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Bit Rot and Bug Fixes

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·41m 39s·analyzed·Apr 1, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Technical troubleshooting of 8-Ball Deluxe restoration with Stern tech support.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Chris's ongoing restoration of his 8-Ball Deluxe pinball machine, focusing on troubleshooting efforts with help from a Stern technician named Nick. Key issues included connector problems on the MPU board (resolved by reseating connections), bit rot on sound chips requiring replacement, and dead lamp matrix chips. The episode covers technical diagnostics, replacement parts sourcing, and cosmetic restoration planning.

Key Claims

  • Nick from Stern was able to diagnose and partially resolve multiple issues on the 8-Ball Deluxe including loose connectors, bit rot on sound chips, and dead lamp matrix chips

    high confidence · Chris detailed Nick's visit and systematic troubleshooting approach over two hours

  • Bit rot on ROM chips destroys information over time with no replacement option other than getting new chips

    high confidence · Nick explained the concept to Chris; suspected three sound chips had bit rot

  • Lamp Matrix chips are prone to failure and are commonly replaced by installing them in sockets for easy swapping

    high confidence · Jared explained standard practice of socketing lamp matrix chips because they fail easily

  • Many vintage pinball chips are interchangeable and can be swapped between sockets to diagnose which is bad

    high confidence · Nick demonstrated swapping chips between sockets to isolate faulty components

  • Novus polish can be safely used on both clear-coated playfields and Mylar-covered playfields

    medium confidence · Jared stated Novus 2 is gentle enough for both surfaces

  • Spike pinball boards use distributed computing with networked daughter boards controlled via LAN cables from a small main board

    high confidence · Nick showed Chris a Spike main board (~4x3 inches) and explained the architecture

  • Battery replacement kits for vintage pinball EEPROM backup are not commercially sold; hobbyists homebrewing solutions using button battery holders or triple-A packs

    medium confidence · Chris researched battery replacement options and found no commercial kits available

Notable Quotes

  • “It's one of those things where when you see somebody that knows what they're doing, doing their thing, you realize how little you know and are ever so grateful that they know what they know”

    Chris @ ~15:00 — Reflects on the value of expert technical knowledge in pinball restoration

  • “Eventually. But in the meantime, it's working again. So if it doesn't work again, jiggle the connectors.”

    Nick (Stern tech) @ ~18:00 — Practical troubleshooting advice for connector issues; connectors are common failure points

  • “Bit rot, over time, it basically chews away the information that's on the inside, and there's no replacing it other than getting a new chip. I mean, once it's gone, it's gone.”

    Nick (Stern tech) @ ~25:00 — Explanation of ROM degradation over decades—a major issue with vintage pinball machines

  • “I'm probably going to be the pin owner that pays somebody else to fix electronic issues with his machine, and I can strive to deal with the mechanical issues myself.”

    Chris @ ~90:00 — Self-assessment of technical skill level and approach to machine maintenance

  • “It's basically what I would wind up with is the cosmetics of the machine and how that's going.”

    Chris @ ~45:00 — Shift in restoration focus from electronics to aesthetics once playfield is functional

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonNickpersonMike LovettpersonAndrew Driverperson8-Ball DeluxegameMetallica LEproductGhostbustersgameRoller Gamesgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: No commercial battery backup replacement kits available for vintage pinball machines; market gap filled by hobbyist homebrewing solutions

    medium · Chris researched battery replacement kits; found no commercial offerings; community using button cell holders or AA packs as workarounds

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern technicians actively supporting community members with technical guidance and house calls for restoration projects

    medium · Nick traveled from Vegas to help Chris troubleshoot; provided 2-hour diagnostic session; offered follow-up visits for chip reading/replacement

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Lamp matrix chips commonly socketed by manufacturers due to known high failure rates, enabling easy user replacement

    high · Jared explained standard practice of socketing lamp matrix chips; inexpensive chips (~$2) easily swappable by end users

  • $

    market_signal: Vintage/classic pinball restoration remains active hobby with demand for replacement parts and services

    high · Chris actively sourcing parts from Marco Specialties, Cliffy, and other suppliers; Nick offering diagnostic and repair services

  • ?

    community_signal: Nick from Stern providing freelance technical support to community members outside of official channels, facilitating knowledge transfer

    medium · Nick visited Chris at home via WonderCon proximity to help troubleshoot; demonstrated extensive technical expertise and hands-on diagnostics

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.125

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rides easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization
0:30
You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Freedless, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan.
0:41
Live from a boat, because it's been very, very wet here in Queensland. Oh yeah? Yeah, we've had flooding here in Queensland.
0:51
We've got about, some sims have had 400mm of rain in about three hours. well this is why your cars have the uh the snoot on them right the snoot that goes up to the roof so you can drive through this stuff yeah that's right well they actually have it they have another campaign he called if it's flooded forget it because there's lots of heroes there's lots of heroes that like to drive through um flooded water and not realize that you know half the roads washed out beneath them right and um yeah it's a bit of a bad time so yeah they actually have this campaign that says if it's flooded forget it and most people still ignore it as you see in all the news it's amazing the campaigns that have to get put out for various causes and they might as well just start every one of these with hey dumbass they should really show it shouldn't they don't be an idiot you have no sense of common sense so it's like yeah you go through like there's some bits of road i saw some cars going through like flooded areas of water over the road and the water you know you can actually see the road below it and it was low enough that would not have been any trouble at all to get across you know and that's that's okay i think as long as you can see the road surface below um and you know the condition of the road underneath and that's fine but if you if all you see is a big lake um or like rapid water going over a huge like expanse like what was you know like a a 10 meter wide creek it's now a 50 meter wide creek you know maybe maybe not uh yeah yeah that's right so yeah it's been real wet here but we've been fine um but pretty much everywhere else that's low um has been inundated.
Spike
product
Firepowergame
Centaurgame
Blockade Podcastorganization
WonderConevent
Wizard Amusementscompany
Marco Specialtiescompany
Cliffycompany
Mr. Sheenproduct
?

product_concern: Widespread ROM bit rot affecting 40+ year old pinball machines as inherent hardware degradation issue

high · Nick identified bit rot on sound chips in 8-Ball Deluxe; explained irreversible nature of chip degradation over decades

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spike platform represents significant architectural evolution from centralized backbox design to distributed networked daughter boards via LAN

    high · Nick showed Chris a ~4x3 inch Spike main board controlling entire machine via LAN cable networking to daughter boards

    • 2:47
    Some 40-year records have been broken here, so it's been crazy. Wow. Yeah, we actually got sent home. The government here in Queensland officially sent everyone home last Thursday and closed all the schools on Thursday and Friday, which was great for the kids because it's now school holidays here.
    3:10
    Sorry, really? Yeah, extra two days of school holidays for them, so they're stoked. And the parents are going, exactly yeah well over in this neck of the woods the rain has seemingly stopped we're back to sunny weather and that makes me happy because I don't like the cold and I don't like the wet I know that we need the wet but I really don't like it yeah I don't really mind the wet but I don't like this sort of wet you know ridiculous wet, biblical wet biblical proportions, apocalypse wet yep, no good it's classic California really isn't it like it's sunny all the time well yeah Southern California, we do have to delineate ourselves from Northern California or see when we talk California we always just assume Southern California and when Northern Californians talk California, they have to specify Northern California because otherwise you get lumped in Southern California and they don't like us much.
    4:18
    That's probably fair enough too because if you think of Queensland, there's Southeast Queensland, which is where I live, and then there's the North, which is tropical. It's sort of like saying just Queensland. It's very broad because California is quite a big state.
    4:33
    We cover quite a bit of distance, long and narrow. The reason why Northern California doesn't like us is because we take all their water.
    4:42
    Ah, right. You know, you've got the pipes. It's all pipes. Exactly. Hey, before we get going much further, I want to give a big notice of appreciation to one of our listeners, Andrew Driver. He's been listening to us since the Barcade podcast days. Since the really rough, rough days. God, that's a long time ago when there was eight voices shouting over each other and really bad comedy skits with really terrible Irish accents going on.
    5:20
    Yeah. Anyway, I just want to give a big thanks to him. He donated to the cause so that we can keep our website going. So mucho appreciation. Good on you, mate. Thank you very much. and keep on listening. It's going to get better. Why do you say that? As if it's not good enough?
    5:42
    It's always going to get better. It's continuous improvement. I always love it. At the end of our podcast, if you make it through the end of the podcast,
    5:51
    there's Jared's canned section. Yeah, his little canned speech section saying, hey, thanks for listening and to be sure and leave reviews. Yes. And then the final one that it always kind of tweaks me is because we can't be better unless you tell us how. And I'm like, we've been doing this how long? Do we really still need them to be telling us how to get better or do we just kind of know? Or do we even care?
    6:21
    Well, sometimes we like to know. As far as the format goes, I think we're okay. I think we've got that down, which the format basically is we do what we want. which seems to be working pretty well for the last like 50 episodes or so that we've done in this format um but um it's more about you know leaving reviews it's actually on the subject of reviews for podcasts it is actually kind of good to do it if you are an itunes user because it does actually surface the podcast higher um with with the positive just like an app review really um it contributes towards its position in the podcast chart. So if you do listen through iTunes and aren't using something like Pocket Cast on Android or something like that to consume the podcast, if you do like it, leave us a review. And if you don't, send us an email and tell us why you don't, which is generally the case for anything as well. Reviews are only there to... When you leave a review for anything, it should only be positive things. If you've got negative things to say, you send an email to the person.
    7:34
    You know, generally that should be how it works, but I know a lot of people find reviews easier to unload their vitriol in.
    7:43
    Not that we've really had any reviews, I think, for the podcast. I was going to say, I don't know if we have, and if we have, I haven't gotten any notification, nor have I necessarily gone over and looked. And looking.
    7:57
    But I mean, really, a lot of the time, reviews come in different forms. So we don't get official reviews on iTunes, but we get all the folks in Pinball Arcade fans interacting with us and having a laugh.
    8:09
    Honestly, that's just as good. Or on Twitter, as we just got a notification today where somebody was like, hey, you know what? I came in to listen to the pinball and came out being like, yeah, they're talking Aquabats.
    8:23
    Everyone's happy. Exactly. You never know what's going to spark your guys' interest. We never know what we're going to talk about, generally, before the show starts. That does happen, too.
    8:35
    We totally find it. And that obviously seems to be the best way that this show works. That format works for us, so we do it. Yep. So last week on Chris's Adventures of 8-Ball Deluxe, I regard everybody with charred boards and a non-functioning pinball machine so since then on Thursday this guy Nick from I believe he actually works for Stern he's based out in Vegas anyway he was coming to the WonderCon in Anaheim which is a I guess it's another one of these you know it's another Comic Con essentially but it's not it's more anime and cosplay-based than it is movie-based, which Comic-Con has become very heavy.
    9:30
    So anyway, as Stern has been doing various cons, they bring some machines and set up a booth and let it roll. And I think they've been having much success based off of...
    9:45
    Pinball has definitely picked up, I'd say, in the last two years. Yeah. It's become much more commonplace. I've been seeing many more articles about it.
    9:56
    Yeah, it's become part of the zeitgeist now. It's just like... Yeah. It gets mentioned in the same breath as vinyl records and, I don't know, plastic chairs.
    10:08
    Vinyl records and plastic chairs. Vinyl plastic chairs, you know? Egg-shaped chairs. Imagine if you had to place some vinyl chairs plastic records and pimples That would just be a recipe for success a business opportunity right there Yeah so anyway WonderCon is in Anaheim Anaheim is by freeway only 20 minutes away from me so after he got done setting up he swung by my house again thanks to Mike Lovett of Wizard Amusements who gave me his phone number good on you Mike so anyway Nick came over and as many questions that I had regarding voltage and where to meter and what kind of numbers and me trying to stare at a schematic going, what am I doing?
    11:04
    He comes in there, whips out the meter, starts just touching points going, nope, that's good, nope, that's good, nope, that's good. It's one of those things where when you see somebody that knows what they're doing, doing their thing, you realize how little you know and are ever so grateful that they know what they know because he whipped through and troubleshot like a madman. The good news is all of my boards are fine. Good. That's really good. Yeah. So I was getting and he checked the power modulator board first.
    11:39
    Said all the voltage was just fine on that. And then he started checking the MPU board and trying to figure out what was going on with that. and that one was kind of stumping him for a little bit. And then he started kind of testing various connectors and seeing if they were getting power.
    12:01
    And on the solenoid board, there's a connector. It goes into the J3. I don't know what exactly any of that is. But anyway, he kind of was plugging and jiggling and kind of just playing with it a little bit, rocking it back and forth and all of a sudden, boom, MPU came back to life. And I realized that therefore it was my going through and unplugging and plugging everything back in that shook the connection. So it's one of those things where I said, so do I need to replace the connectors? And he goes, eventually.
    12:36
    But in the meantime, it's working again. So if it doesn't work again, jiggle the connectors. It could actually be one of two things. It could be that the risers of the motherboard, there's a little bit of dry solder on them. So when your soldering skills get up, you might just be able to reflow solder onto those connectors or the little pins, and that might actually fix the problem.
    13:02
    Or it could actually be within the plug itself, in which case, yeah, sniff the wires, redo the plug. Again, when everybody's recommendation is the first thing you do is change all the plugs and connectors. It is usually the cause of most problems, as you found out. As I just found out. So, again, that's one of those, okay, down the road, we'll get to that. Buy a creeping tool, buy some Molex plugs, and just go to town. That put him back on course to then trying to deal with my sound issues. Yeah. So he was checking it all out, and he was like, oh, no, these are warming up. They're good. All the test points were good. he was just basically we had a solid green light and he wanted to get rid of that solid green light and get it to pulsing seven times because that would tell him where any error was so he popped off a couple of the chips that were on there turns out the two of them had a leg broken so he repaired the leg on each of those. How do you repair a leg on a Rome? Do you just touch a solder on it? You know, he had a little thin wire, and he kind of jammed it in the hole where it would go, and then he put the chip wire over and held it in place, made sure it was making a connection. Once it made the connection, then he soldered it into place. It's a completely Frankenstein temporary fix, but again, all we were doing was trying to find out what the issue was.
    14:39
    Once the issue is found, well, then you can go ahead and replace as necessary. So then, but what he suspected was, and he kind of, he left pretty much thinking that this is the case, but he was saying that my chips, they have what's called bit rot.
    14:58
    So bit rot over time, it basically chews away the information that's on the inside and there's no replacing it other than getting a new chip. I mean, once it's gone, it's gone.
    15:10
    Unfortunately, he didn't have his chip reader with him, so he wasn't able to confirm necessarily. But there's three short chips that are basically exactly responsible for the sound, and those were the three that he was like, nah, I'm not happy with these three.
    15:31
    So what he's going to do is come back on another day with a Squawk and Talk board that he knows is fully functional, and hopefully his card reader. I assume that it's also a writer.
    15:47
    But if we can make sure that those chips work, then we're all good, at least on the soundboard aspect. But he said the amp was perfectly fine, and, again, all the voltage on it was perfectly fine. so then we moved on to the lights that I had that weren't functioning anymore and it was kind of a string of lights, I mean obviously they were connected in some way, shape or form it turns out that it was more lights than I thought it initially, which was the rollover B and the arrow light no, it was a couple of the numbered balls and then also the in the bank of drop targets there's a whole set of lights that are also numbered, and a couple of those were out. So there was an actual string of lights that were gone. Marking down what those were and then reading the book, he was able to determine that it's one of the... On the... That matrix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's common to die really, really easily. Yeah, so one of those chips is dead. And so he was like, okay, so we've got to replace that. Yeah.
    16:56
    But again, he checked every other connector on that board, and there was only one that was dodgy. Yeah. So.
    17:05
    Yeah, the Lamp Matrix chips are, like, if you need to replace them, what they normally do is when they're doing the replacement of the chip, they put a socket on there and then they put the chip into the socket because it's pretty common that they go. If you ground out something incorrectly or you, like, touch wires over things that you shouldn't be touching, it'll blow that chip real easy. so normally they just put a socket in and you can just buy these chips they're very inexpensive, they're like a couple of bucks and they will just work, they're a pre-programmed chip basically that is a drop-in replacement so they're just an integrated circuit, that's all they are so anyway, once that's all once those are all, I mean they all seemed fairly minor you might say it's just troubleshooting them as major but I was amazed at how I didn't realize so many of the chips are just interchangeable with each other there's only a very few that are specific chips so he was able to pop them off, put them in place elsewhere and be like nope, see it's working here so it's not the chip that's bad, or it is the chip that's bad determining which is which he was able to take out a sound chip and put it into another sound chip socket and it would still behave the same. It doesn't matter where you essentially put them as long as they're all in together and together they form the whole of its part, I guess you could say. Yeah, right. So it was interesting. He was over here for two hours just hammering away looking at stuff.
    18:45
    He gave it a thorough look over. Well, it's good. It sounds like most of the stuff that you're concerned about isn't actually a real problem. and it's just doing a few minor tweaks here, giving you EEPROM for the sound and that, I mean, many people out there can burn them for you. You can just buy a complete set from Micro Specialties, I think, or, you know, this guy probably can actually do it for you because you have a run burner. So, you know, easily fixed and it sounds like you've got a, all you need to then do is re-operize the play field and start flipping it. Well, that's just it. It's, you know, however much I need to pay to get these little things working, whatever's left over then goes to cosmetic appearance things. Like, rubber is probably the first thing I do need to, I don't own any Novus polishing.
    19:39
    Excuse me, Mr. Shane. It's fine. We'll furniture polish. Well, and there's the question. over the play field, it's not clear-coated, but it looks like it has a form of Mylar over the entire playfield. It's not just in specific areas, but it was the entire playfield done. So there's my question. Are you not supposed to use Novus on Mylar?
    20:06
    I don't think so. Novus is just a cleaner. There's different grades of Novus, of course, like a more abrasive version and the sort of fine polish. So I think generally Novus 2 is what they use to polish play fields and sort of get them back to nice and slippery again so the ball can really fly over it. So it works pretty much the same if it's got Mylar or if it's got a clear coat. Essentially, you're just cleaning the surface and reconditioning the surface. So Novus is, I think, used on pretty much everything. It gentle enough that it doesn really affect the Mylar or the plastic overlay Likewise with the automotive clear coats it just as good So they say after you cleaned it with Novus then throw on the carnauba wax and let it rock
    20:56
    Yeah, you can if you really want to go hardcore. But seriously, I just buy a tin of furniture polish. The brand over here is Mr. Sheen. I'm sure that's a brand you can get over there as well.
    21:07
    But it's just a straight-on foaming furniture polish, and it's good because it gets into little gaps. you can spray it along habit rails and stuff as well. And it brings them back up to a beautiful shine.
    21:21
    Yeah. You don't have any of those, but you know, you can, and I have like, it's my go-to polish. And, um, I've even gone to our local supermarket and got the generic brand of it. So it works just as well. So it's, it's fine. It's just, it just removes all the solenoid dust. Um, I need to get a new on my, uh, on my pop bumpers. I need to get new pop rings uh that's good no it's the little plastic uh on top of a ballet it says amber and then on top of that is the cap that uh so I'm missing yeah so I'm missing one of the 8 ball deluxe caps but then at closer inspection of the other two it looks like they've just been glued onto the rings so the the rings are they're only three bucks each and the yeah I can get a set of caps for $20.
    22:14
    Yeah, easy. So that's not the problem. I need to get a new coil for my knocker coil, which is $10. So I really need to buy some lights.
    22:26
    Yeah, you do. You should think about LED. I think on that era of pinball machines, some of the controlled lamps, so the ones like the 8-ball lights and stuff, they don't go so well with LEDs. but you can definitely put all the LEDs under the plastics, all the GI LEDs. Yeah. Apparently you need to get a, um, a new board though for the LED. Really? That there's something about, uh, I was reading about it that, uh, some people have had no problems plugging them in and other people have saying that the, the light just kind of flickers a little bit and then goes right back out. Um, yeah, I think you've got to get the right type of LEDs. Like you've got to, there's really cheap ones. The non, uh, the ghosting LEDs. but the ones that are non-ghosting I think actually have the little bit of circuitry built in that that board that you're talking about actually offers so if you were for example going to use LEDs in the whole play field you probably would just go and buy the lamp driver board and that would solve the problem for you but otherwise you can just use the non-ghosting LEDs I think again you know Marco sells an entire kit for $215 bucks.
    23:41
    No, really. A whole board kit. A whole board kit and all the LEDs. Or I can spend $22 and have 100 bulbs of just regular 555s and go with that for a little while. Yeah, that'll certainly do for the time being.
    23:57
    The thing is that the longer you have those bulbs in, the crustier the GI circuit will get. It'll just keep on getting real charred. so if anybody out there is an LED distributor and wants to give me a sample pack that will work on my table I'd be more than happy to accept a sample pack yeah when you say sample pack you mean an entire kit of LEDs no no no I'm not asking for an entire kit I'm just saying if you want to try and convert me to the ways of LED on a pinball machine then send a couple bulbs my way and let me see what they look like.
    24:41
    Like I said, it's basically what I would wind up with is the cosmetics of the machine and how that's going. I was thinking of with the return lane, when the ball comes down, my return lanes aren't dented at all. On Firepower, they were dented from how forceful the ball can come at the return lane. On 8-ball deluxe, it doesn't look like as much of a problem.
    25:07
    They're not caved in at all. They're crimped or anything. They're nice and straight. That being said, the ball comes down. As soon as it hits the back of the flipper, it kind of does a little hop.
    25:18
    Yeah. It's a wide guard, isn't it? It's like a little wide guard. It's a metal plate. No, it's a metal plate. A metal plate. Okay.
    25:28
    Now, could these cells... Cliffy sells them, and I'm not sure if they have done something with the shape so that it goes flush with the flipper instead of being slightly lower than the flipper so the ball bounces on the back of the flipper.
    25:43
    So that might be something that I'll try, too. Those are $11 each, and I would only need the two. Yeah, that's fair enough. Because it is kind of annoying doing a live flip and it hopping on you, and so therefore there are certain angles that you can't get on the fly. You have to catch the ball and get that angle because of that. Are they original flipper bats on there? I couldn't tell you.
    26:13
    Okay, so on that era of pinball, I think you might find that the rubbers were slightly thinner than the regular rubbers that you see on most pinballs today. So you might find that it's jumping because the rubbers are actually a little bit too thick as well. So just bear that in mind too. If you're going to replace the return lanes, also replace the flipper bats as well because if they haven't been replaced recently, they'll be cracked and buggery. Well, they're not cracked, that I can tell. All right. Well, think about it because the thing is, if they're old-ish looking, you're going to be looking at them all the time. So cosmetically, just buy a new set and you'll be guaranteed the right tie, number one.
    27:01
    And, you know, they're going to look good every time you flip. So, yeah. I did notice that on Marcos, they also sell a custom pinball for Able Deluxe, which is a black pinball with a little eight on it. And I was like, I might have to get that. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
    27:21
    Especially after seeing that kind of stuff in Pinball Arcade with, you know, their custom balls. I think I've done that very ball with A-Ball Deluxe although the problem is that when you play it in night mode it's really hard to see a black ball yeah, it's the thing not a problem on a mobile, but not good on a DX11 so anyway like I said, I don't know the convention ends on Sunday he might swing by after the convention otherwise I think he said he'll be in California again next week so for the meantime the machine actually plays though so I can get back to playing the battery on the MPU after my neighbor and I tried cleaning up of the corrosion that was on there I think we cleaned up all the solder that had been trying to make any connection whatsoever and so all the high scores all the game settings that you do via the back box or not via the back box via the coin door I can't do any of those So it's basically factory reset, doesn't retain high scores.
    28:29
    So that's one of those things that I definitely would like to get a battery back in there. I just need to, you know, I've looked up the battery replacement kits.
    28:41
    Nobody's selling an actual battery replacement kit. So apparently everybody's just kind of homebrewing them. I think at OT&T what they do is they put a button battery holder in place where the little battery pack thing sits on the board and that's good because they're cheap the little lithium batteries that you can get from a drugstore or whatever and they last for ages they last for a good four years before they start failing so yeah that's one way of doing it or you know you just do what everyone else does and get like a little three double a, uh, battery pack. Right. My question is where do you, where do you get that from? You could probably get those from any, any place that sells, um, like spare parts. Like I'd imagine radio shack, if they're still in business over there would sell those. Yeah. Um, or any, any place that sells, um, you know,
    29:38
    uh, kits that you can build with, you know, like electronics kits. Yeah. Um, would have all those accessories there anyhow. Yeah. So, So a really common thing to do is just jump through it off the board with long wires and the rest in the bottom of the back box. But the other thing you can do as well, I think, it's more expensive, but you can get a flash kit that allows you to save game settings on flash memory and doesn't need a battery backup, which is pretty cool as well. It actually just daughters onto one of the, I think the game chip goes into it and then it just stores the settings directly on this sub board and it doesn't require any battery backup at all it just does it on flash memory which is pretty cool. He was saying that there's somebody's making a sound board that you can play your own music on so you can have it not play the music that is say with Able Deluxe and you can have it playing your own music. I was like that's pretty cool especially with I think I've mentioned it so many times it's driving people nuts, but my story about Centaur and that customer on the pack dude did, because I was like, I'd be able to get my music back in there when going to multiball.
    30:52
    It's pretty cool. It is, and then he showed me the board for Stern, the new Stern board. I kid you not, it was I don't know, maybe four inches by three inches. That's it.
    31:07
    No it doesn power everything So that board that he showed you is the spike board that in the back box Then because spike is a distributed computing layout there a whole lot of daughter boards underneath the play field that drive things like the flippers, solenoids, all that sort of stuff. So rather than having it all up in the back box, it's located right near the thing that it actually controls. So that board he showed you was actually just the wrong board.
    31:35
    Think of it like a motherboard. It plugs in with LAN cables. That's the amazing thing. You know, that's what plugs into the other boards. LAN cable is like, wow, that's slick. Yep. Just everything is networked, basically. Yeah. Back to the main controller. Yeah, and it orchestrates everything. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Spike is pretty cool as an architecture. And then he goes, you aren't in the market for a new machine, are you? I'm like, no, I can barely afford the one that I bought. He's like, oh. He brought a Metallica LE and a Ghostbusters. I don't know what Ghostbusters he didn't mention to the show and he's not exactly keen on hauling them back to Vegas geez wouldn't that be amazing you can drop them off to me I can mine them for you do you want me to hold on to them while you do something totally yeah wow that'd be alright wouldn't it and then I said you know the machine I really want is a roller games to which I was greeted with really?
    32:42
    And he goes, yeah, I know a guy in Vegas. And that's when that's pretty much, you know, I'm like new in box.
    32:47
    And I'm like, wow. But wow. I can't afford that either. It's unobtainium. Right. When you go to the car dealership and they go, what do I have to do to get you in a car today? And you're like, give it to me for free.
    33:06
    Yeah, That's right. That's pretty much where I'm at there. Yeah. Thanks. You know. Yeah. Just had to pay the property tax. So... All right. That would have sucked.
    33:21
    So anyway, that's this week's adventures and hopefully next week I will be able to say that it now tells me to quit talking and start talking. Yeah. It squawks and it talks. That would be nice. Yeah.
    33:39
    Yeah. I guess the thing you do, you get to learn lots of stuff with an old pin, more than you probably would with something like a Ghostbusters LE.
    33:50
    What I have learned quickly is that I'm probably going to be the pin owner that pays somebody else to fix electronic issues with his machine, and I can strive to deal with the mechanical issues myself.
    34:04
    Yeah. That sounds fair enough. there's a bit of a specialized thing to be able to fix boards. So, you know, if you're not comfortable with it, pay someone who is. And as you saw, like two hours with the tech, you get a working pin at the end of it, or at least a pin that's working for now. Not only that, but like I said, he knew exactly what everything should be reading without having to, you know, consult a manual or anything else like that. Um, I can imagine me trying to figure out what test points, you know, doing the counts, knowing where they are, looking at a manual, going back and forth. I mean, that's something that would have taken me hours and hours and hours. Yes.
    34:41
    So as opposed to him just being like, no, not there. No, no. Okay. We have that board. Fine. You know? So yeah, it's like, Oh, that's a two minute check or not even that probably. Right. So yeah, it's, it is a lot quicker to sometimes pay an expert to do the job. You know, it's all about time versus cost really, isn't it? And sometimes it's worthwhile.
    35:03
    Yeah, it is. Oh, what else is going on there nothing else new happened with uh pinball arcade did it oh wait something kind of that we're going to vaguely mention yeah because we're not quite super sure if if they want to talk about yet so we're going to be very vague but let's just say some people have been asking us even via twitter uh so what is going on with the month off that farsight is taking what are they going to be uh you know do we know what they're working on yeah do we know Okay, good.
    35:34
    And we've had whispers. We've seen video. And we can say that we're talking about them going in and retuning tables, changing collision detections. It turns out that sometimes the way it was layered with graphic-wise was affecting how the ball was reading the collision. And that was creating what we often refer to as the vacuum ramps.
    36:03
    we can say that some of those tables that you know and love are going to be significantly more difficult.
    36:12
    Or, let's just put it this way, more accurate. Or more accurate, but yeah. But don't expect things like the ball to go rocketing out ramps and basically you just look at the ramp and the ball will go up it anymore. Things are changing.
    36:27
    And mainly it's changing with those first two season tables. Now, this isn't going to be either every single table. but the tables that we've heard mentioned that are being worked on are definitely from those first two seasons and you know so whether or not we see better graphics on any of them I don't know but gameplay wise there's going to be something expected I'm pretty confident we won't see refreshed graphics they're just not going to have enough time but definitely anything that can be tweaked that's already in the game So things like collisions, draw order, stuff like that, that can be done. Things that actually require an art pass, such as alpha panes, new artwork, that sort of stuff, no, that won't be done. But yeah, the actual gameplay and your interaction with the play field and the flippers, I think that's what we can actually look forward to in this bug fixing month. But on certain tables, that's the source of many of the bugs that are on that table. That's right.
    37:38
    So I think as we draw closer to it, we'll start talking about it more. But there's lots of the stuff we've seen.
    37:47
    It's certainly getting me very excited. And it might actually really ignite my passion for some tables again after they've been implemented. So I'm really looking forward to the fixes coming out.
    37:59
    So that's the little bit of news that we have on that front. Anything else going on that we should mention?
    38:10
    I did actually get a little bit of a tweet conversation with Zen. I follow a guy on Zen called Mel Kirk. He's one of the guys who works for Zen, and he was saying, just pulled a 13-hour day at Zen Studios, but it was totally worth it. I said, hmm, sounds like you've got something pretty cool. Yeah, it sounds like you've got something cooking up. It should be pretty interesting. I guess I cannot wait to show you guys more.
    38:38
    So I think we're going to be in for a Zen table release or announcement pretty soon. So stand by for that one. That'll be sweet. It will be sweet.
    38:49
    So, yeah. Yeah, I don't even know what they're working on, which is very much the case with Zen, because they never show their cards until they've actually released a table. Right. Yeah, so we'll just have to wait and see. But, yeah, keep an eye on their Twitter feed or their Facebook page because, yeah, I reckon a blog is impending. I'm about tapped out mainly because I want to go back to playing my machine.
    39:11
    You want to flip out. And I have to go as well because I'm having my dad over today and kind of got to clean the house and also buy the food for lunch. Oh, well, yeah.
    39:22
    So I probably should go do that, I think. All right. and you the listeners should get back to doing whatever you're doing instead of listening to us blather on and on and on but hey if you want to drop us a note give us a comment give us an idea for an upcoming episode that you want to hear us talk about please do so drop us an email blahblahblockade at excuse me let me try that again god I always mess that up blahblahblockade dot com no god damn it put it at the end of the podcast please um the address you want is blackheadpimple.com for the website and blah blah blackhead at gmail.com for the email uh but that they're the ones that you want why don't you go ahead mock us on twitter jared is at jared morgues i am at shut your traps uh you can also uh uh check out my instagram feed it's uh shut your trap or you just look up Chris Frevis either or you'll find my Instagram.
    40:26
    And yeah, those are about the notes that we're going to give today. Yeah, that's about right. All right, folks. Hey, if you want us to geek out on any thing not pinball, also give us a heads up what you're interested in because you know I'm always up for going off on tangents non-pinball.
    40:47
    Yeah, absolutely. That's what the show is all about. So yeah, you can send us stuff and we will do our best to talk about it and entertain you. Yes. All right. So until then, we'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye-bye. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter runs easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to you can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening play some pinball
    41:33
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