Your balls are filthy. Go to the ball washer now. And no, I'll just listen to Topcast. Yep. You're listening to Topcast. This old pinballs online radio. For more information, visit them anytime. www.marvin3m.com Flash Topcast. Welcome to another edition of Topcast. Today I have Norman back, Fresh Outta Rehab. And looking rather sober and good actually in shape. Yeah, I wasn't, uh, being able to hear me out there, I can't hear myself from you. Why don't you boost me a little bit? I'm gonna boost you right out the window. But anyways, yeah, I was there with Britney Spears. She sort of looks like Shillinga from Oz. Everybody's watch Oz on HBO. And the Nazi guy with the shaved head and tattoos. Yeah, well minus tattoos. But anyways, tattoos. So we're from, we're coming today. Life. Life. From the Department of Famous People at Not so Famous Places. And the reason why I bring this up is because Norman wanted to talk about somebody that he met this weekend. Oh, it's a thriftodster. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, he, uh, I met Todd. He's a nice guy, real nice guy. Do you know Todd's last name? McCutchens. It's McCullick. McCullick. I hate to say that. McCullick. Well, I mean, not even. He's big. He's just a shy, a shade under a seven feet tall. He's 17. No, he thought, I just said, what are you? Six, ten, he goes, yeah. Must be asked by that by everybody. He probably does want to. No, he's splitting his. He's six, eleven and five, eights. Yeah, and one of those cities. He's seven foot in my book. He said he's up to 400 pounds, but I, he doesn't look, uh, bit over 300 to me. He's got a ton of games. He loves your site. Yeah, we know. And so what did you learn anything interesting from Todd? Anything we should know? Yeah, Todd has too much money. Aside from that, as a former NBA player, still under contract for the 76ers. Playing basketball was very lucrative to him. Yeah, and unfortunately, he heard himself. That's a real shame because he's, uh, he's, he's a little walkin' a little bad. I feel real bad for him. He's, uh, he's a good guy, he's Canadian. And I know you don't like Canadians, but I think you can make one exception. There's only one of eleven Canadians ever played in the NBA. And he played in the Olympics. He's got a very impressive, uh, Yeah, he played for the Canadians in the Olympics. Yeah, in Australia. Yeah. Which reminds me of these other guys who are getting emails from Australia, but we can talk about that later. No, actually, we're gonna talk about that right now. Norm has been collecting Norm's mailbag. Yes, Norm's mailbag. Norm has been collecting letters from people asking pinball questions from all over the world. And Norm keeps these in a little bag, along with some of this stuff. And he likes to review them every now and then when he's feeling not so good about himself. Oh, too high, which is pretty much all the time. We got one here from Holland. Well, hello there. First of all, lots of props. I don't understand half these. I don't think some of our English words. No, props means props means prop and you up. That means it's a good thing. And you don't even know the any, you know, any American lingo. No, I just think these guys get an American to whatever language they speak. Go book and pull words out not necessarily. They always don't translate well. Go on. Well, hello there. First of all, lots of props because your manual about fixing a pinball machine has helped me a lot. The machine works again. I'm very happy about that. I'm interested in having a couple of DVDs about repairing pinball machines. Now I am supposed to be sending money to this address Las Vegas pinball. The question is, are you working there? If the money arrives, you know it's for me so you can hand me the DVDs. What is the progress? Hope to hear from you soon. Regarding Ray and Holland. I told you some of these words don't really translate well. So what exactly is he asking you, Norm? I think he wants to make sure that you're sitting there waiting for his check to come and say you can mail him a DVD. Yeah, patiently. But your whole life waiting for a letter to come from Holland. Give us the next one there, Norm. You guys are great. I love the videos. The amount of information is incredible. I find myself taking notes and loving it. He gets, taking notes and loving it. I must be mad. Tell Norm that I happen to like his clips. So don't flame me on your next video. By the way, you wouldn't happen to have a nice high speed play for your lane around. It's Chris Minidu and I don't know where he's from. But if I had an extra high speed, I believe me, I would be putting it on my own game which I don't have. Well, you know, it's funny, Norm, because every one of these letters, they always want something at the end. That's pretty much the case. I mean, everybody, I mean, they send in, you know, expecting us to fix their pinball machines. You know, without seeing them, I have this specific problem. And it's on the J6Y connector. It goes into this here, it comes out here. And I can't make coffee. And we're supposed to like fix the coffee machine. They're their pinball machine. All right, well, Norm, I think I've had about enough of your letters. Oh, no, we got, here's a guy from Italy. Hi, just received a video immediately burned it. What does that mean? Oh, that means he destroyed it. Maybe it is on fire. It's simply awesome. I will be going to order more of them soon. I can't find nothing over here in Italy so your job is giving us a great help. Pinball greets to all of you. Palo Vanini from Italy. Well, so we have, we got Mark Anderson from Australia. And he invites me over to his house anytime I'm in Australia. Because he probably knows I'll never go there, you know. So that's why, but he's a nice guy. He's a principal of a school and he's big into pinball. And I send him my regards. Norm, I think that's enough letters. Can you just, let me look one more here. If I can find one more. Maybe I won't. Are we done? Yeah, some guy said about us that we're saving pinball. Chuck Emmery. You know, we get letters from all different sources. We get them from the wreck pinball site. We get them from the Maven 3M that site. And we get them from the top cast site. So if you want to send us anything that we'll actually get a couple of criticism. We've had one in seven years. We went out and had a hitman put on that guy. Remember what his name was? No, I don't. Stan Strain. Yeah, I'm not admitting that any. Stan Strain. Norm's email is norm at Maven3M.com in case anybody cares. Stan Strain. Martin. You know, that's enough. Okay, so now we're going to move to another segment because I've about had enough of norm. Here we go. You want me to come up to you? It's time for... Play a wee wee wee wee. Okay, so we're on the line with Trent. Trent is doing our play of the week. Now Trent, you've been working hard. You're up to fourth best pinball player in the whole entire world. How did you pull that off? Well, you just got to keep going to show. You've got to keep playing in tournaments. And just do your back. Keep practicing and pick your battles. Pick your battles. What battle did you pick? You have a little bit of choice when feeding yourself. You know, do you have to search the scores? I know you're going to face in the first round or what part of the bracket you're going to be in. So your last show was that Akron. How was the competition there? The competition was pretty good. And Chris, there was a lot of prizes there. And he rose there. Three guys in the top 10. And I think there were seven guys in the top 50. So it was a pretty good competition. But you came out number one, right? I did. I ended up feeding Chris. And then I ended up getting a prize to win. Wow. You're kind of a pinball stud, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're at the Texas show right now. I'm calling you. You're actually at the Texas show. Give us a report. How the Texas show is, you know, I would compare it to say, expo or something like that. Well, the show is very good. There are a new location this year. And it's probably three or four times the size of the old location. We're in a night's hotel up in St. Vine Mills. And it's great. You know, there's a lot of machines here to play. You know, there's a few machines for sale. A gene cutting am is making his debut with a giant booth. He's got some new Centaur's Playfields, new eight ball's Playfields, new funhouse Playfields. Along with a bunch of new William's Hearts. Bob and Herbert Senna's here. He's got some of his old Gally VMs. There's a nice tournament going on. We've got four family guys who've been playing. Fun Steve Norgez. Got a booth here. That's the least of his first booth ever. A life is a great show. You know, there's a good stuff for sale. A good machine to play. It's a lot of fun. Okay. Now, are there any seminars? Yes. Dennis Norgeman, who just did part of the Caribbean, along with, you know, Scarsdiff, any 500, Tim Olish and Man, Whitewater, he all did for William. He came and gave a presentation on all his games. Showed us some pictures and had a question and said it was good. And then also Gene. Gene gave a seminar, which I didn't attend. I'm not sure what he was battling about, but he was here too. And have you seen any of the Big Bang bars? Yes. There are two big bang bars here. And the story is, one's regular one is sold. It's a little bit older, it's a prototype. And it's silent auction. The regular one is starting at 10,000. The gold one is starting at 12,000. As far as I know, still no good. Now, what's the play of the week this week? Well, I figured this was playing family guy in the tournament. I would sell a family guy. Okay, Leon, be dog. Well, basically, you've got two main things in family guy. One is the mini play field, which is actually a mini play field. The stewie is created. And also the TV mode. Wait, wait, I thought Pat Waller created it. Well, yeah. Technically, Pat Waller probably created it, but stewie takes credit. But we will like the TV mode by shooting the center, which is the lowest shot. So many spins. We'll like the TV, which is someone who's lighting the bookcase, so you can add something. Shoot it in there, and you'll get one of the modes. There are five TV modes altogether. If you've done that, you've gone through all five modes. There is actually a TV wizard mode. And the point in the wizard mode are actually based on how well you did in a regular mode, which I think is a very good feature. The other thing is the mini play field. There are actually two captive balls on the play field. And one of the side shots from the upper left footer and one of the right-and-ex to the TV scoop. Every time you hit the captive ball, you get lettering pinball. Once you stop pinball, the TV, the scoop is lit for the mini play field. The mini play field is actually a replica of a regular play field. The mentions are all correct as opposed to most of our mini playfields where the four of us are big and just the play field is small. Everything is miniature-eyed. You've got five shots up there. Once you complete all five shots, do we multiball parts where you have to actually play the mini play field? And the big play field at the same time. Are there multiple balls on the mini play field? No. Are there we talked about doing that just to make it a little more difficult? There's one five eight inch pinball on the mini play field. They can't go to the camera turn in the footage. And the... So basically what you have to do when Stewie starts is you have to make each of the five shots on the mini play field. At the same time you have to make each of the five character shots on the mini play field. Once you've done all that, the Super Jackpot will be lit for a side shot from the flip or it's very difficult to do. Hmm. And this is the tournament game for there, right? This is the tournament game. And how are you doing? So far I'm qualified for. I'm doing well so far. They're taking the top 16 so I think I'm qualifying in this evening at 11.30. They do have a bunch of tournaments down here which is very cool, unlike some of the other tournaments or shows. You had the... Today the kids tournament were all the kids that had to play. They were probably 30 or 40 kids. And they had the father son or parent child tournament. Today which was really... It was really a head again, probably 30 or 40 people playing. Last night we had to draw your partner which is kind of cool. At the random flying draw, you know, I'm just like in dust for who your partner is going to be. And you played doubles, you know, head to head against the other team. And Kaz and his partner ended up winning and... He walked around his partner and ended up winning. We're getting second. And was this all on Family Guy? That was all on Family Guy. And then tonight we were having a plastic tournament which is going to be on my ball. And they were having an E tournament which is on the clock tower. And that's going on right now. Wow, so some of the grand a good time. Oh, we're having a great time. It's always fun down here. So how does this show compare to say, Allentown and Expo, I mean as far as numbers and things to do and seminars and games for sale, parts for sale, vendors, general attitude, designers, that kind of stuff? I would say the slightly smaller version of Expo. As far as, you know, suppliers and parts and machines are concerned, I would say the attendance is probably quite a bit less as far as collectors go. Most of it are people from the area. There's a lot of, you know, public that come to their show. That goes Expo where you've got all the pinheads are going. Right, not now. And you know, I don't have the ultimate for parts. You know, they got a lot of games to play. They got a lot of parts. Right. And the other is what the new market today, but I didn't go out with them. I don't know how. Okay. All right, well cool. Well, that's Transplay. The week of the day, you're trying to appreciate your on the spot reporting from the Texas Pinball Festival down there. And it sounds like you're having a good time. I hope you do well in the tournament. Because, you know, I want to call you next week. You know, you could easily move up to second or third place without too much problem. In fact, after effort, I'm probably already up to second. But we'll see what happens after this one. As long as I finish at the Josh, I'll be up to the end. You'll be in second place overall, but it's going to be a big stretch to try and catch Keith right in first. Yeah, it'll take all year to see you then. Now, how did he get so far ahead compared to everybody else? He did really well in Papa and he did really well in Expo, which Papa is a four times tournament and Expo is a double tournament. Oh, you mean double the Wapper points or something? Yes, you get double and double the Wapper points. Okay, cool. All right, Trent. Well, thank you very much for your report. Okay, no problem. I was like, all right, take care. You do. Bye. That was our poll. How you doing? Norm, do you like hearing from Trent? I was great little Texas show report. That was great. I'm sure they get around and go into all these different states. That's a long haul. Well, I'm sure they fly. I don't think so. You think Trent flies? I'm pretty darn. There's a lot of dough to spend just to go play pinball. Somebody's got to do it. Hey, he's number two in the world. Number two. How old did they get the guys from foreign countries coming out of here and playing? Yeah, I think like the top eight are all from USA, but there's some guys from Sweden and some other Belgium and that and certainly in the top 15. These guys like wait, lift, lift weights are doing certain procedures to improve their talents. No Canadian, so we're actually taught is in their somewhere, but I can't remember where. You know, but hey, so you know, we got another feature we're going to run right now. And then we'll come back to normal norms of babbling, but here we go. And now it's time for tech, tech, tech. All right, tech, tech tip of the week involves new stern games. I've been given a lot of calls from people with newer stern games, sopranos, NASCAR, you know, all those. I know how to fix them. Yeah, enormous. I've seen in the match. Yeah. And the flippers don't work or the flippers get weak or they work inconsistently. And what happens is that stern, um, stern's manufacturer for the flipper blades that are used on the switch, the cabinet switch for the flippers have some issues. What it is is you got two kind of quarter inch wide copper blades and then they have two contacts on them. And the contacts are tungsten, which is supposed to be a real, real hard material. And the tungsten contacts are kind of form and access they meet. You know, so you got one slash of an axe and the other slash of the axe. But right where they meet, right at that cross section, you get this divot in the, in the, in the contact points. And that will prevent them from making good contact. And the reason why you get that divot is the company that was making the switch blades, uh, changed their tempering technique on the blades. And they screwed it up so that the blades weren't the actual contact points weren't being tempered correctly. So you get this little divot in them. And what I would, what I did, you can get new blades of course from stern that have, have fixed this problem. Um, but what I did in a, in a pinch is I've got a bunch of got leave EM switch blades that I buy from Steve Young. And I use from EM games. These cells have been light medium and heavy gauge. So I've got the heavy ones because those are the ones I use the most for, for got leave EM flipper, um, flippers, uh, buttons. And then I also bought from Steve Young a bunch of gold flash contacts. And I can, um, the neat thing about the Steve Young blades is that they're drilled in multiple places. So you can put the contact anywhere you want. And then you just solder it to the back of the blade. And so that's what I do. I just use those two blades and I, uh, flip them into the switch stack for the new stern games. And they have two nice new gold flash contacts and, um, you know, basically the less forever. So what games had this problem? Let's see, I done it to a sopranos. I fixed and, um, it wasn't NASCAR. It was something similar, something, oh, Terminator 3. So Terminator 3 and, um, and, uh, and sopranos have been the two that I've had to do that for. But I've heard other people that have had that. I think this will happen on all those games. It's from the same vendor at the same time. I'm really, really hoping that they all break. And then people, because, okay, so let's fall plug me in norm. We don't have enough pinballs. And we're looking for new games to acquire. Hey, you don't wait. Let me end this here. Tech, tech, tech, tech. All right. That was the tech tip of the week. Now we're going to move on to spam. Uh, this is norm and, and shaggy spam. You know, I heard that somebody gave Cliffey. I, a brand new Simpson's pinball party. Because he's a great guy. How come me and norm don't get free game? Wait, wait, you got a free game from who? I don't know some guy. Like, mail them a game and he opened it up and he got a, a free like Simpson's pinball party. Yeah. Like three plays on it or something like that. He making this up. I'm not making it up for him. Well, then maybe he's got a thing for Cliffey. They got a thing going on, you know what I mean? No, no, no, I don't think so. So I, I want to know why, uh, why norm and I don't, you don't get, uh, opportunities like this. I would even be willing to pay money for, for one of those games. Yes, it's true. Alright, so anyways, then up for our spam. Um, we're going to now move on to, um, curb's, systematic, uh, tech tip of the week. And here we go with curb. And now, top cast is happy to present. I survived, systematic. Presented by the man with all the answers. Curve! Hey, everyone, it's curved with a quick systematic tech tip. This tip has to do with coil test and troubleshooting. The systematic coil tests are crude at best and can't test non-CPU control coils. When trying to find a non-firing coil, be sure to remember that systematic uses two relays to block the voltage being supplied to some coils. The game over relay Q, and tilt relay T, can block power to supply to many coils. Make sure you have power to the coils before tracking down bad connectors, switches, or transistors. The Q and T relay are sometimes mounted in an area of the play field that allows these relays to get damaged. Inspect the relays and make sure they work properly. Don't forget to check out the systematic repair guides and the great systematic, and this is OpenBall DVDs at marvin3m.com and shoot Cheg in email if you have a system 80 tech tip that you want us to cover. And just to kind of add something to that. You know, on the other solid state games, you have a game over relay. By the other manufacturer, it's mounted either on the solenoid driver board or somewhere up in the head. We've got to put their game over relay to Q relay for system 80. It's actually mounted usually under the play field. And it's more open. It doesn't have a little clear plastic case on it. It's more easily damaged as it may be. What were you going to say, Norm? I said getting back to those free games if anyone wants to give me a free old gun game that's decent or Williams 50's base pod B. Really happy with you. You want to pay us back for all this free work we've done? What would you like? What would you be your new vine there? Shaggy. What would you do? One million dollars. Nobody's going to give you a gun game either, so stop asking. Sure they might. They might do it. No, no. I bet you that could happen. No, it's not going to happen. We'll wait. We'll take a bet on this. Yeah, it's not going to happen. How many years do we have on this bet? Ten. It's about ten minutes. We'll have a call. At the end of the show, we'll see if you get a gun game. We'll listen to the show. They all downloaded it. Yeah. Oh, let's see. Okay, so now we're going to move on to our next little segment, which is my personal favorite. And now it's time for... Stop up a jump! It's time for Stump the Chump. We're going to call a guy that we gave some technical advice to last week and see if our technical advice actually solved his problem or if we struck out. We're going to talk to the gentleman named Rex and he had a white water. And we're going to see if we solved his problems. But first, let's go back to last week's episode. And here, what his problem was and what advice we gave him. Yeah, this is Rex and Oregon. I have a white water. And F-111 blows on it about every 50 games or so. The flasters go out and then the copper lights go out. The chaser lights go out. When the fuse goes out, the playfield flasters go out and also the top there. It's a 5-volt slow blow. You mean a 5-amp slow blow? A 5-amp slow blow, yeah. Right, right. I would break the system down in the smaller chunks. First thing I would do is I disconnect the 194 bulbs all of them. There's a connector somewhere that runs power to that waterfall thing on top of the backbox. I would go to the... There's a chaser board up in the top. I could disconnect the voltage off of that. Right, disconnect that, connect the board, that chaser board, and the power that it outputs to the lamps. Just take that whole thing out of the system. And he said it takes about 50 games to see if it blows. Yeah. Okay, that I would play 50 games. And just see what happens. Okay, that's what happened last week. Now we're back and let's give Rex a call in Oregon and see how things worked out with his white water. Let's get him on the line. Hello. Hi, is Rex here? This is Rex. Rex, the shaggy colony back on top cast to see if... How are technical advice played out on your white water last week? All right. Okay, so we gave you some advice that maybe you should break the system down into smaller parts. And maybe that would help find where the problem lied if it was either with the flashers or with your waterfall lights on the top of the backbox. So what did you find out and what did you do and what worked and what didn't? Well, the first thing I did was to disconnect the connector to the chase board that was in the upper right hand side of the backbox. Yeah, that's basically the power to the... To the power, the blanking signal that goes up there and connects it to the whole system. Yeah, and that connects the waterfall lights to the system. Yes, and that's plug one up there. And when I did that, I noticed that pins one and two were black and I looked at my schematics and that's the 16 volts AC that comes in after the F111, the fuse that was blowing. And I just left the hanging there and I don't have the parts to replace the connector yet. But I just left the connector hanging there and played many games like you told me to. And also to put a little stress on the system, I went through the flasher test several times. It sits right by my computer desk so I can run it through the flasher test and it goes cycling through all the flashers. Oh, 6, 7, 8, 9 times before it turns itself off and no fuse blown. And so I'm assuming that the problem is there at that connector. Yeah, probably at that connector. If the black and pins on the connector mean that the connector is taking on too much current, more current than that connector is capable of handling. And you're probably going to have to replace the pins in the female side with like Turf-Friedcon style Molex pins and replace the male header pins on the little board. And I think if you do those two things that should probably stop the current consumption and fuse blowing problem. I think the black and pins is definitely a sign that there was a problem. Yeah, and it makes sense too because the the chaser lights, they run all the time. And so it's going to put a lot of strain on that connection. I think if you just replace the connector housing if it's burnt or you can reuse it either way. And use some trifor-con pins, Molex trifor-con pins which are better resistant to a vibration environment. And you don't have the parts if you want. You know, email me your mailing address and it's nothing else. I'll slip them in and I'll open the center to you. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, sure. That's fine. So basically it sounds like we're on the right track and we gave you the right advice. Oh, yes. It's amazing. I just took the pin off and there it was. I'll burn it up. You can see it from the outside. Right. Yeah. It's just a matter of breaking the system down into smaller parts and examining the smaller parts until you find the one that's causing the problems. And fortunately it was the first thing, the first tree branch you went down was the one that was the problem. So it made you like a little easier. All right. Okay. Well, hey, thank you very much Rex. You made me your address and I'll get that stuff off to you. All right. Thank you. All right. Take care. So it looks like we call that one right. Hard to believe. But the chumps actually pull you on the bag and did okay this time. Unbelievable. Stop. Stop. So what's our banning average on this stuff? I think we're doing pretty good. I think it's like in a 7800 range, which is outstanding for not knowing much. Well, that would certainly apply to your situation. Well, Eric seemed to do pretty well. He was giving you a run for the money. No, I need to be honest with you. The guy said this to me. I told him not to say anything in the phone call, but actually the advice Eric gave him a long, he said that the voltage got rectified by the power driver board and then went to that little driver board, that little tiny driver board up in the head and that was actually incorrect. It goes through the F-111 fuse as AC goes up to that little board and the little board does the rectification up there as needed. So actually Eric will send them down the wrong way. Oh, you're the best. You're the best. We're about all the times I was right on this thing and the connect is an A and Stadled you because I beat you. And I don't know a damn thing pretty much. All I know is. I get lucky. What, a squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Is that a lucky squirrel? No, blind squirrel. It's under review whether we're going to let Eric come back again. He's a good guy. Yeah, he is. We're going to let him come back. The other thing too that was kind of interesting about the last show. Mort. Do you want to talk about Mort? Yeah, I think people think he's irritating. I think he's funny. We need a lot of different weird people in this world to make it cool around. I think he certainly qualifies. He sounded like another guy that used to have a radio show and that's what I thought it was but I don't know if I can mention his name. No, you can't. Yeah, Mort was interesting. I think there was only a couple of people. I took a poll that I actually liked him and everybody else. It was like, you know, 9 million to three. Well, I was one of the yeses. Yeah, that liked Mort. But he's out of his mind for God's sakes. Mort, I can relate to that. Yeah, Mort will be back. I trust you. Mort will be back. All right, now we're going to move to our next series. And I want to tell people the phone number to call for this because this is Corns conundrum. And Corns conundrum is a call in aspect of the show where people can call in and win junk. It's about like byproducts of corn like testido chips and that's what it's about. Right. Corncabs and corn nuts. And this is what the questions are about. Finally, right? No. Okay, so like I've got some junk to give away. This is the junk I've got today. I've got more kuiper thin, cliffy protectors. He sent me a pile of them. I got a ton of those. I have DVDs. I have some top DVDs. Wow. I have some pins and vids DVDs. I have the system of the 11 music showcase CD which is like normal once a copy. I'm just looking. And he wants to listen to that. You know, so but I've got more of those. So I've got a bunch of crap to give away. So if anybody wants to call, we're going to tell you what the phone number is now. It's 1-800 and now it's time for. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the arcade. Corncadero. Hi, people it's the corn and welcome to this week's version of the conundrum. Here's how the game works. I give 10 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? Well, as we were saying, hyper thin cliffy protectors of your choice system 11 music showcase, top DVDs, and pins and vids DVDs. Alright, let's play. Clues number one through five. This is a Williams game. It's a system seven machine. System seven. It has dual playfields. And it was designed by Barry Orcel. And as usual, here are a whole bunch of sounds from this game in no particular order. Oh, that helps. So that basically sounds like every system seven game in the world that doesn't have speech. I mean, they all use the same goofy kind of defenderish sounds. But what we're going to do is give a call in 1-800-375. Oh my god, I think the boat is ringing. God, it woke me. Answer it quick. Okay, we're going to answer the phone right now and see who's on the line. Alright, let's get a money. Hello, welcome to Topcast. Yep, I'm Colin Dominguez here. Is that by chance Kazanek gunfight? It is not. It is not cosmic gunfight. Oh, that is too bad. You give me another gas. We'll give you another gas since you're on the phone. Another gas? Sure. Quick, you have five seconds. No. Oh, too late. Too late. Nope. Okay, we're going to take the next call. I'm so excited. Hi, you're on Topcast. Hey, how'd it go on? Good. So, do you have a gas for a corn's conundrum? Is it jungle, Lord? It is not jungle, Lord. I'll give you a second gas. Is it the black hole? It is a godly, even I know that. It's got two playfields. Yeah, but it's probably the wrong manufacturer. It's okay. It sounds like the same. It's William. I give it to many people. Black hole is by Williams. It's like a jungle lord and he says not jungle lord. It's not jungle lord. Then you said it was black hole. Who are you calling from? We're making fun of your black hole gas. Not the jungle lord one. Who are you calling from? One last week. One of these weeks it's got to be Ed. Yeah, you figure. Who are you calling from? Norm wants to know where you're from. Union City Michigan. Okay. All right. Well, hey, thank you. Can I try again if I find the answer? Sure. Oh, I'll back immediately. All right. Bye. Hi, you're on top cast. Hi, you're on top cast. I'm trying to run the matter back. Hello. Yes, sir. Hello, you're on top cast. Speak open. I'd like to guess the corn's conundrum. That'd be great. What do you got? Black knight. It's not black knight. No, that's what I was going to use. It's not black knight. But we thank you. You know, I would have to book a red card. Take care. Hi, you're on top cast. Hi, try again if I find the answer. Yeah, I think I had a guess for your gain of the day. Sure. Sounds a lot like black knight to me. It's not. And the reason why it's not is because of the lack of sound and speech. There's no sound or speech, so you know it's not black knight. Oh, man. Okay, well, thank you, though. Next. Nice. Don't go, Lord. Nope, not that either. Hey, okay, it's better. Thanks. Hi, you're on top cast. Is it Starlight? It is not Starlight. Boy, it's getting close, though. All right, we've got some more things, but we'll say, I really appreciate it. Paul, I just let him answer that. All right, next one. Bye. Hi, you're on top cast. Hi, I have a guess for the game. Sure. What do you think? Solar fire? My God, it is solar fire. Oh, it's fire for you. It's solar fire. And what's your name? Ethan. Ethan, how did you guess that it was solar fire? Well, we think in maybe gunfight, but then somebody called in. Right. And then somebody, you know, with their other Collins and we were narrowing down the orchard list, remember playing that at Papa. And it was a game we were in the market for, too. Oh, you don't have that siren. Remember this siren. Right. You don't have the pinball book and you just go through System 7. He's got the inner. That's what I do at the database. So, what you need to do is send me an email, shaggy at marvin3m.com. Hi. Well, what was your first name again? Ethan. Ethan. Ethan. Ethan, I'm going to remember that. Ethan, you call back and or call back. You email Ian with your address and what do you want to, you want to go to the contact? We're going to go with the System 11. Show us. Down. CD thing. Okay, great. Just make sure you tell me that in the email, too, with your address and I'll send it right out to you. We'll do. All right. Hey, thanks a lot. Bye-bye. All right. Bye. Nora, what did you think of that? I didn't even have to play. I didn't even play all of the hints. We had more hints. I'm going to just put the fun of it. I think that we already know. Here's more hints. People have to know what it is yet. No. Well, here's five more clues in case you don't. Okay, we already know. But we're going to let him lose 6-3 in that anyways. This machine has four drop target banks. You know, the rest of the details of corn's guesses for solar fire really wouldn't have helped me either. It was just a matter of narrowing it down when people saw that. But anyways, we're going to take a little break. We're going to run an ad and take a little break. We'll be back in about 30 seconds. Top guess is brought to you by Pinball Life. Give you a Pinball Machine. New Life with parts from Pinball Life. We ship Pinball Parts. We'll walk. Pinball Life is located in the Great City of Chicago. Their number is 773-202-8790. We have an open door Ryan Policky and you're welcome to call us with your questions and concerns. 80M to 5PM, send us on Monday through Friday. The website is at PinballLife.com. Pinball Life. The last one is just the parts you need next. Okay, we're at the part of the show where we're taking calls for any tech questions. If you want to call in with a tech question, it's 1-800. Or if you're that last caller that didn't get through for the guests, you can call back and guess again. Even though you know the answer now. But if you've got any tech questions you want to call in, give us a ring and we'd be happy to talk to you. And the meantime, we also take them via email. And I've got a couple here that people have emailed off the topcast website. There is actually a link where you can submit tech questions for us to kind of... Give me a norm, get this email and we kind of can digest them over the week. It's kind of cheating. But here we go, we got a couple things here. But you can't be an idiot, Savant all the time and know everything off the top of your head. Well, sure you might, you can be, but not me. Okay, here we go. We got it one from a guy named Jim Krizmall in Ordell, New Jersey. He says, I'm interested in clear-coding and touching up my own playfields using automotive clears. I have the necessary spray equipment and understand the safety risks and need for protective clothing and eye wear. We're going to put this on hold. Hold on a second. We've got a call. It's Gary! Hi, you're on topcast. She asked, sir. Hey, great to see you. Okay, who's this? This is Chuck from Benton, Wisconsin. Chuck, how can I help you today? First of all, I got to thank Norm. He said my name on the air earlier and it was like having my name spoken by the gods. When did I say this? Oh, you mean you sent Norm a letter? Yeah, he read my name earlier. He said you guys were saving good and well and I think that's pretty accurate. Did Norm catch on that? He had a stick around his ass there? Or did you have to clone in on that? Oh, stickers, yes. They're very nice. Yes, he did. It's a very nice thing. He's not supposed to put anything free and I sent you some free stickers. So it's not a Benton ball machine, but a... Hey, it's great. I appreciate it and need more people in a world like you to do nice things for people. Norm, what he did is he gave a bunch of those stickers to his wife and told her to go get on dress and get imaginative with these and come back out in three minutes. I hope in both sticker pasties. Something like that. I don't want to ask you many more details than that. All right, Chuck, do you get any kind of a tech question for us? I got a definite tech question for you. Oh, no. Here it comes. All right. I got an Adam's family that I bought off coin up route that had a million problems. I got them all fixed, but one. My back glass doesn't flash. I can go into the system test and it breaks it down into the inserts. I believe are people in house. And you can make them dim individually, but you don't give any action when you turn the game on. You mean the only flashing I know of are the 455 bulbs that are used in there like for, you know, the window and that they have separate 455 actual flashing light bulbs. Can you put flash bulbs? This flash your bulbs in there? Yeah, everything is a constant burn in the back glass. Oh, you mean you can't dim the GI. Is that what you were saying? What's that? I'm sorry? You can't dim the general illumination string? No, you can dim them, but it seems like they're both acting like a general illumination string. It's like if you can dim the inserts and the lightning bolt kind of flash that goes through the center of it. But it just burns constant when you turn the game on. Nothing flashes off and on individually. I guess I'm confused. Maybe we should turn yours on. How go run and go look? Yeah, go turn it on. I'm going to go look. He's going to turn on my atoms. I don't think that they do flash. I think the only flashing that happens in the backbox of atoms, like I said, was just if you have four or five five bulbs, flash your bulbs actually in the appropriate sockets in the backbox. I think that's the only flashing that's going on, but normally actually we went around the corner to turn my atoms on. It'll probably take them 20 minutes to find the power switch. But I'll tell you what. No, they flash. Wait, he says they flash what flashes? The little light bulbs behind the windows they sort of go on. Yeah, that's the four or five five. Those are flashing bulbs. Yeah, those are flashing bulbs. What's what I said? Maybe he needs flashing bulbs in there. Does he have flashers in there? Do you have any flashing bulbs in there? I'm guessing that it's probably five or five. I never even thought that far ahead. I figured it would be a try-act or something. There's no flashing bulbs. It's overlooked the obvious apparently. Yeah, there's just flashing bulbs. I came up with the right answer. Well, the flash is kind of... oh god, I just don't want to admit anything to this guy. You know, it's like it goes to his hat. Got me to rip your game apart and see what kind of bulbs are in it. All right, here. You talked to him normally. No, no, I'll talk to him. You talked to him. You talked to him. So you got a printing business? Yeah. What do you print? That file is awesome. You can be perfectly honest. Our biggest account is John Deere. John Deere, that's got to be a big account. But Boy, we can be doing playfields on a heartbeat. And I'd love to go that direction someday. I've contacted Stern a couple times, but they're pretty set looking who they're with right now. So you could be moving on to bigger and better things. But at least that would be in my mind, bigger and better things. Spinball, you know? So you could do glasses? Financially probably not a great move. No, you could do glasses if you could. You could do pinball glass? Wow. Okay, I'm back. Shut up. We're talking something important here. No, okay. So yes, there's a combination of wedge style sockets and bayonets sockets. So if it's a wedge socket that's a 555, and if it's a bayonet, you put in a 455, and the 455, of course, is the flasher. So that's all there is to it. It's a pretty low attack. Man, well, I feel like you can please dumbass. No, that's fine. That's what you call for. And you're going to make me that free gun patrol back glass because you could do what you said. We'll do anything for Norm. Really, it's a losing proposition. Thank you so much. It's a losing proposition, trust me. Hey, hey, hey. Okay, well, hey, Chuck, I appreciate the call though. All right. All right, you take care. Thanks for coming. See you. Bye-bye. Norm. Well, sometimes the obvious is, you know, there's obvious things that you've made mistakes on, and we're not all knowing. No one is all knowing. Yes, especially you. 1-800, if you want to call in with a tech question. Anyways, we're back to that one I was reading when the phone call came in. I was going to spray in a verithane. He wanted to know if it was possible. Well, he's doing an automotive clear. He says, I have the necessary spray equipment to understand the safety risks and the need for protective clothing, eye wear and respiration. I'm a bit concerned about the toxicity of the over spray vapor, lingering effects of spraying this material. My detached garage is fairly close to my neighbor's house. Yeah, I would four feet. I wouldn't care about it in so much. I'm a dog cat. And I'm a bit worried about this stuff blowing around and injuring others with secondhand vapors. Just how long does it linger? And how much space do I really need? I personally, I emailed them, but then my email bounced back because I think I by mistake emailed it to you. Yeah, way to go. But I told them not to do it. But if you had to do it. I don't see it as a huge concern. I would spray during money to Friday, like nine to five, when people are at work, you know, when they're not around. I spray it late in the evening when there's no wind and when people are sleeping and no one's out. I may do like midnight. No, no, no. I would do it during the day. No, no. And you can't do it. You can't do it in high winds because you know, you just don't want to craft spray on your play field. But the main thing is, no, it doesn't. At night, one o'clock at night. No one's up. It's calm outside at night. Yeah, during the summer when they get their windows open so it's fogs into their house. They have a blowing, have an old fan at your window to blow that crap out. No, it doesn't linger that long. It just depends on how much wind is there. It's kind of like a cloud. And how fast the cloud moves depends how fast the wind is blowing literally. You know, and it could clear out in 30 seconds. And here's a man that sprayed verithane in his basement without any protection or venting. Or more more more. You talk about, you're going to take advice from a guy like this. Hi, you're on top cast. Oh, yes, Shag. Yes. How are you? I'm not too bad. How are you today? Good. My norm. Hello. Yeah, question I had for you. You mentioned earlier about rebuilding the contacts on the flipper back cabinet buttons. Yes, the stern. Yes. The stern. Yeah, on the stern. On any, I've gotten the tips from Steve as well on the past. And I seem to overdo it when I squeeze them. I crack them occasionally. You have a special tool or anything you use on them. I've just tried using pliers and putting them in front of the contact to protect it when I squeeze it. But it's like either to get their loose or to get them really tight. You're on the verge of splitting the surface. Yeah, I think you're taking the wrong technique. This is what I do. The contacts, the way they fit in the blades are just loose. They rattle around in the hole, literally. And I know what you mean. You're trying to pin the end of the contact end that goes through the blade. Yeah, just solder them. Just solder it from the back and don't even attempt to do that. Oh, really? A little bit of flux and some solder. Actually, you don't even need to flush. Just regular 60-40 solder and just solder them on from the back and you're good as gold and you don't have to worry about peening them or any of that stuff. Oh, cool. That's a heck of a lot easier. But good luck with that, okay? All right. Thanks a lot. All right. All right, no, you're welcome. Have a good one. Okay, here's another one. We got this one. Another one came in from the site. This is from Chris Hibbler. Now, Chris wrote us about his high speed, his system 11 high speed. It says, I have a technical question today for your calling show. I have a Williams high speed that does not have the beacon assembly on it. The WPC repair docs cover what to do when I get away at WPC game is missing the beacon but not on the high speed. The high speed uses 24 volts AC for the beacon and you suggest using a 12-volt DC beacon from HAP products as used in the getaway. We'll come right back to that. We'll take this call. This is Notes. Hi, how are you? Hey, I'm a fish tail and I was wondering if you knew of a way that I could fix. You know, the back of the tail where the solenoid activates and it pushes the fish tail. Yeah, we're pushes the fish's butt. Right, yep, yep. Well, I've been in the factory. There's the metal plate that pushes on. Right, so it doesn't push through the kind of silicone body and ruin it. It's about halfway pushed through. Do you know of any f***ing? Anyway, to fix that, yeah. Put a bigger plate on. Just increase the size of the plate to overlap the old one. Can you move it? Is there any way of moving it? I don't know how the plates attach to the fish's butt belt. Maybe you could put something in there like a baffle attached to a piece of plate. No, you don't. Don't listen to the norm. Or a cushion in the metal, so I won't be cutting through that. I would just install a larger plate. I guess the way I would do it if the existing plate was still locked in place nicely, I would probably just lightly drill it with eighth inch holes and just literally pop the rivet on a new larger plate. It's a piece of plastic on the back. I wouldn't do plastic, that'll break. Not Lexan. Yes, Lexan will break too. It's going to get hit hard. Okay. So that's what I would do. You think that'll work? Put an extender on there. Yeah, give it a try. Yeah, give it a whirl. Let us know. Let me know when. Let me know how it went. A lot. Okay, thank you. I don't think he was that happy with our response. I don't know, I think he was. I mean, it's a good suggestion. There's a lot of ways to do things. 1-800 if you have another tech question. Anyways, back to the one that we're reading. Chris from Chris Hibbler and his, his, his, his, his, is trying to install a 12 volt DC beacon. On a high speed. On a high speed. On his high speed that uses 24 volt AC for the beacon. So he, he goes through and says that he, he went to an electricians friend, and said, how can I convert this 24 volts AC to 12 volts DC? And electricians said, what are you doing? Cut the beacon 1-1-2. No, don't cut the beacon 1-1-2. What you can do is, as your electrician friend suggested, two AC-C lugs of the bridge and then the two output lugs of the bridge will be you know more or less 24 volts DC. Run those through a filter cap and the filter cap size doesn't really matter. Your electrician buddy suggested a 150 microfarot. You could go higher if you want to. You could go you know up to 3200. You can go up to 10,000 if you need it too but you don't really need to since this is just going to be powering a motor. And then bring it in to a 7812 voltage regulator which the 7812 looks like a basically like a tip 102 transistor and there's a what's known as a VN pin that that's the DC voltage coming in and then a V out is the 12 volts going out and then the last pin is ground and you connect that out to the other side of the bridge rectifier which is the ground and then you should get 12 volts of ground rectified 12 volts of ground from this 7812 device. Now you will need a heat sink on that puppy and it also only outputs one amp so make sure your motor that you're using to run your beacon is never more than one amp with the juice. And you still went off of police cruiser? No I'm Google. See if you can go on the Google or eBay and find a police cruiser beacon and actually use the real thing. Those would be 12 volts too. You know the north side of the phone stop is bringing this to us you stop giving stuff away. Yeah I've got norms, car keys. What's he driving to Caravan? He's driving a Dodge Caravan. If you want a late model Dodge Caravan be the next caller and it's yours. Nobody called I get to keep it. No you don't. You want a VW micro mini bus from 1969 which is Shaggy's? Oh no. Okay our next email question was for a 1964 United Orbit shuffle alley. Now I gave out some advice about this a week or two ago. I did too. I bounced it in the bounce back. Mine was just to check the switches on the bottom because I had issues with switches that get stuck or break and I think I'll shut up. Yeah maybe. It says here follow up. I looked under the alley part of the game and noticed the contact was broken under one of the roller switches. I replaced it and now the game ends at the 12th frame instead of going on and on. Just like you know norm and I told them kind of. Yeah more or less. You know sometimes there's obvious things that you can find. Inspection is the biggest thing and if you can't hit it in one day come back and rethink things out. I don't think you're going to have to get it this first time always and go through over and over until it becomes quite obvious and it should. Yeah and and have a couple beers too that's always been norms with both. We're not going to get off some of your friends or pinball guys. Just sit there talking. Somebody come up with a good idea. But it's a lot of inspection over and over. The reason why I didn't check the switch is because the pin that was under the roll over switch always went up when the puck was thrown over it. Yeah and again this back row of switches has nothing to do with raising or lowering the pins. It just has to do with completing the actual frame or shot. So there's a first throw and a second throw relay and if those never go up it doesn't matter if the pins go up or not. Those switches are disconnected from the activation of either the first shot or the second shot relay and that's what in fact he was fixing and that's why his baller now worked. And I had that problem. It drove me crazy for a long time. I played a game and then the game would just stop in the middle and I couldn't play it and I'd stop two months later pick up the game and just stop and it was a switch that didn't come all the way back to its final or open position and it was just driving me nuts. So I finally inspected all the switches and find it. One was just a little bit just sticking a little bit and once I changed that stick cleaned it up the whole game continues to start working again. Big deal. More great advice from Norm. Okay here's what we got another one that was emailed to us. This guy has a got-leab royal flush. His name is James. He's from Milton Washington. Okay. It says intermittently and only on the first player of all things. Ten unit real won't advance when the ten points switch on the playfields are closed. When this occurs the ten relay and the backbox the n relay will lock on and I have to manually disengage it. It seems to be a problem with the score real but I can't figure it out. You kind of talked about this. I thought maybe in another episode or somebody called in with it and what happens is on that score real there is an end of stroke switch so that when the real pulls in it opens up a switch at the end of the stroke while the plunger for the score real is fully engaged and that releases that n relay. If that switch played for some reason is misadjusted and not fully opening every time occasionally you'll get that where the real will stick on. That's why it's only happening for one player because the player, the one player, ten is real that has that switch on it that's having the problem. A lot of times that switch will break completely so that the switch is always open which means that the n relay will never lock on. The disadvantage to that is it also means you won't get a full pulse to that score real and your score may actually be a little lower because of that because the real may not advance the full number every time if that end of stroke switch is not working. That was another kind of interesting thing. Here's one that's really bizarre, not really bizarre but it's going to be almost impossible the answer but I figured we'd talk about it anyways. This guy's name is Greg. He's from St. Paul, Minnesota. He has a Gottlieb surfer. Surker 1976 again an EM Gottlieb. I think it's a two-player game isn't it? I believe it. No, that was surfer champ. I'm sorry. Well surfer and surfer champ are the same once two players once four. I forget which is which though. Says when it's turned on the game continues to reset. It's locked in this reset mode. What do I do? Thanks for your help. Well that's really all he gave us for detail was two sentences and he expects you, Norm, to fix this game. I need you to give an answer in a concise format that everybody will understand in and needs to be correct. He's ahead that problem. Something in the start-up mode. That's what we would say. Something in the starting mode. It's broken is what he's saying. Now what I would check, the first thing I would check is make sure all your stepper units are resetting. That was the very first thing I would do and probably the only advice I can give you at this point that underneath the play field there's a bonus stepper and then there's the player unit in the backbox. I would make sure that all those things are finding their way home. I suspect that you either the player unit is getting stuck and it's not fully turning or the bonus relay or the bonus stepper is not fully resetting. And also on the bonus unit there's probably a switch that determines when it's at the reset position. Make sure that switch is good. And again on the player unit, make sure all those little brass braids on the non-moving part of the Bayclad Disc are all nice and clean and the fingers on the moving part are nice and clean too and are free to move up and down. Well then why don't you just start right there and say make sure that units intact and the pieces are there. You got your first year serving too much. Somebody could have hacked in there and took it apart. Make sure that the thing twists freely and isn't gummed up.