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Build Your Own Pinball Possibilities...?
RayB:
K-Nex
Kids building toy.
Just ignore that. It's not a serious option.
yugffuts:
Yea, I would never get that on a Monday morning...
allroy1975:
yugffuts, how's it going? I see you've had some discussion on the pinmame-hw forums. like..the ONLY discussion almost. :D
I think I'm going to try to pull a Brad O. and set up one of my Baby Pac-Man's to run pinMAME. this should give me a good understanding of how it all works, and to be honest, I LOVE that game and don't plan on ever getting rid of it. The only problem I have with it is the inconsistancies of the board. my good one burns a transistor from time to time and the left kicker won't kick the ball out of the hole. I'd rather deal with a minute of boot time than having to take that board out, replacing that transistor...not to mention the other freaky problem I have with that game...after about 45 minutes of play both the GI and Switched Illumination lights all start to flicker and stuff just stops taking score etc. Turning the game off for a few hours "fixes" this.
Anyway, once I've had some experience "restoring" a game I think I'll be more ready to take on a full blown DIY pin. :D
waddaya think of that?
Allroy
yugffuts:
Sounds like steps in the right direction. If you read the thread at pinmame-hw you'll see that Reg thinks that setup could be used to control any pin, as long as you can write the code for it.
I'm going back and forth now working on my VP table to finalize the design and scripting, and working on a simple standalone script that will monitor for keystroke input and act on them. Once I have that script worked out, I plan to revisit the pinmame-hw and sift through all that information and try and figure it all out.
I had a baby-pac myself, and once I got the acid damage fixed, it worked pretty reliably. I just sold it off a few months ago.
allroy1975:
I started e-mailing Brad O. Here's what he recommended when I said I was with him 100% that I'd rather set up a PC and wait a minute for Windows to load than have to take the pin apart every few months to replace that stupid transistor....
here's what he suggested to me:
My recommendation would be to buy the components and hook them up so that
you have ONE lamp working and ONE solenoid working. Once you can do that,
the rest is just busy work. That is the approach I took and I was surprised
at how easy it was after getting the one lamp and one solenoid working.
Looking at the circutry they have over there it's obvious that there's just a LOT of the same thing to do OVER AND OVER again. nothing really COMPLICATED, like he said..just busy work.
Another really exciting thing about it is that they are alive over there. I've written to Brad 2 times today. He writes back quickly and has offered help if I need it. Anyway, I'll probably get started in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted with progress...maybe a project announcement.
Allroy