Hi there, pinball fans! It's your favorite clown, Krusty, and you're listening to Norman Shaggy on the TopCast, the greatest pinball show ever made! Ugh, can I get my money now? I'm such a whore. You're listening to TopCast, this old pinball's online radio. For more information, visit them anytime. www.marvin3m.com slash TopCast. Well, here we are, Norm. Yeah, here we are. We're reaching places all over the world. Australia, Zimbabwe, and even Potsdam. So here we are. We're coming from the Department of Nostalgic Games because Norm lives in the past. That's what he does. That is true. And I'm going to really irritate you because I've got a scab on my leg and a pick on it right here. You see that? That's nice. And we can all see that in the webcam, too. We can see your scabby leg. There it is. I'm flicking on the scab. No, no, no, no, you're not. I'll put it in my pocket for you. No, no, you're not. So anyways, Norm, any good stories you got for us this week? I had a stent pulled out. I don't think we want to go into talking about the stent taken out of my urinary tract. No. Anyways, you talked about that last time. We really don't need to hear that. Okay, well, you know, Norm, let's do what we love to do, the part of the show that you seem to enjoy the most. Do you know what that is? Taking calls from people? No. And now it's time for everyone's favorite game of the week. Game of the week, Norm. So I'm going to, everybody direct themselves to the webcam, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to set up the webcam for our game of the week, and while I'm doing that, Norm is going to entertain us with a short song and a story. Why am I? You're putting me on the spot while you sit there and do what you do to yourself. Are we taking calls today? Yes, we are, but I have to do Game of the Week right now. Well, then I don't want to really sing any songs or do anything because all you people are going to do is get irritated. This better not take too long. That says you don't have any other stories for us? Your entertainment value is going down the toilet. How about our competitors? Are they still on the radio, or have we bumped them all off? No, they're still doing what it is that they do. That's good. I think there's room for everybody. We should link them all together and have one time where everybody's on and everybody can get bored together. Okay. There we go. So what we've got now, if everybody directs themselves to the webcam, is our game of the week. This is a 1973 Williams gun game, And we picked this because Norm seems to like gun games. It's called William's Ambush. It's a big one. Yeah, it is a big one. It's got a really deep cabinet. Probably they changed from the prior year they had a smaller gun game cabinet. But this one is a model, you know, with Vietnam War in mind. It's a monster. That was kind of weird to have that at that time. Yeah, and it was definitely not politically correct because you shoot people of certain descent, as that may be. With a machine gun. With a machine gun. That's really cool because it has, in the machine gun, it's got like a kickback. You know, it's got a solenoid that fires. So as you're firing, the gun's like, you know, you can feel it in your armpit. As a matter of fact, my son, when he plays it, says, you know, it hurts. So could you actually go to war now if you were in war and use this Thompson submachine gun to kill people if you wanted? Yeah, that's what it looks like. It looks like a Thompson. Like here I'm showing it Here I'm shooting the gun And you can see the red flash In the gun barrel As you shoot it the gun barrel flashes red Which is really kind of cool I think Dale's got one of those It's really a cool gun game I mean it's mindless fun Here we are playing it You can see the helicopter And whenever you hit something The lights flash in the background It really kind of gives you the idea That you're actually killing things you know like there's you know when you hit things the light actually flashes this is great fun i mean it's a mine it's a precursor to the video games nowadays that these kids play and uh and all the mindless killing and maiming that everyone does right right but i i really enjoy it i mean it's just mindless silly fun and you get uh it's shots you get like a thousand shots or something like that and if you get past the high score or past the set score it'll give you more it'll give you like another thousand shots or 500 shots but it's like uh you know a minute of mayhem mayhem yep yep and the guys when you shoot the little men they kind of bounce up and down like you're hitting them okay and uh here here's that here's the game from the side to kind of give you a little bit of an idea of how big it is but anyways maybe we could do a show on Politically incorrect games like this one and Happy Gang and Minstrelman and all the great games in the past that they would never make again. Norm likes these games that are a picture of our society. Exactly. They are a lot of fun, and they are kind of neat. But anyways, that's it for this week's Game of the Week. That's it for this week's Game of the Week. Okay. Okay, so anyways, the next thing we're going to pull up is Tech Tip of the Week. Okay, so Norm, you got any good tech tips for us? Yeah, always keep everything clean in your shop. Don't have stuff laying around where you can trip and fall and electrocute yourself or burn your eyes or hands. You should have ventilation in there, too, when you're doing your soldering. Okay, that was Norm's useless Tech Tip of the Week. I'm going to give you one that probably would work out a little better. Say, for instance, you're having reset problems on a WPC game, be it Adam's Family or, worse yet, Twilight Zone. And you've done all the normal things. You've changed the BR2 bridge. You've changed its associated filter capacitor. You've even gone so far as to replace connector J101, which is a good idea. and you've also replaced the LM323 voltage regulator for the 5 volts. But you still get this thing when you press the flippers, the game resets. So then you go down to the power box, which is the metal box where the on-off switch is mounted in the game, and there's a thing called a thermistor, which is basically a little timed resistor. it has like, I don't know, a couple ohms of resistance as you turn the game on, but within like 10 or 20 seconds as it warms up, the resistance drops down to zero. And what that does is it allows the, it prevents less of a shock to the bridge rectifiers when you turn the game on to try and save their life. They only did that on WPC and WPCS, by the way. They abandoned that with WPC95. But anyways, you take an alligator clip and you go over the thermistor so that it's essentially not in the circuit, and you're still getting resets. So you've done everything. You've even disconnected your dot matrix display and maybe your sound board to see if those things are pulling the five volts down, and the game is still resetting. So what do you do next, Norm? You go to Marvin3m.com and you look this problem up. No, because this solution that we're about to discuss isn't in that, isn't in there. I think you should put it in there. Well, let's also say another thing you should have done is check your wall voltage, too, to make sure that you've got 120 volts. I mean, if you've got, like, 110 or, you know, even under, I'd say under 115, you're probably in some trouble. But let's say that all that stuff checks out okay. Norm, you got any other ideas? I would ask Drex to. Yeah, and actually, this is something that, you know, probably came from that route. um what you can do is the lm323 is actually a variable voltage regulator which means it's by default puts out five volts but it can also put out other voltages too up to seven or eight volts so how do you adjust this thing so that it steps up the voltage just a little bit so you don't get these resets how do you want to do that norm a little screwdriver no no what you do is i i take a 32 ohm half watt resistor and i put it there's two screws that that connect the casing of the lm323 to ground and what you do is you isolate those two screws and you're going to have to like do a little trace cutting on the back of the board and you route the case of the lm323 to ground through this 32 ohm not 32k but 32 ohm half watt resistor and what this does is it tells the lm323 to actually raise its output voltage just ever so slightly. If you use more resistance, you could bump the thing up to 7 volts, but we don't want to do that. I want it to come in at about 5.1 volts instead of its... Typically, I see it's usually 4.95. So if you just bump this up just a smidgen, just a hair, I find that the reset problem goes away. Now, I've even seen people where they re-jump their game for low voltage and that, And this problem basically, you know, solves all those problems. You don't need to do that. And why would you have to do this? You know, sometimes components, you know, on the board, you know, as they get older, they may consume more power or whatever. And just, you know, the age and the manufacturer and that, it's just kind of a neat little trick to bump up the voltage just a smidgen to like 5.1 volts so that those flipper resets just kind of go away. And it works really, really neat. it's the last thing you should ever do i should make that clear it certainly isn't the first thing you should do you should do all the other things that we talked about and then some as is referred in the um marvin3m.com slash wpc um repair guide but you know that's kind of a neat trick when everything else has has failed you but anyways that's our told you this you know what do you mean why do you always think somebody tells me these things i don't think you just sit there and vent these things why can't i do any research you probably can but i'm sure you can't take the credit for everything why not because then people get mad at you like that uh guy out in arizona we won't start with him tech tip of the week anyways that's our tech tip of the week so now we're going to move on and we're going to do trent's play he's throwing stuff on my back we're going to do trent's play of the week now trent augustine is ranked number five in the world as all pinball players and competitive professional pinball players so who's number one you know lyman no lyman is actually number two oh i forget um i think keith is number one keith um i forget his last name he's out of california i believe he's number one lyman's number two um but anyways trent is our uh comes up and does our play of the week every week So we get him on the phone And let's see if we can do that Let's call up Trent Is he calling from the cave? Okay, we're getting to get Trent And here he is with our play of the week Let it rip, Trent We're with Trent for play of the week Trent, what's the play of the week this week? Well, I was thinking of going over the rule set For Captain Fantastic You know, a fairly popular well-bred game The classic 1976 Valley EM Captain Fantastic. Tell me about it, Trent. That's it. That's it. Okay, tell me. Tell me what you got. Well, the first thing you want to do is try to keep the ball over the top of the play field. You mean at the top? There's two or three rollovers up there. There's A, the one on the right is B. The one in the middle is for the gate. So the first two things you want to do is you want to get the A rollover and the B rollover to light the double bonus. Bonus is a pretty big scoring opportunity in that game. And then the third thing you want to do is light the center rollover, which will open the gate on the right-hand side. It saves the ball from the out lane. Oh, right, right. It closes the right-out lane, correct. Sorry. Yes, it closes the right-out lane. Okay. So you can only do that when they're lit. And so those will alternate when they're lit. So basically I just keep shooting up there until I get them lit. At that point, you want to knock down the drop targets. The first time you do that, you get points. The second time you do that, you're going to get the extra ball lit. So where'd you get the extra ball lit? It's on the right in lane. So if you've got the gate open and you've got the right in lane lit, generally what I try to do is get the ball on the left flipper and hold the right flipper in so the upper right flipper is up and then shoot the ball under the right flipper and let go of the button at the same time to basically caught the ball underneath the upper right flipper. At that point, press the button to release the ball. The ball should fall down and go right into the right in lane to give you the extra ball. If something major happens and you miss or whatever, if it goes into the out lane, as long as you've got the gate open, no problem. Relight the gate, try it again. Right. Okay. And is this a rinse and repeat situation? Well, you can only get one extra ball in an EM, as you know, Joshua Clay. So, you know, once you've got that extra ball lit, basically you want to get your bonus up to its max, which I believe is 15, which with double bonus will give you 30. At that point, you know, you can keep shooting drop targets if you want or just, you know, keep shooting it up to the top and just breaking in points. And have you ever used this trick in any sort of competition or is this game just too old? Well, it depends on whether they've got extra balls enabled. If extra balls are enabled, yeah, absolutely, because extra balls are huge in EMs. Right. The other thing you can do on some Captain Fantastics, you can do an alley pass, also known as shatting in the in lane, where you've got the ball on the left flipper and you hit the button for the left flipper as late as possible, shooting the ball up the right in lane. And on Captain Fantastics, if it's got a gate, what will happen sometimes is it will force the gate open, and if that happens the gate will stay open because the em does no difference that's another way of uh of getting the gate open although it's a little bit more dangerous than hitting the top rollover oh you're saying that what you're doing is you actually force the return gate open and because it's an em that gate will stick open as soon as it's it's forced open yep that's correct okay so it the same thing as hitting that top rollover lane without hitting the top rollover lane Yeah exactly Very cool That a neat trick I like that Yeah, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And you can do that on any game that has a gate. Depending on where the hinge for the gate is depends on how easy it is to get that gate open on an in-lane shot. Right, right. Very cool. And that's a neat trick. I mean, have you ever gotten like a high score on Captain Fan for you? Well, if you're playing with extra balls and three-ball play, you know, you can get two, three hundred thousand. No problem, son. And, you know, Captain Fantastic is cool because it's got an over-the-top buzzer. Right, right. When it goes over a hundred thousand, it goes really obnoxious. Yep, exactly. Yep. Yep. And I'm sure you'll explain to your listeners how the over-the-top buzzer works. Well, basically there's a relay that as soon as the score reel goes over 999,000, it closes a relay that's called the delay relay. And it uses a 455 flasher bulb to hold that relay in. And you'll actually see it. It's weird. There's actually a lamp socket on the relay with this light bulb in it. and people look at that and they either have the wrong light bulb in it. For instance, if you put a regular 47 in, the relay will stay on forever and the buzzer will buzz until the end of time. It's really obnoxious. But it's supposed to be a 455 that's a flasher so that it only stays on for, you know, a few seconds, and then the flasher turns off and that disengages the relay, and then that's it. You know, it's only on for, you know, a few moments, and that includes the buzzer. Yeah, that's a pretty neat trick. Yeah, it's kind of a low-tech timing device. Very neat trick. All right, well, that's Trent's Play of the Week. That's very cool. Thank you, Trent. Hey, no problem, Joshua Clay. All right. All right, well, hey, that was Trent, who's Trent's Play of the Week. That's always a good thing. I like Trent. How do you feel about him there, Killer? He's a good guy. Yeah, he is a good guy. He's a good guy. Okay, now we're going to do our ever-so-popular. And now it's time for Stomp-a-Jump. As you know, every week we take callers at the second half of the show that have technical issues with their games, and we give them advice as to what we think should fix the game. And we did that last week, and actually last week was a fiasco. somebody called with a a tommy game uh data east tommy with the blinders and i had never worked on that before norm and and i i tried to solve that problem on the phone and it turns out i really gave some i think some pitiful advice but um and actually a caller then called in afterwards correcting me which really throws uh salt in the wound nothing wrong with that but anyway be right on everything well let's uh let's go let's read let's go step back and let's revisit what we talked about last week and um we'll we're going to call up our our gentlemen and see uh uh exactly what uh what the deal is if you know if you got the problem fixed here we go let's go back let's go back in time i got a question for you regarding the blinders don't work they don't work at all in test load or anything that I try and do to them. It worked when I got the machine prior to me shopping the dog thing. So apparently I suck at shopping the machine. Do you really want it to work again or do you really care? Well, that's obviously one of the better features of Tommy, I would think. How do you think it should work? I have actually never fixed a Tommy set of blinders. I'm going to let Norm answer this question. You cut a wire somewhere by mistake. Did you see the pins are properly dotted all the way? Yeah, I actually re-dotted the header to the car. Well, that was a slight recap of what we did last week. And what we're going to do is we're going to call this guy up, and we're going to see exactly what his solution was. Let's hope. I think the key is that the thing worked until he fixed it. Took it apart. You mean until he shopped the game. Pretty much. That gives you a big clue on what's wrong with it. Man, let's see. We're not getting through. Oh, yeah, it's ringing. Hello? Yes, is this the Mr. Data East Blinder Owner? Yes, this is the Tommy guy. The Tommy guy. The Tommy guy. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Sounds like you guys are getting an ice storm up there, huh? Yeah, we're getting an ice storm. That's why we're doing the show today on Saturday instead of our usual show on Sunday. Norm, who likes to drive out for the shows, if at all possible. I worked today. Yeah, he had a big ice storm coming, so we moved the show up a day. I thought you northerners know how to drive and that stuff. We do, but Norm is from Boston, and he normally has a chauffeur. I got studded tires. But anyway, so we played our tech advice from last week, and I know it was a bit of a fiasco, but it turns out, did you fix the game? Yeah, the blinders now work. Ironically, when I have the blinders out, I play better, so maybe I'm channeling Tommy or something. There you go. But basically after your guys' advice, I kind of started second and triple guessing myself. I'm like, you know what, it's been a couple months since I looked at it real closely. So I went back and started to look at that little blinder board again and realized that while last week I said I reflowed the header pins on it, I realized that I only had reflowed the ones that went to the servo board, little three-prong one like the second caller said that one has a sensing wire and the other two are oh the one that actually goes to the servo motor you mean correct yeah the servo motor okay um so i started looking at a little closer and uh at the time i tried to repair it last time i had one of those really cheap ass radio shack soldering irons and uh since then i've gotten a real nice one one those Weller 5-1s or WE 5-1s or whatever. And I kind of noticed, I'm like, the big header, there's like seven or eight pins that feed that little servo board, the power and all the other wires that come from the CPU board, the driver board. And they didn't look like they had ever been reflowed. So I kind of was just kind of going over everything that I'd already done. I went back and I sucked most of the old solder off just to be safe and then put new solder on it. plug the board back up and the sucker started working on it so let me get this right norm gave you the right advice to re-solder the header pins yeah i just showed you that it's all good pinball repair guys go back and revisit the stuff that you've already done a second time sometimes you'll you'll find out you screwed up yourself the first time so i i can't believe norm came through in the pinch of all people you know how do you feel norm i don't know i mean i i think i have some intelligence. You may not think so, but it's just a matter of if you keep doing these things over and over, you're going to develop a sense of logic. I think everybody does that. If I keep praying for the lotto numbers over and over and over, you think I'm going to get them? I'm trying. It's not working. Not at all. All right. Well, we appreciate you letting us call you back for Stump the Chump. I appreciate the help in making me second guess myself. It works. No, I mean, just have confidence in yourself. and sometimes you've got to back check. The sound of the logic was it was working and it didn't. That's the whole key there. Why wasn't it working after it was working? What did you do? Of course, with Norm. Right after I shopped the thing, so I thought I messed up majorly and blew something up or something. Well, that's what Norm would have done. That's what I figured. I said, did you cut a wire? Because that's what I would do. All right, well, thank you very much. We appreciate you letting us call you back. Thank you much. All right, take care. Norm, I just can't believe you actually did that. You get the, Norm gets the applause. Do I get a shirt from Pim Jane Journal? No, but Norm gets the applause. Meanwhile, for my incorrect answers. Ah, crap. That's what I get. Well, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. That's pretty good. Even a blind squirrel. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so next up on our fine thing is we've got Korn's Conundrum. And before I start Korn's Conundrum, we need to dice out the 800 number so people can get ready to call in, okay, because they can win a prize. And we've got some really keen, kick-ass prizes this week. The phone number this week is 1-800. That's our 1-800 number for the week. No code. So anyways, let's get rolling now with... Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the arcade. Korn's Conundrum. Hi people, it's the Korn, and welcome to this week's version of the Conundrum. Here's how the game works. I give five clues about a game's identity. That's up to the listeners, that's you, to 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? I have a sundry of Cliffy Protectors. I mean, this guy sent me like a dozen different ones for different games. So you get your Cliffy Protectors. All right. Let's play. Clue number one. Since last week was a BMW game, this week we're having a game that was not designed by Bally Midway or Williams. It's designed by... Clue number two. Red is a very predominant color in this game's artwork and play field. Clue number three, they produced more than 1,000 but less than 5,000 of this machine. Oh, that helps. Clue number four, the theme of this game is planes, trains, and tanks. And clue number five, here's some of the sounds from this game that I sort of hacked together. Eagle 3, you are cleared for takeoff. Let's take out that power plant. Enjoy all-planting targets. Sounds like a video game to me. It's not. Hey, guys, this was on the location I was in school. Think you know what it is? Hell no. Then call in. Shaggy, give them the phone number just in case they forgot. 1-800. Anyways, you know, I have to give a further hint, too. It is a timed game, or it can be run as a timed game. And it was made by... Give me another cigarette. No one seems to be calling. Either we're not being listened to or this is a tough one. This one actually is kind of tough. This one is tough, so we're going to play another hint. Clue number six. It's a Ray Tanzer design masterpiece. Oh, that really helps too. flip a clown clue number seven this is the last alphanumeric game from okay we'll just say it gotley oh that's a big hit let me get my book out clue number eight this game has a mix master like device on the play field does that mean i can be a dj yeah no i don't think so clue number nine this is the first time that gotley abused smart switches on the playfield oh man oh this has everybody stumped i got cliffy protectors to out the wazoo i got cliffy protectors way cliffy protectors Okay, let's go for the last one Clue number 10, the game name starts with an O Think you know what it is? Then call in Shaggy, give them the phone number just in case they've forgotten 800 And we got a caller We have a caller Hello, how you doing? Good, this is Scott Freeman calling from Westland Scott Freeman, how you doing Scott? I'm doing terrific, and you? Good, now you think you have this game nailed? I hope so Okay, and wait. Okay, we want to go real slow on this. I had it in the first five clues, but it took me a while to get the phone number in. Why? I wrote down the wrong number. That's all right. That'll do it. Okay, what is the name of the game? Well, we know the manufacturer's Gottlieb. What's the name of the game? Operation Thunder. That is correct. Wow. Give him a rim shot. Yeah, I mean, Operation Thunder. Who would have ever known? It was at Expo this year, and someone brought it from the pinball mafia, if I recall. Oh, that's just unbelievable. I can't, you know, I would have never known, you know, Operation Thunder. That's very good. Okay, so we've got a bag of Cliffy Protectors here. Wonderful. Let me see. What do you need a Cliffy Protector for? And I'll see if I got it. Oh, my God. Hyper Thin Star Trek Next Jet. Let me help you. Got it. Okay, it's yours. Send me an email, shaggy at marvin3m.com. And it's yours. And it's yours. Excellent. So do you need any others? I won't be greedy. Spread them around. Take one more. Come on. What do you got for the revenge from Mars? Hyperthin? I don't know if I got that one. I got two Monster Bash. You got a Monster Bash? Nope. Save that for me. You don't have a Monster Bash. All my other games got Cliffys. That was the last two that are missing. All right. Well, we'll send you that one. That's good. Send me an email with the one you want and your address, and I'll get that in the mail to you. Thanks a lot, guys. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. That's Korn's great conundrum. Okay. So now what we're going to do is we're going to take callers for the second half of the show. I'm going to give you the 800 number, and then we're going to run some ads. Please call in with your questions, any kind of questions, electromechanical or solid state. anything about pinball all right norm and the 800 number is 1 okay and uh while we doing that for that to ramp up we got to go and do a couple of commercials This portion of TopCast is brought to you by Marco Specialties your pinball parts superstore TopCast is brought to you by Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore. Visit their website at marcospcialties.com. You can search for parts by game name, game make, or part number. Marco Specialties was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Lexington, South Carolina. They specialize in pinball parts, supplies, books, and anything pinball. Marco has been online since 1996 and is the web's oldest and largest pinball parts supplier. Their new 12,000 square foot distribution center services 25,000 customers in over 50 countries. Feel free to call Marco Specialties at 803-957-5500. Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore at marcospecialties.com. TopCast is brought to you by Pinball Life. Give your pinball machine new life with parts from Pinball Life. We ship pinball parts worldwide. Pinball Life is located in the great city of Chicago. Their phone number is 773-202-8758. We have an open-door Ryan Policky, and you are welcome to call us with your questions and concerns. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time, Monday through Friday. Their website is at pinballlife.com. Pinball Life. No hassles, just the parts you need and best. Okay, we're back, and we've got Roger on the phone from Columbus. Is that what you said, Roger? Correct. Okay. And, Roger, you've got an EM game. What can we help you with on what EM game? I have a 1972 Bally time zone that I have the 10 coil in the back and the 100 coil in the back. They go down and then they stay energized. You mean as soon as you turn the game on or as soon as you start a game? As soon as I start a game. It used to be the 1,000 point switches weren't turnover. And then I got in there, was tinkering around a little bit. Now the 1,000 points will score and the reel will turn over, but when I press on the tens and the hundreds, the score reel won't turn over. And also the slingshot bumpers work. They'll kick the ball out. But they don't score. Well, the top two on the right and the top two on the left won't do anything at all. Okay. Now this is, what was the name of Bally? What was it again? Time? Time's out. Time zone. So this is the one that's got that little tunnel, right? Yeah. It's kind of a cool effect. It's kind of like a, I don't know, it's like maybe three inches wide at the top. A uterus? Yeah, and it keeps going down to a smaller thing, and then there's a motor with a light. And if you do the skill shot and get it in the top kick-out hole, it'll give you the points either 1,000, 2,000, to 5,000. It's kind of a really neat effect. And your game is the two-player version, right? Right, yeah, the four-player is space-time. Right, right, four-player is space-time. Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with the game. I would say, here's a tip. When you turn the game on, right when the game's off, you flip the switch. Does it go ding right when you turn it on? I mean, do you hear it? No, it just resets. Everything resets back to zero. No, not when you start a game. When you actually turn the game on. When you actually, like, the game's dead and you hit the power switch and come on, do you hear a ding? You know, like from one of the chimes. No. Okay. A lot of times if you hear that ding when you turn it on on Bally Games, what it means is one of the play field switches is stuck closed. You know, have you recently re-rubbered the game? They're fairly fresh, but it's been about a year. Okay, okay, okay. You know, it really sounds to me like you've got a playfield switch or two stuck. It sounds like you've got, what are the units that aren't advancing, the 100 and the 1000s? No, the 10s and the 100s, the coils in the backbox, once they go down, they're activated, they stay energized. Right. And they won't kick over the coil. That's what a friend of mine told me, that it could be a stuck switch. So I just get in there and just try one each individually or try to separate the... Well, what I would do is I turn the game on, but don't start a game. And then I would take, if it's easy, take the rubber off all the things that you don't have to remove any screws to take it off. And what that will do is it will relax the switches out. And then just try the game again and see if they're still stuck on. Because what I suspect is, like your friend said, that you've got a couple of play field switches that are stuck. That, you know, when the ball hits something hard and it just happens to bend, the switches close or they get stuck. Sometimes the plastics warp a little bit and the top of the leaf switches get stuck on the top edge of the plastic. That's real common. Something like that. This would be a wire form rollover. Yeah, exactly. A wire roll. Oh, and the other thing, like, I can't remember if this game has it. Like, if you've got a valley with the rollover, like the star rollover guides, you know what I mean? They're on the play field, this little star. If you've got any of those or any buttons in the play field. Check all those. Yeah, check all those because those really like to get contaminated with dirt. Yeah, they get dirt from the top side of the play field. What you can do is just stick a business card between the switch. But give that a whirl, and we'll give you a call back next week, see if you can stump the chumps. Okay. I'll get it working. I had one other quick question for you. I'm getting an EM kit from Steve Young as far as files. How do I differentiate which is the flex stone file and which is the other file? Well, you're only going to get in that kit a flex stone and a metal file. Right. And the flex stone is going to be the one that flexes. It's not conductive. Yeah, it looks like sandpaper, and the metal file, of course, would be rigid. Double-ended sandpaper. Yeah, and you'll get some contact adjusters, too, in that kit, too. So it should be pretty straight. You're going to use the Flexstone for basically everything but the cabinet flipper switches and the flipper and the stroke switches. Everything else, basically, you'll be using the Flexstone on. Wonderful. Thank you, gentlemen. Okay. All right. Well, good luck. and we'll send you an email and let me know how that worked if you were able to figure it out. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you. Thanks for calling. Bye. All right, Norm, what did you think about that, Norm? Well, it's just basic EM repair. You've got to go ahead and investigate, read. You've got to get a feel for these things. You know, there could be another thing. Sometimes on the score reels, there's a switch that opens up that releases the relay when it scores a point. Sometimes that switch breaks, too. It could be that, too. But we've got another caller. Let's take him on. We need to clean those score reels, too. How are you doing? Hi, you're on the air. Yeah, how are you doing? Hi, what's your first name? Kevin. Kevin, where are you from, Kevin? Pretty good. How are you doing? Good, and where are you from? I'm out in Santa Maria, California. Good, and you've got a game? What kind of game? Well, no, I'm just calling in from the last caller who is having problems with the EM. With his bally? Yeah. Okay. And the 100 and the 10 stays energized all the time. Right. I just had a thought. It may not have anything to do with it, but if I remember right, some of those games have, in the actual score reels themselves, when the unit... Yeah, when it energizes, there's a switch that opens up that releases the relay. Exactly. Yeah, we were just talking about that. Me and Norm were just... Right after he hung up. Okay. Because you guys got a delay. there's like a 30 second delay of what we say. Yeah. So you probably would be hearing it right about now on the cast. Oh, okay. Yeah, we were just talking about that. Usually what happens with those switches is they break so that they're always open. So it doesn't become as much of a problem as if they're stuck permanently closed and they never open that way. Now, he'd be able to know that, though, because if he were to feel each one of the 10 and 100-point coils on the actual index reel and the score reel themselves, if that's happening, there should be one staying energized all the time. So not only is the point relays sticking closed, but he should also have some score reels that are sticking closed. Right. You mean the relay that controls it and, yeah, it's always going to be in that pair. You're always going to get one and the other. Ask him when you turn a game on Or when you start a game If he sees a 10 and 100 points instantly indexed Those are the ones that are probably sticking Right, and that's exactly That's what I was trying to tell him When he turned the game on If you get the ding, that's the same thing Because that's the same symptom Yeah, it would be the same thing I guess I should tell people to watch the score reels To see if they move Because everybody's chimes don't always work Well, you guys have a great show Enjoy listening to it All right, man. Thanks for your help. We appreciate it. Bye. So, yeah, Norm, what did you think? Well, 1-800, and we're ready to take any more calls. That's nice people calling in trying to help everybody out. Yeah. No, the guy definitely had good advice. Lots of good EM people out there. You know, we like to – I like the EM games. I like to work on them. They're really rewarding. I find them really rewarding to work on. Yeah, it's amazing how you can take a dead EM game that's been in a barn or in a basement for years. I picked up a couple of games from the 30s, some Flipperless games. One was a Velodrome thriller from Keeney. And, you know, you can just go in there and resurrect a dead game like Lazarus, you know. Yeah, it's fun. All right, well, if anyone wants to call, our number is 1-800. We're going to run a commercial right now. Pins and Vids Episode 2, Attack of the Phones, is now available at pinsandvids.com. It's the best Pins and Vids yet. Double the fun and half the underwear in the first episode. Surely to be nominated for an Oscar for the best use of fake phones in a niche video or best special effects during a dream sequence. Worth much, much more than the $6 including shipping and selling price, it's worth at least $7 or $7.50. Get your copy now at pinsandvids.com. And now for a word from our lawyer. The entire sale price goes to the Pinball Hall of Fame. First episode also available. Some pinball machines were hurt during the filming of the pins vids, but they were all get your deranged DVDs on coin-op goodness now. Hi, my name is the corn, and if I had any of my hair in the way, I'd definitely listen to the TopCast with no worm and shaggy. Hi, this is Rick Swanson. If you want to have an enhanced TopCast listening experience and do as I do, listen to the show while physically inside a gauntlet of a wedgehead machine. By doing so, you'll experience all the sights, sounds, and smells of pinball while listening to Norman Shaggy. Hey, who started the friggin' game? Hello out there, I'm in here. Please don't fire any coils. Ouch. Shut the damn machine off. Okay, we're back and we got a caller. I'm sorry, what was your name again? Hi, this is Craig in Baltimore. Craig in Baltimore. And Craig, you got a Gottlieb Stargate? Yes, I do. Okay, fire away. What do you got? Okay, I've got a hovercraft that is, or the glider craft is pooched. When you go into glider craft mode, it comes out like it's supposed to. It goes side to side once and then stops dead. Now, it doesn't affect the gameplay. I know it's just eye candy, but I sort of would like it to work correctly. It's a nice feature of the game, actually. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I know what you mean. Now, there's limit switches for the right and left, and also I believe there's a centering switch. Yes. Did you check those? Yes, I did. They all seemed to work. And you went into switch test and made sure they worked? Yes, I did. Okay, okay. No, the one at the very back that is the, I believe there's only the one that goes to the far left. Okay. And you checked that? Yes, I did, but someone, the previous owner had built it up so it was reaching down far enough. I don't know if he did it wrong or not. I replaced the switch and it still does the same thing. It comes out and it makes the one turn back to back, and then it stops. Okay, so this is what I would do. I would put the game into switch test. Then I would lift the play field up so it's vertical and the front of it's resting against the backbox. Now, under the play field, there's a couple relays. You're going to find that there's, because I believe there's actually two motors that run this thing, one that moves it forward and back and one that moves it right and left. You're also going to see under the play field that there's two relays. One relay is going to control one motor. One is going to control the other. The first thing I would do is hold in the relay that moves it right to left, and just make sure that while you're holding that in and you're watching the switch test, that the game does see the switch actually open and close. And then I would repeat that procedure for the forward and back motion and the switches involved in that. Now, if all those switches work and you still have an issue, actually, let me recant that. I'm like 90% sure that you've got at least one of these switches that just isn't registering in the game. And really, you've got to test it in this manner, because if you just manually touch the switch, it may show up on the score display in the switch test just fine, but that doesn't mean that the actual apparatus is actually going to open or close the switch. Gotcha. So if you use the relay to turn the motor on and actually do this, you'll get a much, much better view of how the switches are operating. And it's real easy on Gottliebs. You know, on other manufacturers, you know, you've got to, you know, ground the non-banded side of the diode. Well, on Gottliebs, you can actually do it with your hand. But just be careful that you don't knock the top of the relay armature off the relay frame because it's not that hard to do on those relays underneath the play field. So the relay would be fairly close to the glider craft housing Yeah The motor housing Underneath Underneath the playfield there isn going to be a lot of relays There going to be basically just those two because the other relays used for the game there's a game over relay, there's at least two other relays, two or three other relays. They're mounted on the bottom panel of the game, across the bottom of the cabinet. So these should be actually mounted right underneath the playfield. and when you're in switch test here's the other thing too you got to make sure that all the switches are clear before you start this test so that means you got to take all the balls out of the game make sure there's no balls in the trough um and i do that anyhow anytime you lift it up good good stuff bouncing around exactly and you may if you have the game set in tournament mode you're gonna have to once it's in switch test turn it off tournament mode because it's going to show you tournament mode switch on because this isn't like the bally williams test where It gives you that nice little matrix on the dot on the screen. It just shows you it flashes which switch is closed. So you basically want them all open, every switch open, every drop target up, you know, nothing, you know, clear all the switches before you start this test. And then it'll give you a good indication of what's going on. Well, that makes sense because it's like you always want to test a switch with a ball rather than your finger. Right. Because it'll act differently. This way I'm actually testing it with the actual motor moving side to side rather than with a finger. That's correct. That's correct. All right. Well, thank you. I'll give that a try. All right. Good luck. And do me a favor. Send me an email and let me know how it worked out. You know, it's another classic Stump the Chump episode. I can see it now. Enjoying your show. Keep it up. Okay. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Norm, have you ever played Stargate? Yes. I like that game. It came out. I was playing it in arcades. 1-800. A lot of people don't like that game. You know, I actually think it's quite a cool game. I like it a lot. I mean, God Leaps aren't, you know, considered the best. I mean, it's a progression of technology. As games came up, technology advanced. That's just part of the history of technology improvements. Norm, I've got to run this because I really like it a lot. Hey, this is Oksana. We're on the radio, TopCast. With you here is Norm and Shaggy, two charming young hosts. I like this show. Hey, this is Curb, and even hot Russian chicks love to listen to Norm and Shaggy on TopCast. Hey, this is Oksana. You're listening to TopCast with Norm and Shaggy. Can we get her picture? I love that plug. I do, too. That's my favorite. one can we find her a picture of her current please send us a picture yeah you know how we got that don't you send it that's him right now yeah he's gonna kill us okay we're gonna take this call hi you're on the air with top cast how are you great how are you good and what's your first name my first name's tim tim and where are you calling from tim gandia minnesota okay what kind of game do you have i just had a general question about something else is it snowing out there right now? What's that? It's snowing right now. Yeah, are you guys getting a big storm? Yeah, we're getting a big storm. We're supposed to get like 16 inches of snow here. I heard 20 inches. I heard 100 inches. Anyway, anyways. That much. Yeah. So what kind of question do you have? Well, I just had a question about slot machines. Slot machines? I'm wondering if this old pinball, I know they're not arcade games, but I'm just wondering if you might go into doing a video on them or a DVD on those, being they're kind of popular for your home game room. There's a couple problems with those. There's so many different range of, you know, yes. Yeah, that's the thing. You've got the mechanical, you've got the different manufacturers. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of information available readily out there on the Internet or anything about, like, for schematics. What kind of machine do you have? or manuals, anything like that. Yeah, what machine do you have? I have an older IGT Aristocrat. Oh, that was like their first machine. Yeah, well, it's from 76. I don't know when they came about. I don't know that much about it. Yeah, IGT is a fairly new company. All you need to do is hunt down the game manuals for those. Yeah, they're not that easy to find, like you said, and there's certainly no repair guides out there. There's some manuals out. You can find it. There's a place out in, I think it's Virginia, that sells a lot of slot back glasses that are repros. And there's the guys down there. If I can find it, I'd let you know. But I know in Juke, always Juke in Magazine, they had some advertisements for slots, and these guys are real helpful. The phone, the technician will help you solve your problem. Really? You found someone that's helpful? Oh, my God. Yeah, I mean, I had a problem with my slot, and it was the score reel readers, and he had them there, and this guy was working on them in Atlantic City at Trump's Casino, and he knew exactly all those problems. He helped me over the phone, sold me the reel readers, I installed them, and it was like no problem whatsoever. Were they expensive? No, they were like $30 each. I bought two of them, and then I bought the manual from these guys. The self-help is there in these manuals, but you're right. But to go ahead and try to fix every slot machine and go through all the logic on those is tough. You're going to have to search for some right people, and they're there. It's really tough even finding anyone to help at all with these things. Why don't you look for, I think it's actually a couple of online forums. You can't find anyone to help even give you a phone number because someone else. Yeah, nobody wants to talk to you on the phone on this problem, trust me. The slot guys are real secretive It's just kind of the nature of the beast As a matter of fact, some of the casinos make them sign Non-disclosures where they cannot give out technical advice on slot machines So it has a very, very secretive thing to it Also, a lot of these guys are real old school And they just don't want to give out the information They're not of the internet age where information to them should be free so they tend to really keep their lips tight and don't say a lot of it. The information I found is there's a couple online forums that have some stuff on slot machines that you can post a question and just pray that somebody responds. Oh, cool. Maybe I can email you and get that. If I still got it, it's been a while since I've worked on a slot. No, but if I got that receipt from that place, I can give you an email. What you can do in the meantime is try Googling. I'm pretty sure the place is in Virginia or North Carolina. Put those things down and put slot repair and slot parts, and I bet you'll find the – you may be able to find those guys right before I can even look for – Hey, that'd be fantastic. I will – So Google just general information. I think you can hone in on it if you're good on the Internet. You could probably find it within five minutes. All right. Well, good luck to you. Let us know how it works out for you. All right. Thanks a lot, Joshua Clay. Okay. Take care. Yep. Bye-bye. Norm, so you like slots? Yeah, I always had a big hankering for slots. I got a couple traded, some games, which I probably shouldn't have, and now I got two slots. The kids like playing them, like to gamble when it's illegal. It's fun. I find that the ladies love slots. It's just part of the game room. You have a little bit of everything. You have a ball bowler, you got a slot, you got some pins, you got a jukebox, the more the merrier. You know, I've played Xenon a lot, and she never sounds like that. No. Nope. And she never laughs at me like that either. 1-800, yeah, I mean, I... I've got to break you. I'm going to clip my toenails. Huh. That's kind of disgusting. With your teeth. Ah, my name is the corn. oh man i did that one already god i hate that you don't know nobody's listening play whatever you want hey this is curb and you're listening to top cast with norman shaggy so close that window for rgp quit searching for that next dumpy project on mr pinball and listen up hey everybody this is curb and you're listening to top cast with norman shaggy So get all those questions about the games that you don't know how to fix together and call into the show. And you might get lucky enough to have them answer something correctly. I think we've got a live one. Hi, you're on the air. How are you? Hi, I've got a 1980 Black Knight. And when you light the light up below the spinner, and when the ball goes up through there, it doesn't make the proper sound. You mean you get kind of the wrong sound? Is that what you mean? You get a sound, but just not the one you're expecting? Yes. Okay. Do you know what the right sound is? It just kind of makes... I don't remember what the... It's been broken for a while, or it hasn't been worked quite... Is that the only sound? I don't know what the right sound would be. Is that the only sound that isn't correct? Yes. That seems odd. Yeah, that does seem odd. Maybe he's just not recognizing the sound as the right sound. It just kind of makes a weird sound. Okay, what's your first name? David. David, and where are you calling from? Seattle. Seattle. Okay, the first thing I would do is I'd open up, you know, take the back glass off, open up the backbox. Okay. And there's a, you know, with the game in the track mode, you know, not in game mode, but in the track mode, there's a switch on the sound board that when you press it, it should go through a bunch of sounds and some speech. on Black Knight, and there should be no pauses in any of those sounds or speeches. Everything should kind of run together. Have you ever done that? No. I got the game open right now. Okay, it's in the backbox. The sound board is kind of... There's two sound boards. I think there's another board on the... Well, on the left side of the game, you've got the CPU board on top and the driver board below. Oh, okay, okay. Then kind of on the right side of the game, in the upper right corner, you've got the power supply. Right. Then the sound board should kind of be sandwiched in between these two. It's actually a board with two parts with a ribbon cable going between the two parts of the board. Okay. There should be just a momentary switch, just something you press. Don't change the dip switches or any of those things. Right. Do you see it? Don't see it. It should be on there. There's the two switches on the system board that I don't see. Yeah, and it's not on the system board. It's on the actual sound board. There should be like a momentary switch that you press, and it'll go through all the sounds. And what happens is if you get any pauses in these sounds, it means that basically it's missing a bit or an address line or a data line, You know, it's somewhere in the speech. And that could be, it's usually caused by either, if you look at the ROMs that are plugged into the board, a lot of times the legs kind of get this black kind of tarnish on it, kind of like your mom's old silverware. Or like your teeth. Like Norm's teeth, because he has metal teeth. Metal silver teeth, because he was too cheap to get gold. You know, they'll tarnish. So stainless steel, for God's sakes. So they just dent. So anyways, often what you can do is you can order new ROMs, new EPROMs. That would be one solution. The next solution is you can actually take the ROMs out and kind of lightly sand with a fine sandpaper, you know, like a 600-grit or a 400-grit sandpaper, sand the legs if they have any tarnishing on them. If they don't have any tarnishing on them, don't mess with them. But I guess the danger to that is if they have tarnishing on them, a lot of times they're in the process of deteriorating, and sometimes you can break a leg off. But if you're going to buy new E-Proms anyways, I guess you haven't really lost a lot. Sure. Well, it's sandblasting. Yeah, that's it. You can run over them with your car too, says Norm. Drag them behind your car through a sandy road. But really that switch on the soundboard is really what you've got to find. And it's on there somewhere unless it's been broken off, which probably isn't common, but it doesn't happen. Okay. But you really need to listen. And it'll say do both sound and speech. It'll say, like, it won't sound all that coherent, but it'll say black, night, fight, now, your mother is ugly. Is a man. Is a man. Is a man. Wears army boots. It'll say stuff like that. sound real sputtered like that but there'll be no spaces between any of the sounds or any of the any of the speech okay so that would check that also the ribbon cable that goes between the speech board and the sound board sometimes those go bad those aren't so easy to replace because on one side of them it's soldered into the board the other side it's removable you could also try reseating the removable side just kind of pulling it out and pushing it back on you could try that that on the ribbon cable. Try all those things. The way it works is that when the spinner spins the CPU board sends a number of bits from the board to the sound board and the sound board interprets those. If any one of those bits is missing you get the wrong sound. It may not show up for any other sound, it depends on the bit, but typically it shows up with other sounds being problems too but not always it just depends okay but you know give that a whirl and send me an email at shaggy at marvin3m.com and let me know how it turned out okay okay all right all right well good luck to you okay all right take care boy we could be right a lot or wrong a lot next week you know norm i i got a feeling that you might be wrong a lot that's okay well Norm that's it, that's another episode of PopCat it's over? oh my god it's an hour Norm, how long do you want it to go on, forever? I think this is about as much as people want of us I think so so I'd like to plug we're going to have another Thursday night show coming up with some interesting interviews and on the weekends we try and maintain this format for these shows so it's been a lot of fun norm you got anything else to close with yeah we should give some kiss good topics but maybe we should do that when the kiss video comes out yeah maybe we should do that