The Importance of Setup: Indy Adjustments

I’ve noticed lately that my Indy gameplay has been a bit of a struggle. This is weird because for over a year I played Indy every morning, almost as if it were a ritual. Get up - > do hygiene thing -> take the kids to school -> get coffee-> Play Indy -> get more coffee -> Log in / go to work.

Now, I can’t hit anything and worse, I can start a mode if my life depended on it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Pinside has the usual ratio of buttholes suggesting you Google before posting a question, mixed with a potential fix that involves yet-another-$5 thing that isn’t in stock anywhere.

(Also, I found that via Google, so… good job internet forum snake for eating your own figurative tail.)

I event went so far as to design a rail and ball-stop brake pad to be printed on TPU95.

3D print file here, if you want it.

I have a playfield protector and a Cliffy but the mode-scoop start issues didn’t start until recently and both have been installed for awhile. Once I got the POA off, you can see in the pic above what was happening. Over time, the Cliffy had actually moved. Which.. kinda / shouldn’t happen with the adhesive on it - but it did. So, the ball would hit the ball stop and deflect back down but the front edge of the scoop was partially obstructed by the Cliffy.

The solution was to pull the Cliffy, re-flatten it on a vice. I slotted the screw holes in the Cliffy to allow more forward placement, put new adhesive on it (3m spray adhesive on a paper plate, then brush on), re-center and re-install it.

I also re-leveled the game while the glass was off, it was leaning a smidge to the right.

Huge difference right?

Do the Flynn Thing

This was done with Alexa Routines but there are similar features on Google Home (Routines) and HomeKit (Shortcuts).

A large prerequisite to this is the presence of SmartPlugs to handle the power on for your machines.

I’ve got an older post on smart plug, you can check it out, here:
http://arcadeshenanigans.com/blog/2018/2/13/smart-plugs-a-year-later

The obvious downside to the smart plug approach used here is expensive and network population, having 36 Wemo plugs means 36 IP addresses to allocate, 36 Netbios names to configure, if Siri integration is wanted, 36 HomeKit setups to complete. Wemo plugs can have setup and support frustrations, as do their competitors.

One incidental upshot to this approach is that it is a solve for the breaker instant-load issue you might get from flipping a physical master switch. If you flip a giant red ghostbusters containment unit looking power handle, electricity is flowing out at nearly the speed of light, in an instant. That could be a lot of load to introduce on a breaker panel all at once.

By comparison, each cloud-connected smart switch is going to take at least 120ms of roundtrip network traffic before it closes the circuit and passes power. Everything isn’t turning on at once. It seems like it is but the delay is enough to provide a curve to the load application.

Anyway… Been spending some time in the evening during the quarantine getting the games squared away and making tweaks to the automation. The Alexa routines provided a nice way to move management of the plugs away from the Wemo Rules engine and into the Alexa voice services where we are already pretty well invested as a household.

Stay safe, be smart, don’t trust everything you read.. oh and um… thanks for reading. :)

Monster Bash (again)

This pattern of re-buying games I once had continues…

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I never really find the excellent deals but I’ve been pretty fortunate to have found some good ones here and there. Back in February 2020 I was following a couple posts on Facebook and a Discord chat about one of those dream-warehouses that you sometimes hear about in this hobby. It had all of the usual elements, “Operator trove on private property, mostly unmolested. The property owner is one of those guys that only opens it up every now and then to let a small number of people in with a limit on what they can carry out. He only does it when he needs cash for something.”

..or so the legend goes, anyway.

In the course of my research I didn’t find the National Treasure like-map to get me into this fabled lost city of abandoned amusements.

But I did find a pretty darned fair deal on a Monster Bash along Florida’s Sun Coast.

The seller was reasonable and easy to work with and no complaints whatsoever on his description of the game. The logistics of getting the game to me, was somewhat of an adventure thanks to COVID shutdowns but everyone involved did everything in their power to make it work out.

On May 3rd, the game landed safely in Spanish Fort by way of Bob C’s capable hands.

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So begins another pin restoration..

The initial condition is honestly better than I had expected. Considering my last Monster Bash cost nearly twice what this one did, my expectations were tuned in the “rough player’s” range. Really, though there was nothing major wrong with the game.

A couple minor playfield flaws that will be relatively easy to fix:

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A small ding in the playfield, through the clear and into the wood. Maybe a dropped screwdriver or corner of something sharp

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Ball eject dings from the scoop kickout.

It looks as though someone repaired the cabinet at some point but they did an excellent job. The only reason it stands out is that the back of the cabinet is too clean by comparison to the rest.

I added an LED ColorDMD, new balls and Titan rubbers. Always a good practice because you will discover broken or missing plastics along the way. One pop bumper body needs to be replaced and a couple minor, easy to acquire plastic workarounds were in place.

The first thing I ever 3D printed for myself..

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Favoring BallBaron.com Ninja Chrome lately

During initial play testing, the right orbit was particularly frustrating to make. I kept getting bounces and thought at first that it might be the right orbit switch gate interfering with travel. Recording a slow motion flip from the left flipper, revealed something unexpected, though.

It looks like there is a lip at the drac track where the play field has a light sag or warp.

I ran across this pinside post, it looks like some early Monster Bash games didn’t include a bracket. I don’t know if they increased the ply of the play field or just bracketed later releases, I’m guessing they probably just included the bracket on later runs.

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The bracket needed to fix this is here:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/01-15202

Thing is, I really didn’t want to wait four or five days and not be able to play so I drew a temporary bracket up in Shapr3D and 3D printed a prototype. I also didn’t want to be wandering around Lowes aimlessly during the COVID stuff looking for a comparable generic Hillman bracket.

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I drew a measurement across the existing play field posts to use as the mounting hole and used them to reconstruct a rough approximation of the bracket. My angle was a little sloppier with regard to not being parallel with the play field edge but for a 15 minute design and 1 hr print, it turned out workable.

The result was better but not perfect, at least the game was playable until the real bracket came in. If you have the need, you can get the print and design files for this, here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zpv9piturosdl3c/AACfUkVbhDMFmnN2Pmg_ReaSa?dl=0

The real thing is of course considerably better, being made of steel and much more rigid. I went back and slightly modified my original design to make it a bit more stiff when printed on PLA or TPLA.

I’m definitely not condoning the printed version as an alternative to the awesome metal bracket, I just personally was too impatient to wait and had 3D filament burning a hole in my pocket.

Next up, lit flipper buttons and mirror blades..

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Glass Corners (3D Print Stuff)

My basement floor is a nightmare hell-scape for pinball glass. The hardest of hard concretes with a rough brushed finish. I haven't broken a sheet yet but I'm always skiddish of the coming shard-po-calypse when I do.

You don’t eat yellow snow, you don’t eat tug on superman’s cape and * you never buy pinball glass in single sheets.
* Unless maybe Invisiglass or PDI Glass where you can reasonably only afford one at a time.

I usually try to bring home spare sheets of playfield glass from Marco when attending SFGE. When ordering by mail, Pinball Life has shipping pinball glass down to a science. Shipped two-at-a-time, they are well padded with ginormous foam corners. Those foam corners are great for shipping but at roughly 4in wide by 6in length, they are overkill for storing spare sheets.

I found this clever 3D print design for a compact but effective solution for pinball glass corners. He designed the print to be used with TPU95A filament, which is a rubbery-plastic about the consistency of a dog bone chew-toy. The design worked well in that it grips the glass and provides a little cushion in a compact size.

TPU95A is the way to go for these. For invisiglass I might scale up by an inch or two in length and height but keep the same thickness for grip. If you print them on PLA, you will want to scale them up as well, uniform scale of 115% will do the truck. I understand the drive to use PLA, I’ve received glass with plastic corners before but if you have TPU available - go that route.

Thanks to 80sPinTech for a good design!

Hobby Tools Finding a New Use

As an avid listener of The Broken Token Arcade and Pinball Podcast I’ve enjoyed following Brent’s adventures into getting into 3D Printing and Vacuum forming. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how the ability to make your own parts at home can be handy.

I’ve had an eye on 3D printing for hobby usage back since a really insightful article from Microsoft Developer Blogger, Scott Hanselman back in 2015.

My takeaway from both, broadly, was that 3D printing would be a massive time suck. Who has time for that?

Well, it turns out we are quarantined at home now and my social calendar just freed up for 30-90 days. Time to jump in.

Three different printers had my eye.

Budget Conscious: Creality CR-10S

I see lots of forum posts where people struggled to get started with the Creality CR-10 and CR-10s printers.

“Please refer to the 50 page sticky post about common setup issues and how to solve them”

Once running and once the material specifics are worked out, most owners seemed thrilled with their choice, though. Almost to the point of shilling for the machine and overlooking minor flaws.

Pros:
Nice Entry Price (~$500)
Impressive build surface ~(12.75 x 12.75 x 15.5) inches

Cons:
Kit-built
Easy but fidgety assembly and setup
Machine footprint, Spool placement
Looks like the offspring of an erector set and Johnny 5

Middle of the Road: Prusa i3 MK3S

Time and time again the only bad thing I could find about the Prusa MK3S was that it wasn’t a major change from its predecessor. Usually with a footnote of “but we can’t really think of anything we’d like changed” though. The Prusa came up time and time-again as the winner amongst Maker enthusiasts in posts and articles, based on my research.

Pros:
Reasonably priced (~$750)
Good (but slightly compromised) build surface ~(9.8 x 8.2 x7.8) inches
Flexible options, available as pre-built or as a kit
Good Software
Exceptional reputation amongst enthusiasts, known to be a workhorse

Cons:
Occasional failures on long prints
Still has the erector-set aesthetic.

The ”All In” Option: Ultimaker 2+ or 3

The Ultimaker was the only one that seemed to offer a hassle free setup process from the beginner’s perspective. Most of my research landed on “we love it but it costs too much” as the shared consensus amongst Maker enthusiasts. The Ultimaker machines support NFC chips installed in the Ultimaker material spools. This means that the machine has built in profiles for Ultimaker materials and automatically adjusts by reading the NFC from the installed spool. It seemed to me that the vast majority of bad prints come from improperly calibrated settings in respect to material type, so extension of that logic is:

Foolproof material settings means less fouled prints.

Pros:
Easy setup
Comes pre-assembled
Well-supported by manufacturer
Parts availability
Automated print settings when used with Ultimaker Materials
Gold-Standard in Slicing Software (Cura)
Helpful companion apps for iOS and Android (monitor prints, reprint, pause - resume

Cons:
Highly priced (UM2+ is $2500, UM3 is $3500)
Slightly smaller build surface ~(8 x 8.5 x 8) inches
More expensive parts and consumables

Ultimaker 3

After much deliberation I went with a refurbished Ultimaker 3.

I chose the Ultimaker line (among other reasons) because it seemed like a more self-contained machine, something I’d be apt to just leave set up on my desk. I chose the UM3 specifically because it was Wifi capable, supported dual-extrusion: the ability to print with two materials at once. I chose refurbished because of parts availability, factory warranty and because my Amex reward points only go so far. :)

Software Stuff

Slicing

Slicing is the process of ingesting a model and material properties and building a print plan for the printer to follow. (GCode File)
If you’ve ever done professional publishing where you send off print-ready file formats to the publisher - this is basically the same thing, at the high level anyway. Ultimaker Cura is a gold standard solution for Slicing, it is made by Ultimaker and is free even if you aren’t using Ultimaker printers. Having a 1st class slicing experience contributed to my decision to fork out the extra dough for an Ultimaker printer.

Design

SolidWorks is the Gold Standard Engineering and design solution. At $3400/year for the Standard edition, I can’t even consider this right now. <Closes Tab>

Tinkercad is an awesome solution for building printable 3D models. Schools often use it in STEM or Gifted labs as an introduction to engineering and design concepts.. It is cross platform and has AutoDesk support behind the product. It’s also free. The limitations will come in on high-polygon count or heavily complex models as well as certain import interpolations. But for simple 3D printing, TInkercad is the goto.

If you have an iPad and Apple Pencil, Shapr3D is very powerful middle-of-the-road option.

Shapr3D shares the same solid modeling Engine as SolidWorks (Siemens Parasolid™). It is iPad-only and requires the Apple Pencil but since I’m an iOS and Android Developer I didn’t have to look far for an iPad to commit to this use. The software is free to try and is about $240/year for the pro version. $1 apps might make that seem like a lot but taking in the app’s powerful foundation, level of polish, performance and extensive training library - $240/year sounds like a bargain to me.

Future versions will support object import via the iPad Pro’s new LiDAR camera. (There are videos of this in beta available on Youtube). So, I’m using a combination of TinkerCard and Shapr3D for modeling work.

The Tools are Here, Now What?

This is the point in this story where I’d normally be showing you 3D printed realized objects created from scratch in service of the pinball and arcade hobby. Things like that hard-to-find coil bracket for Ice Cold Beer or 3D printed unobtainium replacements like the Data East Star Wars Death Star plastic that I once paid $175 for.

But first, the ongoing global pandemic and the shortage of PPE have me focused on trying to be helpful in some small way in aiding those efforts.

Make the Masks

The Montana Mask is a 3D-printed mask initiative started by three medical professionals and tested at a clinic in Billings, Montana. The design includes a two-part reusable mask with a place for a filter insert.

Complex prints with overhangs and suspensions will be printed with scaffolding or support material (dissolvable or break-away). This mask design was clever in that it attempts to keep the angles shallow enough to prevent the need for support material, decreasing print times. Currently I’m at about 4 hrs to print each mask at a reasonable quality. I add window seal from MD Building Products, which is a super-awesome company - they donated two cases to me for this cause. Finally, I add in filter material: Flowmark Filters if you can get them. Blue shop towels or tripled up coffee filters can also work.

Stack o’ Completed Masks from Easter Afternoon

Other Opportunities to Help

In addition to masks there are clever initiatives for creating face-shields, respirator parts, ventilator valves and more.
It’ll be neat to get to work on the printer in the future for more entertaining purposes but for now, it whirls away 18 hours a day making stuff related to the pandemic, trying to show appreciation and aid protection for those who aren’t as fortunate as I am to be able to shelter in place and play on the computer all day.

If you know of any front-line medical workers or first-responders with a need for parts that I can print, reach out to me by email and I’ll get something sent your way.

Pandemic Risk Mitigation & Pinball-Arcade Expos

I normally don’t care to comment about current events, politics or the Headline Du Jour publicly. I’ll deploy that overused and probably mis-attributed Einstein quote:

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

Plus, this particular site and the majority of my facebook and twitter feeds are optimized, generally for fun and nerdy things. Global health crises, partisan politics, market economics and people typing vigorously over to the top of one another regarding the kerfuffle of the day: These are all decidedly not fun, for me anyway.

But.. this blog for me acts as a record for hobby posterity and I suspect that in the same way that large-scale geological events can be sussed out from sedimentary rock layers on Earth, I think it is possible that the current Novel Coronavirus will leave its mark on our arcade and pinball hobby long after the current health crisis and related (justified or not) hysteria have passed.

At the time of this post, the Coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 and related infection COVID-19 are the headlines of every major news organization on the planet. Sure, the partisan finger pointing is in there too. American criticism of Chinese Wet Markets, thought to be the origin for the disease and all of the partisan finger pointing that have become the new normal for us here in the States. The late night comedians are having their fun with it, the financial markets are freaked out by it and people are starting to stockpile food, hand soaps, sanitizer, lysol, paper towels and toilet paper. Why toiler paper? I don’t really know..

..and somewhere, right now people are feeling real pain and loss and real fear for their loved ones in higher-risk cohorts. I wouldn’t begin to trivialize their loss or think myself immune to being touched in some way by it.

As of 3/11/2020 122,205 active known infections. 1,002 of those in the United States.

Heat maps like this, predictably always become population density maps. As of today, no known confirmed cases have arisen in my home state of Alabama but I have no doubt the virus is already in our community. Hell, my neighbors were on the Diamond Princess maybe a week before the infected passengers that were quarantine. Not everyone gets tested (most probably do not) and the tests themselves have a poor reliability record. it doesn’t help that the pollen index in our part of the south is 10.5 (out of 12) and COVID-19 early symptoms are shared with seasonal allergies.

Given these factors, I suspect that the public numbers of infected trend lower-than-actual which means the fatality estimates are probably trending higher-than-actual. But, I’m not a health expert, just someone with some BI experience looking at cold numbers with an eye for risks to accuracy.

So how does this all come back to the hobby?

Typical Crowd you might see around arcades at a Con. (This was AWS Re:Play party in Las Vegas)

As of the time of this writing, South by Southwest in Austin has been cancelled. A delay of the Summer Olympics is being considered. Near my career, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Google IO in May are all cancelled. Apple is internally evaluating if they will hold WWDC in June.

Shanghai Disney has been closed since January 25. Tokyo Disney closed on February 29th.

Update: 3/12/2020 - It was just announced that Disney Land will be temporarily shutting down.

Currently, Disney World hasn’t announced a closure plan but I suspect that might change as things progress.

It might seem trivial but,

When Disney closes. You should pay attention.

NBA Season has stopped. NCAA March Madness has been stopped.

International flight restrictions are increasing.

Louisville Arcade Expo just completed.

Update 3/12/2020: Texas Pinball Festival was cancelled this afternoon.

There’s Pinfest, Golden State & Rocky Mountain Expos in May, Northwest & Pintastic in June. Southern Fried Gameroom expo in July.

What impact might cancellations (voluntary or otherwise) have on our favorite Pinball & Arcade expos and the vendors that rely on them?

The answer is: Probably a lot.

SFGE 2018 Crowds

I had some interest in co-founding a gulf-coast arcade and pinball festival, so I’ve spent some time in the last few years talking with event organizers and they all tell a pretty similar story. These shows often start with a generous financial benefactor and/or sheer willpower and volunteer effort. They then grow (often modestly) year over year with this year’s ticket sales barely covering next year’s venue fees.

Show-goers have a tendency to think that these expos are giant financial successes based on anecdotal observation and attendance numbers. They are really more often made viable only through extraordinary effort year after year from the organizers. “Just enough to keep going” is the theme I often hear.

I think there is inordinate pressure on show organizers and hotels to keep the events going whenever possible. But I also predict that in the wake of a mass-spread illnesses like this will generate mounting pressure for cancellations. At this point, I consider every pinball show through summer to be iffy. Yeah, I know: serious bummer.

I urge that we all be patient with the show organizers of your favorite pinball / arcade expos in the coming weeks and months and try to be flexible. We are all in this together and we will get through it and be back to normal before you know it. :)

Update 3/12: Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast Predicts TPF will be cancelled in the first part of his podcast today.

RetroStone 2 Follow-Up (Video)

A month later, I took at look at how RetroStone 2 is progressing. It has come a long way!

The 8 Year Rule

In a recent kerfuffle, Sonos (makers of mid-high speakers) announced that out of necessity, they’d soon cease support for new updates to some of their older equipment. Twitter got mad, bloggers blogged, tech pundits bristled while others apologized. It was a whole thing. The Sonos CEO issued further statements to add clarity and to try to calm the mob.

In the hobby of retro gaming we are constantly reviving 30+ year old gadgets. It occurred me that in other parts of my life (when looking at products) I operate under a proclivity to be selective in some cases and lax in others in adapting new tech. As as much an exercise in introspection as explanation, I thought it might be good to look at this topic and ultimately consider how to might apply to the retro-gaming, arcade and pinball hobbies.

A while ago, I got a text from a pinball-player friend.

I met him in front of a 80’s constructed home on an oversized lot in one of the largest subdivisions in our region, about 3,000 homes. He was playing coy b/c he had found a steal. As we walked down the basement to find his snag, I felt like we were transported to 1996. 1990’s furniture (in surprisingly good shape) buffeted a room with 1990’s Bose sound equipment, a ping pong table, a period entertainment center and in the corner of the room a mid-90’s Williams Pinball of some renown: Tales of the Arabian Nights. 25+ year old electronics, all of it.

The thing is, the stereo and tv still worked. The pinball machine needed some repair (which was why he bought it as a fixer-upper) but it was totally repairable with skilled hands and bench-typical soldering tools.

A Thought Experiment

Now, imagine the technology you have today in your living room, your gameroom or your pocket and imagine jumping ahead 25 years to walk in the room exactly as it is today. Sort of like Sam Flynn flipping on the lights in his Dad’s arcade.

How well do you think your smartphone will work? If the battery hasn’t exploded in the intervening time, the cellular network will surely no longer support the same mixture of communication protocols and radio frequencies we call LTE. Probably a commercial running on the holo-emitter for “17G, from Disney Wireless: All the power to drive your 20k holo-displays.”

Your smart-home devices, will they work? “Alexa, turn on the pinball machines.”
The internet will look dramatically different 25 years. More than likely having long sense dropped support for IPv4. Your cable or DSL modem will no longer have a compatible peer to connect to. No way 2025 is still using DOCSIS 3.1 over hybrid-fiber-coax. DSL probably won’t even exist.

The fancy fridge you bought with a giant iPad on the door - still doesn’t make ice correctly and while it keeps your food moderately cold, the display’s internals have long-since failed. The wifi-connected stove doesn’t turn on anymore. The motherboard has failed in your smartphone-accessible Washer and Dryer.

I know, it’s a long walk to a known conclusion

Technology ages in dog-years.

Specialized & physical vs generalized & virtual

That 25 year old Pinball machine is powered by solid state through-hole components. Electrolytic capacitors, carbon composite resistors, field effect transistors. The smallest components are still easily serviceable with a desoldering pump and soldering iron in most cases. Even better, the full original board schematics are available for free and are part of the public domain.

Simple logic gates and good electrical design make that 25 year old boardset as easily repairable today as it was 25 years ago. What’s more, it is repairable with 40-50 year old tools. I can fix nearly anything on these games with a good multimeter, diode tester, soldering tools & a logic probe. Hell, even the sound and logic ROMS are available so you can burn new ones.

WPC-95, WPC-DCS, SAM, Sega WhiteStar, DE V3 are all pretty simple to maintain with common bench tools.

No operating system, just (relatively) simple, well-documented logic circuits.

But, technology must advance. Excelsior!

Most modern JJP, Stern or Chicago gaming machines have some flavor of Linux at the bottom of the stack. For you non-PC folks, Linux is an Operating System, like Windows but not. MacOSX under Intel architecture is a Linux-adjacent operating system in some ways. Embedded Linux and Embedded Windows are what we call it when the OS runs as part of a distinct hardware framework or chipset. Odds are that your media center DVR, your smart fridge, your connected-washer & dryer, your smartphone, your Alexa Speaker and yes: even your Sonos speakers are running some flavor of an embedded Linux OS.

Operating systems are bootstrapped hardware abstraction platforms. Layers of hardware-interface software (drivers) with numerous common services and platforms on top. These services encapsulate and simplify more complicated tasks. Things like the 3d graphics and physics engines OpenGL or DirectX on PCs or METAL on iOS. Things like a Network IO stack for communicating with other machines and local IO Services for interfacing with peripherals. When you have to wait 6 minutes for Windows to boot or 45 seconds for your old Android phone to boot - you are watching the hardware load the operating system and related services.

Embedded-circuits are designed and purpose-built to provide a certain set of behaviors time after time. There is no operating system in the traditional sense outside of instructions encoded to roms and processors. A real “computer” has an operating system and is suited for tasks that require higher complexity or more dynamic. Ultimately, you can sometimes get away with using a computer beyond the limited constraints of its limited design but an embedded circuit will rarely show the same level of adaptability.

Without knowing the symbols the pinball diagram looks incredibly complex and difficult but if you trace functions by pinout to their related circuit you can use these schematics with success to get to your problem areas. The key is reducing your focus to parts of the board related to specific feature features. In the schematic above, when a switch that is ultimately connected to J2 on the board no longer works, you can pretty readily isolate all of the components in the circuit to find your problem area.

Software stacks are often more complicated to troubleshoot, sometimes by design. The schematics for your 25 year old pinball are available but the source code for Windows (usually) isn’t. In addition you still have the risk of underlying hardware that will eventually fail but with often less-clear symptoms.

Through-Hole vs Surface Mount

Modern logic boards (PCBs, motherboards, etc) are comprised of mostly surface mounted components while older equipment was often through-hole. That is to say that an older Arcade or Pinball mainboard might have a bank of dozens of resistors and half-dozen transistors that are stuck through holes in the board and soldered in place, interfacing with traces that were printed on the board. By comparison, modern PCBs are mass-produced and often the components are laid down in a very specific grid (envision the mesh that holds together tile backsplash but super-tiny) and later applied to the host board with hot-air.

Surface-mount components are a fraction of the size of their through-hole counterparts, in most cases. They are also often “different” in some way, internally. For instance, 80’s and 90’s resistors are usually of carbon composite construction where modern resistors are “film” constructed. Guess which ones are more reliable? It’s debatable. In theory, a smaller component with less conductive material should generate less heat. (Heat is the enemy because temperature cycling contributes to component failure over time.) But, smaller isn’t always cooler. When smallness is achieved be densely packing components together the heat scale can often go the other way.

A modern i5, i7, i9 processor bottoms out at around .014 micron. That’s equivalent to 2.7 billion transistors packed into a roughly 1 inch square. It gets hot.. quickly! Hot components = reduced service life.

Side Note: If we were to print a schematic for the typical i7 quad-core processor with the same scale as the pinball PCB schematic above, it would wrap around the earth at the equator once. So that other schematic seems more manageable eh? :)

A Tech stack, for Tech stack’s sake

Modern Pinballs, Arcades, Refrigerators, Smart Speakers, Dishwashers, Toasters and more have tiny low-powered computers on them running a manufacturer variant of some operation system or another. This allows your smart speaker to connect to your favorite music streaming service over wifi, your Sonos multi-room audio to sync up, your Galaga/MsPac Reunion to boot an emulated version of the original games.

We’ve been in a trend where “tech layers” get added to everything from kitchen appliances to the company operations of luggage manufacturers and other traditional companies.

Hey, computers are great and tech can enhance our lives. When you attach a computer to an appliance you immediately speed up the aging process for that appliance. Today’s smart fridge with 3 cameras and a smart assistant is tomorrow’s bricked android device.

It wasn’t uncommon for our parents to get 30 years out of a dishwasher or washing machine. Now, they have motherboards (single-board-computers or SBCs) that run a software stack to enable the smart features. Even your LG, Samsung, Vizio Smart TV is partially monetized from aggregate data collection on how you watch it and which smart apps you choose. You totally read the privacy policy, right?

This marriage of technology provides a wonder of convenience, sure. But will that LG wifi-enabled Dishwasher stand the test of time? It isn’t reasonable to assume so. I’m a programmer. I’m proficient in many languages, can muddle my way through anything from an a mainframe to cloud services backed machine learning running on a smart phone. Even I.. a card-carrying nerd find myself eyeballing needless tech in appliances as potential future weaknesses.

8 Years

The number I’ve settled on is: 8 years. That $1000 wifi-connected washing machine? In 8 years you’ll (probably) need another. That Nest Thermostat? Plan to replace it in 8 years. The crazy-awesome technology features in your new Ford? 8 years.

Granted there isn’t an actual 8-year electronics death clock out there running somewhere in ULs labs.

The 11 year old somewhat-computerized stereo bluetooth nav system in our SUV still works.. mostly. We all have 30+ year old consoles that still work. I have a 2009-era iMac that works. But, I suspect that these are more attributable to Honda, Apple and Nintendo using quality parts or over-speccing components.

When these tiny components fail, it usually isn’t a complete failure either. The preset station ‘4’ on my 08 Mercedes Convertible no longer recognized button presses because the surface-mount-resistors around the button had failed. That Harmon Kardon stereo would still Jam, though. In fact, I think I miss that radio more than the car… (focus, Bill.. focus..)

When the SUV’s bluetooth controller failed, I was able to fix it once with a heat gun and eventually replace it for about $400.

Increasingly, I’m feeling the trueness of that “they don’t make them like they used to”, sentiment being muttered at barber shops and country breakfast buffets across our fair land.

And it’s true: They don’t. They use machines to make other machines that are (in some ways) millions of times more complicated than what was necessarily 2 decades ago.

That’s progress. I’m not railing against it but I want to have fair expectations.

Bringing it Back to The Hobby

Every new Stern Pinball designed after 2015 has Single Board Computer (SBC) in the back box. It handles lamp control, registers switch hits and powers coils through a modular system of ethernet-connected peripheral PCBs (node boards).

Stern SPIKE:
Proprietary SBC in the Back, Many Proprietary PCBs in the Cabinet

Stern's SPIKE 2 System (in the backbox)

Typical Stern Node Board.

Typical Node Board Placement

CGC/PPS:
Proprietary SBC in the Back, Big n’ Honkin PCB in the CAB

Every new CGC/PPS Pinball includes a similar design and adds a half-playfield-length board beneath the playfield that handle coil control, switches, controlled lamps & flashers.

Typical CGC Backbox (SBC Controller)

Typical CGC under-playfield board

Tiny little mass-produced surface mount components in all of it.

JJP:
Blended / Modular Approach

Every new JJP pinball that was ever made includes an actual PC connected to an IO controller to make all of that pinball magic happen.

Hobbit and Woz both used a commercially-available MSI ATX motherboard, ATX power supply mixed with a proprietary IO Controller and sound card. Notably, the IO Controller still has fuse-able circuits and transistors. I credit JJP for these decisions. Those modular designs with open components will-be repairable in 20+ years.

What about The Others?

I personally wouldn’t be too interested in owning a pinHeck-based Spooky title. Nothing against the electronics design so much as the pinball designs themselves didn’t jive with my tastes. I actually like the modular nature of Danesi’s Total Nuclear Annihilation but the clear-coat curing issues around posts scare me off from that game. I don’t know enough about Rick & Morty’s electronics to comment as of this time.

Closing thoughts

Pinball machines are computers now. You know what that means, right? That means they inherit all of the bullshit you get from computers. Boot times, patches & hotfixes and boards that will be increasingly difficult for a hobbyist to repair. Somewhere, someone is having a SCRUM standup related to a pinball software release. shudders poor bastards

Nearly every arcade machine from the 2000’s on have been some form or another of computer. Sometimes they look more like repackaged console systems and sometimes they look more like traditional PCs. But make no mistake - they are PCs. You know what that means right? You shouldn’t be surprised by the failure of the Big Buck Hunter hard drive or Hydro-Thunder PC.

Mario Kart GP/ GP2, Maximum Tune 3, Tekken 5 & order mid-2000’s arcades are running Tri-Force hardware that is very close to GameCube.

Offroad / Hydro / Arctic Thunder looks something like this

On the upside.. It also means you inherit all of the cool stuff attributable from having a computer under the hood. Expandability through software, richer audio-visual experiences, fine-grained control of components (like pinball coil strength or video game joystick sensitivity), social gaming features and a more-connected future.

It also means that we might be entering into a world where our $1000-$15000 collectible toys have a comparably shorter lifespan.

Those tech-stack dog years might not be kind to us.

The next time I buy a “modern” or NIB pinball, I’m leaning towards a CGC/PPS Remake or JJP for the overall build quality and design. Either way, before I buy another NIB or modern pinball (or arcade for that matter) I’m going to ask myself some questions.

• How proprietary are the components of the game?

• Are parts available today and at what cost?

• Is it likely that this company will be operating in 10 years?

• If the company folds, how likely is it parts (or parts analogs) will be available?

• Do they have a customer-support reputation, post-sale?

• What is my average game-retention time? Is the game likely to “age out” in that window?

It is fair to note that in the case of pinball boards, boutique electronics companies filled the void long after the original manufacturers left the space. Rottendog, Alltec, Great Lakes Modular & others stepped up to build replacement boards that blended the old design with modern components. (With subjectively mixed results compared to the originals.) This was made possible through availability of original schematics, ample demand in the community and an increasingly empowered Maker’s culture.

Who knows, maybe 20 years from now we can buy electronically guided, micro-scale hot air rework stations for the price of a shovel at Home Depot, making these boards reasonably repairable again.

Sometimes, the best way to deter obsolescence is to go modular like JJP did. All-in-one solutions will only last as long as the weakest component. For those folks that bought a high end SONOS speaker system, the traditional approach of a receiver + speakers + components would probably have aged better.