Cleaning, chapter one - stripping down the playfield

Finally, I got to the job I managed to postpone for months. Although the display still isn't working, I decided that it's time to get my hands dirty and begin with hideous task of cleaning the Whitewaters playfield. And boy did I get my hands dirty. It seems that this one is even dirtier then the Star Trek was.
Here are some pics that I took, so that I'll be able to put the thing back together.

Filthy upper playfield


Filthy stripped bottom playfield


Filthy right side


Filth


Filthy ramps


More filthy ramps


Removed filthy upper playfield


Filthy whirlpool lamps


Filth


More filth


Even more filth


Filthy secret passage


Filthy removed parts


Entire playfield, filthy

R.I.P. Pinball ?

On this very day, exactly 10 years ago, Williams abruptly terminated it's pinball division. As it was the only remaining mayor player in the pinball business at the time, this move actually meant that over 90 percent of pinball market suddenly ceased to exist.


Many people declared this day as "The day that pinball died?"

Do I agree with them?
Unfortunately I must say that I do.

Although that new machines still get made by STERN, with every new pinball announced I keep asking myself: "Where's the progress?". Every new machine could as well be built in 1995 and no one could tell a difference. We all know what happened with the technology in the last 10 years an nothing of that reflects in any of the new pinball machines. Here's some stuff that could be well used in new pinball machines, but it's not:

• LCD displays; the only step forward here in the last 20 years was pinball 2000 platform. Instead of hi res graphics that could work as both, backglass and display , there is a 128x32 4 color dmd.
  Tiny, gsm like displays could even be integrated into playfield itself, instead of archaic lamps.
  
• Connectivity; new machines could easily be connected to the internet where global scoreboards could be published.
  Machines could notify operators about earnings or problems with machine via gsm or email.
  Operators could mark machines with location data, that would be published online, so the players could easily found the desired machines.
  Entire online community could be built around machines, where players could communicate with operators or each others.
  
• Lasers; just remember with happened to the pc mice in a last couple of years. I'm sure laser motion sensors would be quite useful in pinballs
• Moore's law; Imagine the cpu/memory capacity could be put in machines these days. What sort of games or self diagnostic tools could be built with that.
• New materials; I'm not sure about this one, but i bet, that there's tons of new stuff that could be used
  

So. I guess Now I just have to wait until some STERN guy stumbles upon this blog and convince his boss to invest into Pinball 3000.

Until then I'll just play with with we got, although it's build on 15 years old technology.

The DMD, Part V

I tested the DMD board today. It was over in i second. I turned the machine on and the R5 resistor exploded.

I'm running seriously low on ideas now.

I am a honorable player

I beat the grand champion on my Star Trek today. I almost forgot what a great feeling that is :).

I know 8 billion isn't that much, but I will improve it. I promise.

The DMD, Part IV

I was finally able to get back to my White Water this weekend. Of course, my primary goal is still to get the DMD controller back into working state. I just picked up the controller and some tools and took it back here with me

Here's the approach I'm taking now.


On the left, there is a broken White Water's controller and on the right the Star treks, that is all fine and dandy.

I measured the resistance of all the components and all the traces on both boards and try to identify any suspicious components, that might be causing too high negative voltages.

Anyway, the following measured quite different than on the working board: D4, D5 and D7 diodes. Q4, Q5 and Q6 transistors and R3, R4 and R6 resistors. These are the things I'll replace.

I guess I'm going shopping tomorrow. Naturally I will report about the results.

The DMD, Part III

The DMD controller failed again yesterday. This time it went with a bang and scared the hell out of a friend playing the machine.

At first it seemed that only the fuse failed, but after replacing it, the display looked really really weird. No letters, no graphics, just some sort of huge blob in the middle. I measured the voltages (Again) and the two negative voltages were waaaaaay of the normal readings. They read -152/-130.


What am I going to do about this one? I don't know yet. I'll see in a couple of weeks, when I'm back with my Whitewater.

It seems that if things continue to evolve in this manner I'll have to start a new blog and dedicate it to DMD controller exclusively. :)

Broken switches

Now that the DMD works again I checked out the whole bunch of broken switches that the self diagnostics reported.

Result: All of them actually work.

I guess my dad was playing and hit very little switches in a whole lot of games :).
Must I add that he is not a very good pinball player.