@apzpins@mstdn.games
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

apzpins

@apzpins@mstdn.games

A pinball addict. I tend to enjoy working on pins as much as playing them! Owner of Hopeakuula Arcade, apzpins on Twitch and YouTube. Also: cats! 🇫🇮

This account is all about casual and tournament playing, streaming, restoring, repairing and owning pinball. Other casual nostalgia and retro stuff might also sneak in. Feel free to ask me stuff.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ifixcoinops, (edited ) to random
@ifixcoinops@retro.social avatar

Damn I gotta play my garden music more

(once she's gone, obvs)

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@ifixcoinops What is it? The beak looks like it's some kind of a trush.

apzpins, to tech
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

What appears to be an impossible trick is one of the coolest practical effects in pinball. A huge magnet is driven along a reversible screw. It's powerful enough to move the ball through the playfield.

Under the playfield video of Dracula pinball machine. There is a huge reversible screw and a carriage with a huge magnet travels along it across the playfield.

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Bram Stoker's Dracula's "magical" levitating ball never gets old for me! Over 30 since this game's release, it still blows new players' minds.

Video demonstrating Dracula pinball machine "levitating" a ball magnetically across the playfield.

Monsterlady, to VideoGames
@Monsterlady@masto.ai avatar

Not everything warps back to normal here. #Control

#videogames #shareyourgames

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@Monsterlady I've been meaning to play this for so long now. So far I've enjoyed everything Sami Järvi has written/directed.

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Back in the days the manufacturers were throwing a lot of shit at the wall, seeing what sticks. Some ideas we weird, some were wacky, some we just accept as one of those "but that's how pinball has always been!". Here's Chicago Coin's Big Flipper and its "Jumbo flippers". They're about twice as large as normal flipper you know today. Technically they were moved from the middle, not from the shaft like normal flippers. And yes, these were definitely in the that's weird category.

Closer view of Big Flipper's flippers. They are labeled "Jumbo Flipper". There's an adult male hand for scale on the glass, the flippers are longer than the hand's palm.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@ifixcoinops I wonder if you were the one to demonstrate me the flipper mechanism. I talked to a lot of techs in that event.

craiggrannell, to random
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

curls up and turns to dust

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@craiggrannell If you think this is bad, imagine having lived in times when C64 was the hottest shit, then seeing all the "You may be old, but are you this old" pics about Vista PCs and stuff.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@craiggrannell We actually had a long talk about what actually is "retro" at the last retro game day event here, after someone had a PS4 there. The consensus was eventually that if it's not current gen, it more or less is "retro". Not that I'd gatekeep anyone, just felt funny. OTOH I have people calling pinball machines as retro games, even when they're playing a frest out of the factory Jaws pin that came earlier this year.

apzpins, to random
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

This is surprisingly creative in Fish Tales. The balls is between the habitrail and cabinet side.

apzpins, to random
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

The linkage between the eyelids and their servo was surprisingly challenging to make, but now all that remains is the part that connects to the servo itself.

Animatronic head of Road Show pinball, being modified to use servos. A 3D printed link to they eyelids installed.

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Time to raise the playfield and take a look. My initial reaction is amusement - I have never seen a low mileage EM game like this. After probing around, I have a hunch that this thing might fire up with very minimal work. #pinball #empinball #pinrepair #arcade

View from under the playfield and inside the cabinet of an electronmechanical pinball machine. Long banks of relays, stepping units, motors and other electro-mechanical units are seen.

apzpins, to Cats
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

The old geezer yawning.

apzpins, to Cats
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Liquorice nose sniffing liquorice.

A black cat sniffing a piece of liquorice

apzpins, to random
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Moving stuff onto my retro PC project has taught me just how much incompatibility happens as time passes. It has all the familiar tools; rar, pkzip and others, but none of those read what a modern Linux version of those has created. Rar atleast has an option for older format. Also the CDs made by genisoimage don't please DOS even when they're supposed to be standard ISO9660.

Man, I really need to find a CF adapter somewhere that has a nice 3.5" bracket and use that as a poor man's USB stick.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@dec_hl I was originally thinking of booting some older SystemRescueCD and just using Linux to move the stuff, but the world is just so limited with 40M of RAM and a distro that uses a huge initramdisk.

But fortunately what I need to get done right now happened, thanks to my USB floppy drive, although it reminded me the painful times of installing stuff from floppies. OS/2's huge stack of floppies comes in mind.

apzpins, to InitialD
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

It's very rare to see a game from 70s looking like this without having someone do touch ups and clearcoat on it.

video/mp4

apzpins, to random
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Here's a screen for my retro PC project, a 15" SuperVGA.

apzpins, to Electronics
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

The board that runs the NBA Fast Break pinball machine's basket displays is smarter than I had assumed. It has two CD4029 counter chips and a 7-segment driver for each. It uses 2 solenoid drives to control it; one for resetting it and one to step the number down.

I had previously assumed it was a lot less autonomous. Technically this could be powered on and run on my workbench.

#pinball #pinrepair #electronics #technology

Schematics of the board that drives the 7-segments.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@root42 The spare part has a slight dimensional problem. They are both sold as 1.8", but apparently in one it's the case and in another the actual number size. The pinout is the same and the larger one would easily fit their enclosure, so it's just a matter of some creative jumper wiring.

apzpins, to Electronics
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

Twilight Zone is being bit of an ass. The clock board fixed the flickering hour optos, but now some of the minute hand optos fail at random. I noticed that it stops if the clock is in my hands and quickly noticed it was something in the cabling. After some DMM poking, it'd appear the wiring is broken right about here.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@davespice Yeah, that's the reality with devices that were made to last only certain time and then thrown away. Fortunately everything here can be rebuild with more modern methods as needed.

Monsterlady, to random
@Monsterlady@masto.ai avatar

Why is it that every time my anxiety worsens at work it is always the social part and not the job itself?

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@Monsterlady At least in the IT world it's not the technical side that drives me insane, it's the people who shoot themselves in the foot with a bazooka and then scream no one told them that'd be bad.

This is usually after they've been multiple times told not to shoot themselves with a bazooka, because they'll blow up and no one is coming out looking pretty from that one.

apzpins, to random
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

People are often surprised that we keep on replacing balls in our pins. They do wear and lose that smooth, shiny surface. Here's a used and a fresh one side by side.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@root42 they have a hard chromium coating. When they're in this shape, it has worn so badly they can't be polished without exposing steel spots.

The playfield is the most expensive single part in the game and scratchy balls will begin to displace the wax and start sanding the clearcoat away. So it's an important thing to replace them periodically and inspect them for damage during playfield cleaning and rewaxing.

apzpins,
@apzpins@mstdn.games avatar

@root42 The wax is cheap protection for the clearcoat and dirt can be just wiped off. And when the wax has worn out, it gets stripped and new layer is applied. We use solid carnauba wax. Its side effect is a pretty shine on the playfield.

Camera panning over pinball machine's playfield, demonstrating the shiny wax coat on it.

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