okay, so where are you having them check the... On the display controller board. Okay. It was actually no AC input at the dot matrix controller board. And I had him take his meter and don't check and triple check. Make sure he was on the right fence. People have the hardest time measuring AC volts just because they try and use ground as the reference. Right. And which, of course, you can't do it. You can't. And I'm telling them, dude, you got to be checking this wrong. Your transformer can't be bad. It's just one set of windings on a transformer. So what was it? There's a connector between the transformer and that dot matrix controller board. It's a molex-2 pin connector. All it is is those two wires for the high voltage on the negative side. Actually, one of the negative voltages was there, but the other one wasn't. Okay. And for that one set of voltages, it comes from the secondary on the transformer. He lifts up the play field, looks at the connector, and he started cussing and saying it's unplugged. But he plugged it in and the display came right up right and... Nice. Great. That was a good one. Tech-tech-tech. Oh, we... Eric, man, I'm long winded, ain't I? No, that was good. All right, now let's listen to curb. Curbs got some tectics... Tep-tics for us there. Why the heck am I supposed to use these? And now, top cast is happy to present. I have survived this tomato. I've survived this tomato. Presented by the man with all the answers, curb! Hello, everyone. It's curb with a quick system-aditective. This tip has to do with the lower play field lamps on multi-level games such as Honnett House and Black Hole. A single relay is used to turn power onto the lower play field, and in some cases turn power off to the upper. And Honnett House, this would be the U-relay. This relay turns on the lower play field lighting for a cool effect, but many people often put number 44 bulbs in these bayonet sockets. Not knowing they are really 24 volt lamps. The proper bulb to use is a number 313 lamp, which is shown on the play field solenoid and illumination schematic. Don't forget to check out the System Aide repair guides and the great System Aide this old pinball DVDs at marvin3m.com. I don't know how many times I've seen that before, like a million. I don't know how many times I've seen that where they put number 47's in and they just blow instantly. It's like this bright flash of light. But they work for a second. Or half for a second. That's when you thought it was safe to go back into the arcade. It's not. It's not. Hi, people, it's the corner. Welcome to this week's version of the Kanundra. Here's how the game works. I give 10 clues about a game's identity. That's up to the listeners that you call in and guess what game it is. Pretty simple, right? If nobody gets it, I keep giving more and more clues until someone nails it. What is this week's prize, Shaggy? Well, we've got the standard assortment of DVDs and cliffy protectors and air exploits. All right, let's play. Blue number one. This is an alpha numeric Gottlieb system 3. System 3 Gottlieb. Black hole number two. It was designed by Jon Norris. I know where it's got. Blue number three, there were 2000 produced, which, considering the manufacturer in the year, that's pretty big numbers. Blue number four, artwork, is by David Moore and Constantine O'Mitchell. And clue number five, you know what's coming. Here's a whole bunch of sounds for this game, no particular order. Black hole. You got time, you did both. And corn gives us all the sounds, doesn't it? Oh man. Corn's got a shrimp down on the silence. Nanta, gaita. Think you know what it is? Black hole in. Shaggy, give him the phone number, just in case they forgot. 100 now. Give us a call, we're going to run an ad right now, and we're waiting for some call. 800. Is that a game journal? It's a proud sponsor of Topcast. It covers pinball like the one the publication can. The pin game journal is America's only pinball publication. Whether you're looking for new games or the classics, reports on industry shows or collector expos, insights on a game you want or features to help you fix the game you've got, pin game journals for you. Your website is at pingamejournal.com. Hey George, I just had to call and tell you about this really great magazine I guess. It's called the Pin Game Journal, and it's the only magazine dedicated to the pinball. It's got great articles and interviews with designers and everything. No George, I won't loan you my copy. Who knows where you'll take it to? You're going to have to go to pingamejournal.com and get your own subscription. But George, the guy says that each issue will give mail whenever he feels like it. What's the deal with that? Alright George, I got to go. Got to call Elaine until her. I can't believe how good this magazine is. Alright, we got a call around the line. This will be called in and you got to guess you think you know what game it is? Yeah, I'm thinking Serpent Safari. Serpent Safari? You sure you don't want to say black hole? Um, now. Okay. Excellent. You are correct it is. It is Serpent Safari. Man, so what's your first name? John. John, where are you calling from? Um, Audubon New Jersey. Okay, John, so of the assorted junk that we have to give away, which would include the cliffy protectors for various games. We've got some top DVDs and we've got the system 11, the system 11 music showcase, anything that you want. Um, I haven't got the new top DVD yet. Sure, send me an email with your address and say that you want top eight and um, shaggy at marvin3m.com and we'll get that sent right out to you. Okay, cool. Alright, well thank you. Thanks, Claire. Alright, bye. Bye. Man, we're going to have to, I almost feel bad that you know we don't play the rest of his clues, but I'm going to play him. Clue number six. In an apparent bid to see more relevant to the hip youngsters of the day, this game features an alligator wearing sunglasses on both the play field and the back glass artwork. I think it's also on the cabinet too. Blankhole. Clue number seven. You take a quick look at this cabinet. You might mistake this game for Congo. It's not. Kind of cool. Clue number eight. This game has a grid of lights in the play field that's used for countdown timers among other things. Clue number nine. This game has a whirlpool or a spin out toy on the play field. Creature. And the last clue, the predominant play field color is blue while the predominant cabinet color is black. Think you know what it is? Then call it. Shaggy giving the phone number just in case they forgot. All right. Well, that was the famed corn's conundrum for this week. Here's the answer to this week's conundrum. Serf and safari by Gottlie. Until next week, this is the corn signing up hoping you had fun playing corn's conundrum. That's pretty good. You know, the people that listen must be pretty smart because I'm not sure I would have gotten that air. You kept saying black hole because you like saying black hole. Yeah. So it sounds good rolling off your tongue. But I mean, did you have any clue really what it was? Actually I was thinking, cactus jack. But that's not a system three is it? Yeah, it is actually. Oh, it is a system three. It's one I think. Yeah, it's a good game too, cactus jack. It actually is a good game. Anyways, now if you want to call in with some tech questions, the number is 1-800. Call in with any questions, opinions, statements are really good. Oh yeah, by the way, I just like to make a disclaimer. I do not smoke too much drugs and do drugs and stuff like that because everybody asked about that. Yeah, and the reason why everybody asked that is because Eric is selling a game, why not even going to say which one? But he thinks it's worth a million dollars and when it clearly isn't. And it's, you know, he paid like pennies on the dollar for it. And now he thinks he wants to ride this thing all the way down retirement lane. He called me and asked me if I was on drugs and I was, no, I was not on drugs. I was hoping somebody else was but no, definitely not on drugs. Yeah, I don't know about that. It sure, it sure seemed like it, you know, I mean really, really sure seemed like it. Anyways, we've got some, if you go to our website, the marvel3m.com slash topcast, you can send us tech questions through the email and we get a number of them now and then and we've got a, we've got one from a guy that's in systematic hell. He has a got-leab Spider-Man. Says here question, good day. So maybe this guy's from Australia. Mate. Yeah, good day, mate. Love the show. Recently purchased the dead Spider-Man. The power supply MPU and driver board were sent out for repair and the ground mods completed. Now the machine runs and plays fine but I've got no sound. I've checked the speakers in another systematic game and those check out fine when I crank up the volume pot. I'm getting no hiss so he's getting nothing out of the soundboard. Well remember the soundboard is its own computer and it has an amplifier right on it and if you're the amplifier isn't running, you'll get this no palm. You should get some sort of homers static and I would check the power going into the soundboard of course first and if you have, you know, the appropriate voltages as seen on the schematics. The next thing I would do is check the amplifier. Sometimes the amplifiers get a little hot on there and you know they can actually desider themselves from the board or maybe a leg or that. You got anything you want to throw in there Eric? I don't know. I like want to grab a logic probe and see if it's actually running the CPU. Yeah, he wants to check the clock signal, the reset line to make sure that it's not hell low and also the address and data lines to make sure that they're dancing. I would indicate that it's actually running some program. Those are so cheap. I love them. Everybody should have a logic probe. Yeah, good 20 bucks and then you know that's all there is to it. Here's one from another guy. His name is Mark, he's in Crystal Lake Illinois. He's got a dirty hairy. It says here every once in a while the ball just drops out of the gun. The machine is tilted as far to the rear as possible. Lace can't go anymore. It doesn't happen every time but I notice it most of the time when playing the light go out normal for some of the modes and the ball comes down the ramp and there's the gun and then just dribbles out. You can continue the game if the ball doesn't exit the playing surface and you can use the flipers to get the ball back and hit something up. Any ideas on how to fix this? I don't know. I've seen that happen once or twice on a dirty hairy. I'm not real familiar with the game. Yeah, I've seen that happen now and then but not a lot. I think I would check the home position for the gun. If the gun, if the home position is leaning too far, is pointing too far towards the player, you might have this problem with this role. Also there might be a way to adjust actually just the angle of the gun too. I would check into that. Those are the only two suggestions I can really offer. Is that something similar to the one gun on trilogy, Star Wars trilogy? It's like trilogy and kind of like a Batman forever. Yeah, Batman forever and Terminator 2. They all have kind of a similar rough. You got a home switch. You've got a clear switch in addition. You should have two switches on there and I guess make sure both of them are working and make sure that physically there's set screws underneath neither one of those are loose. There's probably a couple down there. Here's another one we got through email. This guy's name is Jeff. He's from Agura Hills, California and he's got some ballet games. He doesn't say what era they are and he doesn't say what game. He says model, anyway. He says I've just started with my first machine and I'd like to know some basic maintenance. For example, what's the best way and how often to clean the play field, flip or adjustment, how to change, how often to change the battery, what's the best wax, how to fix draft targets and just basic repairs. All right, you want to start. You start here. Myself, a good rule of thumb I like to think is every year on your birthday you change your batteries. For those of us that have a lot that could get pretty expensive so maybe every couple years. Do you have a lot of birthdays or a lot of games? A lot of games. Oh, sorry. The wax question really jumped out at me because there's one wax that I swear by and it's Mother's Pure Carnuba. It's probably about 20 bucks at 10 though. It's kind of expensive but it's the hardest, you know, purest wax I've ever found. Everything else is soft. It's got solvents and whatnot in it. I just love this stuff. It doesn't give you that super duper glossy shine but I know it's really giving you protection. All right. Here's my tip. First off, I would clean the play field with Novis 2. Stay away from Milwax. I know that some guys like to suggest Milwax. That stuff just smells bad. It makes my skin crawl too. I find Novis 2 to be much more inert on my person, on my constitution as it may be. Okay, the next thing I would suggest is after you clean the play field, I would re-rubber the sucker. If you got a new game, I would re-rubber it. Okay? Now. So you got a clean play field and you got a new rubber on it. You can use white rubber. Don't ever use black rubber and I'll tell you why in just a second. But use white rubber and for the flipper rubbers, I'll use red rubber. And again, there's a reason for this. Okay? For one, the derometer rating of white rubber is less than, say, black rubber. So that means the softer you get better bounce, the game plays better. Same thing with the flipper bat rubber. The red is a softer derometer rating. It just feels better. The game just plays better with red rubber compared to black flipper rubbers. That isn't really the main reason why I suggest white rubber. The reason why I suggest white rubber is it gives you an indication of how long it's been between cleanings. So what I do is I don't really count the games or count the time. I just look at the rubber on a game. When the flipper bat, the red flipper bat rubber or the slingshot rubbers start to get black marks on them. You know, and start to get a few black marks on them. I wake up without a paper towel and some lighter fluid. I buy lighter fluid at the party store, you know, for the zip-hole lighters. Just one of those little cans is like a bucket of half. And I just spray some of the, or not spray a, pour some of that onto the paper towel. And then that'll wipe off all the black marks right off the rubber. So, and make the rubber nice and clean. And while I'm doing that at the same time when I get all done, I get out my novos 2 and I knowvos 2 the play field. So I use the game. I let the game tell me when it needs clean. And I start seeing the black marks and if they, and you know, you can use that trip. You don't have to take the rubber off the game. You know, you just wipe the areas, you know, that if, assuming you did a good clean the first time. Use lighter fluid? Lighter fluid. So, nap the right? Yeah, also known as nap the hardwurst. Cool. Yeah, this is, we're talking Eric A. who, who, who used lighter fluid to burn a high, what was it, a high speed play field. Yeah. What did you use? It was in a fire, what should tell us that story? You guys never heard this story? I have to be correct. I have to be correct. Alright, the whole story is, yeah, this is good. I re-imported this high speed and it was beautiful. I mean, really nice day one mile hour. So I pulled a mile hour up with this hot air gun. And the mile hour comes up and the colors are like, gorgeous. I'm like, so excited. And so I tried to take the glue off with like the glue gone and the goof off. It's just not budget. So I move on to like, VM and P nap the. And that's, you know, starting a little bit. So I take a hot air gun and try to soften up the glue that way and it starts working. But it's not working fast enough. So I soak it in the nap, then the paper towels and really let it get in there and then hit it with the hot air gun and it starts coming up and, you know, it's a lot better than what it was, but just not really coming up as fast as I want. So I move on to a pole paint torch. Don't ask me why to this day. Thank you. Obviously it was like, he did up the play field with a prop paint torch. If you douse the thing in a lighter fluid, well, actually it was paper towel soaked in the nap. Oh, that's even better. So you got paper towels soaked in the lighter fluid acting like a wick, which is, yeah, it's worse. So what did you think? Okay, let's forget the lighter fluid for a minute. Let's just think that you had paper towels there. What did you think that, like the paint torch was moving the torch really far? It was moving the torch really quick. Now this is something that I didn't tell group. So anybody that wants to download it, you're going to hear the full rest of the story. Okay. I went at it the first time and didn't catch it on fire and I looked underneath the paper towels and I'm wiping it up the glue and it's coming off like a dream. Couldn't believe how good. And I thought to myself, you know, I could have caught that thing on fire. Well, I went back a second time because it was coming up so easy and I did catch it on fire that time. And you destroyed this play field. It went up like a wick and I go running upstairs trying to find a fire extinguisher. I'm freaking out, right? So I'm looking, can't fire a fire extinguisher. Go run it back downstairs and out of flames are like four feet high. The dogs at the top of the stairs looking down at me like, what the heck is going on? I'm freaking out. So the only thing there is this bucket of water that I wiped the cabinet down with. I douse it. Now the oil from the goof off and the googon and the nap. And I mean, literally I like douse this thing and the flames start rolling down into the coin trace. So I got this flaming slick of nastiness. I'm trying to blow out the water that's dripping out of the bottom of the cabinet. You know, there's this ball of fire in the coin box. Finally got it out. Went cried myself to sleep that night. You destroyed this play field too. I mean, it was like wasted. Oh, dude, I had, I took it to Kalamazoo like three years ago and had a price tag on it of $3,200 as a joke. Now this is, I'm going to be slapped probably or comments, but blondes really get that name for a reason because this blonde lady kept looking at the play field, walking away, came back, walked away, came back and she looks at me. She goes, I just got to know, why is that play field so expensive? You should ask her for phone numbers. Yeah. Should have done. Could have probably, I think she was married, don't you? You don't care. It's God. You know? Well, anyways, you obviously don't want to do that. Let's see where, how often change the batteries? Okay, the first thing, always choose remote battery holder. Okay, I can't stress that enough. Your battery holder has to be remotely mounted. If your batteries are remotely mounted off the CPU board, how often your change your batteries is less important. I'm not saying that you should forget about it, but all I'm saying is if you forget, at worst you're going to waste a $5 battery holder. So it's kind of like a security blanket. If you don't remember on your birthday as Eric was saying to change your batteries and they leak, you're not going to wreck the board if you got to mount it remotely. So even if they're double A, still mount them remotely. Let's see, how to fix drop targets. Boy, that's a show all by itself. Other basic, let's see, flipper adjustments. That's kind of hard to describe in, you know, on the quote radio. I would recommend a top video for something like that if you need to see how that's done. There's a lot of tricks to doing flipper adjustments and flipper rebuilds. It's just, this probably isn't the right format for that. Boy, if any, pushing a product, I don't know what is somebody's got it. It's a dirty job. It's a dirty job. But anyways, I hope that helps them out. Let's see. All right, here you read this one, Eric. Uh-oh. Okay. Hi, guys. I was wondering, should I tell where it's from? Yeah, you can give the guys first name in this location. We work from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Wow, we got people all the way over there. Yeah, across the big pond. And what machine is it for? It's for Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone. All right, read it. I was wondering if you could help me with little diagnostics problem on a Twilight Zone machine. The machine's been in fine working order for many years now since I restoring it. However, it has recently developed a problem with the small upper left play field. That's the one with the magnet thing, right? Yeah. Electromagnets under this small play field, which normally flip the ball instead of flippers, when the feature is active, do not operate during normal gameplay anymore. If you test the electromagnets and switches using the WPC diagnostics, they all seem to work perfectly. Any ideas, regards Mark? I know this one. You do? Yeah. Isn't there an opto at the top of the play field? Yes. And that opto when it's broken will not turn those magnets on. Right. It's exactly it. Yup. It's something. Yeah. There might be another switch too. I can't remember. There's another mechanical switch, but yeah. That's it for sure. Okay. Hold on a second. Hello, you're on top. Hey, how's it going? Good. This is Mark. And I got a Stern stars that I'm just starting. Stern stars. Let's sit from what? 1980, right? 78. 78. All right. And instead, nothing happens. I know the systematic approach for EM. What is the systematic approach for an early Stern solid state? It's an MPU 100. Okay. First thing I do, as you stare at all the boards in the backbox, I remove the lower left connector from the CPU board before I ever turn it on. And what that connector is, is it's the power to the CPU board. The next thing I do is I check all the fuses. You all right? Yep. Okay. Check all the fuses. I actually take them out and put them on my digital multimeter set to continuity and make sure they buzz out. Okay. Okay. Now I flip the thing on. All right. Now, nothing will start up because we don't have power going to the CPU, but I can check the voltages on the solenoid driver board. So the first thing I do is I check out in the upper right hand corner of the solenoid driver board. There's a couple test points. And I think there's three. There's one for 12 volts DC and then there's two for five volts. Now the first thing I do is I check the 12 volt one and make sure that it's at least 12. It'll be somewhere between 12 and 14 volts DC. Okay. Then the next thing I do is I check the two below which relate to five volt ones and they should match. They should or be within very, very close to each other. Okay. Why are you smiling? Eric's smiling. No, I'm just okay. Now in a quick thing, if they're not the same, that means that connector that's right by the test points is got an issue and you might have to do some repinning. But in the, there's actually a modification you can do where you jump. Those two five volt ones together and it takes some of the stress off that connector. Okay. Now the next thing I do is I check the high voltage voltage. There's like in the upper left hand corner of the solenoid driver board is the voltage that's made for the squirtest place. Now it's normally 180 or 190 volts and there's a little pot there that'll allow you to adjust it. And there's two test points there. One with the raw voltage coming in, the raw DC voltage which is about 240 volts DC. And then the other one is the adjustable one. And I always adjust that down to about 170 or 175 volts DC. Now if the two voltages on both those test points are the same, that means the high voltage section is smoked and you'll have to rebuild that. Or the pot is bad. Sometimes it's the pot's bad. You won't be able to, it'll be high voltage error. Now was there a reason that, well, I know the answer to this but you know that Valley design that system specifically like that. So when the high voltage section fails. Yeah. When the high voltage, yes they designed it so that when the high voltage section fails, it blows open instead of shorted. In that way it passes the full voltage through thinking that the operators would see that the displays are getting 240 volts instead of 175 and they would fix the circuit which of course they never did. Which means you get a ton of score displays that have that burn around the segments. Okay, so anyways, assuming that you've gotten through all that and all your voltages are good. Given the game off, I plugged that connector in on the CPU board and I turn it back on and I hope to see that LED on the MPU board flashing. Okay. Now, if it's just locked on, there's all other list of things we got to do. You know, basically you've got to fix the MPU board or buy one of those all tech replacement ones. But there's a whole systematic approach to that and that's probably outside the scope of this program. You know, that's fixing an MPU board. There could be a million things wrong. Of course you got to check for battery corrosion. If the original battery is mounted on the bottom edge of that MPU board, I always just cut that off and throw it away. Somebody hung another one on there. Okay, well it's not a battery pack where you can replace it. Right, but is there any corrosion on the board? Not the board. No, good. Good, that's good. That's really good because now the next thing you do, do you know, does that, do you get any flash sequence out of the board? Nope. It just, the light just stays on. Okay. Then the first thing I do is I check for pin, was it pin 39 of or 40. Pin 40 or 39, I can't remember off end of the U9 chip, which is the 6800. That's the reset line. And you want to make sure that that's five volts. Okay. If it's not five volts, that means that the reset section on the MPU board has failed. And you can go to the repair guide at marvin3m.com slash valley and it'll tell you how to rebuild that reset section. And the reset section tends to go bad because it's right around that battery. And if you've got any battery corrosion, that's like the first thing to get attacked. But if that, if the pin, I mean, I forget, is it 39 or 40? I'm trying to remember and I think it's 30, I don't know, dude. I can't remember. I think it's pin 39. Yeah, it is pin 39. It's pin 39. I'm pretty darn sure. Pin 40 is ground. Schematics will say like reset or RST. The Marvin guide will tell you to. And anyways, so that's how you can tell if the reset section is working. And then, you know, if you're still not getting any flashes, you know, you could try some goofy silly stuff like reciting the chips. Oh, also check all the chips, particularly the ROMs. Make sure they don't have any black legs. They got black legs. I usually pull them out and try and gently sand them and hope that you don't break any of the pins off in the process. If you do, it's not the end of the world. You're going to have to replace them anyways with e-proms. But the problem is, is that when you replace them with e-proms, then you've got to reach up for the board. And that's all another subject that you want to go to. So this is your first solid state game? Yeah, very first one. Okay. So. So, I was sitting in someone's pole barn for about six years and it's dry, but nothing wakes up. Yeah, but the battery didn't leak, huh? The battery's starting to leak, but somebody had replaced the battery, put another one that's wired so it hangs out past the board. Oh, well, that's good. It just drips onto the wood just a little. All right, cool. Well, that's the things I would do. You know, I would check first. The Marvin Guide is awesome. I mean, it really did help me start with my electronics repair. You know, I had a basic electronics background schematic reading and whatnot, but troubleshooting pinball machines, specifically the valley sections and the Williams sections. Yes, those are awesome guides. There's a lot of help there on how to diagnose the flash sequence, but basically you've got to have that reset pin getting held high or the thing is never going to even, the CPU chip itself is never going to start reading programs from the ROMs and starting the whole boot sequence. Do you know what he means by high? Yep. Okay. Yeah, high is five volts. High is five volts. A logic probe to do this. No. Can you do it with a multimeter? You're going to do it with a multimeter, a digital multimeter. At some point you're going to need to get a logic probe. They're cheap. They're only like 20 bucks. You should probably pick one up, but yeah, everything so far we talked about you can do with a logic probe. Airdic, like a meter. Or with a meter, I'm sorry. Airdic likes to get the logic probe out early.