Collingwood, ON
Hi, my name is Dave Astill.
I am a long time pinball collector, and a supplier to the hobby.
I have been supplying programmed EPROMS, ROMS, PROMS, GAL, PAL, and PIC chips for over 20 years. I'm a licenced supplier for Bally/Williams.
I am ROMPINGIRL on eBay.
Like most of you here I started playing pinball as a young kid in the 70s. We lived near a large ski resort called Blue Mountain and every lodge had multiple machines. "Ah the good old days"
Even laundrymats and garages would have pinball machines on location here in Ontario.
Pinball exploded here in the mid 70's as it was finally legalized by the Ontario Government . Machines were always on location but were subject to the odd seizure and destruction by authorities.
It seems everyone was into pinball at the time. Every Christmas our parents would ask what we wanted, we always replied a pinball machine. It never showed up but I never forgot about it.
I purchased my first machine (Playboy) in 1993 and now have over 20.
Most notably I have a one of a kind custom built Rush, as in the band. It's a full size dmd machine. Rumour has it, it was built for a member of the band (Alex Lifeson).
In 2011, I was in a reality tv show called 'Risky Business' starring Brett Wilson. The story of the show was to pitch a business idea to regular people in hopes of a $10,000 loan. My pitch was for the locating, fixing and selling of pinball machines. I had one month to see if we could make a profit in the pinball business. I trekked to Montreal and bought 12 old stored games. To make life difficult, Canada Post went on strike just after I had placed my parts order! They parts arrived basically at the 11th hour. It was a ton of work but I made a $3000 profit and was one of the very few succesful entrepeneurs on the show. It was definately an interesting experience being in front of the camera. (Episode 3 Sept. 26/11)
