Hang about! Pinball Machines.

Amberale

I may have overheard someone mentioning pinball machines.
I want one but they are all somewhere between a Vostok and a KDV Slim Jim price wise these days.
There are some firms down here who lease out machines so, when you get bored you can change out for another machine.
I’d love a Twister machine from the 90s “We got cow!”.
I was a nut playing them from the seventies til the noughties.
What is your favourite?

DavecUK

Amberale What is your favourite?

I have Big Brave, from 1973, and Funland from 1968. My favourite table of the two is Funland. It managed cleverly to be a more complex game.

At the moment big brave isn’t clocking up replays, the knocker works but it doesn’t move the replay counter. I have narrowed it down to a couple of places in the 7 miles of wire it contains 😁 will probably fix it when the brighter days and warmer weather arrives. It will either be a wire fractures off the solder, or a relay that needs cleaning. Fortunately big brave only contains 900 relay switches, or perhaps even 800.

Jony

Don’t you will set Dave C off 😂

Rob666

I have a Funland but it’s been out of commission for maybe 40 years.

DavecUK

Rob666 The Funland is the machine I have no schematic for and it’s quite complex inside….do you have the schematic?

Rob666

DavecUK Sorry Dave, I don’t have a schematic for it. From what I remember I used to just work it out as I needed to. At the time I bought and sold a few machines, fixing their problems as necessary. The Gottliebs such as the Funland were always easier and better in my opinion.

DavecUK

Rob666 Good quality machine, harder to fault find without the schematic.

Rob666

DavecUK harder to fault find without the schematic

Agreed but I always found that if I traced back from whichever function wasn’t working you could always find the problem.

DavecUK

Rob666 Agreed but I always found that if I traced back from whichever function wasn’t working you could always find the problem.

Sometimes, but not always. I had a problem and figured it was something to do with the score motor and perhaps one of the relays. I couldn’t find the problem for the life of me. I cleaned the relays, in fact I cleaned and checked all the relays on the score motor, which is a PITA as there’s quite a few. In the end it was luck that I spotted a tiny speck of solder at the base of the relay leaves (in the block). It was sitting on top of the block that holds the leaves and shorting two of them out. It must have dropped from the playfield.

Rob666

DavecUK I take your point! Not sure a schematic would have helped much with that one.

-Mac

I spent a lot of my 6th form in the arcades of Newquay and got to learn the intricacies of a couple of tables. Hook (the licensed Robin Williams film version) was my favourite. BANG-A-RANGGGGG!!!!

drdre89

Why y’all talking about pinball machines.

Let’s just make everybody in fear and deploy the new variant.

Systemic

Spent far too much time back in the day when Jack was a lad.

DavecUK

Systemic Fairly sure I played that one a few times…agree with the misspent youth, for some reason I loved pinball tables. There seemed to be a touch of James Dean about the people who played them.

Systemic

@DavecUK With the Apollo, you got free plays for getting above a certain score if memory serves. Top guns on the machine were capable of getting the machine to log its maximum free plays.

Pinball machines were so tactile - each one had its own character.

DavecUK

Systemic Always annoyed me when the engineer came and adjusted the levels!!

Systemic

DavecUK and made the tilt sensitivity more hair trigger

DavecUK

Systemic and made the tilt sensitivity more hair trigger

God yeah, I remember the fairgrounds, you only had to look at a machine and it would tilt.

Hotmetal

I have fond memories of playing the Addams Family table in the local pub before they got rid of it to make space for families to dine.

When I was an apprentice one of the guys had a machine in his (dad’s) converted garage. A dream when we were 18! I think it was Star Trek the old one with Kirk on the back board. Happy days.

Systemic

Hotmetal I have fond memories of playing the Addams Family table in the local pub before they got rid of it to make space for families to dine.

Sacrilege