Episode 425 - Multi Races annoucement, Multi-Bingo status, Robo-Frenzy status, Ballerina fixed

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·22m 43s·analyzed·Jul 4, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Multi-Races project launches with Victory Derby acquisition; Multi-Bingo, RoboFrenzy, and Ballerina restoration updates.

Summary

Nick Baldridge announces the acquisition of a 1946 Bally Victory Derby to serve as the basis for his Multi-Races conversion project, detailing the game's condition and conversion strategy. He provides updates on Multi-Bingo animation progress (paused due to work), RoboFrenzy relay bank challenges, and successful repairs to Ryan Claytor's Ballerina bingo machine. The episode showcases the homebrew pinball community's restoration and documentation efforts.

Key Claims

Victory Derby is a one-ball game from 1946 by Bally with payout mechanism that dispenses nickels directly.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing the newly acquired game in the opening segment.
Multi-Races umbrella includes 49 total identified horse racing games with one-ball mechanics and standardized playfield layouts.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge detailing the scope of the Multi-Races project.
Victory Derby has no GI lights (6-volt lights) unlike Turf King, which has four passive bumpers.
high confidence · Technical comparison of playfield layouts between two conversion candidates.
Bally began providing detailed rivet-per-rivet documentation on search and spotting discs around 1953.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing documentation history and gaps for pre-1953 games.
Multi-Bingo has 70+ games programmed with animations still needed for Bally and United titles.
medium confidence · Nick Baldridge providing status update on Multi-Bingo animation work, noting only a handful of Bally games and all Uniteds (except Brazil) need animations.
RoboFrenzy requires a six-relay bank with wing nuts (Gottlieb assembly) for trip relay functionality.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining the relay bank procurement and assembly swap planned for York.
Spotlight is one of the earliest bingo games and extremely rare; Phil Hooper provided documentation enabling its animation.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing Spotlight acquisition and Phil Hooper's contribution to documentation project.
Ballerina had been sitting for at least a decade before Ryan Claytor acquired it; only three balls remained in the machine.
high confidence · Nick Baldridge's account of the Ballerina restoration work with Ryan Claytor.

Notable Quotes

“The nice thing about the multi-races is that the P3 rock and all the computer boards and the computer itself will sit right inside the front door. There's a big open space between the payout mechanism and the back wall there.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~2:00-2:30 — Explains the technical advantage of Victory Derby as a conversion platform for Multi-Races.
“For this project, things are a little tougher, because these one-ball games are not as well-loved as the bingos, which, of course, are not as well-loved as the flipper games.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~3:30 — Contextualizes the relative scarcity and lower demand for one-ball games in the collector community.
“There are 49 total games, at least that I've identified, that could fall under the multi-races umbrella. These are each a different game with a horse racing theme and one ball.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~4:45 — Defines the scope of the Multi-Races project, establishing it as a multi-game platform like Multi-Bingo.
“I'm hopeful that I can document as much as possible for each of these games and then implement them in software just like I did with the Multi.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~8:30 — States the documentation and software implementation strategy for Multi-Races, paralleling Multi-Bingo methodology.
“I'm nearing the end of those projects and so I should be able to devote my evenings and weekends to family and to the multi again.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~9:00 — Signals return to Multi-Bingo development after work commitments cease.
“I was fearing that I would never get the documentation for that, just because it's such an old one. It's also a hard game to find.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~10:15 — Highlights the rarity and documentation challenges for early bingo titles like Spotlight.
“The Gottlieb one should be pretty easy, as far as it goes, to work on when a problem arises, but we'll find out.”
Nick Baldridge @ ~13:30 — Reflects on the practical advantages of wing-nut relay bank assemblies for field serviceability.

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonRyan ClaytorpersonPhil HooperpersonVictory DerbygameMulti-RacesproductTurf KinggameMulti-BingoproductRoboFrenzyproductBallerinagameRagmopgame

Signals

?
product_launch: Nick Baldridge announces the formal Multi-Races project with acquisition of Victory Derby as conversion base, detailing playfield swappability for 49+ horse racing games.
high · Opening segment detailing Victory Derby acquisition and explicit statement: 'There are 49 total games, at least that I've identified, that could fall under the multi-races umbrella.'
?
design_innovation: Multi-Races design enables swappable playfields (Turf King, Victory Derby) with unified control system (P3-ROC), allowing one machine to host multiple game rulesets.
high · Detailed technical explanation: 'I'll be able to swap in these playfields if I want. They're the same size, approximately, and everything should just work, I think.'
?
restoration_signal: Multi-Races project includes systematic documentation of all 49 one-ball horse racing games via P3-ROC software, paralleling Multi-Bingo's approach to preserving game logic and mechanics.
high · Nick states plan to 'document as much as possible for each of these games and then implement them in software just like I did with the Multi.'
?
community_signal: Phil Hooper's bingo documentation project (bingo.cdyn.com) fills critical gaps in pre-1953 game documentation; community collectors contribute; Nick seeks to establish similar documentation standard for horse racing one-ball games.
high · Phil Hooper obtained and shared Spotlight documentation; Nick notes 'there's nothing exactly like that for the horse race games so I'm hopeful that I can document as much as possible.'
?
technology_signal: P3-ROC and PD-16 driver boards retrofitted into vintage Victory Derby cabinet to control both new digital gameplay and original mechanical payout mechanisms via relay control.

Topics

Multi-Races project announcement and technical designprimaryHomebrew pinball development and conversion methodologyprimaryMulti-Bingo animation programming and game documentationprimaryRoboFrenzy relay bank procurement and assemblyprimaryVintage pinball restoration (Ballerina, Ragmop)secondaryBingo game documentation and archival (bingo.cdyn.com)secondaryOne-ball horse racing game history and raritysecondaryEM pinball repair and maintenance techniquesmentioned

Sentiment

neutral(0)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.068

What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to For Amusement Only. This is Nicholas Baldridge. Happy Fourth of July to all of my American listeners. And I have some exciting news. A new game is in the house. It is 1946's Bally Victory Derby. Victory Derby is a one-ball game, and you drop in your coins, try to increase your odds, get a good selection, and then you plunge your ball and attempt to get in a winning hole. This game has a repainted cab that was painted with a brush, the incorrect colors. The playfield is phenomenal. It looks fantastic. and the back glass is shot. It is mostly see-through. There's no back door and a couple other minor cosmetic-type things, but this game is a payout game. It's got the payout tubes in the front, and it will actually shove out nickels directly if you win. So my goal for this game is to get it working and then actually to use it as the basis for the conversion for multi-races. And I know I've talked about this idea on the podcast before, but it's really solidified now. The nice thing about the multi-races is that the P3 rock and all the computer boards and the computer itself will sit right inside the front door. There's a big open space between the payout mechanism and the back wall there, and there is essentially nothing inside the lower cabinet of the game, unlike Turf King. Turf King has the entire mechanical assembly stored inside the front door. On Victory Derby, the only thing in the front door is the payout mech. All the mechanics are in the back of the game, and I plan to keep those intact. now you might ask why I'm going to use a game that can definitely be restored I mean it just needs a back glass essentially and then a repaint not the end of the world a little bit of scrubbing on the side rails that kind of thing but certainly doable well with the multi bingo I could be quite a bit pickier of course there were a lot of those games made and there were even more. Not really, but there were quite a lot of those games destroyed. And they were destroyed for different reasons. You know, they were completely smashed and obliterated if they were confiscated. But if they were not, operators would smash them up if they needed parts, you know, to keep another game running. And so over years, operators would amass these huge stockpiles of parts from these parted-out games. And so I could be pretty picky and say, I'm only going to do this if I can get, say, cabs from parted-out games and various mechs and so forth. And I was able to stick to that for the multi, 100%. I never had to ask somebody to part their game out in order to get one of these rare parts. I was able to find somebody with a stockpile of something. For this project, things are a little tougher, because these one-ball games are not as well-loved as the bingos, which, of course, are not as well-loved as the flipper games. So finding just a donor game in general is a lot harder. I'd been on the lookout for some time, and this was essentially local to me, and it was only a couple hours away. And the seller was a super nice guy, and I just think it's a good conversion candidate because the back glass is so shot. And since I'm leaving the mechanics intact, theoretically it can be converted back. Of course, I'll document everything like I did with the multi, so it's not like there's going to be a situation where you couldn't convert it back if you wanted to. As far as extra mechanics, I will need to add a couple of relays because part of my grand plan is actually to drive the original mechanics using these new mechanics that I'm going to put in. So I will be able to run the control unit motor via a relay that's driven by the P3 rock and the driver board, the PD-16. And, yeah, I mean, it should be pretty great. There are 49 total games, at least that I've identified, that could fall under the multi-races umbrella. These are each a different game with a horse racing theme and one ball in order to get it And most of them use a pretty standardized playfield layout It not exact like it is with the multi but it pretty darn close for most of them I have two different playfield layouts. One is a Turf King, which has kind of a tighter layout with four passive bumpers. And then I've got, of course, the playfield for the Victory Derby, which is a much more open layout, and there are no passive bumpers, so it's pretty straight down. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say there. But there's a lot of space. So on Turf King, there are GI lights, you know, 6-volt lights. On Victory Derby, there are not. So that's another difference. and the supplemental power supply that I'm going to put in there is going to handle that as well. So I'll be able to swap in these playfields if I want. They're the same size, approximately, and everything should just work, I think. We'll see. I've got a few other ideas as far as playfield layouts. There have been a few others that I've identified, and I have found a couple of those. Oddly, the playfields seem to be saved much more than the cabinets for the one balls, and I think that's due to the cabinet construction. So on most of the one balls, there are no legs per se. Instead, there's this to-the-floor kind of unibody construction for the lower cab where everything is connected in the cabinet design, and that unfortunately makes the cabinets very large and awkward to move. But on Victory Derby, the nice thing, I was able to move the entire game by myself. The previous owner helped me load it up, thankfully. But when I got home, I was able to take it out and set it up really no problem. So I think this will be a great game to take to shows, whereas a game like Turf King or Futurity or some of the later horse race games would just be prohibitively heavy to move by oneself. So I'm looking forward to that as well. the previous owner had replaced the fuses fuse blocks and had also replaced the plug to the wall and had been through the game mechanically so it'll just take a little bit of work it sat for a couple years I assume but I'm thinking whatever problems there are are pretty minor and then I'll have this game up and running and then the plan is to document it So for each of these horse race games, this is before Bally started giving the rivet per rivet documentation that they gave on their search and spotting discs in the bingos. In fact, they didn't start that until about 1953. So some of the early bingos also suffer from a problem where there's a lack of documentation. luckily Phil Hooper and his amazing project on bingo.cdyn.com have really just gone above and beyond with help from all these different collectors in the community as well as a lot from Phil himself filling in the gaps in these documentation and there's nothing exactly like that for the horse race games so I'm hopeful that I can document as much as possible for each of these games and then implement them in software just like I did with the Multi. So with the Multi, just transitioning topics here to the Multi Bingo, that I have had to set down along with pretty much all of my hobby activity for, well, since Allentown basically because of a work-related series of projects that had to get done within a time frame here but I'm nearing the end of those projects and so I should be able to devote my evenings and weekends to family and to the multi again. So there's only a handful of games that need to have their flash animations done for Bally, and then all the Uniteds, except for Brazil, I think, need their flash animations done. The Uniteds are a little trickier just because of how they work. I've figured out how they work mechanically, but it's making the multi do that because each animation happens multiple times per rotation. In fact, sometimes many, many multiple times per rotation. So it's just a matter of making sure that all the units are coordinated within the system. It shouldn't be too big of a deal, but I just need to sit down and write it. And I wanted to finish Bally first you know kind of clean that off my slate and then I wouldn have to constantly shift gears back and forth I was doing them all alphabetically but ran into that problem pretty quickly with some of the earlier Uniteds and they're so radically different from the Bally's that I needed to have a minute to think about it. So I'm excited to get back into that. I'm hoping by York I will have all the rest of the animations done. It makes such a major difference. Phil Hooper got me information on Spotlight, and I'll be getting that one done. That's one of the earliest games. And I was fearing that I would never get the documentation for that, just because it's such an old one. It's also a hard game to find. And I have seen photos of, I think, three people in the world that have it in their collection. I'm sure there's more, but they're just not people who were kind of running around in the circles that I know. So, anyway, that was what I felt like was a major coup. There's a few others, Palm Beach, for example, which are going to be hard to find. Palm Beach is in general hard to find. So, yeah, we'll see how that goes. There are probably going to be a couple holes in the lineup as far as the animations go. Where possible, I've managed to cobble something together from watching YouTube videos over and over and over and over again. But the YouTube videos, if I'm to do that, have to adhere to a few different guidelines. Like, the camera has to show multiple coins going in, meaning the flash happened multiple times. And sometimes that is not something that happens. Sometimes the camera only shows one coin flash, for example. and the rest focuses on playfield art or what the player's doing with their hands, which is fine, but it doesn't help me with that particular goal. So I'm looking forward to getting what I can done there. And then RoboFrenzy, I have a pretty hilarious update there. so on a break from work I stopped into eBay and took a look for reset banks as I had been doing, trip banks I have decided that I need to separate my timer unit into various functions so I'm going to have two banks of trip relays, one for each player and the timer unit is going to be vastly simplified and it's only going to handle timing for the game so that's all fine except that I need these trip banks and the trip banks have to be relatively small I think I've talked before, or at least I've intended to about their placement, they're going to be to the left and right of the coin box, right inside the coin door and so they're going to need to be protected from stray coins I'm going to build wood and of course glue or caulk or something at the bottom to prevent coins from kind of walking their way underneath and causing problems. But I was hoping to find something that was, oh, say, exactly four relays in the bank. But there's nothing that kind of fits that exact need that I have, at least in kind of a modern package. So I've had to settle for a six bank, and I've been on the lookout for a while now and haven't found anything in that range that was less than six. So what I decided was, all right, if I'm to use a six bank, it's going to need to have the wing nuts. It needs to be a godly assembly, basically, because those wing nuts allow you to swing up the entire assembly to address switches as you need, and the Williams ones just do not. So the Gottlieb one should be pretty easy, as far as it goes, to work on when a problem arises, but we'll find out. Anyway, so I purchased a Gottlieb assembly without really examining the pictures very closely. Oh, it's a six-bank assembly. And, oh, there's the reset arm. All looks good. So I get it and realize that the bank is much shorter than normal, and I couldn't figure out why at first. I'm saying, hmm, this is weird. Reset arm resets the trip relays, no problem, not a big deal. so I start looking at it and I'm going, what is wrong with this thing? there's something that's not quite right here, not what I expect and so as I'm looking I realize there's no reset coil that is pretty obvious, but something that I missed and so I spoke with another friend and he going to do a swap for parts for me at York So expect an update on RoboFrenzy sometime after York From now until then, I'll be working on either the Victory Derby, just getting it playable again at first, or the Multi, programming it. And that's really what I've got going on. I did, after last week's interview, or last episode's interview with Ryan Claytor, we did go check out his ballerina, and I was able to get that working. The ballerina had sat for some unknown period of time before Ryan picked it up, at least a decade. And we put it together, and I took a look, and it tried to spring to life right away, which is great. There were a couple of interesting hacks or changes to the game. One, somebody who had previously been doing service on the game had inserted a secondary power switch in the backbox, which is kind of neat. That was kind of clever because it allows you to turn the game off without having to go all the way to the front of the game or pull the power, which it was kind of helpful. I don't think I would do it for any of my games, but it was kind of neat. The other thing, all the balls had been removed except for three of them. I thought I'd had Ryan check that, but I guess I didn't, or I'd forgotten one or the other. Anyway, I only had one spare ball with me, So with three balls, a bingo is going to think, you know, it's only got the ones that are there for extra ball, but nothing else. So I had to do some quick thinking and some quick manual trough switch pulling and pushing in order to fool the machine into thinking there were an appropriate number of balls installed and then testing all the functionality while still holding those trough switches closed or open. It was pretty hairy, but it was pretty fun. So at the end of it, Ryan had a fully working bingo. The only thing I would say that's a big problem left on that game is that the shutter motor was absolutely screaming. It did not like moving at all. I'm hopeful that either a little bit of play will get the gears re-lubricated, or that motor might have to be replaced. But we'll see. I'm also thinking that there were a couple pieces of wood that were stuck between the play field and the shutter board. and so perhaps one of those is actually physically jamming it. It didn't feel too bad when moving by hand, but it didn't feel great either. So I gave him instructions for how to remove that shutter board and pull out those pieces of wood and hopefully that'll do it. But somewhere in there it should be all good, but that was pretty cool. So the 1-7-7-1 feature worked, the magic screen worked, scoring worked in all the different colors it took a little bit to get everything going as far as mechanically but most of the mechanical units were still in good shape even though it had sat for a long time they weren't incredibly filthy and mechanically they stepped and reset very smoothly and snappily so that's always good so some light cleaning and a couple of tweaks there were a few switches out of alignment and a few different units and then everything came to life worked great so that was good and then the other thing we talked about but I hadn't yet done was Ragmop Ragmop was a big project that Ryan picked up and I went through the underside of the playfield and got everything cleaned up and made sure all the switches were in line and doing what they were supposed to do. Most of the sequence for the game is stored under the playfield so that's the majority of the stuff in the game. The head has a couple steppers which were completely frozen up and I didn't have time to go through those and of course it needed a new power cord installed. but other than that, I think it'll fire up and actually try to play which is pretty cool so that's all for today, happy 4th of July again my name is Nicholas Baldridge, you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingos line, that's 724-BINGOS1, 724-246-4671 you can listen to me on Pocket Casts, iTunes, Stitcher via RSS on Facebook, on Twitter, at Bingo Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at Bingo Podcast. Or you can listen to us on our website, which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.