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Modifying A Dual-Mode Add-A-Ball Game to Use Both Modes

Pintastic New England·video·49m 10s·analyzed·Sep 6, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Technical guide to rewiring Gottlieb add-a-ball games for dual-mode simultaneous play.

Summary

A detailed technical seminar on modifying dual-mode Gottlieb add-a-ball pinball games (Bank Shot, Ship Ahoy, Lucky Hand, Rockstar, Neptune) to simultaneously use both novelty mode and add-a-ball scoring. The speakers explain how to wire a second stepper unit to track 100K scores independently while maintaining the existing wow-count mechanism, addressing relay logic, zero-position switches, and AX reset circuitry. Physical space constraints and wire routing are identified as the primary implementation challenges.

Key Claims

  • Six Gottlieb games used the dual-mode (add-a-ball/novelty) system: Bank Shot, Ship Ahoy, Lucky Hand, Rockstar, Neptune, and one other unspecified title

    high confidence · Speaker opening; enumerated with some uncertainty ('I'm missing one')

  • Neptune has the largest adjustment plug configuration with 26 pins across 2 positions, making it one of the most complex examples

    high confidence · Direct observation during seminar; physical demonstration

  • The lightbox advance unit is dual-purpose: one side counts 100K lights (up to 1.9M in novelty mode), the other controls add-a-ball mechanism; both functions cannot operate simultaneously

    high confidence · Technical explanation with physical unit shown

  • Italian pinball system allows maximum of 5 stacked add-a-balls, versus 10 in American systems; balls-to-play only steps down, never up

    high confidence · Dave's explanation of system design constraints

  • JX relay energizes every time a player crosses the 100K point threshold; this pulse is critical for stepping the new 100K unit in add-a-ball mode

    high confidence · Technical schematic explanation

  • The modification requires either moving the wow-count or 100K-count function to a new stepper unit; wiring complexity is roughly equivalent for either approach

    high confidence · Dave and unnamed speaker consensus

  • Rockstar uses a gong bell for 50K points in novelty mode instead of a knocker (unlike Neptune)

    medium confidence · Speaker comparison of game variants

  • Physical space in the backbox/playfield area is the primary constraint for housing a second stepper unit; placement between existing units or above adjustment plugs are proposed solutions

    high confidence · Direct engineering discussion about implementation challenges

Notable Quotes

  • “There were six of them. Team One...Which is probably the best or similar phrase describing 2024 innovation player out of all of them when you think of it.”

    Primary speaker@ 0:33 — Establishes the specific games covered and identifies Team One as a notable example

  • “It can't be used for both. And if you want to make the game actually show your score over 200,000 and over, you have to use a different unit because otherwise you would have to disable the novelty mode, which is counterproductive to the game.”

    Primary speaker@ 5:21 — Core problem statement—justifies the need for a second stepper unit

  • “The key to making this work is when you break the Blackwater 100,000 point barrier JX relay energizes, ok every time...that's the power from the switch on the JX relay is going to power 24 volts to the step up coil on the new stepper unit.”

    Primary speaker@ 17:32 — Technical mechanism critical to the modification

  • “I would lean toward doing it electrically only because I don't like to physically alter factory-made products, items like that, unless you have to.”

    Primary speaker@ 21:55 — Design philosophy preference for non-destructive modification

  • “The most difficult challenge in there accomplishing this is finding a place to put the new stepper unit, believe it or not. It's tight back there.”

    Primary speaker@ 37:13 — Identifies the primary practical implementation barrier

  • “Alvin Gottlieb does not typically stack a ninth switch. Eight is maxed out for that relay.”

Entities

GottliebcompanyNeptunegameBank ShotgameShip AhoygameLucky HandgameRockstargameTeam OnegameJacks to Open

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Educational seminar format with interactive Q&A, physical demonstrations, schematic review, and component examination; addressing collector/enthusiast community needs for technical knowledge on boutique modifications

    high · Entire structure of seminar; audience questions; physical component display; schematic breakdown

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Preference for non-destructive modification approach (electrical vs mechanical constraints); alignment with original factory engineering methodology; prioritization of preserving factory components

    high · Direct quote: 'I would lean toward doing it electrically only because I don't like to physically alter factory-made products...unless you have to'; multiple references to 'the way Alvin Gottlieb would have done it in the factory'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Modification technique enabling simultaneous dual-mode operation in add-a-ball games through independent stepper unit configuration; represents evolution of 1970s Gottlieb design for modern restoration/modification context

    medium · Entire seminar content; explicit statement that this modification integrates modern understanding with factory engineering principles

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.147

0:00
So the big door games, I call them the big door games. There were six anaballs that were big door games.
0:22
Bangshot, Ship Ahoy, Lucky Hand, Rockstar, Neptune, and one other, I'm missing one. I said bank shot first. But anyway, there were six of them. Team one, thank you. Which is probably the easiest player out of all of them when you think of it. So, and they had, I'm going to pull this down.
0:50
Those six games had, if you could see that up on the screen, these numbers written on the back glass that were not used in an edible mode. The only one that was used was the 100,000 light.
1:07
So the other lights were used for another mode, if you will, called novelty mode. And we'll kind of demonstrate how that works in a little bit. But there's always been this kind of request to say, how do you make, how do you utilize those numbers in the backlist? Because some of these games, for example, Team 1 is a pretty easy player. And you can roll that game three or four times easily in a game because you're getting out of balls. And you have to kind of remember that, oh, yeah, I rolled it three times. So I get 300,000. Well, how do you utilize these lights to put the 300,000? And that's what this seminar is all about, is how to wire the game, how to make it work so that it scores 300,000 and shows it on the back glass.

Primary speaker@ 36:18 — Design constraint that forces alternative wiring solutions

  • “I would rather have the big old rugged unit...because essentially we're copying what they've already engineered for, which is this.”

    Primary speaker@ 39:49 — Rationale for component selection based on engineering precedent

  • “Those AS units...the only person here that I know how to get them right is Donnie Owen. He's not here. So those things are hard to get correct every time.”

    Primary speaker@ 39:58 — Identifies a specialist (Donnie Owen) and technical difficulty with alternative approaches

    • game
    Lariatgame
    Hot Shotgame
    Fast Drawgame
    Lawmangame
    Sheriffgame
    Surf Champgame
    Snow Derbygame
    Daveperson
    Donnie Owenperson
    Pinball Resourceorganization
    2:09
    We have this huge adjustment plug. In fact, the rules of Neptune, this is like the biggest adjustment plug I think. Right. And there's 8 or 10 pins.
    2:32
    Right. And he's not here with the camera. This adjustment plug right here, you see it's got 8 pins, 2 positions.
    2:43
    2 positions. Right now it's in addable position. So that's 26 pins. So it sounds like to try to make both the modes, have the 100,000s go up and up and up and also do add a ball, it seems kind of daunting that we have 26 pins to deal with. But as you'll hear in a few minutes, it's not that bad.
    3:07
    So what happens in the game play, in add a ball play, is when the player reaches 99,990, the next point scored, it would be at least 10 points, clicks on the JX relay, which is right here.
    3:30
    And you have a nice picture of it there. JX, because it's an interlock relay. And that does, the JX does two things. One is just a regular switch on there that closes and simply lights the 100,000 light. The other switch on it is a make or break switch. When it's at rest, it tells the game when you have the game set at under 100,000 points for an addable wall, it allows it to add a wall then. when the switch is activated over a hundred thousand points it's telling the game then say for example this game is at 90 and 140 when you get 140 it's telling the game at 140 add a ball okay and then every time the game rolls from there and you roll it to 240 it adds a ball and that all works through this system right here. Okay, and this is called light box advance unit. It's a dual purpose unit. One side of it advances the balls, the wows, and they decrease as you use them. But the other side of it counts the numbers 100 through 1 million, and it actually goes to 1,900,000 in novelty mode.
    5:16
    Since this is a dual-purpose unit, it can't be used for both. And if you want to make the game actually show your score over 200,000 and over, you have to use a different unit because otherwise you would have to disable the edible mode, which is counterproductive to the game.
    5:40
    Are you there, Dave? Yep. Am I on schedule here? Yeah, we each looked at this problem independently and we had different ideas about which of the stepper units might be the one that you want to leave on the lightbox advance, repurpose the lightbox advance to do one of its purposes and which of those purposes, 100Ks or counting wows you would put on a new stepper unit. Turns out, as at least the people who are comfortable with these old EMs from Gottlieb will soon realize during this seminar, you can take your pick. So you're saying you could either move the add a ball or move the step count of 100,000. hundred thousands. You can move either one and one has as few wires to move or as many wires to move as the other maybe by one or two. Well yeah if you can ask them over there so we can record your questions. Yeah or the mic. While he's walking over there. So you're gonna have a second stepper unit. I think a lot you guys I recognize that people who probably have a collection of old stepper units I brought one here we'll look at it a little later on that that one happens to be missing one component that we would want to have but we'll talk about that so your question That unit is only counting the wows? Right. That's correct. It doesn't control the ball and play. That's a separate unit. Right. This is the Italian system. So it's like bonus balls in some modern, you know, the Gilkins Island, for example. It has a separate stack. That means if you have one ball to play on the main ball count unit, you can only work your way up to six. Unlike an American add-a-ball where you could run up nine, go from one to ten on the single ball count unit. On the Italian system, you can have no more than five stacked up. Now, you can go up and down on that. But once that drops down, then the next time you cross the trough switch, you're going to be subtracting from the balls to play. So the key thing in the Italian system, balls to play only steps down, never steps up. That's a rule for Italy. So the normal ball in play is kept track by a different unit? That's correct. That lower unit. That's kept track by this lower unit. Say if you were to choose to utilize the unit that's in there for counting the score rather than the balls,
    8:41
    you would need to have an additional unit. Right, to count the add-a-balls. You only have to count five. That's correct. Yeah, zero through five. because now you don't have to find a step that has 19 positions or whatever. Right. Because it goes up to 1.9 million, right? Right. You could use one that – I would argue that if you use this, like this 10 – this is a 10-step – or no, it's not. That's probably a 0 to 9 unit. Yeah, it's a 0 to 9 unit. But if you used a 10-step ball count unit from a game – Oh, no, I know what that is. From an edible from the early 70s, I would argue that that would be plenty of – I would say scoring more than a million points is highly unlikely.
    9:22
    It's highly unlikely. I know. For you, you're a good player. Do you want to move the adjustment plugs to the novelty mode so we can show people? Yeah, now would that affect novelty mode safety?
    9:34
    We'll address that. Any other questions right at this point? So Dave was thinking mainly about counting the 100 Ks.
    9:48
    And I was thinking at first, I thought, well, there's 10 light bulbs. That's 11 wires, you know, common for the wiper and then the 10 bulbs that belong to the 100 Ks. Why not leave those on the existing unit and move the add a ball, the wow count, into a new unit?
    10:14
    This will not affect the back glass. That's why you don't want to just take out the ball count unit and switch it over to the American system because then you're going to go past five balls to play up to six, seven, eight, nine, ten. You have to do some damage to the back glass or stick a box on the top or whatever. So this, by having the wow count on its own unit, that will just light the five wow lights the way this game does in that mode.
    10:47
    There's no way to separate the dual unit? Well, what... Since you're making a major modification anyway, why don't you just utilize that light count unit? Okay, so for... You are. You're using it.
    10:59
    In the case that we were, the example I was saying, if we move the 10 extra counts for the extra score, you would be utilizing the existing unit for an eyeball. So there's common parts in that thing. Yeah, we'll cover that. It's really one step unit. Yeah, it's one step per unit. It's one step per unit. There's some lights that have to be lit up. That's your way to think about it. If you look at the schematic, you can see there's a branch where the adjustment plug is saying either you're going to feed six volts to this wiper that does the wows or this wiper that does the hundred thousands. Right away, that should tell you that we're going to have to have two step units. Only one set of coils operating it? Yeah. I thought it was four coils. So what we're going to do is divide the function in half, and some of the wires get to stay on the light box advance. We probably want to rename it. So we'll use names like the 100k unit and the wow count unit. Those are going to be the two new functions But which of those is the new stepper unit is not clear All right we take another question Very quickly for the idiots in the room like myself, a reminder on what the wow count is. So the wow count is the name I'm using for a stepper unit that goes from zero to five wows, and I guess we can show that we can win some wows. in novelty mode wow means 50,000 points so that's why you need to get up to 1.9 million we're giving away 50,000 and once the wow is light they don't reset they just stay on for the rest of the game so the wow count is not as flexible as the American system where you can go up to 10 at any time and step up and down But it does step up and down. You saw it on Lariat if you played Lariat here in the past.
    13:15
    And if we move that off, there is a little complication with when it steps down to zero, and as we were talking about a minute ago, then you want to start decrementing from the ball count, doing that properly. Right. Which, therefore, and we answer some back and forth,
    13:37
    my personal opinion would be to move the lights for the score versus the wow count. That's my personal opinion. And I was leaning towards moving the ball count, the wow count, off to the new unit.
    13:55
    So. Oh, yeah. It's jumping wires, basically, from the stepper unit to the new stepper unit. Are we ready to demonstrate? It is ready to go for novelty play. All right. Let's show that. Yeah, just... Oh! That's good.
    14:29
    Now, what we want to do is perhaps show the back glass. Okay, we've got the back glass. And we've got to cross that trough switch.
    14:43
    Okay, balls to play five. And if we make a couple swings... And every time you get a card, you get a knock.
    14:56
    You want to get them all. All the black lights? Yeah. Okay, so now we're lit up for wows. We have 25.
    15:08
    Boy, it's very generous with the scoring here. And it's a nice digital readout, of course. All right, now we win a wow. So the knocker effectively is like a chime for the ten thousands. So you're gonna hear a lot of knocks and the lights are not going out. The wows are staying lit. It will be like that for the rest of the game. Just one caveat to that on team one there's a gong bell for ten thousand and the knock or doesn't knock for that, for each one. Just on, not on team one, on Rockstar.
    15:52
    Yes, if you're lucky enough to have one. All right, and if we get all the red. And now all the wow lights are lit up. And as a couple of people in the room have noted in the past, I think this game has more wow lights than any other game.
    16:12
    Okay, 200,000. Very soon. Ah, the bulb. Hold up. There you go. 400,000. 500,000. And I'm just hitting. I mean, these targets are very easy to hit, so you can see how it's just throwing points at you like there's no tomorrow. Which is why it goes up to 1.9 million plus.
    16:36
    So. But when we put this in the new mode, it's going to play with the add-a-ball rule, so it's not going to throw all those points at you. So 5,000 is the most it would give at one time. Right, or 15,000 in that pocket.
    16:52
    Which I wonder what it does now. Oh, yeah. So I agree. Okay, so it's the same thing. It's the same principle. You know the motor level E switch that comes around only one-third of the time. It runs that down. Right. I have another question.
    17:10
    You guys have both different approaches of how you would do it. Does either one affect novelty play? Like you wouldn't be able to play novelty anymore? Not at all. It's very minor, very minor. We'll get to that.
    17:24
    So the key to when we're back in edible mode, the key to making this work is when you break the 100,000 point barrier JX relay energizes ok every time if you rolled the game now the score wouldn't change but JX energizes every time and that's the key to making this work because otherwise that's the power from the switch on the JX relay is going to power 24 volts to the step up coil on the new stepper unit so the key to it is that JX energizes every time you cross the 100,000 point threshold for the next 100,000. Are you with me? Is there a problem with the energizing long enough to step the unit up? No. Not at all? No, it just has, all it has to do is pulse. It's tied into the 10,000 score reel and that's got an end of stroke switch, so you get that. So, here's our stepper unit. You've got an add coil and a subtract coil and this one.
    18:41
    There. Can you get it on camera there? Just watch my fingers. Okay. Now that flies back because it doesn't have, there's an extra. There's an arm in there that I would hold. switch Paul off of this pivot point here that would make it single step down. So whichever stepper unit is your wow count has to step down with single steps. The other one, the 100 Ks, you're going to be getting enough pulses from the reset circuitry that if it is a single step down, that's fine because when this is a novelty mode, the reset single steps it down. So you don't have to find a flyback even if you do the 100Ks on your new stepper unit. Your new stepper unit, you probably want to have more than five steps, go past 500,000, but whatever you got. A bonus unit that goes up to 15, end of ball bonus and Hot shot, big shot, or... Fast draw, fast draw. Oh, yeah, right, not hot shot, but... Quick draw, fast draw. Yeah, lawman, sheriff, all of those, you could use those to count your hundred thousands.
    20:04
    And then for the other, you've just got to count the five wows plus the zero position. Which, if you don't touch anything to it, you really don't have to do anything to it. You're not affecting anything on that in an adder ball mode. Yeah. And if you think about it, you may not win, you may not stack up five extra balls that often. So something like the, there's a so-called sequence unit in Jack's open and lucky hand that's got four steps for the different progressions on your drop target bank, single step up and down. You could use that. if you get a flyback and you get the extra arm you could actually remove the extra arm and just put a washer in its place and make it a flyback unit but if it's a wild count then you need to make it single step down
    21:01
    right if you do it that way let's see you're going to need a disc and wiper but it's only going to light 5 lights if it stepped up a little too high now this is something we didn't rehearse but you know there's a lot of adjustments here so you could maybe file off a tooth so it only steps up to five and then won't step any higher or maybe, what do you think about put these little stops up higher and maybe stop it up a little high so it only does five steps Or you can put a switch stack on here and let the pin in the gear stop the stroke from... So it's your choice of an electrical type cutoff like he's describing or mechanically limiting it. Yeah, without a tooth. I would lean toward doing it electrically only because I don't like to physically alter factory-made products, items like that, unless you have to. So if you can just add a switch to it that cuts the current to the step-up coil, I think that's the best way to go. Yeah. This has five lights, so this might be an old-style ball count unit where game over was done somewhere else. So this has the right number of steps.
    22:27
    Some of your modern ball count units on a single-player replay game, they would have... 11 steps. Or you could go ball zero, you know, when you reset it before it crosses that trough switch and then you got ball one, two, three, four, five and game over off the single stepper unit that would be seven different positions. You only need six different positions for this. But you know, you analyze your game. What we're describing Neptune is like one of the more complicated ones but this should apply to all those other big door addibles from Gottlieb. Right. Yeah, there are a few subtle differences such as the gong bell instead of the knocker for 50,000 points in novelty mode. You get five gongs on the gong bell on Rockstar. Here you get five knocks. Those are the differences. Those are one of the differences. I'm going to move over to the schematic. So if you want to... Excuse me.
    23:43
    Are you there? I'm going to put this back. So there's really... You'll see the pins all over the schematic here.
    23:59
    This is, I'm not asking you to read it, but all these dotted lines here, these are all different pins in the 26 pins of adjustment between novelty and add a ball mode. What he's pointing at now is the unit that's under the play field because this is, I believe, the one that turns on and off the wow lights This zone right here this is where the interesting stuff happens So other than when you hit the last of your wows and you subtracting that and flipping back to subtracting from balls to play,
    24:49
    the zero position switches on the two stepper units, the two that you're going to have after you do the mod,
    24:57
    function the same way in reset. So you just have to sort of duplicate that step down function as far as the reset goes.
    25:07
    So, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So step up. Well, we talked about the step up on the 100K already. You're just going to take that signal that is flipped by this pin to either flip on the 100,000 JX relay in out-of-ball mode, your 1 in 100,000 light you get, or it's going to do the light box advance every 100,000. So you've got a signal line there that's going to step up every 100,000, and you just need to route it to whichever stepper unit that's going to be counting your 100,000s. Yeah, the way that I had originally described to Dave to do it was actually to disable this switch and put an extension on to the wire that runs to the light box advance unit and put that to the new coil, the step-up coil on the new advance unit.
    26:07
    All right. And the other one is 100,000 points that runs. It runs to the bulb, and it also runs to the wire on the light box advance unit that runs to the bulb, and that can be disabled, actually, because it would be unnecessary. Yeah, and can we get that excerpt of the schematic back?
    26:26
    So, and you can see right there, the fifth position light box advance unit that only applies in the add-a-ball mode that stops it electrically from going above five.
    26:41
    That's this switch right here, which we have that little camera. Yeah. That's this switch right here.
    27:01
    So it dips in there. And that's the fifth position. So in edible mode, this switch is now open. So if you scored a wow, it would not award a wow because it only awards five. Wherever your addable wow count is, whether it's the new unit or that unit, you have to make sure that it doesn't go above five. The zero position switch, if we can swing that down while I'm talking. The zero position switch is a little more complicated than you might think. It's got three things in the stack. And that just has to do with the way that you do that transfer when the ball count,
    27:54
    when you're going to start subtracting from the ball count instead of from the wow count. There it is right there. And other than that, the zero position switches are involved in reset.
    28:05
    It will keep getting pulses to step down until one of the zero positions, which stops power to the coil, although mechanically it may be prevented from stepping lower anyway. And then there's another thing we'll get to later, which is how the game knows that all the different resets have been accomplished and it's ready to go into play mode. Let's see what else I want to talk about here. So you need to think about the upper and lower limits on both units. Did I cover what you need to know for the lower limits? It's very similar. You'll be able to copy the functions you see there. So on the new unit, let's say the new unit is the wow count unit. That's the more complicated case. You might even want to consider whether you can take away the switch stack that we were just looking at, that big stack of zero position switches, move that to the new unit and fabricate new zero position switches for the existing unit, depending on wire lengths. Or otherwise, if you pick to have the wow count on the existing unit, you leave that zero position switch the way it is and fabricate the simple stack of two switches to cut off only for reset for the 100k times. The 100k only steps down during reset. Now I think we're ready to talk about that line of things that determines AX reset going on anything else to show back there before we go to that? No, I don't think so. But to sum up where we are so far, I would say that, and again, this is my version of adding the new step for the 100,000 points. There's 10 wires to jump from one unit, from the original unit to the new stepper unit. there's a wire to jump from the switch on the JX relay to the step-up unit on the new unit, and then there's wires to jump to reset the new unit. Yeah, all those zero position switches. All the zero position switches. And the coils. And the coils, and then of course the common, the black wire, if you will, on the coils. We really have talked through everything. We actually spent more time talking about it than necessary to try to give you different points of view so you can think about it. To summarize on the coils, black wire on each side, every coil in other words has one black wire so that's easy enough and then the reset is pretty straightforward and that can zero position switch so that might be even a jumper right there you would run you I would think you would run a jumper off the reset on the ball count unit because that's a and and then run that to a an end of stroke switch on the gear the back of the gear of the new unit and then to the from that unit the other side of the switch runs to the coil. Yeah, and that's the way I would do it. Step up was that thing I was showing on the schematic before where there's one line that is the pulse that you're adding 100k and there's one line that's the pulse that you're adding a while and you need to get those to go to the correct pad coils on the two units. So Dave is probably going to start and explain how this could work off of the AX unit. I think you were going to talk about that. This is the way Alvin Gottlieb would have done, you know, the Gottliebs would have done this in the factory. When we get the schematic back. Right. There is a part of the schematic and for those of you following along at home, it's the AX reset. So AX pulls in when you're completing the reset. It's only involved in reset. It's got eight switches on it. It feeds pulses to all the score reels and the subtract coils we've talked about. It makes sure that ball count steps upward to six, which is no light bulb, but then when you cross the trough switch, that ball count unit's going to go down to five because it's an add a ball, so going across the trough switch counts down your ball count. And AX reset is the thing that pulls in to say, okay, all the criteria have been met. Our game is now reset. And that is about row 21 on your schematic all the way from E to I. Reset completed relay, AX reset. And what it has there is a big long line. Yeah, thank you. Reset completed relay, AX reset. So the ball count unit has to be up to six as I described. and it will slide over here. Zero position light box advance, and then it wraps back around, and you've got all the scoring wheels that have to be at zero. The motor has to come back home, and relay R has been set on the hold relay.
    34:22
    So all we have to do to get a proper way of wiring up the reset the way Gottlieb would have done it from the factory, that zero position light box advance unit opens it, well it closes at zero. This is showing it closes. We need two of those because we've got two units now.
    34:45
    So this is a brown-white-red to orange-white-red on the one light box advance unit we have now. So we're going to take one of those, say the orange-white-red, and pull that off, put it on zero position switch of the other unit,
    35:05
    and then put a new wire between the other side of that switch and the other side of the switch on the light box advance. So we're going to take the two blades of that one switch and kind of divide it like that and put another line in between. So now we're saying that both of those two stepper units have to step down to zero and close the respective switches along with all those other switches being closed, and we'll finally pull in AX reset, and we're done. That's doing it the right way. The cheating way would be to say, oh, we're going to have enough pulses. Somehow it'll step down enough, and we won't count it.
    35:45
    Which is the way I would have done it. Yeah, but it's not too bad to do the right way. I mean, you've got to fabricate that switch stack for the zero position switches or swipe it off some unit. Or add it to the end of the AX relay. Well, that's another thing because AX has eight switches on it already,
    36:09
    and we would want to have a ninth switch if we were doing the right thing to give it subtract pulses to the other new stepper unit. Well, Gottlieb does not typically stack a ninth switch. Eight is maxed out for that relay. So if we can find, what are these, number 440 screws or 256 or some tiny tiny... 5-40 screws. 540. If you can find some real long 540s, you can stack it up higher and ride on the top of the nylon there. Available at the Pinball Resource 9 to 5 Monday to Friday Okay That was a word from our sponsor and i don know if there enough insulation there at the top yeah it it it close because they maker brake switches yeah so that's a little chancy i think i think what golly really would have done is they would have broken it into two relays if they needed nine exactly yeah but we we don't have room for that. I think that the most difficult challenge in accomplishing this is finding a place to put the new stepper unit, believe it or not. It's tight back there. It's tight back there. Yes, yes they are. Any other questions about the pulses, the AX or any of that. You could probably just find a point on the schematic where pulses coming through one of these switches on AX could be split off into two places. You might want to upgrade the contact points maybe if it's not really designed to be doing two subtract coils at the very same time. Whatever your conscience will let you do. This is going to be about the size of it and it's sort of like if it could float here on top of these adjustment plugs or if we could take the adjustment plug and move it down there or something like that. The optimal area I thought to put it would be between these two stepper units that are already here somehow. Because if you move one up a little and one down a little and then it would be easy to really simple to jump the 10 wires from one unit to the other and also the reset wire. Don't we have to worry about this being too low and it bumps? Well, only if it opens. But yeah, somewhere in there I guess you would, if we put some of these, if we move anything, You've got all these stapled down wires for the lights, but maybe we could put standoffs. So whether it's a stepper unit mounting or the adjustment plug mounting, it's kind of above the wires. The other thing that crossed our minds was like a little FS unit, the little ones that you hold in your hand. The problem with those is it's an AS relay or an FS. And the problem with those is at the end of the game, you would have to be able to reset it. And it would have to reset similar to the way that unit resets on a game like Surf Champ or Snow Derby Surfer, where it goes back home. Yeah, so you need that cam to make it go back home. Right. But, yeah, I would rather have the big old rugged unit. Exactly. because essentially we're copying what they've already engineered for, which is this. And those AS units, as you know, the only person here that I know how to get them right is Donnie Owen. He's not here. So those things are hard to get correct every time. Well, Joey can do it once in a while. So, that is an engineering challenge because you probably don't have all these wire colors in stock in long enough lengths to make whole new wires. The way I would do it at home is if I had the same color wires, get some numbered Brady labels. That's what these little labels are called here. I don't think there's any on here. On the adjustments? Yeah, on the adjustments. There's a little number. They're called Brady labels. And you could get one through ten and run them. And this way you would be able to keep track of them that way if you didn't have wire collars. Yeah, well, let's take a quick look at the harness. We can back out a bit. Some extra length here. So these are the balls, probably. What mode are we in right now? Addable. Addable mode. And do we have any wows? We have one. Okay, two wows. And this cutting off the wow lights? Not yet. Okay, one of these. It's one of the pins. There you go. That one. Okay. So those wires seem to have some length to them. That might be part of your consideration. If you could keep those wires intact and they had enough length. I suppose you could move the ball count unit over so that you have the new unit directly under because this is coming from this side. All the feeds are from that side so you can move it over that way. Then maybe get the adjustment plug out where you can look at it. Which would be nice. Yeah. Have we... Everybody glazed over yet? Yeah, you should be glazed over by now. So we did anticipate the question of suppose that you wanted to try novelty mode after doing these mods. Well, really, novelty mode, you're not going to win any wows. So you do something to shut off whatever is stepping up your wild count unit.
    42:30
    And then you put the plug in the other position, and I think we had one pin. Well, maybe with the light bulbs, two pins out of those connectors that we sort of tampered with the purpose a little bit. But the vast majority of the stuff in the connectors, We're saying this mod, you leave the connectors in addable mode.
    42:58
    And then if you wanted to play novelty mode and you just moved the connectors to novelty mode like you would normally do to play that mode, it would have no effect.
    43:08
    Anything that we've done will have no effect on novelty mode. That's correct. That would depend. That's either method. So, right, you just think about the resets are the same. They're both going to keep getting pulses until they step down to zero.
    43:24
    And so it's all a matter of what adds to each unit. So you look carefully at what you did for the add coils on each unit. And if in that novelty position you're putting voltage to somewhere you shouldn't, then you have to break that connection. That's it.
    43:41
    Right. And that connection is actually made if you look at the schematic, and I don't have it. But that's either plugged or not plugged, either at a ball or novelty. So that connection would break by moving the plug on the novelty. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What I'm showing right now is the complexity of subtracting a ball when you have two different things counting it. But I'll just come back up here. So right about there, and that is around 14 to 15 E on the schematic.
    44:23
    That's going to be where you're looking at the step up, which pulses go where. And they put in a capacitor. Now, we think that's just the nicety for arcing on the wipers or something like that. It's not required. Yeah, I think that's probably exactly why it's there, because I can't find another reason why it would be there, honestly.
    44:52
    Yeah, there it is. Now that you're all, like, and further questions. Who's going to be brave enough to do it? Well, I would like to find a, if not, I don't want to call it a beater at a ball game, But if I could find a game that I wasn't planning on keeping and I wanted to try it out, I'll come back next year with it. I'll come back and bring your pillows.
    45:21
    Other questions? I think it would be wise to draw some kind of diagram of at least of what you did because if I did it and then I suddenly got hit by a bus and Joe got my game, I'd want him to know what I did to it. Oh, is he the one in your will? Yeah I would, I'd put some pencil marks around parts of the schematic and say C notes and then write up something that's like a separate sheet because it isn't going to be that much but took the green-yellow wire from here to here.
    46:12
    It won't be that much. It's the mounting of the new unit. Maybe you want to write up how you did that for posterity. Yeah, and if somebody opens the back box and is familiar with these games and sees that, the draw might hit the floor for a couple of seconds until they realized what you did.
    46:30
    It's the close back box. I don't know what it was. Or I want to buy this game because it's got this really cool feature.
    46:42
    This is something that I've thought about for years. Oh, it's so tempting when you have those lights there. Yeah.
    46:53
    So I hope you like that we did the research and it turned out to be quite easy. Probably easier on Lucky Hand or Schipahoy. But overall, easier than when I first started to consider it. Overall, a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be really, really involved. And it really mostly involves running jumpers.
    47:20
    Yeah, and I thought it was going to be something with those connectors. You look at that, even on the simpler ones, 14 or 18 pins and a single plug that goes into two 18-pin sockets. And you say, well, you've got to parse out all that stuff and maybe have some kind of Y cable that takes, you find a socket and put pins in the two different other sockets. It probably is.
    47:52
    Right. We're in the weeds far enough. So the short summary is you need a second stepper unit. You pick a stepper unit based on what you've got in your parts bin that meets the criteria, and that's going to drive your choices, but you won't be doing a whole lot with the adjustment plug.
    48:22
    So it's just getting the wires into the new stepper unit and the zero position stack for the new unit.
    48:30
    Okay. So I just want to take just a second to thank Dave for asking me to be part of this little project. It was kind of fun. For those of you who don't know, not only is Dave technically a real expert, he called me an expert earlier, and I can't even begin to duplicate his knowledge, but also a real historian of the hobby. So it was a real pleasure to work with Dave. Thank you. Thanks everybody for listening.