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Pinball Machine Troubleshooting Made Easy with TNT Amusements!

Pintastic New England·video·56m 11s·analyzed·Feb 7, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

TNT Amusements teaches DIY pinball diagnostics using basic tools and logical troubleshooting methods.

Summary

TNT Amusements presents practical pinball troubleshooting techniques for diagnosing electrical and mechanical issues without specialized equipment. The video demonstrates diagnostic methods for Gottlieb, Williams, and WPC systems, including using a stripped wire to test transistors and lights, identifying switch problems through logical isolation, and creating simple diagnostic tools. Key emphasis is placed on systematic troubleshooting approaches rather than replacing parts immediately.

Key Claims

  • Most pinball troubleshooting problems can be diagnosed without a meter, only needing a stripped wire and possibly a soldering iron

    high confidence · Todd demonstrates this repeatedly throughout the video with Hot Shot, Barnyard, and other machines

  • Gottlieb games are the most dependable system ever made

    medium confidence · Todd states 'Gottlieb are the most dependable system they made' during discussion of Gottlieb troubleshooting

  • Original Molex connectors on System 80A Williams games were 'horrific' and prone to cold connections

    high confidence · Todd explicitly states connectors need to be reheated and describes original Molex as 'horrific' multiple times

  • Every Kathy Adams family machine has a bracket that breaks and welds, requiring rewelding to fix permanently

    high confidence · Todd states TNT bought a welder specifically for this repair and confirms finding this issue on the machine at Emily's room

  • Harry Williams games use a matrix system allowing 64 different individual light commands from 16 transistors with diodes

    high confidence · Detailed technical explanation with Brother Rob demonstrating on Cyclone machine

  • WPC boards have a fuse chip that is 'the only part that blows up' on those boards

    high confidence · Todd identifies fuse chip as sole component that fails on WPC systems and demonstrates this principle

  • A trough switch problem on an AIQ game at Emily's (Electromagnetic Pinball Museum) was solved by finding a broken wire on the kicker switch

    high confidence · Todd describes diagnosing this at the end of the hall in Emily's room without a manual

  • Most troubleshooting mistakes involve jumping to conclusions about which component is bad rather than using systematic diagnostics

    high confidence · Extensive discussion between Todd and Chuck about broadening approach to diagnostics

Notable Quotes

  • “Gottlieb are the most dependable system they made.”

    Todd (TNT Amusements)@ 11:44 — Establishes reliability reputation of Gottlieb machines as foundation for diagnostic approach

  • “The original Molex used on the original System 80As were horrific. Horrific.”

    Todd@ 8:25 — Identifies specific hardware quality issue with Williams System 80A connectors requiring reheating

  • “You don't have to have a meter because I can figure out in a flash which is bad.”

    Todd@ 31:39 — Core premise of the video—demonstrating diagnostics without equipment

  • “Most of the time it's not what you think the problem is.”

    Chuck@ 25:25 — Key insight about systematic troubleshooting versus assumption-based repairs

  • “Every Kathy Adams family on planet Earth, that bracket breaks, it welds. So we bought a welder just for that.”

    Todd@ 21:39 — Identifies chronic design flaw in specific machine model requiring permanent solution

  • “When you call Todd you're talking about your favorite menu items and no more phone work and working on the weekends.”

    Chuck@ 33:53 — Humorous commentary on Todd's willingness to help and extensive explanations

  • “How many mistakes have I made? I made all of them. Still do.”

Entities

TNT AmusementsorganizationToddpersonFrankpersonChuckpersonEmilypersonBrother RobpersonMatt Scott ParisipersonTonypersonElectromagnetic Pinball Museumorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: TNT Amusements actively supporting operator and collector community through field service calls, shared knowledge, and mentorship

    high · Demonstrations include real service calls from shows (Emily's AIQ diagnosis, No Fear trough switch problem); Chuck mentions 20+ year mentorship relationship

  • ?

    community_signal: TNT Amusements actively producing educational content teaching DIY pinball troubleshooting and repair methods to broader community

    high · Entire video structured as educational seminar with detailed demonstrations and systematic teaching of diagnostic methods

  • ?

    product_concern: Original Molex connectors on Williams System 80A boards identified as problematic, developing cold connections requiring regular reheating

    high · Todd explicitly states connectors are 'ice friggin' cold' and need reheating; describes original Molex as 'horrific' multiple times

  • ?

    product_concern: Chronic bracket failure on Kathy Adams Family machines identified as systemic design flaw requiring permanent solution (rewelding)

    high · Todd states 'Every Kathy Adams family on planet Earth, that bracket breaks, it welds. So we bought a welder just for that.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Aftermarket diagnostic tools (stripped wire, simple LED test fixtures) being promoted as viable alternatives to meters for troubleshooting classic machines

    medium · Frank demonstrates creating simple LED diagnostic tool with diode; Todd emphasizes can do most diagnostics without meter

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.168

0:00
We decided to do something today for some of you out there, probably half of you that don't own meters. Okay, meter is pretty much a very important thing, but if you didn't have a meter or if you happen to be at a show like this and came across a repair you could do without using any equipment except possibly a soldering iron if a wire came off, because I did just that in one of the booths on Thursday night, one of the rooms, Emily's setup at the end, they were having trouble with an Addams family,
0:41
and one of the trough switches didn't work. So I showed her what to do without a meter and without a manual. She didn't even have a manual. Because in this case, if one of the trough switches didn't work and it had a white... Oh, wait a minute. We have to run the opening titles first. I forgot the opening titles. That's so unlike you. Hey, we're ready to go. Go ahead. We have to call for this.
1:27
And I should point out, Scott Parisi's on the front. And Greg and Terry are four rows back for some inexplicable reason. They should be sitting in the front. Yes, they should. They should be in the front. And this is John. And Franklin, everybody knows. and Chuck, who's our humorous sidekick that replaces Frank when Frank's not present.
2:06
What am I doing here now, then? Well, you're going to provide some tips. Oh, gotcha. I'm used to it. You notice the title said Electronic Troubleshooting Made Easy, and that is just what we're going to do today.

Todd@ 35:02 — Establishes Todd's credibility through admission of learning from experience

  • “I spent so many hours trying to figure out why this transformer was causing a hum... Well, you didn't think there was a blown fuse, but th—”

    Todd@ 36:25 — Anecdote about overlooking simple fuse solution, reinforces troubleshooting lesson

    • Pintastic New England
    organization
    Hot Shotgame
    Barnyardgame
    Doctor Whogame
    StrikeMastergame
    No Feargame
    AIQgame
    Cyclonegame
    Gilligan's Islandgame
    Whirlwindgame
    Cometgame
    Kathy Adams Familygame
    2:23
    There's only one thing you'd have to make, and Frank's going to show that shortly. But here you are. You're at your house. You're in your basement, and one of your games stops working, and you can't figure out why. There's a problem with one of the lights. All the other lights work.
    2:43
    You first try shorting out the tab of the light to the light next to it, and it lights up, meaning the bulb and the ground is good, but the signal's not getting to the bulb. I'm going to show you on a hot shot what we did. It's a Gottlieb game that's very common. You can also use this trick with the older Bally Williams games. Yeah, Bally and Stern and Williams, too, for troubleshooting lights and also the newer WPCs, too. This would work. So we'll start by running that clip. I'll finish the story with, because it may make more sense. Okay, I'm going to share with you, it's a little hard to squeeze in here, an easy way to test solid. If I gave you a little room so you could squeeze your belly in here. Tony is filming. Now, you're going to start with a piece of wire that you've stripped on each end.
    3:51
    Now, it just so happens the wonder and beauty of most of the board systems, they all share a common ground. In this case, the metal, because everything is grounded to Mr. Metal. Now, I want to show you something. If I touch this to this, and I'm very careful, and I touch this to a transistor, I can fire the transistor. I want you to look carefully. Tony, can you show that little bead of solder? You see that little blob of solder? That transistor has been on enough. It's been locked on probably, the bed connection, whatever, where that transistor is not going to last much longer. The bead of solder means it's heated up on the inside, so we're going to put a new one in. But let's see if it still works.
    4:40
    Aha! Tony, what's it firing? It's not firing. Right. So we're going to change that. But I wanted you to see that this one is resetting the red bank. Yes, it is. This one is resetting the yellow bank.
    5:01
    And this one down here is resetting the last one, the green. The frog. Now, this other one is the alcohol. Yes, it is. Okay. Now, that's the knocker. I see that. This is probably a lamp. We looked on the play field someplace, we'd see a lamp light.
    5:22
    There's the knocker over here. See the knocker? Yes. So this wonderful little thing can verify that things are working without removing the board, which is very important. Now, we happen to have this lamp right here out. And the problem is, on this system, I can't get to the transistor because of this.
    5:50
    That's just what this is for, right? You can't even get this stupid board out. So what we're going to do now is take this board out so we can go in and see if we can figure out what's going on with Mr. Transistor. Now, we know the light will light because I want to show you a trick.
    6:12
    You put this in a safe place. Yeah. Okay. Now, you have to be careful and not be clumsy with this. Yes. You see, we know that's not the bulb. The solder is good, and this wire is solder tight. The light will not come on.
    6:30
    So, very carefully, I touch this tab. Don't try to sit on it. tab and watch. I did this earlier so we know what will happen. There will not be an explosion.
    6:48
    I had to put the explosion in, Tony. I had to. See, I can do that in my effects lab. See, look, the light is lit now. Yes, it is. So I have now ruled out the socket, the bulb, in the ground, I know the problem is this wire. On this specific game, I know the transistor has to be damaged because we found a blob of solder on top of that light and they smelled something burning.
    7:19
    So it must have damaged the transistor. I see. Who cares? One lousy transistor. One lousy bulb. Are the other 300 on?
    7:35
    It looks fantastic. By the way, I should point this out. Doctor Who has a switch, too, a kill switch. This kills the switch to Mr. Fan here. You want to put your finger on that? That wouldn't hurt as much as the Doctor Who. Yes. Cutting your finger off. Slices her. That would bloody you up, but I don't think you'd lose Mr. Finger. But they did put a cage around it. But for good news, for extra good news, I should just cut this out and throw it away. Or put a plastic fan in it. My competitors would cut it off. Yes, they would.
    8:11
    By the way, remember, please remember, you have to reheat these connectors. They're all ice friggin' cold. Okay? These connectors back here generally don't go ice cold. Okay? These are better. The original Molex used on the original System 80As were horrific.
    8:32
    Horrific. By the way, if you don't have a piece of wire, you can always use an alligator clip. But I wanted to show you the wire to show you how great I am. And clever.
    8:45
    All right, now we're going to take this out. Okay, Frank's now here and assisting. See, Frank, I got you on the video after all. I'll turn the camera just so people know it's here. They'll know it's made from this.
    9:00
    Listen, now that we got the display out of the way, we can show you that these toll, these are U45s, these are A13s. And if you do the same system, now what I did is I unplugged the logic board so all the lights are out. Because, see, now, by me touching the metal, I can light various transistors. You light the transistor? You're lighting transistors. Cool. I don't see the transistor lighting. Now, over here is where my problem is. See that one? That is, when I touch it, look, the bad one is lighting. Why is it lighting, Todd? Because we're shorting it out. We're bypassing the computer. shorting the collector out. No. Or whatever. Who knows? See, no meters needed. Don't you know what you were doing? I do. Well, I kind of play a guy who knows what he's doing on YouTube, right? Now look, do you see this? That transistor we did change, but it's still not working. Oh, no. So we think it went up to the next chip. So when this one blew up with a blob of solder, it took this out, and we think it took this out too. Oh, did it? Well, you have to figure this out because I'm a doctor. So do you see all the things you can do with this? So without having to find the wire color in this connector, now you could do something like this too. Watch. Look at the play field. When I do this. Let me show you what you're doing up here first. See? You can light lots of things. You can even fire coils. You can do a lot.
    10:46
    How come you're not doing anything? Thank you so much. Oh, my brother. You would make an appearance. Wait a minute. Robbie. One moment. You back with the Whoppers yet or what? What did you want? Wasn't it Whopper Wednesday? Yes, it's Whopper Wednesday. I want a Whopper, Schmuck. Frank, what do you want? A Whopper. The extra triple-sized. No, that's for your brother. Come, come, come. Come order my food first, because once I get his lunch ready, there'll be nothing left. Are you already up, Danny, on Whopper? No. I'm hungry. Yeah, we can start.
    11:17
    I'll take an order and then I'll bring something else back. How's that? That's quite a piece of equipment, isn't it?
    11:25
    Can we wrap it around here? This is where you store it when you're not using it. You store a lot of things in your mouth, don't you?
    11:32
    Anyways, now we'll proceed to repair this. But now you know a little bit more about Godly stuff. People are afraid of it. What do you mean, afraid of it? People are afraid of Godly. stuff. Colleagues are the most dependable system they made. As long as you're not... When we took this display out, we turned it off before we unplugged it. I'm going to blow all my chips out on the board. Yeah, because then you walk away chewing your hand and there'll be left for me to do it, but I'm not doing it. Well, you're going to have to fix this because this guy is screaming. He personally counted every bulb. I'll fix it. It might be this week. It might be next week. What's your time budget? One month? Two months? Frank, let's get back to you.
    12:24
    Now, the guy actually pointed that out when we sold it to him. You know, this bulb isn't working. Every bulb. So if you do home sales, even somebody that doesn't even know how to pinball, How they spotted this one bulb with 64 other ones blinking, we'll never know, will we? But he did. So we did fix it, and it turned out to be the chip because that blob of solder really did its duty. It wasn't the chip. You said it was. Well, what was it? The transistor below the one you were pointing at. What nonsense. Liar. But for purposes of this conversation, it was the chip.
    13:06
    It was the chip. No, it wasn't. And it's fixed. And the customer is happy this week. Remember what I said yesterday about thinking it's always the chip? It wasn't the chip.
    13:20
    Well, Frank came up with an interesting other item you can make with a couple pieces of wire, a lamp socket, a light bulb or LED, and a diode. And this is to assist a Williams repair that uses a sort of not really a similar system. It's for matrix. Matricing work because the diode is needed to isolate the bulb from all the other lines. Yeah, the Gottlieb and the early Bally games, the bulbs are driven individually. So they all fed power and then grounded individually through the transistors That all you doing is just grounding that transistor which tells you that the bulb is good the wiring is good the socket is good Now this is also a little tidbit. If any of you ever see for sale a shuffle bowling alley in your neighborhood and it's cheap, if you were looking for a Williams board system, System 11, and then one shuffle alley is System 9, you have a complete set of boards inside a shuffle alley that you really don't have any intention of keeping. But if you were able to purchase the shuffle alley for $400 or $500 from your neighbor, you can take all the boards out and put them in a Tomcat or a Whirlwind or anything else because it uses the same boards. So Williams used that way. Only one shuffle alley used System 9, which is great if you have a comet that has battery damage. Now, this is the part that Frank made in this next chunk of video that you can make. Run the next clip please. So Frank, why don't you show us that connector that you made that everyone in the audience can make too. So what this is, I use an LED, just a regular lay down socket and have a diode in here with the banded side going to the red. Use red in your problems. It makes it easier when you're probing, so that's where you get the red to the yellow, red to red, yellow to yellow. This is handy because when you're trying to find a problem, you have a string of lights that are out. I'm going to use this StrikeMaster as an example because a lot of times these interconnect boards are a problem. You have the lamps and lines that come down from the logic board and then it splits off. You have one section going to the pin panel and you have another section going to the play field. If you're probing and you probe the connectors on the driver board and you probe all the lines and they're all good, then you know that it's not a problem on the board and you can come further down. You can say, well, is there a broken wire or something? Maybe there's a break between here and here and then that would affect the pin panel and the play field lights. With it being red to yellow, you have the diode in here, it won't affect anything negatively and you can just go down the line. So it's very simple. A little bit of wire, socket, an LED, and a diode. So you would put all the lights in a flash test. Right. You would do a lamp test, and then you can just probe. Now, what I did was I took some extra capacitor leads and soldered them, so this way you have nice, instead of trying to leave the loose, you know, the strands of wire, this way you can probe each one. Now, this game is turned off, obviously, so you could possibly turn it on just to see. Well, we should. I mean, these people are screaming. Wait a minute. Look at the credits. You're the director and the producer and the writer. You didn't direct this. Well, I expected you. Franklin. Nope, that wasn't in the contract. Was it in the contract for you to step over that? No.
    16:59
    You can't afford to do that. Now, of course, Frank, you can also. Now, right now we have all the lights flashing on the play field, say.
    17:23
    See? So that's good. You can check all the lines here. So he's basically checking all the red lines, and then you can basically move it and check all the yellow lines. So if you find one that's dead. So all the reds are good.
    17:42
    Skip over the key. This helps isolate where the problem could be because your problem could be very low in the play field. You know, Frank, I don't know whether I should rate you on greatness or what. You can also check that on whether it's good on here. Now we know everything is good. Everything in the driver board is good. Everything coming into this interconnecting board is good. And then you're set. So if you see a line that's not working, then you can troubleshoot. I've had problems with these boards. You might have to go in the back and then do some continuity checks. You might have to run a jumper. Why are these traces? It was more with switches, but the switches will work the same way, too. You can actually put it into a switch test and make a little thing and then use a button, put a diode in there, and you'll have done that before, too.
    18:31
    Now, there is another way you can test switches if you have it in the switch test. And, Frank, what I would do is actually you can't do it up here because the two wires are in. But you can actually unplug it.
    18:50
    Oh, boy, that's in tight. No, you're just going to put it inside. No, you can't do it on this. No, you would have to be split. No, no, no. Okay, so here's what I'll do. I'm just going to cut it after that. I'm not going to say it. Now, you know, there's another way to test, and that's with, Frank, a... That little bit of light is hurting your eyes. It's quite my face.
    19:15
    Frank, I've spent millions of dollars on this equipment to make this episode. Why do your videos still suck? Oh, I'm going to stop making these videos for good. The promise is promised.
    19:28
    People love your sarcasm. Well, Frank, why don't we look at a Williams game and see... The Scott Lee game is different. The test I was talking about with the switches, and I'll continue with the room that we were in at the very end of the hall that has a No Fear and an Addams Family.
    19:50
    That is Emily's room from Electromagnetic Pinball Museum. And when I walked in, boy, was that room hot.
    20:01
    And it got even hotter after you walked in, right? Emily had her head inside the Adams family because she wasn't sure why the switch didn't work, and she was thinking the switch was bad. And if all of you even have the least bit of knowledge, Williams uses green and white. So there's a green wire and a white wire, and that particular switch didn't work. The other three 12 switches did, but they didn't share any common. We didn't have a book. So I said our smartest move is to see what may have broken off before the end of the line, which was that switch.
    20:42
    So all you have to do is, this is if you do not have a book. A book makes it real easy, is look at the two colors. You have green and let's say red and white and brown. And then start looking at all the switches, starting with anything that's a drop target or a stand-up target. The stand-up targets get beat, so the switch is hit on the top and it wiggles the wires below.
    21:12
    Okay? And number two, check anything on a coil switch that's mounted on a coil plate where the coil bangs, and then the switch is attached to that, and that could happen. So we found this real fast. It turned out to be the kicker that kicks the ball from thing, goes down a ramp, and kicks it back to the play field.
    21:37
    Also, if you owned an Adams family, every Adams family on planet Earth, that bracket breaks, it welds. So we bought a welder just for that. We take the bracket out and re-weld it, which fixes it permanently. And sure enough, the switch was dangling away. I think it was white-gray now comes to think of it. One of the white-grays broke, so that means all the white-gray after that switch would not work. That was a quick fix. She presented me with a no-fear that had no trough switches. And then also, you know what it was? It was the left ramp, the left shot. all in the left lower part. The slingshots, both slingshots and the two left ball drain. Ball drain and the left flipper feed. I think that's what it was. She had a book.
    22:31
    Actually, it was the chart they used to staple to the bottom of the machine. And that, sure enough, one wire shared all the common wires for that. And here's what happened.
    22:44
    We first looked at the logic board, and I looked for battery damage because WPCs had the batteries and they leak. And somebody had changed the batteries recently, but they had no sign of leakage. So I wiggled the connectors while they held down the switch on the left out lane, the kickback lane, I guess you could say. We got no sounds, nothing. then we noticed that also in sharing is the cabinet switch which runs the extra ball that didn't work either that's a separate connector so that told me since that switch didn't work and the playfield switches didn't work that there are two separate cables going to the logic board so it really points at the logic board because of the fact that we had two separate cabling, and it probably removed the possible chance of it being on the play field, like a wire dangling.
    23:51
    Sometimes you don't get lucky like that because there's only a few switches on the front door that don't share. But in this case, we went right to the logic board, and by unplugging the play field switch for the white, and by moving the connector over a pin or turning the plug cockeyed and plugging the plug back in so that one wire was now plugged into another pin on that connector. None of the other connectors were made. We pushed the switch on the playfield. It worked. Now we know absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, the problems on the logic board. So we took the battery housing off, and there's a chip there. I call it the fuse, the only part that blows up on the WPC boards. And it was already in a socket. So somebody obviously had changed it before. When we sell a WPC game, we put that chip in a fuse all the time. No, we put that chip in a fuse. We put that in a socket. Correct. So I said to Emily, Emily, were you changing light bulbs on this? And she says, well, yeah. About 10 minutes ago, I was changing some bulbs. I said, well, it sounds like whatever you did touched the switch line and blew the chip up, because that's when the problem developed. It's always neat when you go out and do a service call. Has anybody been in the machine? Oh, no, nobody's touched it. Not at all. No, but I'll remember. and then when you find the problem well, I did make that adjustment and that's when the game stopped working but a few minutes ago you said you were never in it happens a lot, doesn't it? never mess with anything with the power so she was supposed to get a chip, I didn't follow up with her but the switch chip was positively her problem but all the other switches worked she should have been happy with that she was happy And she's lucky that you were there with your knowledge and years and years of experience. And greatness. Okay, let's not get carried away. Anyway, our last clip is with Brother Rob showing a Williams, a cyclone. And this is a diagnosing, what were we diagnosing? The light bulbs. Oh, yes. We film these things and kind of forget. So we'll run our last clip. Well, I'm going to show you something about Tolstoy's building, the GI lighting, and it also is a great crossover to the switches. Now, I don't know if you're aware of this, my brother. This is Brother Rob. You recognize him, don't you? Where?
    26:43
    He's my big brother. Almost useless, but I still love the man. When he takes my I see I got one in I got my poke in and let's look back to the time the cowboys aren't happy they're never they're never happy right now listen there's something in this system all the Williams systems uh do what they call the matrix this will work for any Williams pinball from 1977 seven until the oh through the WPC system because you can also cheat and it's cheating we're to figure out where your problem is on the play field or on the board now first I'm gonna do we're gonna do the switch test first Robbie so I put it into a switch test that's the lamp test oh no no I'm sorry we'll do the lamp test first since that's first. Now notice it says here, all lamps. Yeah, there's a couple that aren't flashing because we haven't serviced them. This little light here isn't flashing Clark You right It was earlier I going to write a letter to the manufacturer of this Oh you know what You know why it not Robbie It cold The board has not been serviced So there an ice cold connection on this board
    28:18
    Well, Jesse? Done. Done. The die is cast. Okay. So what we want to do is we're going to try to figure out where the problems are. Notice all the lights are blinking. So that means, Robbie, that it's sending a signal through these two, the yellow and the red. Right. And these eight transistors, and these eight transistors, these 16, allow, because there's a diode on each light bulb to create 64 different individual light commands so the computer these EEPROMs here can tell that light to go on all by itself and it sends a command over to these these are called PIAs okay and they in turn run the switches which is here so this is probably the PIA. We have solenoids and lamp PIAs. The processors are over here. I'm not sure exactly which is which, but I can tell you that it's very easy to figure things out. Now watch. If I unplug this plug, all the lights go out. Now, every Williams game has color codes. So this is red, but then there's a little color in there, blue, green, whatever. Now, if this was, and there's a key, so you can't boob it up, Robbie. Have you ever plugged a plug in wrong? No, I never. And not blown anything up? Never.
    30:00
    I don't know. If possible, he hasn't. Probably. But if I move this, now watch. If I move this here, eight lights are flashing, okay? And that is, in fact, the pin sending the signal. Then I move the connector over one, eight are still flashing. Eight are still flashing when I plug it in here, and so on. So if I move this plug all the way down, I have proven that every single pin has an output and it's flashing. That means all of these transistors are good. Now suppose I did that and this one didn't work. That's the fourth. I would, I think it's fourth, I think it starts here, that's the bottom second. I would then look at this transistor because it's not flashing. Now it is because the transistor is good. Now the nice thing about this, you can do the exact same thing with this one. You move it one by one, see, all those, and the same lights will flash when I move it because i'm sending the signal to the same light bulbs the computer doesn't know this and it would probably be upset too if it knew i was doing this but see it doesn't so i can do anything i want with this some people say well suppose you're halfway down and you're not sure then all you really need to do you can bend the pin down so you remember you can take the board out and then change the transistor Now here's the beauty of this, Robbie. What I just showed you, you don't have to have a meter because I can figure out in a flash which is bad. I need to see these videos before we do these presentations. Can I make that request? Because just like the audience is seeing it for the first time, so am I, and that's why I'm sitting here. Where were you watching? Oh, you were watching. I'm watching there, yes. I didn't see them.
    32:02
    Chuck, you're now senior editor. It's right in front of you. Well... It's called a talent monitor, so you have to have talent. But there's two. One's pointed at me. Spoken like a learned individual. See, he knows you, Todd. Now, Chuck... Yes. Thought had an idea when you were working with your games. Chuck owns some games, too. He's actually not an employee. He just likes to hang out at TMT.
    32:34
    No, I wouldn't say I like it. Oh. So I bought my first game from TNT 20 years ago. You got overcharged then. I got overcharged. Way, way overcharged. Tripled the market. Probably correct. And Frank and I were talking about this a little bit earlier.
    32:57
    The first time I owned a pinball machine, I opened up the back box. I pulled up the play field and I went, what in the world is all this? Like, what is this stuff? And over the years, I've had the good fortune of working and having Todd as a resource. So when I have a problem with my machines, I mean, he's making it look easy. And obviously, how many years of experience do you have doing this? Two, three. I was going to say maybe four. I mean, he makes this stuff look easy. And I know an awful lot having been around Todd for the last 20 some odd years. but it's still overbearing and it's still difficult i i can call todd anytime i need something and say hey todd what's the answer to my problem and he'll go on and on for probably 35 40 minutes and then i'll call frank and he'll fix it in five but but it's nice to talk to no more phone help for you you know what yeah but when you call todd you're talking about your favorite menu items and no more coming in and working on the weekends for But anyway, putting that aside, the most interesting thing that I've learned over the years, and you and I were talking about this yesterday, and you actually brought it up in your seminar yesterday, is most of the time it's not what you think the problem is. I mean, you've got a switch out, and you immediately go, well, the switch must be bad. Let me pull the switch out and put a new switch in. And it turns out that you pull your switch out, you put the new switch in. Sometimes it works for a little while. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. You just spent 25 minutes putting a switch in, and now you're like, well, what is this? And so we've all been there. We've all just sort of jumped to the conclusion of it's got to be this. I'm going to focus on the switch. It must be this issue. and you and I, we talked about the fact that you need a much broader approach to this. You want to do the switch test. You want to start with your connections on your board. You want to do the easy stuff first before you focus solely on what the problem is. Yeah, and when I point that stuff out, I don't say that to criticize. Like, don't do this. I've done it. How many mistakes have I made? I've made all of them. Still do. How many mistakes am I going to continue to make? A hell of a lot more. I don't.
    35:11
    You've made, never mind. How many of your dad made a mistake 16 years ago? I'm sorry, never mind. John, how many mistakes have I made? Today.
    35:19
    That's not fair. Today? I've been the last 38 minutes. None, but I'm not always watching. Thank you. That's a good answer. But sometimes when you're looking, you have to look beyond what you think it would be, even though it may not make sense. It's not always the case, but sometimes it is. So you just can't just look at one thing and then replace a part and insist, well, maybe that new part's bad. I've seen people do that too. So you just have to really kind of look out a little bit and expand and think about it logically. What's it doing what it's supposed to be doing? What's it not doing it?
    35:56
    I mean, how many times do you think it's one thing and it turns out it's a fuse? And you're like, that was so simple. Why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I start there? Oh, I got a funny story about that. we had this, it was a System 3 Gottlieb game, and I didn't work on it, and it had a hum. It had a hum in the sound. So somebody changed the whole transformer panel, put another one in, fixed the hum, and then the game went out the door. Well, inevitably, we needed that transformer panel for the game that the other one was taken out of. And I spent so many hours trying to figure out why this transformer was causing a hum. And there were no blown fuses. Well, you didn't think there was a blown fuse, but there was. Actually, Jillian, do you remember we had that situation on a shack attack when you were down at the shop a year or two ago? Yeah. And I showed you that, and the fuse was blown, but it was blown underneath. So when you looked at it, it looked fine. And the audio amplifier gets two lines of AC sent to it, and one line was out, and that's what was causing the hum. So this is one of those times where you're sitting there thinking it's one thing, and it's not, and I didn't. You look at the fuse, and usually when a fuse is blown, it looks blown, and it wasn't. It was just a tiny little break. And when Jillian and I were looking at the shack attack, it was the same thing. It was humming. She said, this thing's making a hum. I said, I know exactly what it is. And we looked at the fuse. I pulled it out. It was a tiny, tiny little break.
    37:19
    And that was caused because the diode went bad on the amplifier board. So you put a fuse in there. Well, we also had where the fuse block itself went bad. Yeah, but on those games, that's pretty rare. I know they're the beefy fuse blocks. There's not a current going through them. But, yeah, I mean, it can get a little bit of corrosion on it. We actually had in Atlantis, I think it was, what was it, Uralantis, the one that has the red and blue, or I'm sorry, the red part of the GI, there's red and then there's white or something. And the one section was out, and there's a fuse block. So if the play field's lifted up, it's on the right side about the middle. I'm looking over it, and I'm looking over it, and I see, oh, the wire's off. So I solder the wire back on. Everything's fine. and wandering around and lights are out again. What the hell is going on here? There was corrosion on the fuse holder and on the fuse, and it was getting so hot from the resistance that it was melting the solder, and the wire had just fallen off.
    38:15
    So sometimes you could have such a simple – the answer can be right in front of you, and you don't even realize it. I myself, I take lots of pictures. A couple years ago, I replaced a flipper coil.
    38:32
    I took all these pictures, you know, so I didn't mess up the wiring or anything. I changed the coil.
    38:41
    I turned the game on and blow a fuse right away. Blow a fuse right away. Put another fuse in, blow it. And I sent these pictures to Frank. I'm like, what's going on here? and after a few moments he said you know look at your pictures you actually when you when you changed the coil you soldered you flipped two wires around backwards and he saw that just because i had before and after pictures i sent him and it was right in front of me and i didn't even notice it i can't even tell you how many times i've done things like that and i've gotten to the point now where when I'm taking something apart, in addition to pictures, I take a little piece of tape and I mark everything because I've done that so many times and spent hours trying to figure out what is it that I reversed. You're going to see it immediately. I had gotten so frustrated I wasn't even taking close attention to the documentation I did for myself. But there's another problem with that. If you're changing a flipper coil and it's got three tabs on it and you do left, center, right, you can't always put them back left, center, right. Do you know why? why can't you just do that? You can't just blindly do that. Why can't you do that?
    39:55
    Todd? Well, the manufacturer of the coil could have reversed the diodes soldered across the tabs. That's exactly right. So you have to check the positive and negative of the diode. And that just happened. The banded side of the diode goes to the banded side of the diode of the new coil. So it might go left, center, right, and right, center, left. The man changed his pin bot coils and called me hysterical because he hooked them up exactly the same. And I said, are you sure the bandit died? Oh, yes, yes. And we're on the phone back and forth. I'm going through the manual. I finally went back and referenced, it was a Joker's, which had the same color wires soldered to it. Took a picture of him, compared it to his picture. I said, you reversed the two wires. I did not. He did. So if you've hit the left or right flip request, I said, do it just to the one and put a new fuse in. Fuse didn't blow. The coil worked. How could I have done that? My favorite is when people put the coil in backwards. Oh, that's always a good one. You've got the center and left and right, and the last person put the coil in wrong, so you take the coil out. You go, no, it's supposed to be this way. You put it in, and then you put all the red wires on the top. Must be there again. You wire it backwards. Yep. Because the last guy put it in wrong. And 99% of the time, if you wire a coil back, would you blow the diode? Just put a new diode. Yeah, you have to change the diode again. So here's a little tidbit. This guy, Pinbody, is at Michigan, and his new replacement coil just had one diode on each flipper, and he blew the diodes out on both. So I said, you can get the Williams packed into every pinball machine spare diodes, and they both happen to be. One's on the slam switch, so you have to cut that off there. And one is on the tilt switch on the play field, this pendulum that you're never going to need. And that's what he did. He unsoldered those diodes and put them on his flippers and fixed his problem without having to send him any more parts. Now the pinbot guy I dealt with matches up to a four important lesson for all of you When you stuck on something sometimes you need another set of eyes
    42:18
    That was my case with Frank and my flipper coil. Somebody else to look at. Absolutely. You all know it. You can look at it a thousand times. It's right, it's right, it's right. Somebody looks at it and says, no, it's not. and you're like, ah, I can't believe it. And I've done that and called both of these gentlemen and said, hey, what a – and they just – they know it. But it's a good thing. Another set of eyes. And if you don't have a set of eyes, take a break for a day or two and come back to it. Or have your wife look at it.
    42:47
    If you don't mind being screamed at because you broke a game that was working. You hooked this up backwards. What's wrong with you? You idiot. Something like that. Now, we're running into an issue now of finding people that want to actually work on games. You guys have to learn how to do your own stuff or hire somebody outside, which, and they're few and far between. And we now have Greg that I pointed out earlier. He now comes. He moonlights at TNT two days a week. And Terry, my daughter, who's next to Greg there, she moonlights too. They have real jobs. But they moonlight and have to learn. And I never got a chance to run this clip. I have a 45-second clip of Terry when she started working for me when she was 14 years old. And this is a piece of an old video I made of her. Remember when Transformers came out brand new? So that gives you an idea how long ago this was filmed. But we wanted to show people that even a 14-year-old could put the machine together, and we just used a 45-second clip from the video. But I said, I've got to get her in this tonight. So we'll run this little clip next.
    44:14
    This is so unusual. We never have technical difficulties when we do live. For those of you who watch the live presentations, you know we never have problems.
    44:27
    The videos on YouTube are always professionally shot and done. They're always in focus. Do you know I'm making, I get thousands more views on TikTok now. So TikTok is replaced.
    44:46
    And they're filmed. I call it wretched vision. So we go up and down, and Facebook is up and down. Do you know if I try to go on YouTube Live, it defaults you on up and down. You have to go way into the menu to turn it to horizontal, because I still like horizontal videos. But today's kids do not like horizontal videos. They like to go flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, and watch five seconds of your video. So if you do TikTok, you have to make sure the first five or six seconds can grab them and make them sit and watch. I did a video last night on TikTok. Uploaded it. It was midnight.
    45:28
    And I put it up today. Or I put it up immediately. I'm going to actually have it looked. But you ready? Let me just finish this. My mother does this too, by the way.
    45:51
    It's up and down. Yes, but that hopefully gets them. So I shot the video. It's gotten 594 views and four shares so far.
    46:03
    So I'm trying everything to bring in new faces, people interested in fixing stuff, and even people like my daughter. You're ready now, Terry. Here's your 45 seconds of fame.
    46:17
    Actually, I think you've got this on for like eight minutes. Hi, I'm Terry, and I'm going to show you how to unbox a brand new Transformer symbol. Now be careful with one of these. Now I'm going to bolt the legs up. See how easy this is? Well I'm holding all the weight. And now we're going to lift the head up.
    47:06
    So precious. So fuzzy, too. Those old cameras. But see, back then, we were just making the videos for fun and such.
    47:17
    Yeah, it's got another serious business. I did one opening a brand-new Tron pinball, and that was Tammy that unboxed it and she somehow found it online and deleted it forever. So I can't show that anymore. Terry, could you find some of the videos and delete them as well, please? I'll give you a list.
    47:40
    This is why she was converting all the old movies. It makes sense now. She's destroying them. She went. She did not want her to be seen. Tammy has kind of, has very little interest in pinball, unfortunately, but just like my wife. But thank goodness Terry is here. That's right. Terry likes, she actually enjoys meeting all of you and talking to you and wandering about. It's just like, I guess you noticed at this show, this one in particular,
    48:14
    it seems to be much closer because you're not walking a mile from your room to the hall. Everything's carpeted. It's intimate. And this is a very nice hotel. Very nice. Agreed. So it's worked out very nicely so far. Gabe has done a wonderful job. Fantastic job. Amazing. Right there in the front. And our two AV experts. Thank you.
    48:43
    Great. I'm just a sideshow. He's a sideshow. I used to travel with a side-chess. You used to travel. I thought you were still in the side-chess. It's always a carnival with Todd. It is. And we have time. We have the space until when? Well, I was going to say, we have about eight minutes. That would be a fabulous idea, Gillian. Does anybody have any questions or comments? So, Frank, you made that test light with just using some capacitor leads. Now, back in the day, when Radio Shack was all over the place, you could buy test probes. Yeah. And you can get stuff on Amazon, too, if you want. They're still around.
    49:36
    Would you want to do that? Do you see any disadvantage? I mean, it's a nice 4-inch long insulation. You can just hold it when you're at the diode. Well, you're not going to get, as long as you're not sloppy, you're not going to get hurt. But this is more in reference to just something you have laying around. You can whip something together. But, yeah, you can get, and it might only even be $12 or $15, like a whole test lead kit from Amazon, because I bought some extra ones for my meter, and they have the nice long leads, and you can actually just cut them. But I like using the red and the yellow wires just so when you're probing, you're staying on the red, because the diode matters. I guess you could put some tape you could maybe put some yellow tape on the one for the yellow side cut the lead back if they're cheap enough by the way there's a tip speaking of the tape that he mentioned you can buy heat shrink for like dirt next to nothing, big rolls, underfoot rolls on Amazon for under $10 so we have five different sizes you can get different colors too you could get different colors, we usually just buy the black but they're perfect if you're adding lights to your surface. When I was underneath the Addams Family, I saw, I call it alligator clips-a-go-go, with all the things added with alligator clips. Nothing goes out of our shop with alligator clips. For the extra lighting and things, we solder everything. We cut the alligator clip off that the person who sells you the toy includes. and if you say oh I might want to take the toy off you can put a molex connector on it you can buy a male and female molex we have drawers of all different sizes so in fact if we want to take Uncle Fester or they call him Uncle Lester off the seat you can unplug them rather than unsolder it since you cut the alligator clips off alligator clips will short stuff out because one's going to fall off when you lift the play field up on the umpteenth time. It'll fall off and then swing and touch the magnet transistor or something.
    51:47
    Or even if you're just moving your game around to a different location in your game room, you buy a game from someone that has a mod clipped on there, you transport it home. Or just vibration from players. Yep, absolutely.
    52:01
    Cut them off and solder it. Anybody else? Oh, go ahead. So you used an LED and a diode. What if you want to use a regular bulb? What if you don't have an LED? It doesn't hurt anything. You can see it works fine. I mean, that would be like saying we'll just take all the diodes out of your lamp matrix if you're going to put in LEDs.
    52:30
    I don't know. I never experimented with it enough to see if that makes a difference or not. You could try it. Does it change the voltage drop at all? No, the LEDs draw about a third of the power that the incandescent bulbs do. That's why you don't burn up your connectors anymore when you switch to LEDs. And you can actually lower your fuses too, which I recommend doing. Yes, that's true. Frank, you know, the Williams had 5-amp fuses for the four lines, or five in the case of the WPC. But if you change it all to LEDs, you can drop it down to two. Two and a half to three, it depends.
    53:05
    You could. I mean, you could put a meter across and measure it and see what the draw is and just keep it as close to that as possible. You've got to buy a meter. Take it down to threes is fine. Don't tinker with a pinball machine if you don't have a meter. Sorry. That's one of my questions. When do you stop putting down a piece of jumper wire and grab a meter or grab a logic board?
    53:24
    I guess it depends on what you're really finding. I was kind of asking you, when do you put down a piece of jumper wire and grab a meter? Well, I'm never going to use it. I don't meter. I don't meter anything when I'm fixing lights or switches until I have to measure the transistors on the board. So you can just do the jumper wire thing.
    53:43
    If that doesn't work, then you isolate it back to the board. Then you need a meter to measure the transistors. Logic probe, I only do that when I'm fixing dead boards. I'm checking address and data signals and stuff like that. I have a scope, which has been out of the box three times. I never use the scope for any kind of trouble. I haven't needed it, so, I mean, a logic probe will work fine. And I actually did do a video using my scope demonstrating how the 6803 lamp circuit works. That's on my YouTube channel showing how, because you have one transistor that controls two different bulbs independently. And I show how the two different AC phases, how the game will alternate between if it wants the A lamp on or the B lamp on. So you can check that video out. It goes into a little bit more detail on how that works. Because if you have a transistor blend, you're going to lose two bulbs, not just one.
    54:29
    No quarters needed. No quarters arcade. No wonder people don't find your site. Any other questions? I have blank stares. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
    54:49
    And can you please run my end credits? It's only 10 seconds, maybe 20. Everybody stick around for the next 10 seconds. See the end credits. Well, that's all we have. I don't think anybody learned the same thing. What do you think, Zach? Yes? About what?
    55:10
    About how to fix their stupid games. What do you think? Not even close. Robbie! What? Did you learn something? Shut up!
    55:23
    Anyway, and I want you all out there in the audience to thank the idiots sitting on the... the folks sitting up front. including me. I don't want to be all alone working. Well.
    55:37
    And now you can run the end credits. I forgot I filmed that, too. Good night. We're all so much better having seen that. That's ten seconds of your life you'll never get back. You're mean to me.
    56:00
    Thanks for coming, folks. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.