You're listening to TopCast, this old pinball's online radio. For more information, visit them anytime. www.marvin3m.com slash TopCast Alright, welcome to another night of TopCast. I'm here, along with Mr. Shelburne, who's our engineer tonight. And we've got Norm on the telephone. Say hello, Norm. Hello Norm. Yes, thank you Norm. So Norm, we're coming from the Department of New Acquisitions. Do you know what that is all about? I mean, buying stuff new. Yeah, what have you been buying lately? I bought an old hockey game in Chicago for $54 and I bought a fun fair. Well, those aren't actually all that new, are they? They're about six months, eight months old. I'm not buying a lot of games right now. I'm out of space. Oh, yeah. Well, boy, how typical, huh? How is Shelberg? What has he bought lately? Shelberg just runs his magazine. That's the best he can squeak out. I mean, everybody does what they can do. He bought a new scanner. He bought a new scanner, he said. Okay, so if you check out the webcam, I'll switch it to desktop. to desktop, I'll show you the latest thing that I've purchased, and that is a Chicago coin band box. Now, they made these things in the 50s. Let's see if I can give you a year. Yeah, they made them from 50 to 52. And what they are is they hook up to a jukebox, and you put a dime in the jukebox, and then these little mannequin puppets... They're midgets. Yeah, midgets are behind a curtain. And they play. And the curtain opens up, and then they start playing when the music starts playing. They sing Elvis Presley songs and Laverne Baker and all that other good stuff. Yeah, and they start, yeah, you've got to feed them, though. They want, as part of their contract, food and drink, you know. I would always have one and keep a rat in there and keep those idiots in line. The rat would keep them in line. Good. The little midgets in the band box hated the rat, so they were always, they didn't form a union to do anything stupid. and kept him in control. Yeah. So anyways, that was... Yeah, but stop laughing. That's my latest acquisition, was the Chicago Coin Ban Ban. That's awesome. Yeah, you like that, huh? Where did you buy that? Well, I bought it from Wyoming, actually. Did you pay a pretty penny? No, actually, I got a pretty good deal on it, relatively speaking. Damn the guy. No, no. We won't use that other term. No, no. Okay, alright, so, no, I didn't pimp the guy. That's the other one. Okay, well, we're back to the webcam now, the regular webcam. We're done with the band box thing. Anyways, Norm, we've got quite a few new things this week. Oh, wait, what about the band box? What are you going to do to restore it? It's actually all restored, believe it or not. It came restored. So you need a jukebox to operate it? Yeah, so I'm... Don't buy one. No. Okay, so I want to talk about some of the things we're going to do this week. We've got some new stuff. We're going to do Game of the Week like we did last week, and the webcam will be an important part of Game of the Week. We're going to also do Stump the Chump, which is a review of some technical advice we gave out last week to see if it actually panned out and we gave the correct advice. But now we're going to start out with Tech Tip of the Week. And the reason... Let's see, do we got that there? Yeah, here we go. Tech Tip of the Week. Tech Tip of the Week. Yeah, Tech Tip of the Week. We'll try that again. And now it's time for Tech Tip of the Week. Okay, so Tech Tip of the Week. I was working on a Data East Last Action Hero. And I had seen this game about a month ago. And the guy had just bought it. And it was working fine for him. I helped him set it up. He was a first-time pinball buyer. And he really liked the game. and he was playing, and he kept on calling it Terminator 2, though, for some reason. But that's what he liked to do. So anyways, he called me back and said, you know, the game won't turn on. So I go over there, and sure enough, you turn it on, and nothing really happens. The dot matrix display doesn't come on, nothing. You know, you get a little something, a little glow. You get the GI, obviously, from the play field, but not much more than that. So I check all the fuses, and all the fuses are good. and then I check the 5 volts on the CPU board, and the 5 volts is like zero. There's no 5 volts. So there's no 5 volts DC for the CPU board. Of course, the computer's not going to boot. There's no 5 volts for the dot matrix computer. That's not going to boot. And there's no 5 volts for the sound board. That's not going to boot. So nothing's going to run. So did he have enough power in those walls? Yeah, he was running it on gerbils. No, it was really kind of interesting. What it was is I decided to just kind of see if anything was dragging the 5 volts down, so I unplugged the sound board, and the game came to life. So that was kind of interesting that you unplug the sound board, and all of a sudden there's enough 5 volts so that everything comes up, and the 5 volts was good. It was right at 5.01, and everything worked, but obviously there's no sound. Plug the sound board in, boom, the whole thing dies. Everything goes down to nothing. I think the problem was in the soundboard. I'll give you a hint, Norm. The problem was not in the soundboard. Can you give me a guess, Norm, using your technical... A tracing or a connector. And it wasn't a connector. A tracing. And it wasn't that either, whatever you just said. You had your finger somewhere. I didn't have my finger somewhere. You got any other guesses? None that I can repeat on air. Okay, good. Well, what it was was just on the power supply, there's a very small 47 microfarad cap. It's just a little thing. I mean, it can't be more than a quarter inch. How the hell am I supposed to know that? I don't know, but it was like right next to the bridge rectifier for the 5 volts and right underneath that big honking heat sink. And what happened is the heat from these two devices had dried out that capacitor and then made the game not run. which I thought was really interesting because when I replaced that one, you know, I don't know, 50-cent capacitor, everything worked perfect. Kind of interesting that, you know, the electrolyte from the heat had dried out inside. Because what is an electrolytic capacitor? It's basically an electronic jelly roll. It's tinfoil with, you know, jelly on the inside. How many games do you think have been thrown away? Well, you know, it's not that they throw away the games, but, you know, people buy those rotten dog power supplies because they can't figure out what's wrong with the Data East power supply. So, you know, I thought that was an interesting fix. It took me a little while to figure it out, and actually, I admit, I had some help. I called a friend of mine, and he gave me a couple pointers. Yeah, Dragster? I called Jerry out. Yeah, the Dragster. Yeah, the Dragster. I called the Dragster 73, and he gave me some tips. And, you know, it was enough to send me down the road to, you know, redemption, and we got that sucker working. Perhaps you should plug him then. Dragster underscore 73 at hotmail.com. Send your boards to him, right? Is that what you were looking for? I think, yeah, throw him some business. Yeah, okay. So we just did that. Are we all good now? No, we should make him a sponsor. Now he's got to pay us. Okay. Okay, so that's, you know, that worked out pretty nicely. And that was, you know, of course, that was... And now it's time for... The top tip of the week. Tech Tip of the Week. Tech Tip of the Week. That was Tech Tip of the Week. You know, we'll try and do that every week. Okay, so the next thing we're going to look at is we're going to look at, you know, some other stuff. You know, we're going to do Norm's just absolute favorite. Okay, and that is... And now it's time for everyone's favorite. Game of the Week. We're going to do Game of the Week, but before we can do Game of the Week, we actually got to set it up. So I'm going to have to run a little ad here. But give me a break while I go set this up and we'll run a little ad. TopGast is brought to you by Marco Specialties, your pinball parts superstore. Visit their website at marcospecialties.com. You can search for parts by game name, game make, or part number. Marco Specialties was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Lexington, South Carolina. They specialize in pinball parts, supplies, books, and anything pinball. Marco has been online since 1996 and is the web's oldest and largest pinball parts supplier. Their new 12,000 square foot distribution center services 25,000 customers in over 50 countries. Feel free to call Marco Specialties. Top Guest is brought to you by Pinball Life. Give your pinball machine new life with parts from Pinball Life. We ship pinball parts worldwide. Pinball Life is located in the great city of Chicago. Okay, so now if everybody will check out the infamous webcam, I am showing the game of the week, which is 4 Million BC. It's a 1971 Bally game. It's a short flipper game, which means it uses 2-inch flippers, but it has what's known as zipper flippers, which is the same style of flipper that was used on several other games, Capersville, Fireball, a couple other ones. Tickney Land. Yeah, and Norm, what's cool about zipper flippers? Norm? They go up and down. Yeah. No, they go in and out. They're different. And if you note on the webcam, notice how the hood raises up. The top glass is actually in a frame of metal, so you don't slide it out. It kind of lifts up like a car hood, and then I usually take it completely out. Here's the play field, and I'm going to, like, start up a game here. I'm actually going to be playing it. And the cool thing about it is the skill shot. You want it to go up that ramp and not all the way over, which is what I just did by accident. But the other cool thing about this game, other than its immense spunkiness, is it's a multiball EM. Since this game came out in 1971, you actually can trap the ball. They have trapped the ball on the left-hand side of the play field. And what that does is then it's in the volcano, and the lights flash from different values. and if you unlock the ball at the right time, you'll get more points depending on where you unlock it. So that's one ball locked, and then the other place that you can lock the ball is in the tar pit. Okay, so the tar pit's on the right-hand side. Oh, here I got the skill shot again. There's a gate that goes up that'll allow the ball to go back to the skill shot. Did you ever visit the tar pits in California? Pardon me? I said, did you ever visit the tar pits in La Brea? No. No. And so here I have the ball stuck in the tar pit. Now if you hit the mushroom bumper in the center, it'll advance the ball down the tar pit. And you've got to do that three times, and then the ball will be ready to release for multiball. And then you can actually have, here I'll have two balls going, and if I hit the other mushroom bumper, I'll have three balls in multiball going all at the same time. And here you can see I've got the three balls running If you're watching the camera The webcam And I have the zipper flippers You just see them go open and close So it's a really really cool game I mean to be honest with you I'm not a huge fan of Multiplayer games But some of the Bally multiplayers are just Feature Feature laced they're really really cool Like here's the zipper flippers closed And there they are open And I'm showing them go back and forth open and close, open and close, in and out, kind of like Merman, his boyfriend next door. Oh, sorry, Merman. Merman, you still there? I'm here. Okay. I thought you might have fallen asleep. I did. Okay. All right. But anyways, that is 4 Million BC, and that is the Game of the Week. So now we'll switch the webcam back to the usual. And now it's time for everyone's favorite Game of the Week. So, Norm, what did you say about California? Have you ever been to the La Brea Top? It's in California. No, I never have. Oh, I was there. Yeah, you like it? It was interesting. All right, now we've got our next little, no, not that one yet. We've got our next thing. Somebody emailed me and said, you know, we really got to do something about playing tips. So we've got a new feature We're not going to have you show how to play, are we? No, we're not going to have me show how to play But I'd like to introduce Trent's Play of the Week This is Trent's Play of the Week Where Trent Augustine, who is currently ranked 5th in the world for pinball players Is going to give us a trick or tip in regards to playing or rules that he's used in competition. Right, Trent? That is correct. Okay, Trent. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you want to tell us about today. Today I'd like to talk about Dirty Pool, which I believe originated with Adam's family, wherein you can lock a ball in a bookcase while the bookcase is closed. Gomez will say, Dirty Pool, I like it, old man. You can also perform that trick on Attack from Mars. you get a ball stuck behind the three bank in front of the saucer and then actually knock that ball with another ball back into the saucer and it will destroy that saucer and also award you that saucer so you can move on to the next city. So obviously you only do this during multiball. You can only, you only have at least two balls on the play field. So as the saucer's coming up, you somehow get the ball over the wall and it traps the ball there, keeping you in multiball with just one, with maybe a minimum of just one ball which is kind of neat too Right Any of the multi you have the easiest way to do it is if you got one ball on each flipper At that point trapped on each flipper At that point, you can shoot one in to destroy the saucer, and then as soon as you hear the saucer destroyed, shoot the other ball toward the saucer. And ideally, what will happen is, that ball will hit the saucer wall coming up and rattle around in there without actually going into the saucer and become stuck behind the wall. Now, at that point, you've got one or more balls on the play field that you can play with. You can either knock that ball back into the saucer, destroying the saucer with one shot, or you can continue to play your multiball, racking up some points. Yeah, you can rape the jackpot because you just have one ball, right? You could have a one-ball multiball going. Now, the danger of that is if you lose that ball, now you've still got that ball behind the three bank. And when the game starts to go through ball search, the three bank will come down, and generally that ball will roll down, and hopefully the ball won't roll between the flippers. Right. All right, well, cool. That's Trent's play of the week. Thank you very much, Trent. Hey, no problem. All right, take care. Okay, so, Norm, what did you think of the play of the week? I'm eating some nuts. What, are you asleep again? No. I think Trent is very good. Did you know he owns a cave? Yeah, tell us about the cave. A cavern. A cavern. A cavern underground in Ohio. Yeah, it's pretty cool. He's got an arcade there, too. I mean, not in the cavern, but... We're going to have to go there and make some films. Yeah, I think you should put the arcade actually in the cavern. I think we're going to drag a pinball machine down into the Table Rock where the Indians used to do all kinds of ceremonies. Yeah, absolutely. Like prehistoric pinball. Yeah, don't you think that would be fun? I think... Shelberg, would you like to go? Absolutely. I've been telling them that for years. Let's do it. We'll have a road trip on a weekend. We don't let Shelberg out of the gerbil cage No, we're going to let him out We're not going to let him out We are going to let him out We're going to put you in the cage Alright, we've got a couple more things that we're going to do We're going to do Stump the Chump next and then we're going to do Corn's Conundrum and then we're going to be starting to take Collars but let's work on Stump the Chump And now it's time for Stump the Chump Okay, so Stump the Chump is our episode where last week we gave out some pinball repair advice and then we called them back this week and see if our advice was either correct or incorrect. And believe me, we're not always right. It's hard to fix pinballs, period, much less doing it over the phone, as Norm will attest. Oh, great. Yeah. How can you find something wrong that was in the factory? Or how can you find something wrong that you can't see? Or somebody else butchered it. That's right. It makes sense. We did that the first show where the guy called up and talked about a problem, and he said he looked over it how many times, and he goes back and he says, oh, yeah, the guy took three wires together and tied them together, and that was the problem. How in the hell are we supposed to figure that out? Over a phone. Yeah. When he had it in front of him, and it took him how long to figure it out? Well, let's go back to last week's episode, and we'll do a quick recap of what advice we gave out. Yeah, this is Spencer down in Orlando, Florida. I had a quick question on a Bram Stoker Dragula for you. I just went ahead and did a shop job on it, and the ball throw that actually pops the ball into the shooter lane worked before the shop job and is not working now. I replaced the transistor on the board. And you said when you ground the coil, the ground lug on the coil, the coil does fire, but when you ground the transistor tab, it does not fire. That's correct. Look, I couldn't find any broken traces on the board. Could it be any of the chips or transistor chips? If you're grounding the tab on the transistor, all you're doing is basically that's just an extension of that ground wire from the coil. So to me, that still means you've got to break somewhere. Then you've got to break somewhere between the connector and the transistor. Okay. So we're back to this week, and we're going to give Spence a call back and see how he did. What do you think, Norm? I think we should rename this. Call it the pinball psychic. There's no damn way you should be able to diagnose the problem of anything over a phone. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to call up Spence right now, dial in his number, and let's see if we can get him on the air. Okay, so we've got Spence on the line. We talked to him last week. Yeah, what was happening is the vinyl tro solenoid to pop the ball into the shooter lane was not functioning, and I toned out all the wiring and everything else, and you said to go back and check the traces on the board again, and actually you forcing me to go back and check those again. And what I found out, the whole green masking on the back of the circuit board was kind of wrinkled. And the actual trace that goes to the solenoid that was giving me the trouble, actually part of that wrinkled green masking came off along with part of the trace. So that was my problem, that I was really getting an intermittent connection there with that trace in the board. But the bottom line is that you didn't have to tear the whole thing to take chips out and all that to get it working. and you just needed a little nudge to go back and look a little closer maybe. Yeah, and I took it and I put a jumper wire to jump that broken part of that trace, and it's working A-OK now, so I'm good to go. All right, so we actually called that one right. Hard to believe. It's amazing, unless you're setting these all up ahead of time. No, no, no. We're not setting these all ahead of time. Okay, I believe you. Are you sure you believe me, Norm? Ask Shellberg if he believes you. He says yes. I do believe you because we're just taking these calls off the internet. Unless you tell him, be prompting people. I don't think he would do that. You have so much integrity. Thank you. Thank you, Norm. Thank you, Norm. Can we go long today so we can mess up all those other radio shows that are lined up after us? No, we're one hour. One hour. No, we're going over an hour. No, we're not. Okay, so. Let's be politically incorrect like that other guy Gary says we need to be. No, no. No, bad, naughty, wrong, no. Okay. Hey, man. Go back in my box. I gotta go, man. Where you going, man? You wanna score us a little happiness? No, man. I'm doing a radio show about goofy pinballs, man. You ain't doing a radio show, man. That was just the girls club talking about somebody else, dude. That's cool, man, because I don't know nothing about no pinballs, man. No, man. Neither do they. We got some, we do these little, people do these plugs for us. We got some pretty interesting ones. We've got a really big show for you tonight. It's Norman Shaggy on the TopCast. Hi, this is Jim from Arcade Rehab. If you have no problem laying out six large that have a pinball machine restored for you that you won't even play, you may be tuned into the wrong internet pinball broadcast. TopCast with Norman Shaggy. If you don't do it yourself, you won't learn nothing. Hey, it's Chuck from Belmizu on TopCast. Tonight's subject, play will teach us how to restore virginity. Stay tuned. All right, Norm, we're back. Sorry. You know, I like the one that you played before with the chick on it. Is she, like, Russian or German, or what is she? Oh, okay, Norm. The one with the curb on it. Hey, this is Exxon Air. What's going on? On the radio, TopCast, with you here is Norm and Shaggy, two amazing guys. I like this show. Hey, this is Curb, and even hot Russian chicks love to listen to Norm and Shaggy on TopCast. Hey, this is Oksana, you're listening to TopCast with Norm and Shaggy. Those are good, I love it when people... Yeah, what's the history on that one? Explain that one to me. I don't know, you'll have to call... Curb? Yeah, you'll have to. Have him email me at norm at Marvin3m.com. Curb, would you do that? I know you're listening. Explain to them how I just got a million emails from all over the world. How bad? I have a billion dollars for you. I'm in Ethiopia. Right. Okay, so now we're going to do a little call-in now. So everybody write this phone number down. This is our 800 number. 1-800. Don't call yet, because right now, we've got a special feature. Keep the lines open, because we're giving away crap. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the arcade. Korn's Conundrum. Hey people, it's the Korn, and welcome to this week's edition of the Conundrum. Here's how the game works. I give five clues about a game's identity. That's up to the listeners, that's you, to call in and guess what game it is. Pretty simple, right? If nobody gets it, I keep giving more and more clues until someone nails it. What is this week's prize, Shaggy? This week's prize is a System 11 music showcase. A two CD set of System 11 pinball music. Okay, so... What the hell is that? What the hell kind of prize is that? Okay, okay. And we'll throw in a Pins and Vids Volume 2 DVD. Like I said, what the hell kind of prize is that? Well, what am I supposed to do, throw in a Corvette? That's a good prize. That's fine. Okay, fine. Oh, and we're going to throw in a what? TV set. And we're going to throw in a... A choice. Oh, man. No, we're giving away too much. I'm not throwing away anymore. Give them a pack of airline peanuts. No, we're going to give them a Pin Game Journal t-shirt, too. So you get three... I'm going to call it. Yeah, you get three items. It's the System 11 Music Showcase, the Pins and Vids Volume 2, and the Pin Game Journal T-shirt. Okay, so here we go. Here's the first four hints. Hint number one. This game was made by our favorite car company, BMW. And no, that's not Bavarian Motorworks. That's Bally Midway and Williams. Hint number two. This game has drop targets. Hint number three. This game has a two-stage kickback Hit number four It's a licensed theme Okay, now And there's the down to about a thousand games Now, Norm And, no, Korn actually wanted me to run the next hint But I think if you do the next hint You pretty much give it away What, give the name of the game? Yeah, I'm gonna go to hit six There's only a thousand games, people, remember? At some cost, this game had to set up drop targets removed from the game before production. Okay. He says it. Here's number seven. Oh, God. And number eight. This game was produced both with and without diamond plate. Both with and without diamond plate. Okay, what do you think, Norm? Norm, I don't want you, even if you know it, which I know you don't. Damn well I don't know it. Okay, Norm, here is the big hint. And hit number five, here is the German version of this game's soundtrack. Now, I cut that off because he played like 30 seconds of it, and to me it was like, oh my God, I knew exactly what it was. Clue number nine. This game was designed by Steve Ritchie. It was a high-speed poop. Would you quit guessing, Norm? All right, we have our first caller. We have our first caller. They hung up? They gave up. They gave up. They gave up. Hang on. It was Steve Ritchie. He didn't know what it was. Steve Ritchie wouldn't have known what it was? He didn't even know what it was. He didn't know. He didn't know the game. Okay. And clue number 10, it's a System 11C game. If that doesn't go away, nothing will. Oh, man, Shelberg doesn't even know. Okay, we've got to call her. Hold on, Norm. All right, Norm, here we go. Hello, Flippy, how are you? Hey, how's it going? Yeah, so what's your guess? I think it's one of Vince's games. Rockin' and Rollin' Roller Games. That is correct. It is Roller Games, but maybe this isn't fair. I should have said that if you know Vince, you're not allowed to call. I recognize the music, too. Oh, okay, likely excuse. Did I have his shirt? Hey, I used to play that game on location. Okay. Norm says he wants your T-shirt, though. No. No, I can't have the T-shirt. You can have the shirt. And what size t-shirt do you want? A large. Extra large. And what size DVD do you want? What size? No, I'm just kidding. So make sure you email shaggy at marvin3m.com. Or look for an email from flippy at idreamofgenie.com or something like that. Wait, is it the conflict of interest? No, so send me your mailing address and we will send out the System 11. Is that Chris Bucci's? Yes, it is. It is Chris's disc. I already have that, so you can save that and give it to somebody else. Oh, God. Oh, man. So how are we going to get rid of all this junk? The next sucker that calls in. The next sucker. Okay, so the pins and vids, too, and the T-shirt is yours. All right, well, cool. Well, thanks a lot for calling. Okay, thanks for the broadcast. All right, bye. Bye. Oh this is like a circus Yeah you like that Norm Yeah without the clowns Well never mind Okay so give us a call If you got any tech questions comments opinions any kind of pinball-related questions, give us a call, 1-800, and we'll be right back after these messages. This portion of TopCast is brought to you by Pinguin Journal, covering the world of pinball. Visit them online at www.pingamejournal.com. Think you have what it takes to get out of TopCast? So do we. The truth is, we can't get enough of these personal promos. You know... Hi, this is Rick Swanson. This is Eric A. Hey, this is Cliffy. Hey, this is Curb, and you're listening to... Hey, Vinettes, this is Mr. Hyden. So if you have a sensational desire to hear yourself plug into TopCast.vericalradio, and we really hope you do, send the corn an email and it'll give you instructions on how you can be on the next show t-h-e-k-o-r-n at t-h-e-k-o-r-n.net the corn at the corn.net and we'll get you fixed up right away and probably on the next show the pin game journal is a proud sponsor of top cast it covers pinball like no other publication can the pin game journal is america's only pinball publication Whether you're looking for new games or the classics, reports on industry shows or collector expos, insights on a game you want or features to help you fix the game you've got, Pin Game Journal's for you. Their website is at pingamejournal.com. Pins and Vids Episode 2, Attack of the Phones, is now available at pinsandvids.com. It's the best Pins and Vids yet. Double the fun and half the underwear of the first episode. Surely to be nominated for an Oscar for the best use of fake films in a niche video or best special effects during a dream sequence. Worth much, much more than the $6 including shipping and selling price, it's worth at least $7 or $7.50. Get your copy now at pinsandvids.com. And now for a word from our lawyer. The entire sale price goes to the Pinball Hall of Fame. First episode also available. Some pinball machines were hurt during the filming of the Pins and Vids, but they were old. Get your deranged DVDs on CoinUpGoodness now. Alright, Norm, we're back. That's great What? Did you miss me? With every shot so far Yes So Norm, nobody called in So I guess we really suck All two listeners are not there to show So what Shelburne's going to do He's going to go stick his magazine In front of the webcam He's got a new Pinweasel gerbil Pinweasel gerbil Yeah A new Weasel Monthly What's the name of this magazine? You know Yeah, I do know, I just don't want to say it You can tell people what's inside What's in it? The microphone's right over there What's in it? What's in it, Shelburke? The microphone's right there Anyways, he likes to promote his magazine We can't get enough 1-800, if you've got any technical questions Or anything whatsoever, give me a call And let's talk Norm? Yes What have you been working on, anything? A couple of kidney stones Yeah, how did that go? They're finally gone. They are 100% gone? They're blasting them. That's all they tell me. They're gone, they're not gone, they're gone. These guys don't know what they're doing. Kind of like if you were a dentist or something like that. They're like, you know, charging me. I'm in seven grand already for these things. I could be investing one of those Chris Hutchinson machines for about seven grand. Yeah, you could have yourself, you know, a fishtails. Yeah, seven grand fishtails. It was perfect. Right. And instead you've got... Instead I have no kidney stone. That's right. That's right. Well, if we're not getting... Oh, my God, it's somebody. It's Santa Claus. All right, hold on. Good night. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, what's your first name? Chris. Hi, Chris. And where are you from, Chris? From Everett, Washington. Cool, and what can we do for you today? Well, I've got a System 1 question. Sure. I've got a genie with a sound problem. The sound board, you can go through the test procedure on the sound board. Plays all the sounds, plays both sets, you know, because there's like two sets of sounds there. Playing a game, all it'll do is just play one single sound. No matter how many points you get, no matter what you hit on the play field, it just continues to play just one sound out of the whole array of sounds. Well, I'd say your sound board's broken. Hmm. Okay, well, simple test. On the driver board, if you look on the schematics, there's pins along the bottom edge of the driver board that say, I think, 10, 100, and 1,000 points. Okay. Those are the three sounds because you can actually replace the sound board with a chime unit. So the way they actually drive the sound board is they take these driver transistors and they set them low. They set them to ground. You know, they shoot them to ground and they shoot a low signal to the soundboard, which should trigger, you know, the appropriate sound for that, you know, that particular point value. So the first thing I would do is look at that connector and make sure that, you know, the pins are all in good shape. And if they look like they're in good shape, I would take a little, like, alligator clip with one end hooked up to ground, the game on, and that connector actually removed. or you don't have to have it removed, but you could, but I would manually ground those pins just to make sure that you're getting the sound out of the soundboard. If you're not getting any sound out of the soundboard, that means that it's not the driver board that's the problem and that it's actually the soundboard itself. Okay, okay. I mean, it could just be a pin problem, but, you know, on that particular game, I actually like to replace the soundboard with a chime unit. Okay. I mean, it's just what I like to do. I get a, like a Bally chime unit, you know, just a junk one. Sure, okay. And hook it up, hook, you know, one side up to the 28-volt solenoid voltages, and then each of those three to the driver board, those three lines. And to me, it's much more appealing than the standard Genie soundboard. Yeah, the sounds are pretty primitive in the thing, and, you know, I'm a bigger fan of chimes typically. But, yeah, if it turns out the soundboard's junk, maybe I'll go that route then. Yeah, because that soundboard isn't really replaceable. I mean, well, I mean, it isn't repairable, I should say, of most of the components on it. I don't know. Maybe you can repair it. I actually haven't messed with that too much. Yeah. Now, Mark Clayton also has a soundboard, I think, available, and so does the guy Pascal out in France. Okay, okay. Where you can get a soundboard set up from either of those two guys if you want to stay with that route. But I kind of like the Chimey route if you can't get it to work. Yeah. Well, I'll certainly consider that. It's not a bad option. Right. But, yeah, I'll get in there and test it and see what happens. Okay, cool. Well, hey, thank you for calling. Awesome. Hey, thanks for broadcasting. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. Norm, did you get all that? Yeah, you're quite the man. Okay, hold on, Norm. You still with me, buddy? I'm here. Good, that's unfortunate. I thought I was going to hang up on you. I hope I didn't insult anybody. You didn't say anything, did you? No, I talked about Chris Hutchins. If people want to pay a lot of money and get good games, that's up to them. How many of those games do you have? Zero. Hold on. Hello. So we got another call. We're going to take it right now. Just a second. Let me nuke this down here a little bit. I'm listening to you guys. You're on Hi, is this Jim? Hello, you still with us? Hello Yes, you there? Yeah, I'm here Yeah, is this Jim? No, no, this is Ron Ron I'm just calling in to try to get on Well, you made it Good I don't know if that's a good thing though Well, I forgot about the start of your show I just tuned in I wanted to get in touch with you the last couple of weeks But never got in You're popular people. Who are you calling from? I'm calling from Spokane, Washington. And what kind of games do you collect? I play all kinds. I'm not really big into the really late models. I only own one DMD. I own six Pins, mostly early Valleys. And, you know, I own a Mystic, an 8-Ball Deluxe, a Fathom, and then I own a Pinbot, a Mousin' Around, and a T2. That's a fair number of games. Yeah, they're okay. Yeah, I'm pretty active on RGP. I've been kind of an asshole in the past, but I got over that several years ago. How would you like to insult Shaggy now? Pardon? How would you like to insult Shaggy now? No, I just want to ask him a question. Fire away. Oh. Pardon? Go right ahead and let's hear it. What was that again? Yeah, shoot. Go for that question. Oh, yeah. Well, several weeks ago, maybe even a month ago, Shaggy was, or Joshua Clay, I should say, was on the group, and he asked somebody for a theory of operations manual for, it was either a System 11 or a WPC. I think it was WPC. Yeah, it was WPC. And I'd be interested to find out if he ever got a source, you know, because I'd like to have one also. I was not able to find that. You couldn't find it? No. Nobody really responded with that. With all your fame, nobody ever got back to you? Yeah. It's not fame. It's infamy, I think is how it works. Isn't that how it is, Norm? Yeah. Yeah, see, Norm's really the famous one here. Oh, yeah, well. Yeah, they threw me off of this little house for drinking too much. I thought it was the women. No, it's drinking too much. You know, there's a lot of stuff in the tabloids about me and that Anna Nicole broad. Yes, I did Fatherhood Child. I am proud of it. I'm going to get all the money. Let's talk pinball. Well, I'll tell you what. I would sure appreciate if you ever find a source for that thing, that you give me an e-mail or something. You know, you can give my e-mail address. You can either ask me after this call is over or whatever. Yeah, go ahead and send me an e-mail, but I haven't had any luck finding it. If I did, I would probably, well, I don't know. I was going to say I might post it on the webpage, but I don't know if I'm allowed to do that anymore. You know, there's so many questions. Yeah, it's scary. I don't even know where to begin with that one. Okay. Okay, well, hey, thanks for calling. You bet. Thanks a lot. All right, bye. Did we help him? No, I don't think we helped him, Norm. We don't help anybody. Yeah. Well, we certainly don't help you. That's true. That is correct. That's good. That's good. Okay, so we've got another call. Hold on, Norm. Hello, how are you? Hey, good. This is Paul from Georgia. Hi, Paul from Georgia. How are you doing? Not bad. I've got a question for you regarding a Tommy machine. A Tommy. I stopped the Tommy and now the blinders don't work. The blinders don't work. They don't work at all in test mode or anything that I try and do to them. I'm going to let Norm answer this question. You cut a wire somewhere by mistake. Norm says you cut a wire. I found that little blinder card under the apron. At least I thought that was a blinder card. But I don't know if I busted the servo or what. Did you want... Well... Is he connected back? Yeah, everything's connected back in it. Did you say the pins are properly soldered all the way? Yeah, I actually re-soldered the header pins on that little card. Did this ever work? Yes, it worked when I got the machine prior to me shopping the dog thing. So apparently I suck at shopping the machine. Do you really want it to work again, or do you really care? Well, that's obviously one of the better features of Tommy, I would think. Yeah. All right, then I guess you want it to work. Yeah. Go ahead, Shaggy, help him out. Yeah, thanks, Norm. Thanks, Norm. I have actually never fixed a Tommy set of blinders. I would, the first thing I guess I would do is, do you know what voltage the motor runs at? No, but I'm sure I could find that out. I have the manual for the machine. Okay, the first thing I would do is check the motor voltage. I believe that, like you said, that is a type of stepper motor or servo motor, as you said. I think they're little, like, radio-controlled servo ones. Right. Well, you mean like out of a radio-controlled airplane or something? Yeah, I think they make some replacements that I think you can go to the hobby shop and buy. You just have to change the connector on it type thing. The other thing I would do is, you know, after I get the motor sessed out as to whether it's good or not, I would move to that little board. And I believe that there's probably only two output pins coming off the board going to the motor? Yes, I believe so. Okay. So I would put a, you can use a voltometer, I guess, or a logic probe, And I would just see if in test mode if that pin is going high or low Not the ground one the other one the red wire as it may be See if it's going high or low See if it's toggling the motor And that'll tell let you know if the boards working or not now if the board if it's not the output pin isn't toggling high or low Then you just got to keep working your way back and and I would go to the next connector which is the input connector and basically it's going to have a similar setup where probably one of the driver transistors on the driver board I would imagine is probably you know pulling low to toggle that board on or off And it may also have another transistor that determines the direction of the motor I would have to look at the manual, though, to be able to give you any more precise information than just those general tips. So I'm sorry, I wish I could help a little better with that one. No problem. I'll try those suggestions and trace it back and let you guys know how it turns out. Yeah, can you send me an email and let me know if my advice was, you know, at all helpful. It probably isn't, but, you know, you never know. I shall do that. Okay. If you can answer it, Greg. Appreciate all you guys' help. All right, thanks. Hey, Shaggy? Yeah. If you can answer it, Greg. You can win yourself a new timing machine online at the Cirrus Radio Network. Cirrus Radio Network. Go look there, and they're giving one away signed by Pete Townsend. Signed by Pete Pouncey. All right, hold on, Norm. Hello, you're on the air with TopCast. Shaggy, it's Marty. Marty, how are you? Marty from Connecticut. Hey, Marty. Hey, dude, how's it going? Marty from Wall Lake. This is Marty that runs the EM Collectors Group on the Yahoo Groups, right? That is correct. Right, okay. And Norm's on the line. You're still with us, right, Norm? Yeah, I've been at a heart attack, Randy. Yeah, I was kind of worried. The excitement might do me in. Grab one for us all, okay? Yeah, the excitement might do me in. You guys are off the wall. Hey, so I got a question for you. I was playing my fast draw tonight, and it started doing something strange that I haven't seen it do. It hasn't done before. Like walking out the house? What's that? Like walking out the house? Yeah, tell me about it. Stop taking LSD. You won't do that. Well, you know what? You know what? LSD is a good thing. You know? Especially if you work for a living. There you go. Yeah. It keeps wanting to count down the bonuses. If I crank it up, it'll count it right down. Right in the middle of the game, beginning of the game, it keeps wanting to count down the bonus. Did you check the out-hole switch just for, you know? Yeah, the out-hole switch seems to be fine. I mean, I haven't delved into it because it just started happening a little while ago. You know what? Good timing. I'm going to have the radio show tonight. And by the way, thanks for changing the time for me because you know I can't stay up late. Yeah. Yeah, we know. Believe me, that was the reason we changed it. Yeah, I know. You guys have a heart after all. No, we really don't. I promise we don't. Yeah, but it's kind of intermittent. For instance, it cut out for, it was doing it for like five or six or seven games. Then it stopped for a couple, and then it started doing it again. You think it might be the odd hole switch? I mean, I haven't torn it apart yet, but I could start looking there. Well, I mean, something's telling it that there's a bonus relay, okay, that pulls in that's going to count down the bonus. And something's causing that relay to pull in. Actually, believe it or not, the relay doesn't pull in. It doesn't pull in. But normally when the ball goes in the out-hold, doesn't that relay pull in? It should, but it will count down, but that relay won't click. I had this machine open looking at it. It won't click. Okay. Okay. Freaky. One switchblade. Well, the next thing I would check, I would work backwards from well, no, actually well, I would start at the bonus unit and I assume that the zero position switch for the bonus unit because there is a switch that that closes or opens when that thing is all the way reset, right? Yeah, I'll start there, yeah. Did you check that switch? No, no, I climbed into the machine to do that one. It's a freaking god leap, you know that. It's way in the back. Yeah, I pull the playfields out when I do that. Yeah, that's what I think I'm going to have. You know, I had the problem with it before with the run-on or not working, so with the gain-over relay, so I think I'm just going to pull the bottom board out and look at it. I think that's the only way I'm going to cure this thing. Well, you know, I would definitely look at the bonus unit and make sure that that thing's working properly and also any of the zero position switches are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay. Good show, bud. Hey, thanks. Bye. Bye. Norm, you still there? I'm still here. You mean I haven't been able to drop your call yet? No. Good. All right. We got another call. 1-800-GIVE-US-A-CALL-AT-TOPCAST. We're taking this guy right now. I lost him. Hello. How are you? Pretty good, Shaggy. It's Korn. Vince? Yes. Is there a reason you're calling? Yes, there is. What would that be? You blew your answer on the Tommy blinders. Oh. Okay, give it to me. All right. How it works is the blinders have three pins that go to the motor. It's ground. I believe it's 12 volts. And then I think they have it labeled as a sense pin. That sense pin is actually what controls the position of the blinders. That sense pin should always be putting out a square wave. and how the position of the blinders is determined is the length of the pulse that gets sent to the blinders. It gets longer when it wants the blinders out, and it gets shorter when it wants the blinders in. Wow. So really the only great way to test that thing is to actually put an oscilloscope on mine, and I could see the output that way. You could probably also use a logic probe, but I don't like those. Well, when they go bad, what's the key culprit? There's a 555 on there, if I remember correctly, and those tend to go bad. There's just a really simple timing circuit. A couple capacitors, a resistor, and the 555, that's about it on those things. Are the capacitors disk or electrolytic? I don't know. It was a while since I worked on this one. The one I had was all hacked up with stuff grafted onto the back of it by some crazy madman I actually just ripped everything off, put it on the meter I'm like, hey, this thing actually works if you don't screw it up Wow, and is the motor actually a stepper motor? The motor's a servo, so you cannot test it with a battery You can't, okay Well, I got that one totally wrong, man We'll have that one on Stump the Chump Hey, give him a break Yeah, I'll... If anybody didn't help us, it's a prize. All right, what do you want for a prize there, Vince? How about two buckets of belly lint? We're only down to one, though, but I'll send it to you. All right, man. You mail me your address. All right, hey, thanks for calling because that helped out. Cool, man. I'll talk to you later. All right, man. Take care. What did you give him? We gave him some belly lint. Oh, I thought you said something else. All right, Norm. You got anything else you want to add? No, I'm just amazed in the intelligence here on this network. It's mind-blowing. We got another call. Should I take it, Norm? Sure. Okay, here we go. Hi, you're on the air with TopCast. Hi there, man. Yeah, Shaggy, hi. This is Rich. I'm in New Jersey. Hi, Rich. Hey, how you doing? Been trying to get in for a while. It's kind of fun with the time delay catching the phone just right here. Yeah, I know what you mean. Enjoying the show. I had a couple things. I wanted to talk to you about a problem I've had with magnets in games and having to do with the power in the house. I came into something. I don't know if you work more on the older ones. I've seen your DVDs on Us in the Zone and the Indiana Jones. I know you do work on the newer ones too. But the rash, I've had like three or four different games with magnets, and they all seem to be a little weak with throwing the ball, or occasionally they'll just grab it and not throw it. And it seems to be across a bunch of games. And I've got one in recently where I even bought a new board from Stern. It's a GoldenEye. And they had that board in stock? They had that board in stock? Yeah, they still got a couple left, believe it or not. I think it's used in Twister also. And he sent it back. He said, everything checks good. I don't know what to tell you. And I kept thinking, there's got to be something with my cellar. I got an Adams family upstairs in the den, and that works fine. Throws the balls around fine. So I grab an extension cord, and I go upstairs, and I run it downstairs to the golden eye, and all of a sudden, this thing's working perfect with either board, you know, where before it would grab the ball between the flippers, and it would just hold it there, and it would, like, it's supposed to throw it up between the flippers. It would throw it up maybe a quarter inch, you know, instead of a good inch or two. And I found I got 121 volts AC coming in the plug, and I found with the extension cord, it's going down to 119, and it works perfect. You got any clue why that would be? So you're saying it works better at a lower voltage than a higher voltage? Yeah. At the end of the extension cord, it's running 119, and it works perfectly at 119. I got a Guns N' Roses. It's always been a little anemic. I got some heavier-duty MOSFETs from GPE and put them in and seemed to help it a lot, and it works better, but still, in other games I've played, it throws them like crazy. I've had Circus Voltaire, Toten, and they all, you know, the work, but just the work, you know, like they always do on other games I've played. But I'm convinced there's something to do with this house. It was built in the 60s. It wasn't all electric house. I've put gas in since then. But it's got a real big circuit box, you know, like a double, equivalent of two regular ones. Like a double-wide trailer on the wall. And everything. I'm just wondering if I have some kind of corrosion outside on the connectors. I was thinking about if I had a scope, maybe I could see if there was some noise in the AC. I was wondering if these circuits, these timing circuits they use to throw the ball, are susceptible maybe to noisy power or something? I guess noise could be an issue. I mean, everything that needs to be regulated, that is, you know, 5 volts or 12 volts or whatever, is regulated. Right. And you would think it's nice and smooth and all that. Yeah, it's black as they fell for clean power. I've got an electronics background, and I said, everything's regulated, everything's built. But this has stumped me for the few years I've had the Guns N' Roses, you know. I haven't tried it with the extension cord yet, but I said, let me run it by you guys, you know. What else is on the circuit? A while back and never had any responses on it. What else is on the circuit? It's cellar. There's a few other things. I did try unplugging everything else. I've got a freezer down there and, oh, geez, anything else? Well, I would, and if you unplug all the other stuff, it still works the same? Yeah, it still seemed to run the same with the other stuff that I knew was on, because I know it was a compressor on that freezer. It didn't sound like it was running that often. But did you put a scope on it just for fun? Yeah, you know, I've got an old one from my dad. It's buried, and I'm just going to pull it out. I just haven't gotten to it yet. I've been fighting rebuilding my computer here for the last few days. I'm afraid I can't. That's really a weird one. It is. It's strange. It scratched my head for a while on it. But, I don't know, maybe somebody, you know, has seen something, would return the call on the show or something. One other thing I wanted to mention on the Tommy guy. I had a Tommy I got. It never worked. There's a small circuit board down in the cabinet that runs the little propeller blades up on the plane. And there's a connector to the backside of the cabinet on that board that isn't used on that game. and what was wrong with mine, there's a spare plug in there also. I don't know if it's for a coin mech or whatever. It looks like it would fit on there, but it's got one extra pin, and somebody jammed the plug onto there, and one of the inputs on the little circuit board on the top, Gordon was talking about the outputs, the input legs, there's one that's supposed to be always high or low, and it was causing that state to be the opposite on the upper board by that plug being on that small board down inside, down by the tilt bob. And if he just shot the game, I'm just wondering if he might have seen that plug and say, oh, that looks like it belongs there and put it on there and caused this problem to quit working because nothing will work if that plug's on there. I actually called Stern, and I forget who it was. It wasn't Chaz. It was one of the other two guys that had said, oh, yeah, we had a problem with that one time. Try pulling that plug off. And sure enough, it started working great. Huh, that's interesting. That really is. You might want to try that. Yeah, that's a good tip. It's down by the tilt bob. It's the row of connectors facing the back of the cabinet. They're vertical, you know, on the board, and they're towards the back of the cabinet. There should be no plug on that whatsoever, and that will pull the whole thing down, and nothing will work on it. Wow, good tip. All right, well, hey, thanks for calling. I appreciate it. And sorry I can't help you too much about your power situation in your basement. Well, I think I might get the power company out and have them look into it and see what they think. All right, man. Thanks so much for the show. Enjoy listening. All right, take care. Okay, take care now. Maybe he can get one of them boxes like the big screen TVs to clean your power up and you can plug all your games into one source. All right, Norm, we're done. That's another show of TopCast that's now finished. and we're we're done until next week we'll have some more of our standard features and hopefully we'll get Norm in person Norm are you ever going to come out and show up again in person? I'll try it's hard to get Norm here but thank you very much for listening to TopCast and have a good night