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#88 Stern Stars - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Jul 26, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

John Day showcases a radical Arduino-modded 1978 Stern Stars with custom playfield and modernized ruleset/sound.

Summary

George, Dave, and John Day discuss a deeply customized 1978 Stern Stars pinball machine that John restored for Mike. The restoration involved a custom silk-screened playfield from Beehive Pinball (featuring reimagined artwork blending Galaxy, Stars, and other classic Stern designs), upgraded flipper mechanics, and crucially, a Ballystern OS Arduino-based control system that replaces the original MPU with modern code, sound synthesis, and dynamic lighting—transforming the game from early solid-state to mid-1980s complexity. The episode documents the technical implementation, gameplay improvements, and the broader community of Arduino conversions for classic games.

Key Claims

  • Beehive Pinball (Mike Lund) hand-cut silk screens for only 15 custom Stars playfields with reimagined artwork combining Galaxy, Stars, and other Stern designs

    high confidence · John Day describing the playfield source and production volume during the restoration discussion

  • John Day has converted at least four Meteors (possibly five) in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to the Ballystern OS Arduino system

    high confidence · John Day directly stating his conversion work: 'far, I have converted four Meteors in the state of Massachusetts to this code. Maybe it's more than that now. Maybe a fifth one up in New Hampshire'

  • The Ballystern OS Arduino implementation includes 93 sound bites and supports 9-13 simultaneous polyphonic audio tracks

    medium confidence · John Day describing the sound board capabilities: 'I think there's maybe 93 sound bites... I think it supports at least nine simultaneous soundtracks, and it might be as many as 13'

  • Dick Hamill designed the Ballystern OS as an open-source Arduino solution plugging into the J5 connector without modifying the original MPU

    high confidence · John Day explaining the technical architecture and crediting Dick Hamill as the originator on GitHub

  • Pinball Life manufactures second-generation Classic Stern flipper mechanisms as replacements for original Stern games

    high confidence · John Day stating 'Pinball Life makes Reproduction the second-generation classic stern mechs' as superior to originals

  • The Ballystern OS is available for at least Meteor, Stars, Flash Gordon, Mata Hari, and Galaxy

    high confidence · John Day listing available titles: 'it's currently available for a bunch of titles. So it's available for Meteor, Stars, Flash Gordon, Mata Hari is another title. Galaxy is another one'

  • A good score on this customized Stars is over 100,000 points; a really good game is over 200,000

    medium confidence · George and John discussing scoring benchmarks: 'I think if you break 100,000... I think 100,000... I think a really good game is probably over two'

Notable Quotes

  • “So this is really boutique. It is. Yeah, it's extremely boutique, actually.”

    John Day and Dave @ mid-conversation — Emphasizes the rarity and exclusivity of the hand-cut silk-screened playfield from Beehive Pinball

  • “And I'm like, that's brilliant... And so I went for it... And that is a brutal game to play, and it is so nice to have precise flippers that are so powerful and so precise in that game.”

    Dave @ mid-conversation — Describes Dave's own WPC flipper conversion philosophy on Flash Gordon, contrasting approaches to mechanical upgrades

  • “I was very careful. I'm a woodworker, so I made a very nice – I copied a meteor, so I copied the same – there's like a square mount for the speaker. So I copied all the dimensions from a meteor so it would look normal. It was karmically correct.”

    John Day @ mid-conversation — Shows thoughtful approach to cabinet modification—preserving aesthetic integrity while adding modern components

  • “So Dick came out with a base operating system, which he published on GitHub. So it's available open source. You can grab it.”

    John Day @ mid-conversation — Highlights the open-source nature of the Ballystern OS project, enabling community adoption

  • “And I think Dick Hamill calls it reimagining.”

    John Day @ mid-conversation — Introduces the terminology for the Arduino approach as a complete reimagining vs. ROM tweaking

  • “So this guy, Dick Hamill, does he have a website or a Twitch channel or a YouTube channel? I don't know. Where do people – because other than playing here and I don't remember again... I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. It's really awesome.”

    George and others @ mid-conversation — Reveals that despite the innovation, Dick Hamill has minimal public profile outside Pinside forums

  • “And so the game actually has a switch, which is kind of interesting in the head, where you can run classic rule sets and the Arduino is disabled.”

    John Day — Important detail: the conversion is reversible via a hardware switch, allowing play in original or modern mode

Entities

John DaypersonGeorgepersonDavepersonDick HamillpersonMike LundpersonMaureenpersonMikeperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Dick Hamill's Ballystern OS represents a systematic approach to retrofitting classic Stern/Bally games with modern embedded control, polyphonic sound, and dynamic lighting while preserving original mechanical playfield and cabinet aesthetics.

    high · John Day's detailed technical breakdown of the Arduino architecture, J5 connector integration, open-source GitHub publication, and multiple community implementations across different game titles.

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Beehive Pinball's hand-cut silk-screened playfield reproduction for Stars (limited to 15 units) represents a high-touch alternative to mass-production options, with custom artwork blending aesthetics from multiple classic games.

    high · John Day crediting Mike Lund and Beehive Pinball; discussion of limited production run, custom artwork process, and unavailability forcing selection of this premium option.

  • ?

    technology_signal: The Ballystern OS community is growing with GitHub hosting, Pinside forum coordination, and third-party PCB kit vendors offering plug-and-play solutions for multiple classic titles, lowering the barrier to technical conversions.

    high · John Day referencing 30+ Pinside posts, GitHub repository with schematics and source files, resellers offering kits, and his own custom PCB design work.

  • ?

    design_innovation: The Stars 2021 Ballystern OS variant adds polyphonic audio (9-13 simultaneous tracks, 93 samples), multi-brightness pulsating inserts, and attract mode light shows that modernize 1978 game's presentation to mid-1980s complexity level.

    high · John Day describing sound capabilities, insert pulsating effects, and comparison of attract mode quality between original and Arduino versions.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.229

0:00
There's a starman waiting in the sky He'd like to come and meet us But he thinks he'd blow our minds There's a starman waiting in the sky He's told us not to blow it Cause he knows it's all worth while he's holding Let the children lose it Let the children use it That all the children do get
0:59
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George and today, a little bit different folks, we're in the kitchen, not the basement.
1:10
We're with somebody we've introduced before. We've talked about him before. Oh, you're going to chime in now? Yeah, why not?
1:20
I'm here with Dave, obviously, but also as we call our resident genius, good guy, pinball intellectual, John Day. Hello, John. Hello, and thanks for inviting me, George and Dave. I'm truly honored to be on your podcast, so thank you.
1:42
Our pleasure. Last time we were here at Mike's house, I spoke of a handful of games that Mike had acquired since I was here last,
1:53
stars being one of those. Well, folks, this isn't your ordinary stars. This is a game that John has meticulously put together for Mike. So I'm going to have John take a few minutes and tell us a little bit about the game and what he did.

  • The original 1978 Stern Stars is a chimer (electromechanical sound) game with EM-like characteristics including a bonus ladder

    high confidence · John Day: 'Is it a chimer? It's a chimer. Yeah. That's correct.' and discussion of EM flavor with ladder bonus

    • @ mid-conversation

  • “The Arduino thing is more of a rewrite and doing whatever you want with it... The Scott way is more like taking the original ROM set and tweaking it.”

    Dave @ mid-conversation — Contrasts two philosophies for classic game modernization—complete reimagining vs. incremental ROM refinement

    • Scott
    person
    Stern Starsgame
    Ballystern OSproduct
    Meteorgame
    Flash Gordongame
    Galaxygame
    Mata Harigame
    Beehive Pinballcompany
    Pinball Lifecompany
    CPR (Classic Pinball Restoration)company
    Pinsidewebsite/community
    Attack from Marsgame
    The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
    GitHubwebsite
    Knight Ridergame
    Pinbotgame
    Firepowergame
    ?

    gameplay_signal: The Arduino conversion preserves original Stars rule structure (3-target 2x bonus, 6-target 3x bonus, star completion) while adding new depth through spinner multiplier tracking (up to 1,000 points/revolution with all 5 stars), ball save features, and enhanced bonus multipliers.

    high · John Day explaining preserved rules plus new mechanics like spinner spin tracking for 100+ spins yielding advanced bonus time and dynamic pulsating insert feedback.

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Two competing restoration philosophies emerge: John's Gen 2 Classic Stern mechanics preserve lightweight 'snappy' feel appropriate to original design; Dave's WPC conversion in Williams/Tower games prioritizes precision and power. Both approaches are contextual to game origin and designer intent.

    high · Dave and John discussing their different approaches, with Dave using Bally fiber link for late-70s games and WPC for early Williams games, while John chose Gen 2 Stern for Stars to maintain original flipper character.

  • ?

    community_signal: John Day represents a small cohort of electrical engineers and pinball enthusiasts deeply embedded in Pinside forums who are independently designing custom PCBs and implementing complex Arduino solutions across multiple game titles, creating informal peer-learning communities.

    high · John's mention of designing his own PCB layouts, converting 4-5 machines, references to reseller kits on Pinside, and Dick Hamill's helpful community support across 30+ forum posts.

  • ?

    product_concern: Standard reproduction playfield options (CPR) face long lead times (6 months to 1 year) and stock outages, creating market opportunity for premium custom reproduction vendors like Beehive Pinball despite higher cost and limited availability.

    medium · John Day noting CPR was out of stock, requiring 6-month to 1-year wait for reruns, which motivated the Beehive Pinball option despite its exclusivity and cost premium.

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: John Day's approach to integrating modern audio (speaker modification) demonstrates careful attention to aesthetic and functional integrity, including woodworking skills to match cabinet dimensions and mounting standards from era-appropriate donor machines (Meteor).

    medium · John describing woodworking approach to speaker installation, copying Meteor mounting dimensions, and self-described 'karmically correct' attention to preserving cabinet integrity.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: The Arduino implementation includes a hardware switch allowing users to toggle between original rule set (with chimes) and modern Arduino rule set, preserving reversibility and appealing to collectors who value originality preservation alongside modernization benefits.

    high · John Day explaining the hardware switch feature that disables Arduino and runs classic rule sets with steamer/chimes, with note to turn power off when switching.

  • ?

    community_signal: This episode serves as rare public technical documentation of the Ballystern OS conversion process and philosophy, filling a gap in public knowledge about Dick Hamill's work despite its 30+ forum post community presence.

    medium · George's repeated surprise that this hadn't been discussed publicly before ('I've never heard anybody ever talk about this'), despite the Pinside forum presence and John's multiple successful conversions.

    • 2:13
    Dave's going to ask a couple of questions because I really don't know this game all that well. And then we're going to go downstairs and we're going to actually play it. So I'm going to hand the floor over to John, and Dave, chime in if you've got a question. Do you want to ask a question first? You're looking at me with kind of a long face. No, I'm fine. No, you keep going. You're good. Okay. John, tell us a little bit about this particular Stars, what you started with and what you did to it. Sure, yeah. So this Stars, Mike was looking for a copy of Stars, a game that he knew was really fun and challenging player, and one showed up locally. And as you know, when you look at games in the listings, they often look good. They're in maybe not such good lighting, and the play field looks better than it does when you actually go up and pick up the game. So Mike picked up the game, and the play field was not that great. There was mylar in spots. There was lots of missing paint. It was very dirty. and in the end the play field was just not up to the level that that Mike was looking for so so we were looking at doing a play field swap so I was like you know no problem we can get a repo play field and that will be great so unfortunately there were no standard play fields that were available anymore but fortunately there's a someone I met out of Colorado called Beehive Pinball and I had purchased play field protectors from him before the guy's name is Mike Lund super nice guy and he had made a completely custom artwork play field reproduction for stars and so we went to his website and it was out of stock and it was like sign up for a uh the waiting list and maybe you'll get it someday now now we're in 2022 when did you do this game uh this was done in 2022, roughly January this year. Oh, okay. So this is brand new. This is brand new. Okay.
    4:15
    I got a question, too. CPR does make a star's play field. They did, and I have one. Okay, you stole my question. They did, but they were out of stock, unfortunately, at the time that we looked for it. So if he was in a rush to do it, with CPR, you can say they're going to rerun them again. You just have to wait six months to a year. But then again, the other one you had, the other option is very intriguing, too. if you want like a rare thing, only going to make like 10 of them or whatever, then that's maybe what Mike wanted to do at that point.
    4:45
    So how did that go? How come he decided to make the CPR? Yeah, what's the difference in the game? Or the play field, right? The play field's different. The heart work's different. Great question. So the mechanics of the play field are identical. So in other words, Beehive Pinball completely faithfully reproduced the play field from a CNC routing point of view. You know, position of all the posts, All of that was faithfully reproduced. However, Mike had actually created his own custom artwork with a combination of Galaxy, for example, stars, and a few other classic Stern pinball machines. So he kind of took art cues from all three of those and then created a much more modern art representation of stars. He also moved many of the inserts. So rather than having the EM look ladder that you have for the bonus countdown, for example, he created a constellation of stars. Almost like Pinbot. Yeah, a lot similar. That's right. Pinbot's a really good way. He also used the William Starburst inserts. Yes. Which was very appropriate for this title. The name, it's the stars. Stars, right. So it should have Starburst inserts. Let's hold on here for a minute. But you, Dave, said something about beehive pinball to me before. Yeah. But I don't think it was this product. No. You bought something else from these guys. Correct. Now, to John, I've never heard anybody ever talk about these play fields.
    6:20
    The Stars play field. Yeah. I've never heard anybody really talk about this. It's a little underdone, right? Just one. That's correct. So Mike. Well, you can't be the only one who bought it. Yeah, so my understanding is he made 15 of them. So he actually cut the silk screens himself. So this is an actual silk screen play field, which is truly amazing. No, right. No, because now it's all digitally printed, I believe, by CPR, right? That's correct. If you buy CPR now, you're going to get it. And I don't know about the major vendors, but my guess is they're probably digital too? I would assume so. Yeah, CPR is digital now. No, no, no. I mean, Stern or any of the big guys. I believe they are, too. Certainly Jersey Jack, no question. I'm just saying, so this is really boutique. It is. Yeah, it's extremely boutique, actually. You don't have one, do you? Nope, I don't. I had the original CPR stars. Okay, okay. So I had discovered that play field on Mike's website, and so I thought it was quite interesting, remembered it, and then when we were looking for a play field and CPR didn't have any, then we looked there. Oh, no, I'm all set.
    7:28
    Everybody's being really polite, but they're all eating behind us here and trying not to say anything, and they're just kind of, who are these characters?
    7:37
    But it was kind of fortuitous because it made the game so unique because it brought the game, I think, from,
    7:47
    it was almost, when you look at A Star, which is a phenomenal playing game, by the way, but it is kind of EM-like. And I love EMs, great games, but it has that EM flavor with the ladder bonus. Is it a chimer? It's a chimer. Yeah. That's correct. But, okay, so I'm going to interrupt. So it's a gorgeous-looking play field, and Dave, maybe you can post a picture. No, you know what I'll do? What?
    8:12
    I'll find the stars thing on Pinside and just post it there and let people know that we did this. I'll find it somewhere. Yeah, yeah. but I but I right if stars over so people can see because maybe there's a thread there has to be there might be I I don't know I never saw it so that's why I'm kind of asking I never knew about this I'm not sure so uh but I think the play but that's not where it ends I guess I'm interrupting that's not where it ends this is only the start so yeah so what did you do to the game yeah so um so the game was you know the game was over 40 years old it was beat to death as most games are in that age that hadn't been restored yet. So the original plan was to do standard restoration, you know, new drop targets, new stand-up targets, new flipper mechs. Those games have notoriously bad flipper mechanisms that break. You know, the plates snap on them. Really, the bushings are very poor. You can't get replacement bushings for them anymore. So fortunately, Pinball Life makes Reproduction the second-generation classic stern mechs. This is way better, way better mechs. Oh, way better, absolutely. And I believe, Dave, you use those on your restorations too. But I'm really shocked that you didn't talk him into doing WPC mix on this game. That's what I was thinking. All right. Right now everybody just turned off. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. This is a tech talk. This is a common joke between David and I, which I had a – what was it? When did I first start doing this? It was probably Flash Gordon. Flash Gordon, yeah. So I picked up a Flash Gordon. It has linear flippers, which are awful. Which are trash. Absolutely awful. Yeah, I agree. And they were destroyed in this game that I got. I mean, everything, you know, the plates were all stripped out. You know, stuff was broken. There were screws through the play field, and it was awful. And it was junk. You know, coils were burned. So I was going to have to replace everything. And I had read a pin-side thread. I think Vid1900 might have suggested it. And it was to use a WPC mech instead of these linears. And I'm like, that's brilliant. You know, I service WPCs all the time. As an engineer, I feel it's one of the best mechanisms out there to service and rebuild, and they're really snappy-feeling and very precise. So I went for it. So I ordered a couple of WPC reproduction necks from Pinball Life, put them in Flash Gordon, and that is a brutal game to play, and it is so nice to have precise flippers that are so powerful and so precise in that game. Now, the other side of that, what I do with that is I don't go quite the WPC psycho mode that John does over here. What I do is I'll take like an old Bally Matahari Paragon, kind of late 70s stuff with a fiber link in there. It's a way better flipper mech than the linear. And it still has that Bally feel to it and has plenty of strength, age-appropriate strength for the game, whatever.
    11:07
    But the other way, WPC definitely adds, you get more oomph, you get more accuracy kind of thing out of that. So it all depends on where you want to go. But that being said, I do like using the WPC mech in classic Williams games. Yeah. Like the Girl Guards and so forth. Agreed. Same thing with the tower games, like Superman. Same thing. I put them in there. Totally agree, yeah. Yeah, I did Firepower a little last year and did the same thing. I put the WPC mechs in there. But for this game, for Stars, I feel like Stern games have a very unique flipper feel to them. They're very lightweight and kind of snappy. Yeah, they are. And I didn't want to lose that. So I decided to go with Gen 2 Classic Sterns. And I think that was a really good decision for Stars. I think it was great. Great idea. So that worked out really well. So, yeah, so standard rebuild was rebuild all the new rectifier board and repin connectors and all the standard things that you do to make the game play very reliably. But then beyond that was this new play field. So with the new play field, I made new rails for it. Right, but you did electronics. Well, yeah. So I guess we'll get into that. Yeah, right. I think that's kind of what I want to hear. Oh, sure. Because you did this sermon once before when we were here back in May.
    12:24
    But I'm a civ head, so I don't remember any of it. Yeah, yeah, no worries. Now I can archive it and I can actually listen to it 900 times while I'm editing this. Although, it's been pretty good so far. Yeah. A little kitchen noise, but hey.
    12:38
    After some of the stuff I've heard in the last couple weeks from other podcasters, guys, you've got to talk about pinball. I'm done with the personal stories. Yeah. Plus, the good thing about this, it's a live show. It's like an old TV show. It's live. There is no script here. No script. No, I told John that when we started. But I said, I don't want you to tell me anything because I want to be spontaneous. So tell the audience what you did electronically to this game. Yes, let's talk electronics. So I'm actually an electrical engineer, so I love doing all kinds of embedded work and stuff like that. And on Pinside, there was a listing that a fellow named Dick Hamill that had posted a Ballystern OS is what it was called. and the concept of this was to use the original MPU, but there is a J5 connector, which is used normally for factory diagnostics. It's normally unused, except for some Stern games, the SB300 soundboard plugs into that. Yeah, on all those Stern games, they would direct connect to the soundboard through that top connector. Valley games never used that. That is correct. But Stern did. So for all you people following along, that's the connector that you always look at and go, why is that there? On the very top. On a Bally, it just sits there doing nothing. If it's a classic Stern that has an SB100 or 200 or 300 sound board, that board would plug into that. And what is on that connector is the microprocessor bus, so the address and data. And if you were to look at that, all of everything that's going on in the game in terms of running software is presented on that bus. So Dick Hamill came up with this just brilliant idea, which is to design a board which plugs into that connector. no modifications to the MPU board whatsoever. I like it. And now it holds the processor in reset, and then a separate, called an Arduino, which is a programmable, very modern microcontroller. In fact, the company I work for produces the processor for that. And so that Arduino now, which has its own memory, is a processor in its own right, but is way more capable than the original memory that was on the board, now takes control of the microprocessor bus. And most importantly, there's something called PIAs, which are on the board. And that is how you scan your switch matrix. P-I-I-A? It's P-I-A, yeah. So it's a peripheral interface adapter. Or sometimes people call them pain in the arse. Yeah.
    15:02
    But there's typically... First friends down under? Yeah, so there's typically two of those. Never mind. There's typically two Pias that are on a Dally or a Stern. So he came up with an Arduino with a rule set, but didn't you change some things in the rule set and or sounds? So that's a great question. So this Arduino now is controlling the entire pinball machine. So all the code and everything now resides on the Arduino, and it's all written in modern languages. It's written in C, C++. And so Dick came out with a base operating system, which he published on GitHub. So it's available open source. You can grab it. And then different pinball guys, and I don't know if Dick did the Stars 2021 or if someone else did it. I'm not sure. I'd love to give them credit. I just don't know who wrote that one. But someone wrote a rule set specifically for Stars. And as part of that rule set, they also created sound triggering, similar to a much more modern game. So it dispenses with the chimes, and now it sends sound triggers very similar to a modern WPC game, for example. And so there's a separate soundboard with an SD card that has, I think there's maybe 93 sound bites, you know, soundtracks. And then depending on what is going on in the game, it will trigger it to play that. And it's a polyphonic, meaning it can play more than one track simultaneously. So it can have background music or background sounds, and then it can be triggered with a voice of instructions. It can have all kinds of just wild music-type sounds and things like that as you're playing. So when one sound kicks off, it doesn't cancel other sounds that's going on? That's correct. So they can just overlap each other? That's correct. This board, I think it supports at least nine simultaneous soundtracks, and it might be as many as 13. I'm not sure. So I think in the game, it might be more maybe between three and five at most that it plays simultaneously. But that's a total game changer because now you're taking a game that kind of spanned, you know, EM to early solid state. You know, that's why it's got chimes. It's why it's got, you know, the bonus ladder. It's got a lot of EM heritage because it's really one of the first solid state games that Stern ever built. 1978. 78, exactly. So in 75, you know, that factory was doing all EMS. Right. And so it kind of takes you from where that game was, which was just really a transition game. And it brings you to, I think, way beyond early 80s, because I feel like that game is brought into more like... Probably 86, 87. Exactly. It brings you to mid-80s. And that's huge, because if you look at how more advanced the rule sets are on a pinbot, for example, than they are on a stars, for example, or a Mata Hari, or some of these... So what's the major difference in playability of the game? We're going to go play it in a couple of minutes. Yeah, we will. So I did have to do something sacrilege, which I did have to cut a hole in the bottom of the cabinet and put a speaker in. So people will hate us for doing that. I was very careful. I'm a woodworker, so I made a very nice – I copied a meteor, so I copied the same – there's like a square mount for the speaker. So I copied all the dimensions from a meteor so it would look normal. It was karmically correct. Yeah, exactly. I put a speaker in. It's fine. And so the game actually has a switch, which is kind of interesting in the head, where you can run classic rule sets and the Arduino is disabled. So you'll have a chime game with the steamer. So you can go back to the former game. Yep, exactly. Turn the power off, by the way, if you ever flip the switch because it will not like you switching mid-term. And so when you get the new rule set, there is all kinds of things going on. There are, for example, like it keeps track of how many spins in the spinner. And so if you get 100 spins within a ball then you get this advanced bonus time of getting way more points for the spinner You see all the spinner There five stars that are lit in front of the spinner Those will be like pulsating letting you know that hey this is worth a lot of points So he not only did sound and rule set he did light show too Absolutely, and it's a great point. So there is a phenomenal attract mode light show. Like the attract mode light show is kind of, you know, it's not great on stars. But on stars 2021, you know, which is his Arduino implementation, it's gorgeous. Like it has all kinds of fan type stuff. It's got pulsating where it does multi-brightness. So it has the concept of not just on and off. You have dim. So it has the ability of pulsating the lights. So you can get this light. So this guy, Dick Hamill, does he have a website or a Twitch channel or a YouTube channel? I don't know. Where do people – because other than playing here and I don't remember again. Yeah.
    19:56
    Have people seen – I guess what I'm trying to get at is have people talked about this? I know I see the threads on Pinside for the Arduino and all that. But has anybody ever talked about this or done what we're doing right now? I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. It's really awesome. So I saw the first video was on a Pinside link or it was actually on a Pinside discussion that Dick Hamill had originated. And then that's where I learned about it. And he had a couple of videos that he had posted that embedded in Pinside. and I watched a few of those. I was completely hooked after I saw it. In fact, the first – Yeah, this is right up your alley. Yeah, it was. So the first one that I built was for Meteor. And, in fact, there were no available – Oh, so you've done more than one of these. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've done Meteor. Oh, yeah. I've converted – Come on, George. We know you're talking about it. Yeah. Again. Yeah. So far, I have converted four Meteors in the state of Massachusetts to this code. Maybe it's more than that now. Maybe a fifth one up in New Hampshire right now. So I might have done five of those. Okay, I had no idea. Yeah, so it's really fun. So there were no boards available at that time, and so I designed boards. So you made your own? Yes, I ended up doing my own PCB layout. I guess I should celebrate. I want to stop everybody for a sec. So I'm going to point to Dave now.
    21:14
    Now, he's talking about an Arduino solution. You know where I'm going with this, right? Scott. Did he ever? No. This is not a game he's ever done. No, Scott is all dealing with just regular. You know who we're talking about, right? Which guy? Pennsylvania Scott. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, he just deals with ROMs. He wants to use the real code. We're coming from two different angles, but I want to do the comparison and say, is there somebody else who has rewritten a ROM for this game instead of going the Arduino? I guess that's kind of where. Well, the Arduino thing is more of a rewrite and doing whatever you want with it. That's correct. The Scott way is more like taking the original ROM set and tweaking it. And basically, if the designers at the time had more time to do things and do like version 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, that's what Scott's doing. Exactly. To bring it to the ultimate level you can bring it to. Exactly. That's exactly a great way to put it, Dave. And I think that they're both great approaches. Yes, absolutely. They're both great. I just want to make sure we cover it. That's all. Yeah, they're both great. I think what I see for the Arduino approach is that it is, to Dave's point, 100% rewriting. And I think Dick Hamill calls it reimagining. No, no, wrong door. What, are you looking for the bathroom, right? Right, the bathroom's right there with the wreath on it. All right, this is a garage. All right, you're in the wrong spot. You can try the garage. I have to give direction. Right there. Is there somebody in there? Oh, there's somebody in there? There's a bathroom downstairs, too. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's full, too. Okay.
    22:47
    Okay. Sorry. Yes. Right. Sorry. Give him bathroom directions. Yeah, no worries. Keep that in, George.
    22:55
    I did when we went to, whatchamacallit, when we went to Ohio. Don't you remember we recorded outside the bathrooms? Oh, yeah, with the hair dryer going on. Right, right, with the hair dryer, right. So this is, you know, look, we're unconventional. We tell you that every time we do this. Yeah, yeah. Is there anything else you want to add? because I want to join the party. Absolutely. I'm sure you do. You want to play. We didn't come here to do this, but you're kind enough to take the time to do it. Oh, my pleasure. It's an honor. So this sort of reimagined, you know, Valley Stern, iOS, it's currently available for a bunch of titles. So it's available for Meteor, Stars, Flash Gordon, Mata Hari is another title.
    23:36
    Galaxy is another one that's available. Thank you, Mike. And there may be a few others. So actually, I'm going to be restoring a galaxy next for Mike. We're waiting for the play field to come in. And I'll be playing to do another new game coming. Do you have another new game coming? He had a galaxy years ago, and he sold it. I made him a nice galaxy. And he's kind of bored of it, so now he wants the reimagined galaxy. Yeah, yeah. I think he's really sold on the new code and stuff like that. I had to sell it to get the attack from Mars.
    24:03
    And then I was out of work when Scott was selling it. So it would have been a short conversation with Kathy. Right. Yeah, right, right. Gotcha. Yeah, that wasn't going anywhere. Yeah. So it's really fun, and, you know, and there are, you don't necessarily have to design your own boards anymore. If you go on Pinside, there are resellers that have made the boards, and they provide kits. So you can literally get a plug-and-play kit for Stars or for Galaxy or, you know, or many other gameplay games as well. Or if you're really into designing your own boards and stuff like that, you can do that as well. I have a Project Meteor right now. I had a couple, and one Meteor got kind of lost somewhere. I don't know what happened to it, but it's gone now. But I still have one more meteor left that's actually, I don't know, it's Project City. And I don't know if I really have the time or whatever or the inclination to bring it back. So I probably, I should actually put it out there. I bet it would be worth a decent dough. You just did. Oh, good. Okay, well, it's out there. I have a meteor. I'll program it. You just did.
    25:02
    Okay. Exactly. So it's definitely worth, so go on to Pinside. You can do a search for, you know, Valley Stern OS, I think is the flag for it. You can look for Dick Hamill. There's got to be at least 30 or more postings on that, different people, lots of questions. He's been super helpful. And then he's got links. If you go to GitHub and do a search for Ballystern OS, you'll find his page there, and you'll find all of the schematics are there, all the source files that you need for Arduino and the instructions for building it if you want to take the approach of doing it yourself. You better kick some money back to him, Dick. And fun fact with Dick Hamill, his brother, his Mark Hamill, was in Star Wars, and Dick Hamill was doing stars. So is that going on? What do you think about that, George?
    25:52
    I can neither confirm nor deny that. Okay, we're done here. We're going to go play the game. and then maybe we'll do a couple of other things like one more thing you and me yeah because i have a i have a story okay i guess i can't tell it with you here though because i have to use some derogatory language that's all right she's a big girl she's used to it okay later it'll work okay let's go downstairs all right down in the basement Yeah, can we? Yeah, I just didn't want to talk too late for that So the number of the backlash what's that signify?
    26:41
    Okay, we're standing in front of the stars John just played his first ball pretty game so is that woman or alien on the other game? I don't think so. No. So that's different, too. Yeah, it's different. It kind of looks like the green girl from Star Trek on the planet that Captain Kirk was, let's call it, dating. So this game has a ball save. It does, yeah. And that's a programmable option. I think it's six seconds, if I'm not mistaken. And this game is so mean that that's a feature you use often. Other than try to survive, what do we want to do to this game? So on this game, the rules are preserved, but they're enhanced. So meaning that if you want to knock down three sets of these targets, either left or right, to get 2x bonus lit, and then you have to knock down all six targets to get 3x bonus lit. So that's kind of preserved from the original Stars game. But then you have all the odd rules, like knock down the two greens, and then you'll get the plus 400 will light up. You knock down the red only, and then you'll get the 7,000 light up for the remaining targets. And then you want to complete the stars, which is really the fundamental of the game. So you have a green, a blue, red, yellow, and an off-amber color. And those are your five stars, which are stand-up targets. Each one of those that you complete will give you a bonus, and it also will increase the multiplier for the right-hand spinner. And so if you have, for example, all five stars completed, that spinner's worth like 1,000 points for every revolution. Show us how it's done. Who's going next? Yeah, I think Dave should go next. I'll give it a shot. Dave knows this game pretty well. He's probably a better mechanical player than I am on this title.
    28:29
    Maureen, hold my beer. Show us how it's done there. It's a famous saying. It's like, I'm going to do something great here. Hold my beer. There you go. You're going to have this microphone in your puss. Okay. There's nothing like pressure, Dave. No pressure. It's a stars game after all. What can go wrong?
    28:48
    There you go. Okay, so up the left spinner. And out she goes. Okay, Maureen, show us how it's done. Exactly. All we have is like below 10,000 points, everybody. Yeah, we're all playing golf. So what is a good score on this game? I think if you break 100,000, I think you're... 100,000? Yeah. I think 100,000. Once you break 100,000... Kind of like Knight Rider. Yeah. Oh, really? Is that what this is like? So 100,000 is the rule. So if it's below 100,000, it's a bad game. I think a really good game is probably over two. Then you can really be proud of yourself.
    29:27
    Okay. What's the speaker? Is there a big sub-speaker in this? No, no, this is just standard 6.5. It's the same speaker that's in a medium. It's the same speaker as the Mac. It's expressed? It is, yeah. The parts expressed one. Yep.
    29:44
    Okay. George is up. Every available man, George. Here we go. Wow, he just got one of the stars, I think.
    30:01
    So far, Maureen's in the high school with 30,000 points. George got 15,000 points. Maureen is kicking butt here.
    30:09
    Maureen is absolutely in the lead. John is back up. Player one. And he just shots himself. Take you to the ball save. Ball save. Look at the ball save. Here we go. All right. Come on, John. Okay, we're listening to Attack from Mars in the background Hard to hear this It is what it is, folks Sorry You mean John's not getting jackpots right now? No, I'm not getting jackpots He's getting jack He's getting jacked and it's not pot.
    31:03
    It rhymes with hit. So the backlash has an SK-1 on the plane. You know what that stands for, George? SK-1?
    31:11
    No. That means Steve Kirk design number one. Oh, there you go. There's also an SK-3 and an SK-5. Okay, so he puts a little Easter egg on the game. Oh, come on. Okay, Gabe. Oh, that's better. I had everything lit. I had all five stars completed. I could not get to the spinner. Ah, I'm so frustrated. Sorry about that. So that was time ago, you had to get into the thing. It was. And then you have like five seconds or four seconds. What time do I want to hit it? Once you do the rollover, then there'll be a certain star that's like extra bonus if you can hit it. It's gone already at this point. So right now I got him down, the top left down. Yep, you got him down. You'll see him lit up there as well. I can go over here and get in. over here you get him again or you can do the three and get uh yeah two x bonus so all this brown yellow stand up you want to hit yep exactly those are those are the stars yep and those are pretty critical to the game for sure okay so the red time was worth a beautiful i was worth 7,000, so that was a good hit. I like how the displays roll with the numbers. That's pretty cool. It also has the option, not that that's really possible for most mortals, but it has the ability to actually do seven-digit scoring out of six-digit display. So it can actually scroll it.
    32:43
    How does it do that? Yeah, like Pascal. That's exactly right. So it'll score the most significant digit, you know, if you're past that to the right, which is pretty cool. So I have that on my Meteor. Meteor's a game where you could conceivably break a million points, so on that one I've certainly seen it many times. I've never seen it on Star Wars, because the game is just that difficult to score a million points. There is a cavernous space between those two flippers. It is. To me, right? It's insane. To me. I've got to picture Evil Cleaver trying to jump that cavern. Okay. Let's see. Here we go.
    33:18
    It's just such a great game. It is. It would be nice if I could hit that frickin' spinner. I just want to be able to hit it.
    33:30
    That was a nice one. Oh, nice! Excellent. There we go. Bounce it a couple of times and it shall work.
    33:41
    Oh, I don't know if you watched all the spinners. I was going to do a spinner count down. And notice how he's doing a 64. That's the number of spins that he has. Okay, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, guys. He gets to spin around. Okay. So he's got 61 left right now.
    33:57
    So it accumulates? It accumulates, yeah, for that ball, which is pretty cool. Oh, no. Oh, yes. Nice shot. Oh.
    34:09
    You're in the lead. And I am in the lead. You're officially in the lead. Okay, John. All right. That's funny I'm wondering what this is going to sound like A mishmash An arcade Yeah it's a legitimate arcade There you go Oh, come on.
    34:47
    Okay, John finishes with 87. 87, yeah. So I did break the 100,000, which I said would indicate a good game. So Dave's at 38 now, whatever he just did.
    35:02
    Okay, Dave. Oh. A lot of rubber there, my friend. A lot of rubber. A lot of rubber there, Rubber Band Man.
    35:17
    Yeah, don't do that. Okay, there we go. So he's got one star lit on that spinner. So what's he got, like 200 points of spindle? Okay.
    35:30
    Oh, comes in at 82. Five shoddy. Now's the chance for you to beat us. Samorians at 45. Show us how to play now. Got to take out 87. Oh, that's coming back. Okay, fall save. That is so weird. Isn't that awesome, actually?
    35:48
    Yeah, I could use that from time to time. Okay there, Maureen. Let's get it out of the slingshots. There we go. I just forgot to mention. I did put WBC Slate God's Ice Game.
    36:13
    Oh, God. It's not quite scary. Yeah. I can't stand the turn, John. It's so bad. You should try it sometime. Seriously. All right. I did buy some.
    36:25
    Hey, Maureen ends up at 71. So I've got to take out 87. I'm at 61, and this is going to be the last ball, and then we're going to conclude. So, up spin, here we go, we got one.
    36:43
    Okay, so let's see if I can get the left spinner, and nope, but I took out a couple of targets. Well, look at how strong these slings are. And I need some more. These things mean business. And it makes the game that much more fun, you know?
    36:59
    No, no, no. Okay, that didn't work out well. I came in last. Okay, we're going to conclude because I know it's loud.
    37:12
    Do you have any parting words, John? Do you want to say anything before we tune out here? Hi, I just hope you guys enjoyed playing it as much as I did. So it's just such a fun game. It's a blast. I like the take on it. It makes me want to restore my stars. I've got a playfield ready to go into. I just have to find one of these playfields. You've got to call the guy up. Well, I've got a CPR one. But actually, I do like this one too. I need another star. I need two stars games. That's right. Stars 1.0, stars 2.0. Leave some for the other people. Don't be a pig. Oh, no, never. Don't be a pig.
    37:48
    Me and my 70 games now. Exactly. John, thanks. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I've really enjoyed the chat. That was fun. That was definitely fun learning all about what you did in the stars game. And only, what, one of 15 out there? Correct, yeah, for this play field. That's correct. Awesome. So you know big kudos to Dick Hamill and Mike Lund for sharing their just fantastic work So being enjoyed by us every time we come here Very cool Like it
    38:19
    Well, Dave, that was a lot of fun last night, recording with John in the midst of a pinball party. I've had the pleasure of already listening to and editing that, and surprisingly it came out okay. So I'm hoping everybody enjoyed up until this point right now.
    38:40
    The one thing that bugged John right after we were recording, I don't know if you remember this is, oh, Beehive's not in Colorado. It's in Utah. I was bugging him.
    38:54
    Yeah, he told me as well. He'd say, I always get those two messed up because they're just beautiful places. It's fine. The correction is made, John, so you're whole. And I have to say, for Impomp 2, he's amazing. There was, like he said early in the recording, there was no script. None.
    39:18
    That was completely off the cuff. Yeah, you'd never know it. No, not one bit. He's a good guest. I thought of this afterwards, Mike getting that galaxy. that's going to be the next john because you know he's going to dig into that as soon as he gets all the parts boy we definitely he invited us over to his place to check out his uh his em solid state hybrid creation of that target his museum of electronic marvels there you go and experiments exactly right his experiments yes mad scientist yes he is he is he's amazing i don't know how else to communicate that. I went and looked. The guy, well, he said he manufactured the board for his, so regardless, there's a guy called Roy G. Bev on Pinside. I guess he's the one who makes the complete kits for these games.
    40:16
    So, I think John talked about a lot of the Stern titles and maybe Flash Gordon, but you also have Silver Ball Mania and 8-Ball and Trident. So he's done quite a few... or somebody's done quite a few games. I don't know if all the rules are there, like Stars we played last night, but that's a fun game. And the artwork of that, I went and looked at the old artwork. What a difference.
    40:43
    It's like a modern game. Yeah, it is. The way they did it, it said that ladder bonus thing, like from EM. They kind of changed it to that. That graphic is great. Yeah, I do like the starburst in there. They did a nice job on it. so i want to apologize to the audience i wish we could have had more audio but given it was a party and people were playing other games it is what it is but a great game i have a nickname for john all right what do you got john is now the new star man or stars man but i'll give you an alternative he could also be meteor man five conversions of meteor already did you say that last night yeah so he's got one of the two nicknames i mean that's incredible that's again it's incredible like five how many games do they make is he already done five he works really quick and he's a full-time job he's busy with that so i don't know how he finds the time but uh yeah i think we could cue the uh david bowie's song uh starman the star man you ruined it i did that's right did delete that then you i didn't know you so you knew that one you can't give your mind to like minds like minds uh i i picked that song and i said to myself you know what i'm gonna be like everybody else that does this stuff i'm gonna plant the suggestion in the show and that way somebody thinks oh they said that in the show oh that's why he picked the Well, you pulled the cover back again, as we normally do.
    42:23
    So we are so. He'd like to go and show us, but he didn't blow our mind. We do not comply. Oh, yes. Mind blown.
    42:36
    What's up, Doc? All right, let's see. We'll start with a Stranger Things L.E. Stern Stranger Things. the uh got a call from this customer up in northern mass near the gloucester area uh nice palatial estate and uh the game room guys sold him this game this le as well as an arrowsmith le a bunch of other game room stuff so it was a nice sale and uh i guess straight it's only he's only having for a little while but this is this is a guy who he leaves things on 24-7, his whole game room. So whenever he comes down there, it's all on. You know? No. Yeah, yeah. So he doesn't really care about... Why? Because he has the money to do so. He has the money. He doesn't need to shut things up. Well, you're going to have a full-time job. I kind of told him that, too. I said, you really don't want to do that. You really kind of want to turn this stuff off. And another story coming up later on as well, I'll tell you about another, you know, encounter with another place at 24-7 as well. I say, no, no, no. So I'll tell you that story later. But but this way I told him that. And here's why you shouldn't. And, you know, so he listened. I think he's going to, you know, go with my advice. So the game room guys, he had a problem with the Stranger Things was doing some weird stuff, a weird coil firing. After a little while, it would warm up and do some weird things. And they said, oh, call call Dr. Dave's pinball. He's near you in Massachusetts. Good reviews. You know, check him out. You know, he'll he'll probably figure it out. So I went up there. I did a bunch of research on it. I had everything planned for what I thought it was. When I got up there, it wasn't what I thought it was. It was in a whole different section. So, okay, we're going to start with this all over again. I'm going to look at this thing with fresh eyes.
    44:19
    And come to find out, it was this opto-assembly in the game that I thought at first wasn't lined up. Because an opto has to be lined up. You get a sender and a receiver. The sender is like a flashlight. The receiver is like a thing that receives the flashlight to know that if the beam is broken, you've got a ball in the way. You've got to do something when the beam is broken, like an on-off switch. So I could tell that one of them wasn't working right. This is all surface-bound technology because it's a newer game, so it's really hard to solder that stuff with what we have these days. So I said, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to say I pressed on it, and it worked, and I didn't press on it, it didn't work, so it was a little solder fracture, micro fracture. So heat up with a soldering iron, add a little solder, did all of them, bang, the thing worked perfectly. So I was really psyched. And the kicker is the owner of the house was watching me the whole time, watching us. And he said, you know, I'm an EE by trade. I was really amazed you could get that service mount technology soldered in with a regular soldering iron. And he said he has owned three companies, three electrical engineering companies. and he was just really impressed by all that and then I said, well, while we're here it was a quick fix, why don't we shop out the rest of your game and even though your games are brand new they have this stupid black rubber on them, let's get rid of this crap, let's put on some nice clear rubber and he goes, have at it, go ahead, make them real nice, so we did Maureen and I spent a couple, several hours there and it came out great and then he sent a nice email to the game room guys afterwards after we left there, he said And hey, Jeff, and he had a bunch of game room guys on this call because he had a problem. So they were trying to solve this problem, this whole little group of people, the salesmen and engineers from game room guys. And so he wrote back to him and said, hey, today, Dave from Dr. Dave's Pinball came to our home and fully repaired and spruced up our limited edition Stranger Things. It wasn't an easy repair. He had to break out the soldering iron, repair a bad connection, surface mount component. Really impressive field work from my point of view as an engineer to my core. Dave and his wife Maureen were a great team on the call today to my house. They are great service providers. Your network should be very happy to have them included in support of pinball games your company sells. I thought you guys should know. So that was a very nice email he sent too. Bravo. Yeah. Well done. Yeah, thank you. That was a nice success story there. So how much did you get to play it? And did it have the new code in it? People say that it's a better game. I was, I played it when it first came out. I'm not a super big fan, but you don't see them often. I mean, even at all the shows we go to, I don't recall seeing one recently. I did bring latest code with me just in case it was a code thing. And then he mentioned, I said, Hey, you got the latest code. Oh, I've been, I've been updating the code regularly. So again, he's an engineer, you know, but so I was, so he was behind one round, but I said, you know what? I if he's comfortable doing it I really let him do it oh yeah oh yeah yeah clear that I want to steer clear but if he's good at it have at it have at it I don't want to cause any problems a code update could go wrong and I can make a brick out of it no no you have that dude when it does a refresh on some of those games it takes hours it can if you do a by wi-fi take hours that the best way I find to do it and as I do like you know an SD card that goes into a camera or whatever. You basically just, you can flash an SD card with the code and basically just have it all done on your computer, then pop it in the game, it's done. No going to your game and doing it that way. No waiting game. You know if the thing is verified, you have a working card in the game now, you have a working card you just made in your computer, you throw it in. If it doesn't work for some reason, you put the old card back in. You'll never have a down game that way.
    48:15
    That's a great practice I do now. cool that's okay i have i have a story if you're finished with yours uh yeah go ahead i i have more i got a lot of more a lot of more stories but george you go ahead what do you got well i don't know if i kept you apprised but about when people started listening to it was i guess it was about two weeks ago that i got an email from grant in australia and it was a I don't know a screenshot it might have been from Facebook I don't know where it was from it doesn't really matter that said that they were releasing the queen game you know the band queen yeah so I went out on pin side and I didn't see any chatter I'm like they're gonna start taking orders in like 48 hours I thought everybody was all worked up over this thing after having seen it in london i guess it was at some pop-up shop but it wasn't working they kind of put the you know the dead display you know the display model out there not playing just so people could see what it was going to that was back that was back a couple years ago i saw the date on that was back like i think two years ago no well no the one in london was like within the last nine months i think it was sometime late last year early this year yeah um and i said to myself well let me just put it out there and sing because i'm a fan of the band but i'll tell you about that in a minute so i posted it out there and then nap arcade chimed in and said something to the effect no that's not going to happen this week and there was some back and forth and you know what happens on pin side and i'm no party i'm just like uh let me throw the uh the lure into the water and see what happens and it got some responses a couple of people said nah nah what do you know and so this week the game was released and i guess it's going to be at coin taker um big distributor i guess in pennsylvania somewhere they're going to have it in uh in august but i said to to uh Grant prior to it being released, I said, man, I got my, uh, it's in a ringer. I got my, it's caught in a ringer. And he's like, what I go, you've never heard that saying. And you know, I'm leaving off the letter. Oh yeah.
    50:50
    And he's like, I've never heard that. He was laughing. He's like, I've never heard that before. I said, well, yeah, I kind of did. I kind of stirred the pot a little too much. So I experienced a little bit of fun and frolic on Pinside this past week.
    51:07
    I'm a big fan of theirs. I hope it's a decent game. Pinside can be, you know, you express an opinion out there or your thoughts on something. You're going to get some nice guys out there and you're going to get some sharks. You're going to get some people that are trolls and that just have nothing better to do than just kind of, you know, shoot at your nice little happy people. It was more of a one-upsmanship. Like, I know more than you do. Shut up. You know, you don't know what you're talking about. Sit down. and it's like, okay, I just wanted to I did it without malice I just wanted to see what would happen the reason is, I've been a fan since their first album, I saw them on Broadway in New York City, they did a five night stand with Mott the Hoople and they were really, really, really good, so that's my affinity, but this is a weird pin, Dave, in that it's got a live soundtrack it's not studio it's all live i thought guns and roses has the same thing don't they have live too guns and roses i've only played it that one time with you so i don't know i know there are live tracks in it but yeah like that paul mccartney thing that's not a live track that's a that's a studio track isn't it paul mccartney thing on for what so it might be mixed what i'm getting at is there is no studio audio in this new game okay it's all live yeah i just thought it was a little weird that's all it's all like yeah you know and you know i saw i saw kaneda i saw his little review on it and so forth and you know he's uh he's interesting guy but he's always every time he's saying that he's always poo-pooing so he's always complaining oh this sucks again it's like everything sucks dude you know he's just he's just a lightning rod you know he he just gets both sides going you know the pros oh yeah say it canadian the other side's got pitchforks and fire i mean you know it's like supposedly he's got a big listenership i wouldn't give him five bucks a month i wouldn't either he's not bad he's you know but he's uh he's got a formula it's the same formula he uses every time and it's the same thing he repeats himself all the time it's like you know i like some of this stuff but it's it's kind of uh i don't know change change your tune dude once in a while you know let's let's get uh instead of glass half empty let's go glass half full once in a while you know the mere fact that we're talking about him gets him all excited he doesn't know who we are george i really know probably not but it doesn't matter it doesn't i don't care other people he's a he's a non-entity in my uh in my world yeah he's a character yeah Tell me another story. Another story. Well, let's go with the restaurant in Cambridge. Here's another place that has their games on 24-7. Last time we were out there was back in 2019, before the craziness of the last couple years. And they were a 24-7 restaurant, very popular, right near the club scene there. So they had all kinds of people come in there. I can imagine they did. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
    54:19
    A really nice Twilight Zone and a really nice Medieval Madness. You know, two high-end games in there. Well, you've talked about these games before. Yeah. And years ago, because they needed so much work, I was there like four different times in this restoring, restoring, restoring. You know, Maureen and myself doing it, and she was doing the rubber kit and cleaning, and I was repairing all kinds of, you know, worn-out stuff. and the clock and Twilight Zone, all this stuff. So I got that all done back then, but by them having it on again for three years straight, you know, 24-7, you know, now they call me up, oh, can you come in? Can you balance the games? And I say, sure. So I go in there, arms and teeth with all the stuff I needed,
    55:04
    and yeah, Medieval Madness was dead, dead as a doornail. You turn it on, just some GI lights in the back box came on, and that's about it. That was dead. and Twilight Zone kept searching for balls. It wasn't quite booting up all the way, but it was a little better off.
    55:19
    They moved the games around so they're way off level and that's why some balls were stuck. The Twilight Zone worked on that a little bit, got that up pretty quick since that one wasn't working. They had Medieval Madness on a lot more. I can tell by the coin box. The coin box was overflowing with quarters in Medieval Madness.
    55:37
    Probably several hundred dollars worth of quarters in Medieval Madness and probably maybe oh maybe a hundred bucks or so in the twilight zone and uh they lost the keys so i had to give them new keys for the games um and i you know did a bunch of work twice on it got that one working pretty well did a little refresh on it and as that's sitting and going working medieval madness and medieval madness we're just about done with that that wound up being why it was dead was the uh display was uh was shorted so i put a new display in there bang the game came up and then i I had to fix a whole bunch of other stuff that was broken. How the hell did you figure that out?
    56:13
    I have just seen so many different things on these games over the years. It just says, you know, I put all this stuff in the back of my brain, and I just kind of say, I think I've seen this before somewhere, or I've heard about it before or whatever, and it's like, let's try this. Because I know the audiovisual board won't boot if it doesn't send something, or it's like an overprotection circuit or something. so I put a new how I found it is I unplugged the display and it came up display bad causing problem I had a display on me put it in that came up everything came up and spent a bunch of time on that I would never go there first but that's interesting I just have had all kinds of problems with the display driver boards in these games doing weird things so I just know it's either that can be a problem or the bad display can be a problem for these games They can just drag the whole system down. So that was about nine hours on site there. We got there 11 o in the morning and got out of there I don know like 8 or 9 o or whatever it was But by that time this was the hottest day of the year It was like 100 degrees out in the city Yeah no kidding We in the middle of a heat wave It's going to be... I've rarely gone out the last couple days. It's been in the 90s every day. It's just soupy, hot mess outside. And there was so much stress, more stress in the city because you get heat and stress i had to be in cambridge is all about those meter maids and police all around you got to be on top of your car and feed that oh yeah that's a horrible place to park so i'm in the middle of troubleshooting something i'm getting my mind right about certain things and it's like oh crap i put a lot on my phone oh i've got to feed the meter again and i get out of my zone i gotta agree okay what was i doing again get back into my zone so i parked on a one hour meter on the main street there right across the way and i said you know i can't just keep feeding the meter they're going to see that i'm feeding a meter it's only one hour parking on the hour number two now so i gotta find another spot so i found another spot on the side street two hour parking and i parked there and uh i started feeding that i started feeding that two hour meter so i kept feeding meters uh you know for nine hours nine hours yeah how much i have to ask you have to feed quarters into it quarters yeah 15 minutes a quarter so no electronic meter no which i was really surprised i was really but you know what though you can do this um i'm sure people in cambridge and cities have this this parking app that you have on your phone and you put it in there you know i'm thinking of you know the like kiosk on the street where you put the credit card in right gives you a receipt you put it inside the car and it tells the meter maid how long you can be there well no they don't have that they have they have this more they do have that in a way they have this special app you can do on your phone and it doesn't say that, but you don't get a special ticket to put in your car. Speaking about a little side juncture on the whole thing, the latest thing we're in Rhode Island is that you put the credit card in, you're in the kiosk, you put your license plate number in, you put how many minutes or hours you want on it, and you don't even need a receipt for your car. You just, okay, go off and do your thing, but keep track of your time. What happens is that data goes to all the meter maid's phones and it says, hey this license plate number on this street on this on this location yeah it's one minute left go over there and ticket it's on the hot list so yeah so i don't like that too much that's like way too much stress so the corner thing is way easy for me more eyes than i would want on my car yeah way too way too much so i was getting asked how much did it cost you per hour to park in cambridge you must have had like nine rolls well no you had the coin box so i had the coin box I just kept sticking my par on the coin box and getting quarters.
    60:11
    The cool thing was the world was so easy. You know, it was very nice. Kept sticking the court and getting the party, getting the course. And, you know, so they didn't mind that basically, you know, use their quarters on them to pay for the park because I'm there for their job anyway. And then a very nice place. They said, Hey, anything you guys want throughout the whole day while you're here, it's on us. So we just kept ordering food and drinks and just kept, you know, but it's all it's an all vegetarian place, though. It's all the you know, the whole beyond meat situation going on and all that kind of thing, which I'm usually not really into. I want the real the real food. But, you know, but in a page, it was tasty. You know, I didn't have to go anywhere. And the price was right. Exactly. OK, so that's that's that's a good story. So I have a question about the games. So these games had not been looked at in three years. Yeah.
    61:00
    Well, I guess that's what I'm asking. I know you replaced all the rubbers, but what was it like? It was just grunge? Like you have to really do the full clean job on it? I did. See, on the Twilight Zone, I've already done that a couple years ago, and I replaced all that stupid black rubber years ago with nice, clean, silicone, clear stuff. So that doesn't leave much residue. And it lasts. It lasts. Yeah, it stayed pretty clean. It made a little bit of dirt, but not like black rubber would make dirt, not like totally grunge. So it was already LED-ed, so the LEDs were still good. They weren't burnt out bulbs. The LEDs were still happening. So, you know, it was a general cleaning on both of them. And then, of course, the Medieval Madness, last time I was there, I didn't do a full, you know, day spa. Now I did like a half a day spa just to kind of get it running in 2019. So now it really needed – Medieval Madness needed a lot of work, and I put a lot of time into that. A lot of broken pop-upper brackets were broken in half. a lot of like broken metal stuff metal fatigue was all broken on it the uh flipper rubber was all was worn out from so many hits so i had to replace that on there i had to take apart take off some ramps on the top there and get back there i never got back there before and put some nice warm red leds in there and some it so it really came out nice and had to adjust the switches but i play tested the crap out of that game is it really worked out well um but after you know So after all that time, here's the thing. Menu and mouse are running great. Twilight Zone is running great. About ready to go. All of a sudden, Maureen says, hey, there's something weird going on in Twilight Zone. It keeps going pop, pop, click, click, click. All this weird solenoid stuff happening. And I said, that's kind of strange. All of a sudden then, the dreaded check fuse 115, 116, J112, and opto 12-volt supply came up on the display. And I go, that's not good. What the frick is that? Did a quick little Google on Pinside and it comes up being, oh, everybody hates this thing. It could be all these different things. People had no real answer on what it was. Nothing really nailed down except for a 12 volt off the supply being bad. But I had a brand new driver board in there with a brand new thing on it. And just in case I put another brand new one in there and it still didn't help. It's like and now. So, again, I'm nine hours in. I'm tired. I'm hot and sweaty from all day. it's like i just want to get out of here you know so i was racking my brain and there were no answers online it's like you know i'm just going to go and look and i found there's an opto board in the back on the bottom of the game in the on the play field that does all the opto stuff there's a little red light in there the red light was not on and it has to be on for it to work so okay there's something going on here i think it's got to be the board the other stuff in the game is fine i've measured the power i measured all the power and the fuses are all good on there so this board is highly suspect taking it with me so took it back with me um that's why i showed you guys last night oh that was the discussion i had with john last night yeah that was fascinating again kudos to john he is a memory vault i was just sitting there going how the hell can you remember all this and this is just one of the millions of things he can remember he's he's a great he's is outstanding and i love so i i found so i looked at the board before i went to go see you guys i looked at the board and said hmm it looks almost like alkaline damage on a battery on this board right around the capacitor it's like and i know these capacitors when they get warm they can start leaking leaking up this like alkaline stuff and wreck things and i took it off of there and i found it made away some traces like yep this capacitor causes board to go bad like like an Alkaline damage on an MPU board. And I basically got rid of it all. So I know that's the problem with this board. So when I brought it up to you guys, up to the party with John, I like to always quiz him because I see the weird stuff. And since he's an EE, I like to quiz him. I like to challenge him and say, hey, okay, here's the situation. I know the answer. I want to see what you say it is. I want to watch your thought process. So as you as you as we're going to see with John, as you saw, we interviewed him, his thought process. And I said, yep, you're on the right track, but you're you're thinking right. But but you're not quite there yet. And it was great. That's why I kept offering him. Do you want a hint? No, no. I want to I want to figure it out. OK. He likes trying to work through the problem. And when I finally showed him, you know, he's like, oh, of course, you know. So it worked out well. And actually, the the rest of the story is I just did the work today in that board. I put it in there, power it up, and boom, the game works. I have a Twilight Zone here that I put in. Yeah, I know. You left that part out that you set the game up at home. You got it out of storage, right? Yeah. So that you could replicate it before you even went back to the customer. That's awesome. Exactly. So I basically have a Twilight Zone in storage that I think kind of works. So I turned it on. It works. And then I want to try to break it by taking this unknown, possibly not working board, put it in my get my twilight zone it caused the game to fail with the same message okay no it definitely is bored now and that's when i went after the board that's when i went after the capacitor replaced the capacitor and the led on the board because that was that was bad too because the alkaline took the led out as well and then i threw it into the um i threw it into my game and and now the game came up fully so now i know that board is actually working well now so i'm psyched i can go with confidence now uh possibly a monday and get them all set with that game so another victory there i came in midway and and i finally turned to you and said do you uh do you know the answer and you're like yeah i do i'm like oh okay you're kind of trying to figure out if john's got the the process down which he did he was drilling right down i'm like he's he's incredible he's a he's a sharp guy he likes puzzles because he does a lot of puzzles all the time with his uh with his work with all with all the uh trying to figure out different problems and different, especially with the supply shortages and that kind of thing. He has to get different kinds of chips that will work in systems that usually that they can't find the correct one they really want. So he has to find other different specs and so forth. And he's always trying to do that in his job. So kudos to him for getting that done. Absolutely. I want to, as a prominent White House person once said, I want to circle back. yeah Jen Pisaki no longer yeah we won't use her name she's gone anyway Mike's House I love his games I got to play his Batman 66 his Attack from Mars Beatles which you and I are in agreement in that they Stern I'm going to say it again you'll probably never hear this but you got to make this back into a sea witch ditch the beatles theme and make it a sea witch and get on with it i know you've got a million other things to do but i would buy that game in a heartbeat if they did that i just i'm not a big fan of the beatles you know what i would do instead re-theme it the monkeys that would be a great theme for that game i'll just i'll just take the you know non uh non-licensed theme it's inexpensive guys you've already got all the artwork just put it on the game and be done with it you know it's not that hard and in fact you know i i when i if i design with the monkeys i do a monkey pox multi-ball don't don't don't even don't even don't even go i do not want to talk about that i do not want to talk about that thank you i want to talk about Mike stars one more time. I want to thank him for allowing us to do the podcast there last night. Plus playing the game. The ball save feature on that game is quite unique. I found it disturbing at first. I'm like, it's giving me a ball back. I've never seen that before ever on any game like this. So that was kind of weird. And the post between the flippers, I don't own any games that have that little mini post.
    69:21
    None. So that was fun. That saved me a lot of times on the game. I will tell you, those are all Steve Kirk's. So Steve Kirk, Meteor, Nineball, and Stars. The only three games he made. And they all have the big wide flippers, a big cavern across, like even he was going to jump across, and the post there, because the post will save you from that big cavernous gap. I'm sold. I like the game. I had a lot of fun on it. Yeah, I like those three. I like the Stars and Nineball. Meteor, that's a distant third for me. Well, you're going to eventually set that up, hopefully, but we're not going to go down that trail again. I wanted to mention, before I forget, two things. One, this is the first game we've done in three or four months, April. That was the last time we did Evil Knievel. That seems like forever ago. It does.
    70:19
    Well, we do have a Gorgar coming up. We'll be doing it. Don't tease people because we'll probably do something in between or who knows. But, yeah, that's one.
    70:31
    I have failed and I put a big, big star on the page, not because of what we're talking about, but as a reminder, If you want to contact us, the Classic Pinball Podcast, numeral1 at gmail.com. If we said something wrong, you want to say something, you want us to do something, we'll consider it and we'll get back to you.
    70:59
    Nobody's been emailing us, but I've also not given out the email address. So I remembered that. So I got that out of the way. do you have any closing thoughts I think we did pretty good here on time we do I have I got another story but I only I got like one minute left on this segment so can we save it oh yeah I can save this and I can save it for next time or what yeah save it for next time yeah okay sure say goodbye alright time runs out okay I will goodbye no I'll stay behind that thanks everyone for listening to this our lovely podcast that we have here here the classic pinball podcast and our lovely guest John Day and my friend Paul who chimed in as well and this is episode 88 of the classic pinball podcast I'm George stay cool and play some pinball pool right on Ha ha ha ha ha
    72:32
    What a God Boris P.J. It's the hotline. I'm in P.J. Hello, P.J. Hello, Dave. How are you? How are you doing? We're just about to go live on our podcast. What are you doing? oh are you in the middle of a podcast yeah just about to start one oh alright maybe I better let you go because you want to do that yeah just call to say hello that's all alright cool oh you know what um I was uh surfing on the web and I found a new barcade I don't know how long it's been there for and it's in Saco, Maine and they got about I think it's 60 games okay so you want to look that up I don't know, I just thought it was kind of cool I just thought, you know, it would be kind of cool to take a road trip sometime like when we were kids, go to a couple places and the Arcadia Arcade in downtown Portland, Maine, that expanded. They're now bigger than they were.
    74:03
    What the hell are you recording? Hey, George, PJ just called me for a second here. So I'm just... I'm sorry. I hear him talking. I'm like, what the hell is going on? We got a three-way going on. Am I on the podcast? Yeah, you're on the beginning end of the podcast. Hey, everybody. there's a new arcade it's a barcade mostly pinball what's the name of it I'll look it up I'll call you back I'll look it up where in Saco Maine check it out it's pretty good 60 pinball machines are you up there now or were you just up there no I just surfed in the web and I just came across it I'm like wow I thought you were going to give us some insider info ok you can check it out it looks pretty cool I think we could do a road trip I think we should go there and I think we should go to Arcadia in downtown Portland I second that I'm up for that sounds good when are we going soon let's go let's go okay right now i'm gonna let you go yeah all right george take care you as well pj all right good to talk to you have a have a good podcast okay i will do i think we will thanks for calling in you're our first live caller to our podcast that's pretty cool Oh, lots of firsts. Yeah, sure. I think so. We have to clear probably the board. We have a whole board we have to go in front of. But I think we might be able to make it happen. All right. Take care. You too. See you later. Bye-bye. All right. Goodbye.
    76:06
    Dave. Who? Dave. D-A-V-E. Yeah, Dave. Right. But, George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control