Road trip to the Church of the Silver Ball

Road trip to the Church of the Silver Ball

Barreling down the 401 in a black minivan. Drift Stitching on the front bumper. A hula girl on the dashboard. Industrial metal on the stereo and a bingo machine in the back. A ribbon of bitumen connecting my place to the church of the silver ball in Mississauga Ont. that was hosting a pinball Swap meet September 24th 2016. A fast paced drive: gasoline for the van, apple fritters and coffee for the driver. The expectations were low but the road speed was high.

I got to my hotel around 5pm Friday. Checked in. I the parking lot I ran into my good friend and mentor Robert Baraké of Montréal Pinball. We drove over to the Church of the Silver Ball to meet up with Mike and his crew and set up th 1954 Bally Surf-Club that I brought over from Gatineau. The rest of the evening was uneventful. We hung out, had dinner, hung out some more and called it a night.

R.A.B. by the Sienna with the Surf-Club

The morning of the swap meet I was there half an hour early. Anticipation on the pinball hunt coursing through my veins. Lots of interesting stuff. Oddities and Pre-war stuff. Sporadically throughout the day I showed some interested pinheads how to play the Surf-Club. James Schid of Pinball spotting came by with some friends. I hung out a bit with Rob of Credit dot pinball spreading the shady gospel of bingo machines to anyone that was interested.

Vendors at the Swap Meet

Games for sale

At the beginning of the day, I loaded the surf-club with a bunch of credits, but soon noticed that people would start a game and, not knowing what to do or being unable to figure out where the flippers and flipper buttons were hidden, would just leave the game idle with the first ball still in the shooter lane. So I knocked off all the credits and taped a sign to the game: "Ask J-F (pindude152) how to play --> Space invaders T-shirt" Cuz, of course, I was wearing the cliché space invaders T-shirt.

The Surf-Club behaved badly twice! That game used to be so reliable! At one point the game locked up at payout because the leather clutch washers for the replay cam were due for some neatsfoot oil that I brought just in case, so I fixed that quickly. Later in the day the gearmotor for the ball lift broke down and that was all for the day. Thankfully, I have 2 spare ball lift motors in the workshop for games of that era.

Mike of the Church of the silver ball decided to have silent auctions for the games he had for sale. Silent auctions aren't my thing but those were his games and his shindig so he was free to sell them as he pleased. He had awesome weird stuff for sale. True connoisseur projects that you rarely see for sale. It was a treat just browsing.

At the end of the day I left with a 1936 Bally Challenger payout one ball game and a 1959 Keeney Little Buckaroo flash slot machine console. The van was full. Excited about the new projects! Later I had a tasty dinner with Scott Warlock and R.A.B.

Drove back home Sunday. Uneventful drive with a van full of goodie. As I write these words, the games are still in the living room with no place to go. Ah! the glorious obsession. A good weekend all in all. I got some positive feedback about bringing the Surf-Club. I saw a glimmer of the bingo machine bug in more than one pinhead that tried it out. It was worth it just connecting with other collectors.

A full load of gambling machine gold

Bally Mystic Gate bingo: Begin the repairs

Before even turning a new game on, I give it a good visual inspection. Gives me a good idea of what kind of hacked up game I'm dealing with. In this case, the Mystic Gate isn't too bad but there some strange hacks.

First thing I noticed was that extra armour was added around the playfield. I guess it was to make it even harder for potential cheaters to get a hanger in to get "bonus" numbers. Notice at the left of the armour, there's a wire connected via a lug. That wire was connected to pulsing 6v via the 16 pulse cam... weird.

I removed the electrified armour since it interfered with the lifting and lowering of the playfield.

Next is a classic for the Reflex unit.

The role of the Reflex unit in a bingo machine is to make the odds and the features tighter as the machine pays more credits. Also, it gradually makes the game looser as more and more credits are played. A number of hacks were used by operators to make the back and forth operation of the unit a bit more lopsided to the operator's advantage.

On this unit, you can notice that 2 different gears are used, these gears make the reflex unit advance or reverse. One gear has more teeth than the other. That way, it reverses more slowly towards more generosity and advances relatively faster towards more stinginess, regarding features and odds.

Furthermore the operators manually advanced the reflex unit to the least generous position and jammed cigarette pack cardboard in each stepper mechanism. That way, the unit neither advances or reverses. Stays in the same place. I've seen this in at least half a dozen games I've worked on in the past.

Out of curiosity, I checked what brand they were using... Looks like JPS. Lol.

On the shutter motor, an extra switch was added on the #1 stack.

When I first inspected the bottom of the cabinet, I noticed a loose brown plastic sheathed wire. I followed it back to the #1 switch stack. One side of the switch was connected to the Yellow (common), the other side was just loose. I looked everywhere inside the head for a place it would connect but found nothing. I removed the superfluous switch a wire.

Lastly I found a solder bomb on one or the trip bank switch stack. I removed it as a precaution. It could cause all sorts of weird problems.

Another interesting detail, not pictured is that the game has 4 bookkeeping meters. I've personally never seen that many meters in a bingo machine. I still have to investigate what each one does.

Soon, I will have a friend drop by to help me install the head onto the body. The weight isn't too bad as bingo machine heads go but it's still pretty heavy. Then, I'll be able to turn on the juice.

It's hard to keep friends when you collect bingo machines and need a hand to lift the heavy head every time you get a new project.

More to come

New Arrival: Bally Hokus Pokus pinball machine with Laniel Canada ML 1600 Synchroson soundboard

I picked up this Hokus Pokus pinball machine.

A fairly mediocre offering from Bally in 1975. Lame gameplay. Art that looks like it was drawn by a 3rd grader. Making the A-B-C-D is so easy, sometimes you don't even have to use the flippers to get it.

I acquired it for all the wrong reasons. I likes the writing (graffiti) on the head, it has a Laniel Canada ML 1600 Synchroson soundboard "upgrade" and the game was in home use since 1981.

I traded some work and a bit of Geld to a local pinball reseller who recently received it as a trade-in and didn't want anything to do with it.

Being a total EM Bally pinball nut, I had to get this.

Bally Hokus Pokus

Manon and Marc got a Hokus Pokus for X-mas 1981

High Scores

In the late 70's, when the first Solid State hit the Arcades, EM games quickly became obsolete. To try keep the EM's on the road a bit longer to collect a few more quarters, distributors were offering conversion sound boards for EM games. As far as I know, there was only Pintone and here in Canada; the Synchroson ML 1600 by Laniel Canada that were offered.

The Synchroson boards have the serial number written by hand with a felt tip pen. The board shown below is #19. I sorta collect these oddball boards, I have also #9, 12 and 13. I don't know how many boards Laniel Canada sold. So far, I haven't seen a board with a number above 20.

They have a prototype look and feel to them. The traces are very fragile and they sound like rubbish. They have very little value (5 to 20 bucks). Most collectors take them out of their games to replace them with proper chimes.

The board is powered by the 6V lamp circuit. It has 6 inputs, more like triggers, for sound effects. These inputs were hard wired, usually in a very crude way by the operator, to various coils in the game. Each input has two wires that go to both tabs of a relay coil. The sound effect goes as long as the coil is energised, so the operator had to use G relay coils that are briefly energised.

Here is a link to the Montreal Pinball Website that also has a small article on the ML 1600: Bells & Whistles

Laniel Canada Synchroson ML 1600 Board #19

More to come on the actual repairs on the Hokus Pokus.

Cheers!

New arrival: Bally Mystic Gate 20 hole Bingo Machine!

Bally Mystic Gate in the living room

This is my first 20 hole bally bingo machine. Mystic Gate was released in 1975.

It has a 40 coin limit. It's main feature is the Gate on the top arch. When active allows you to shoot the ball directly to the second row. Might come in handy. Otherwise it's a very basic mystic line game. Anyway, it's a pretty rare game, even more so in my part of the world. I straight traded a Gottlieb Sure Shot, that I fixed up, but that was in rough shape, for this game. The numbers probably don't add up but I HATED Sure Shot so for me it was all good.

Gottlieb Sure Shot

To me, Mystic Gate is not a proper 20 hole: no extra balls and no side game but 20 hole games are pretty rare here in Quebec so I have to make do with what's available. Also, since the card is identical to most 20 hole games, for the exception (off the top of my head) on super 7 and bonus 7, it will allow me to get the hang of the card and moving the numbers around.

More to come as I still haven't assembled the game. Cant wait to debug it and play it.

Sea Island Bingo Repair adventure

Here's another one of my posts taken from the MAACA archives:

I'd like to share part of my repair journey on the Sea Island I'm fixing up. This will be a somewhat convoluted multiple part story about meeting people, picking up bingo machine parts and finding really weird problems and the wild coincidences that made the repair job neatly come together.

First, a bit of background about this particular Sea Island:

The short version is that I purchased the Sea Island from Hyann, a collector from MAACA after he replied to my “LF Bingo machine project” perennial post. I drove down to Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu during my summer vacation. I made a road trip out of it and had lots of fun.

Actually did two trips to Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, one with the machine only and the other with the bunch of spare parts. The second trip being on a Friday, I dropped by at a PW that was happening at tonysoprano's. That was lots of fun chatting with pinball people.

However, the story of how this machine came into my possession is a bit more complicated.

My example of Sea Island is a Frankenstein machine. The body and head serial numbers don't match.

The body is pretty beat up with beer rot, dodgy paint touch ups and has a collection of South Carolina tax stamps. The most recent being from 1975.

The head on the other hand is electro-mechanically like new (however the BG is totally roached). That was the first thing I noticed about it: how the head's inside looked so clean. It looked like it wasn't routed for very long.

Usually, magic screen games look pretty beat up since they were enjoyed by the players and were good money makers for the operators. Magic Screen games were produced from 1958 to 1963 (and Malibu Beach in 1980). After 1963, Bally never managed to release bingo machines that surpassed the magic screens in popularity. They were operated for many years, some till the very end in 1994 when the Régie pulled the plug on them along with all the privately operated one armed bandits and video poker machines.

The head and body were purchased a few years ago from Alouette by an enthusiastic collector that eventually came into contact with Robert with the hope of him fixing it. Robert didn't have time for it. Then Yannick picked it up with the hope of fixing it up for himself. Finally the game was offered to me since Yannick didn’t have the time anymore to fix it. I picked it up because I was looking for a new project to keep me busy.

I wasn’t particularly enthused by Sea Island, being a plain jane magic screen game, the second screen game released by Bally, but the timing was right and the game was cheap so I decided to have a go at it. Who knows, I might discover new problems to solve. I had previously fixed 8 bingo machines for myself and a few others for fellow collectors. I felt like I've been around the block a few times, it was starting to get boring. Little did I know I was to discover and bunch new problems in machine number 9.

But there's more: The machine came with half of a spare Sea Island head, the half with the magic screen mechanism. The other half I had picked up from Robert in september 2014. So finally I had a complete spare head for a Sea Island that, you will later read, will come in very handy. But you have to admit it's a pretty wild coincidence to pick up both halves of the same bingo machine head from two different collectors, and almost a year's time between both halves.

The unloading anecdote

When I got home with Hyann's Sea Island I proceeded to taking it out out the car. To offer some bit of background information, I live in one of the more colourful and turbulent neighbourhoods in Gatineau. It's the old part near the paper mill. Theres always stuff happening, police cars at boarding houses. Old wino's on old bicycles. Dubious ladies. You get the picture.

So I'm unloading this bingo machine from the smallish hatchback in my driveway. I see this older guy, with a mullet and a Canadian Tuxedo et al. walking down the street. Alarming is the fact he's walking down the street in a decided step holding a baseball bat. Now this may not be entirely weird, there are, in fact a few baseball fields real close to my place. However he doesn't seem to have a ball or a glove. The whole thing is a bit strange.

So as the baseball bat wielding mullet man gets closer to me he looks at the bingo machine body that I was just getting out of the car.
He says in french:
That's pretty old.
I reply: it's from 1958.
He then says:
That's one of those old machines with the bingo card on the glass.
That's right I say.

Baseball bat mullet man is now all smiles, gives me a thumbs up with his free hand and more or less says “Right on!” and continues on his way.

Oddly enough, it was the first time I met a non collector who knew what a bingo machine was. Too bad I didn’t get the chance to chat with him further.

End of part one

Sea Island front view

Sea Island side view

Sea Island tax stamps

Sea Island door

Sea Island head guts

The repairs: In this part, and this part only, I will chronicle the repairs I did to the Sea Island.

Info dump: When working on a Bally electromechanical game you must take into consideration two basic facts:

1) Bally had terrible fuse clips that are prone to poor contact, heating up, and breaking apart.
2) Bally had terrible jones plugs that are prone to poor contact, heating up and failing.

The first thing I had to do to this game was change the line cord and all the fuse clips. Then I cleaned and checked all the switches in the body: Shutter motor switch stacks, ball through switches, coin door switches. Cleaned all jones plugs with a small brass bristle brush.

Then I cleaned all the switches of the trip bank, taking apart each stack, first cleaning it with a brass brush, then cleaning off the old corrosion and carbon on the points with a flexstone and dentist's tools. Then I check for excessive pitting of the points and finally I check the switch gaps. Just the trip bank takes 2 to 3 hours of cleaning.

Then I was ready to put the juice to the machine.

Trying to troubleshoot bingo machine problems before cleaning the aforementioned components is an invitation to insanity. Furthermore, you absolutely need the schematics AND the manual for the machine. These can easily be found online.

If someone is wondering why I have the machine down on the floor in the workshop. It's simply because it's easier to work on the units, especially the ones at the top of the head. On it's legs, I would've needed a step ladder.

The first major issue with the game revealed itself when I first turned the machine on: The magic screen index coil was permanently energized, the magic screen would go all the way to the end and the red and yellow super section feature coils would trip. Hmm.

One or multiple short circuits? A wiring mistake maybe? I started thinking maybe that's why the head looked so new. A problem no one could figure out. This lemon of a head probably went from coin-op to coin-op, the problem never to be found. An unsolved mystery. Time to find out if I earned the title of Bingo Mechanic!

The writing on the... head

When I pulled off the backglass, I found a collection of names written on the magic screen panel and on the credit meter. I wonder who were Bob M., Lego, Ronny and Joe? Maybe they were techs who tried to fix this game? I like to think that's who they were.

Also there was the serial number written in magic marker on the left side of the head, preceded by the letter “X”. Did “X” stand for crossed? As in a crossed wire? Perhaps.

This first problem turned out to be terribly subtle. The short circuit was in the magic screen feature unit wiper assembly, also commonly known as a “spider”. The spider is a stack of fingers making contact with different rivets on a stepper unit's biscuit for different circuits such as odds, features, lamps and proportioning. Different groups of fingers must be insulated from adjacent finger groups by way of insulating spacers. The most common insulating material in EM games is micarta.

Micarta is made from organic fibres with a binding resin, similar to fibreglass. The problem with micarta is that if it burns up it leaves the carbonized organic material. Carbon is basically a conductor. If a insulating spacer should, for any reason, burn it becomes a conductor and you have a short circuit!

From the outside, the magic screen unit wiper assembly looked intact. However, when I proceeded to dissect the “spider” I discovered that the very last (bottom) insulating disc had two tiny burned spots at the core. There was the first short circuit. It was my first time encountering such a subtle problem.

The second major issue was two pronged: 

1) Red and Yellow super section feature trip coil would always trip when machine was powered on.
2) When the machine went through the search cycle, the machine would always score 166 credits. Even it there weren’t any balls on the playfield! The 166 credits was actually 75 credits from red score, 75 credits from green score and 16 credits from yellow score (at basic odds).

Again, I found the problem to be a faulty wiper assembly with no outward sign of failure. I narrowed it down to the yellow score unit wiper assembly. Yellow score, yellow super section feature and red super section feature all pass through the yellow score unit. Checking the wiper assembly on the work bench with a multimeter, it turned out to have a four way short circuit! That's enough to render the machine inoperable. I swapped the wiper assembly with one I had from the spare head and the problem was solved.

The third major issue was the game scoring nothing for a 3 in line and scoring a 3 in line when there was a 5 in line, through all 3 colours.
That one turned out to be simple: the core of the search wiper was broken and the soldering points for the slip rings to the wires for the search wiper fingers were cracked. Again I swapped the broken search wiper with the spare one I had.

After that, minor problems were solved by cleaning the various stepper units and changing the score extra step unit coil that was burnt. Nothing very interesting. The usual stuff.

The machine now works as it should.

End of part two

Close-up of magic screen unit

Names on the magic screen panel

Names on the credit meter

The mysterious X

Stepper unit wiper assembly

Micarta insulating spacers: Can you see the carbon spots?

Broken search wiper

Spare Sea Island parts machine in a plastic tote bin

Conclusion

Sometimes, when I think about how these old machines travelled time and space to end up in my basement, I can't help feeling overwhelmed. I Imagined all the times they escaped the crusher and wonder why they didn’t end up at the metal recycler like most bingo games did.

However, we must not get too sentimental, overly warm and fuzzy about bingo machines. They are after all the great grand father, or equivalent of modern day video lottery terminals. Thy caused the same problems to players back then as their modern equivalent do now. The only difference being that the player had minimal control on where the balls would land with a bingo machine. These games made a fortune for the guys who owned them. Many players were made penniless (or nickel-less) by these machines. Bingo machines were responsible for the bad reputation given to pinball machines. Yet it's undeniable that these games were electromechanical marvels. The technological high water mark of the electromechanical amusement device industry. Electromechanical computers.

In their heyday these games were almost everywhere: Pool halls, taverns, bars, drug stores, snack bars, corner stores, gas bars etc. Yet, nowadays, these games have been virtually erased form our collective memory. Replaced by the more socially acceptable proper pinball machine. You practically never see a bingo machine in the background of a 50's and 60's period movie or TV show! Here are a few exceptions.

Memories from Rouyn-Noranda

Back in 2002, I was 19 years old, I was sitting in a Rouyn-Noranda bar at around lunchtime. My father and I were chatting with 2 guys that were partners in a coin-op business. We were relaxing a bit before making the seven hour trip back to Gatineau. We had just bought a large quantity of arcade machines and jukeboxes off them. In the back of their shop they had a beat up Super Wall Street. I wanted to buy it, but, unfortunately for me, they didn’t want to sell it. At the bar, I asked them why they didn’t want to sell it. Their answer was that these games were too complex. That I would never be able to fix it. “They're full of cams” they said.

Ten years later. I bought my first bingo machine. I was 29, I remember repairing that first Super Wall Street. I think I must've spent about 80 hours repairing it, but I did it. I remember I didn’t even know how to play it. I had to learn everything as I went. I think it was a good thing that I had to wait so long before getting my hands on a bingo machine. It gave me some time to mature, to learn to become more patient, more thorough.

These game were obsolete before I was born. Yet, I can't help being drawn to them. The first time I read about bingo machines, I was intrigued. Just the idea of the “Most complex EM amusement device” fascinated me. Their very existence was an open challenge for me to repair them.

The first time I saw a bingo machine in person, I was mesmerized. The first time I worked on a bingo machine, I was hooked. There's nothing like being in the zone when I'm working on one of these machines. It took many years before I got my hands on my first bingo machine but it was worth the wait. Most important is the fact I've met lots of people and made a few friends along the way through my bingo repair adventures. I hope to meet more people still and drive many more miles for this crazy passion.

Return to the writing on the head

I think it's justified that I add my name to the collection of names already there. Doing this, I also think of people who had this game before me. Gerry, Serge from Magog, Robert and Yannick. This game has been around! And like any good MacGuffin, it carried this story through.

My mark

Chasing Bugs

Here's one of my old posts from the MAACA forum.

I started dabbling in pinball machines back when I was 17. But I got really serious about what I would call deep repairs in EM pinball machines 4 years ago. Eventually I might feel like writing down the whole back story of me falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of EM debugging but a good chunk of it can be picked out from my Sea Island repair adventure. I will also add that it involved a basket case of a Bally EM slot machine.

For a few months now, pretty much every second weekend, I spend in Montréal doing some pinball repair work for the North Star. It allows me to get out of the house, break the regular routine and acclimatize myself to the Métropole. Most Importantly it allows me to hang out with friends that are as much into pinball as I am, and it gives me the chance to work on nice and rare games that get operated at the North Star. It allows me to see what kind of problems pop up in 50 year old Bally’s (and even 38 year old Inteflips) when they get many, many plays per week. It allows me to be faced to a number of new and challenging problems I probably wouldn’t get in my own game room.

For a long time now, it’s been a dream of mine of seeing EM games being operated on location and myself repairing them. These bimonthly trips to Montréal allow me to get as close to that dream as possible without quitting my day job.

Every time I’m there for the Saturday morning lineup check I always bring my regular tool case and a second pelican case that contains useful supporting equipment to tackle the bigger problems.

This second big case barely fits in my buddy (and accomplished Montreal Pinball repairman) Rob’s Volvo (aka pinball repair staff car). I know It’s been a minor pain lugging it around up and down St-Laurent st. From Montreal Starburst, to Longueil, to Montreal North, to Ville Lasalle to the Plateau… your get the picture. But I think Rob and other partners in crime finally understood why I carry all this stuff during my last two repair trips.

the big case

Last weekend It was when I repaired a bunch if burnt wires in the Wiggler, I had my old dependable soldering console with me. I’ve had this old thing for at least 13 years, I’m used to it and I wouldn’t have been able to repair so many wires in such a short period of time if I didn’t have it.

Quoth the raven...

...burnt wires

This weekend it was on Capersville. The game had developed a problem a few weeks back. When a ball was in the 4 deep captive ball elevator, the machine got all confused with the ball count. When the ball would drain, the ball count would not step up.

Multiball EM’s are challenging to repair. The circuitry related to keeping track of the balls in play can seem pretty complicated. Being able to read and interpret schematics is essential. Furthermore, depending on the problem, the balls need to stay in place where the problem occurs (captive ball saucers and ball trough) so lifting the playfield and poking around the relays to figure out the problem isn’t an option because the balls fall out.

So I’m at the North Star and I need Capersville’s schematics. The only problem is that they don’t have the schematics for it. Since it’s 2016 and I have a smartphone, I download the schematics from IPDB.

I have a look at the diagram on my tiny phone screen. I start tackling this problem by making an educated guess by forcing the player reset relay to actuated position (closed (or energized)). I drain the free ball and the ball count unit steps up. Hmm? So now I know the culprit, player reset relay did not energize when it was supposed to so I have to work my way up to find out why.

I look at the schematics. I ask for a pen and paper and start scribbling cryptic notes.

I Should've been a doctor

For payer reset to be energized ball return relay has to be energized. How do I verify if ball return energizes when it’s supposed to: I use my old Triplet analog multimeter (Everyone there Saturday morning were “amused” by my big old meter). It’s a big bulky black block of bakelite with a big dial with a fine needle. Using alligator clips I put the meter to the ball return really coil and let the ball drain. If the coil energizes, the needle should jump… Nothing happens. Again I work my way up.

Section of schematics, downloaded from IPDB

capersville section.jpg (41.68 KiB) Viewed 1209 times

For the ball return relay to energize, Outhole relay has to close, captive ball interlock relay has to be in actuated position and #1 through has to be closed.

OK… start with the outhole relay. I use again the old Triplet meter, check, the needle jumps. Outhole relay is not the problem.

Then I have a look at the through switches, they look fine. I clean them for safe measure then I go to the captive ball relay.

I find the switch with the Green-Yellow and Yellow-Black wire (38-1 and 43-1 in the schematics). The switch looks closed? Is it really closed? I put my other modern crappy tire meter on it, I check continuity through the switch…Nothing. There’s the problem. I clean and re-gap the switch. Close everything up. Give the game a try and BINGO! the game works like it should. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy starts playing in my head (I think I even whistled a few bars from it)

The afternoon at the North Star’s workshop was fairly uneventful, but very productive. Did some more work the get the Wiggler ready for rotation. We assembled a few other games to get them ready also. Robert and I had the passation of the Richelieu. The drive back home was fast and uneventful.


When I repair games, my mantra is “The problem is alway inside the box, I just have to find it”. The box isn’t that big either. My main tool is patience, all the other tools I carry with me.

Late Saturday afternoon, riding around with Rob in the North Star Van (yes, van with a capital “V”) we were chatting on how we could write about this weekend (there’s always a ton of interesting stuff we could write about each weekend repair adventure but we just don’t have the time or the energy to do it) and how neat it was that the Capersville was repaired with the help of both my smartphone and my old multimeter, two technologies 50 years apart and yet, for this particular problem I absolutely needed both to get the job done. So here is an honest go at telling this pinball repair tale.