I have been collecting pinball machines since the late 80's I have been intrested in tearing into the guts and finding out waht makes them so attractive.  I studied electronics and openeded my own buisness in 1992.   I then started repairing and troubleshooting Commodore 64's TI994A's and COCO's Microprocessors were the up and coming world. But the real story behind pinball is not the Microprocessor but the single switch and relay system.  After learning and studying Microprocessors I was intrigued by dot matrix printers, and wo La there lies the secret of Pinball.  Yes each grand design was written around the operation of the TIP120 power transistor and a coil being taken to ground evry time that amazing silver peice of steel hits something.  With a little programming and some beautiful artwork you have a pinball machine. So fasinated by it's works I began to troubleshoot and repair pinball machines instead of computers.  Now years later I have achieved my goal of being a computer engineer and aquiring my MCSE and related certificates to not only be able to understand the sophistication behind the newer pins but to also troubleshoot the microprocessor boards and all thier workings.  I was employed by my pinball mentor Scott Sheridan owner of "Dr Scott's" Pinball store located in Maumee ohio. after working for several years on my own restoring and repairing machines for him in my basement for sale he hired me to sell and manage his store for him.  we decided to use Ebay as a base to sell our machines and our local resources. Ron Coon Jr. our best electronics technician came along and was a vital part of the team as he could perform chip level replacement without shotgunning a whole sytem board for a repair saving thousands and thousands of dollars a year on repairs alone.  After a seven year run with the pinballstore the economy got very bad and I was laid off Scott and Ron run the place now and I run the web site taking pictures of various machines which come and go for sale.  I now officially have four tables left after serviceing over 120 machines. three of those tables are being sold so I can go into the future of pinball Visual Pinball still being able to enjoy all there is about pinball and have no repairs on small moving parts. After all there is more parts in a pinball machine than there are in a ford Tauras and over a mile and a half of wire in each box. repairs are very difficult when you have too many machines to manage.  Thats what kind of pinhead I am, I love the game keep in the loops and I play pinball almost daily.  I want to see it survive!