Episode 373 - Progress, 1960 Bally Ball Park

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·38m 19s·analyzed·Jun 29, 2016

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Multi-bingo project reaches power-on phase with technical hurdles; Bally Ballpark 1960 featured.

Summary

Nicholas Backbone provides an extensive technical update on his multi-bingo machine project, detailing progress from schematic completion through initial power-on and troubleshooting. He discusses hardware integration challenges (Raspberry Pi display power delivery, Ubuntu OS updates, serial bus termination issues), upcoming cosmetic work, and plans for multiple playfield swaps. The episode concludes with a featured game segment on the 1960 Bally Ballpark, a pitch-and-bat baseball game featuring a running man unit licensed from Williams.

Key Claims

Ubuntu 14.04 kernel panic issue resolved by updating to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
high confidence · Nicholas Backbone, describing his troubleshooting process for the multi-bingo machine's Intel NUC computer
Multimorphic serial bus configuration requires termination bit set on both the final switch board AND the P3 controller
high confidence · Nicholas Backbone citing advice from Jerry at Multimorphic regarding DIP switch settings
Spring-loaded wire strippers cost $15 and save significant time compared to manual stripping with corner cutters
high confidence · Nicholas Backbone's direct product endorsement based on personal experience
Ballpark was Bally's only pitch-and-bat game using a running man unit licensed from Williams
high confidence · Nicholas Backbone presenting historical game information
Ballpark was the last pitch-and-bat game Bally made until after 1979
medium confidence · Nicholas Backbone noting this as observation-based, explicitly stating it as speculation regarding possible licensing issues

Notable Quotes

“The computer started and immediately crashed. It gave a kernel panic and for those of you listening who are familiar with Linux, that's essentially like a blue screen in Windows.”
Nicholas Backbone @ ~14:30 — Describes a critical technical failure that required OS-level troubleshooting and demonstrates the complexity of embedded Linux development in pinball systems
“So if I'm going to communicate to the switchboard I have to pass through the other four... It's a two lane highway in that there's one in each direction but you only have one lane in order to get where you're going.”
Nicholas Backbone @ ~18:15 — Technical explanation of serial bus architecture limitations in Multimorphic hardware that caused gameplay input failures
“After using one of these, I cannot believe that I held out for so long just to prevent spending fifteen dollars.”
Nicholas Backbone @ ~38:45 — Strong personal endorsement of a tool that proved essential during intensive wiring work on the project
“This feature requires wiring up a new coil and a new controlled lamp and I'll have the opportunity to wire up this playfield the same way that I wired up the playfield that I'm using for the 25 hole games.”
Nicholas Backbone @ ~44:20 — Describes planned playfield swap workflow using a newly acquired Mystic Gate machine as a testing platform
“The game is only three innings long and you can have up to three outs per inning. It's a two-player game meaning each player controls their own pitching and batting or your buddy presses the pitch button and you press the bat button and vice versa.”
Nicholas Backbone @ ~56:30 — Detailed gameplay mechanics explanation of the featured Ballpark machine

Entities

Nicholas BackbonepersonJerrypersonSteve SmithpersonRyan ClaytorpersonDennispersonSophiapersonAvapersonMultimorphiccompany Ballycompany

Signals

?
technology_signal: Multi-bingo machine successfully integrated Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with Multimorphic control boards via serial bus; resolved kernel panic and display rotation issues through OS upgrade
high · Detailed technical troubleshooting narrative; explicit resolution achieved after updating from 14.04 to 16.04 and maintaining Python 2.7 compatibility for PyprocGame
?
design_innovation: Multi-bingo machine implements hot-swappable playfield system with automated back glass display updates via networked Raspberry Pi computers; USB extension cables simplify mechanical disconnection
high · Detailed description of HDMI and USB cable routing, DHCP network setup for Raspberry Pi discovery, and playfield-specific wiring methodologies
?
operational_signal: Spring-loaded wire stripper ($15) identified as essential efficiency tool for high-volume wiring projects; significant time savings versus manual stripping methods
high · Lengthy segment dedicated to tool review; direct personal endorsement and cost-benefit analysis based on intensive wiring experience
?
restoration_signal: New old stock Mystic Gate playfield (20-hole, complete with wood surrounds and apron) acquired on eBay for playfield swap testing and workflow validation
high · Recent acquisition mentioned; planned integration into multi-bingo project workflow
?
restoration_signal: Multi-bingo machine cabinet features worn silver sales stencil (front, recoverable condition) and heavily degraded head stencil (requires complete recreation and spray application)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.115

0:00

What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldridge. Well, it's been another two weeks and this two weeks has absolutely flown by for me. There's been a lot going on as usual and especially a lot going on With the multi bingo project here. So, without further ado, let's get started. The bingo project has been proceeding very very well. I believe when last we left off I was still working on drawing my schematic. The schematic was finished and at that point what was left was some final cleaning uh... little bit of extra polish uh... installing the uh... corner supports and leg plates uh... to hold the front legs on and then I was able to put the legs on that inspired me to go ahead and put the head on and once that's bolted in uh... it's really been kind of a race with me to see just how quickly i can get this thing up and running at that point uh... i had wired up the jones plugs, the female jones plugs and uh... made pigtails for each of the plugs at this point with the head on i had to mount the back door I had the additional couple boards that I had ordered. One final switch processor board and another driver board. And then it was a matter of adding the switching power supplies. I added a 5 and 12 volt power supply and a 48 volt power supply for the coils and then attaching everything where it needed to go. This process took quite some time. Several really way too late nights of working on this but I finally had everything wired up. I did make a few mistakes. That's to be expected I guess when you're doing that much wiring in such a short period of time. I think I did all the wiring in I'm just a handful of days so no longer than a week that's for sure uh... that was a crazy amount of work so uh... it was a lot of fun though I gotta say uh... it's really really neat to see something like that come together so once all the uh... wiring was completed then it was time to tie everything Agenda hoodie Come caution dashнали namechuck Uh... the wiring started shaping up, looking beautiful, and then at that point, it was really time to plug everything in. I had to mount the score and Instruction Card displays, and what I found, I used 5 inch screens that are attached to Raspberry Pis underneath the playfield. The RaspberryPis remain in the cabinet, and when I swap playfields, I'll be removing the HDMI cables that run from the The display is to the raspberry pies uh... otherwise nothing else has to be removed from the raspberry pies however these displays use uh... usb power to actually turn on I had set aside multiple plug-in usb power supplies small transformers that would uh... put out the five volts They were necessary to actually run the things. But um... I couldn't remember why. Because the thing about USB is it kind of tricks you. You know, there's uh... a couple of different uh... power draws that can be enabled through USB. And this is the higher current draw. Um... and the higher voltage. So anyway, I tried plugging the USB directly into the Raspberry Pis which have four USB ports, none of which are being used. And I thought I was being extra clever because I was saving a couple of power connectors. That turned out to not be the case at all because the RaspberryPis don't put up enough power consistently to actually start the screens. So I ended up getting a couple USB extension cables and running those to those USB power supplies. So when I take the playfields out, there is a USB extension under the playfield that's essentially right at the edge of the playfield. So it's pretty obvious that those need to be unplugged and then you can remove the playfield and go on about your day here. So that turned out very well. And then it was time to fire it up. And I really wanted to see what would happen. So, prior to this, I had tested out all of the AC components to make sure that they actually functioned without hooking up the boards. So I had previously tested the boards, just the DC components, and then I unhooked all that and then tested the AC just to make sure that no AC was going to leak into the DC components because that would blow them up. So, I verified that was the case and then turned everything on. And I gotta say that was really cool to have the whole thing light up and do what it needed to do. Everything started the way that I have all my power wiring set. Basically everything will boot automatically as soon as power is applied. The computer started and immediately crashed. It gave a kernel panic and for those of you listening who are familiar with Linux, that's essentially like a blue screen in Windows. And it's pretty bad when it happens in Linux. It means something is real wrong and it's usually a driver problem. So the thing that actually talks to the hardware. The computer that I'm using is an Intel NUC and this is kind of like an all-in-one mini computer and it's really attractive from a price standpoint but it's also really attractive from a footprint standpoint. I'm able to actually mount it on the back door of the machine and it doesn't generate a tremendous amount of heat and I've got it far enough away from the edges of the door so that it can vent appropriately and all that good stuff. I mean we'll have to see how it holds up after hours of use but that's going to be part of the play testing. So, kernel panic and one of the first things that I try to do is boot into an older kernel. That worked. I was able to boot into an older kernel and I took it upstairs where I could plug into the internet. I did that and processed any available updates. I was running Ubuntu 14.04 and that was up until April of this year, the most recent long-term support version. I was using that because that's the operating system that I'm developing on which is also Ubuntu 14.04 so you know I knew what I was getting into. I was familiar with the libraries I didn have to worry about You know stuff causing a problem with that particular version the new long support version came out in april as i mentioned so it's sixteen point of four and uh... that one uh... i went ahead and updated the computer to and that fixed all of my crashing problems entirely Another issue that I had is once I did get it to boot downstairs, I couldn't for the life of me get the screen to rotate. I have my monitor in a portrait orientation and that's how it's going to be rendering these back glass images, but for whatever reason, it just would not rotate. and it was driver related and i'm realized that but i was hoping that i could kind of uh... force it to do what i wanted to do in that way i wouldn't have to update anytime that you update your operating system like that especially with ubuntu uh... or windows or you know just any major upgrade like that there's always a chance that you're going to come out of it a little worse than you were before It was the great unknown. I had not tested this update on any machine that was running anything like what I'm using here so I just wasn't sure what was going to happen. One of the big changes with this version of Ubuntu was that they had updated the base version of Python to Python 3. That's a good thing except that PyprocGame Will not function under Python 3. It was incredibly important that Python 2.7 was installed so that I could maintain compatibility with all the modules I'd written and so on and so forth. So that kind of scared me off and that was one of several reasons that I hadn't updated. But when I bit the bullet, everything worked just fine. It still maintained the separate installation of Python 3 with Python 2.7 So, uh... everything worked great. On top of that, it cured my rotation issue. I'm now able to rotate with a single command. So, when the computer boots, there is a script that will automatically log in. Once it's automatically logged in, another script will execute that will start my menu, which connects to the P-Rock and, um... A free great but the issue that I have currently is that only a fraction of switches that I've The continuity up and down and I have not found any issues so when I'm left to believe is that I've got the boards misconfigured and I spoke with Jerry at Multimorphic who manufactures these boards and he let me know that yeah I've probably got a setting wrong on The and uh... i'm going to see if that fixes the problem and if so i should have relatively stable working uh... i'm trying to uh... play just bright lights at the moment and see how that functions so far what happens Here's the time able to start again uh... i'm also able within that game too uh... coin up so when i drop a coin it actually does what it's supposed to do as far as enabling cards on the back glass it does not finish lifting a ball uh... once it starts lifting after about half of the cycle of lifting it will crash And beyond that, none of the playfield switches work. So even if the ball does lift all the way and I put it in a hole, it has no idea that it's there, which is pretty infuriating. So hopefully these minor board tweaks, just setting some dip switches actually will fix the problem. The issue is that uh... it's a serial bus that allows the P3 rock to communicate with all these different boards. That means that you have essentially a single lane highway between each of these boards. It's a two lane highway in that there's one in each direction but you only have one lane in order to get where you're going. So if I'm going to communicate to The switchboard I have to pass through the other four in other serial buses that have existed previously there's something called the termination and the termination his just a way of telling the bus hey there's no further that you can go you can't you need to turn back now and this termination bit I'm setting on the final switchboard But as it turns out, I need to be setting it also on the P3 rock. And as I was reading online through some of their documentation, it's possible to set the termination bit somewhere in the middle of my switchboards as well. That doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps it was mentioned in light of testing to see if it would allow that termination to function. But at any rate, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to set the termination on the P3 rock and then see what happens there. If all the switches start sensing, then I just need to deal with the crashing that's happening when the 50 volt relays are engaging and the lifter starts lifting.

16:17

What's really neat is that the relays in question are providing power and they provide a nice I am so excited. When you hit the coin switch, it also fires the knocker in bright lights. I am doing this with the early games. For Ballet, they used the knocker. For United, they used a bell. It sounds wonderful. It sounds exactly like the real games do. So this is all just incredibly exciting and now that I'm able to display the back glass appropriately, that's going to make a whole world of difference. This thing is going to shape up quickly, I think, from here. Assuming that I can get the switchboards to behave appropriately and just setting that termination bit is supposed to do the trick, so I'm really hoping that that's the case and we'll go from there. What's the game plan? Once I have the game actually functioning, what do I have left to do? Well, actually a surprising amount. Once I have the game running, now that I have the score and Instruction Card displays booting and actually displaying things appropriately, I need to write the scripts that will actually push the images to the Raspberry Pis and display them on the RaspberryPi displays. That shouldn't take very much time. I've installed a DHCP server which will provide a network address to the Raspberry Pis and with that I'll be able to tell for certain exactly what address the RaspberryPi has. This will help me to determine which display I'm going to be sending the information to. The Raspberry Pis are pretty slick little devices for those of you with a computer inclination. They're pretty neat to tinker with. They do an awful lot and the RaspberryPi 3s are actually pretty darn powerful. They're approaching something usable for a variety of tasks. So this is going to be interesting seeing how they work. I'm not sure if I can make that actually function as I switch through the menu. But so far so good. I'm honestly thrilled with the progress that this game has made just in the past two weeks and I can wait to see what the next two weeks bring Beyond the Raspberry Pi displays that gonna be like one evening of getting that set up What I have left to do is mostly cosmetic I've done a lot on the playfield with Sophia and Ava, my daughters. We've gotten it cleaned and shined up and it is beautiful and ready to play. Dennis provided an awful lot of Hardware to make it look beautiful and uh... so far so good but cosmetically I need to uh... do something with the lock bar. It came with a lock bar for a magic screen game uh... my game is going to have many more buttons but I think by default I'm just going to display the magic screen buttons on the foot rail and i've talked with steve smith and uh... he and i are going to work together on uh... something for the extra buttons uh... essentially they're going to pull out in some kind of drawer or something of that nature we're still kinda workshopping that but uh... we'll get that figured out uh... plenty of time at the moment because uh... None of the games that I've implemented use anything beyond the left and right arrows and in extreme cases the R button but um... none of the games that I've implemented so far actually use the R button because they automatically search and find winners. And beyond that I have to stencil, create a stencil and then You know, apply the stencil to the cabinet and the head. The cabinet actually has a reasonable silver sales stencil. The cabinet's a little rough in the front but it's not bad at all. I've certainly seen worse. The head, however, is pretty bad. It's basically the stencil's completely worn away. So what's left is The outline of the touchdown stencil which in itself is not a super detailed stencil. There's a picture of a football and then four quadrants. So I'm going to be coming up with some artwork for that and then working on getting stencils cut and sprayed. And then beyond that it's mounting the map boards. Ryan Claytor actually Cut me some wonderful foam core and mat board inserts for the machine and that's really going to frame the monitor very nicely. I still have to mount the mat boards because I need to tack on the top and bottom channels for the head. Once those channels are in place, I can mount the mat board and the final piece of foam core. And then, I need to cut a piece of plexi to fit. I had gotten a piece of glass cut and the glass was gorgeous and very attractive looking and it broke in my car on the way home. So, I went back and got a sheet of plexi instead. And I've talked before about my bounty which has one of Crystade's translites sandwiched between two pieces of plexi and I think a lot of my issues with that translite are due to the plexi that I used. I used a really thick plexi and it's adding some odd swirls and things of that nature to the image. So, the plexi that I got is much thinner and therefore much more clear and hopefully it'll look pretty good. Now the reason why I didn't just go and get another piece of glass is if the glass actually breaks, it's going to necessitate the replacing of the monitor in the head which is, you know, not something that I want to do. So, for a $15 piece of glass, you know, I'm not going to risk a much more expensive monitor. So what happens when that's mounted? Well, I'm glad you asked. So, just recently I found on eBay a really nice new old stock Mystic Gate playfield. Now this is a 20-hole game. But it's got a unique feature. This feature requires wiring up a new coil and a new controlled lamp and uh... I'll have the opportunity to wire up this playfield the same way that I wired up the playfield that I'm using for the twenty-five hole games. So that's going to give me a lot of experience with uh... the playfield swapping that I want to be able to do. So I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be a whole lot of work in and of itself because there is no hardware attached to this Mystic8 playfield. It's not quite a blank. It's got the wood surrounds and the apron attached, but that's it.

30:41

He's asking, you know, for anybody who wants it to contact me and I'll give you his number and you give him a call. He's a super nice guy. I talked with him for quite a bit of time the other day. You know, I think this would be a great game. For today's featured game, I thought we'd talk about something slightly different than we have in the past several months, and that's 1960s Bally Ballpark. Ballpark is a pitch and bat game, and it uses a running man unit. It's also notable as the only Bally pitch and bat game that uses a running man unit. The Runningingman unit was created by Williams and licensed to folks like United, who improved a bit upon the mechanism from what I've read. And essentially there are little cardboard players that'll run around the bases as you make hits on various targets on the playfield. So, on Bally's ballpark, the targets are all in the back. And the targets are labeled from left to right, triple, double, single, home run, single, double, and triple. So your best shot is straight up the center, except that in ballpark, one of the lanes will The light will be lit in red for each hit that you make, meaning each time you score a base run, the light will move to a different position. And so you're chasing this red lamp. If you hit the red lamp target, it'll score the indicated value plus four home runs. So it is well worth the effort to try and hit that. Red Target Now as usual if the ball drains down at the bottom then you're out uh... the game is only three innings long and you can have up to three outs per inning it's a two-player game meaning each player controls their own pitching and batting or Your buddy presses the pitch button and you press the bat button and vice versa That's a cool pitch and bat game, I think. It's pretty simple as far as the targets that you're hitting. You know there's not a lot to hit, there's not an upper deck um... there's not targets on the side but that's okay I mean it is a straightforward baseball game and the fact that you can play two-player makes it all the better uh... because as i say if you're sharing the load there on uh... pitching and batting then it just makes uh... makes it more fun this would be an interesting game to own uh... because it's bally's only machine with the running man unit i'm curious to know if there are any mechanical differences between it and the williams Runninging man unit maybe they're exactly the same maybe they came to some agreement with williams i have no idea but what i do know is that it was the last pitch in that the valley made until after nineteen seventy nine maybe they got into trouble for copying the running man unit i have absolutely no idea all speculation But one thing I can tell you is that this game came in both replay and novelty or what they call standard non-replay versions. For replay versions it works just like pinball. You get free games if you get above certain score Thresholds. So let's talk about the artwork. The Backless has a batter, behind him a catcher and an umpire, and the grandstand in the back with the words ballpark behind the batter below that you have your home team on the left and your visiting team on the right two digits score counters on both sides below that you have your outs and your innings and below that you have your running band unit this game is also notable In that it has a little diorama of the grandstands in the back. So before this they would attempt to incorporate the grandstands, the baseball diamond, the players, all that stuff on the playfield. But in this game they moved it to the back glass with the running man unit. As far as the playfield, it is pretty straightforward. You just have a baseball diamond with the typical flap in the center that's used to cover the pitching arm. The cabinet is blue and yellow and has a red and white stencil of the baseball player that's hit a baseball so hard that you can actually see the wind coming off of it. And you have yellow and blue stripes covered with the wavy white and red line that goes up in the head. The mechanics of this game are pretty interesting. There's a picture on IPDB of the inside of the back door and you have that familiar bally score motor which sure looks just like the motor on the control unit For the bingos. And uh... several relays. Obviously because this is a pitch and bat things are pretty simple. uh... there's not a whole lot of stuff in the head. But uh... This is a cool looking game. uh... it's one that I certainly wouldn't mind owning uh... or at the very least fixing for somebody and getting a chance to play. Looks like a lot of fun and I hope to try one one day. Well, that's all for tonight. I gotta go back downstairs and keep working on this game. Gotta see if I can make it a reality. My name again is Nick Baldridge and you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail dot com or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS1 724-246-4671 You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram also at bingopodcast or you can listen to us on Google Play Music. You can also listen to us on our website which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com Thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time.