Randys Story

February 2011....Looking around CraigsList for the first time in months, ended up in the "Toys" section, had never been there before. Typed "Pinball" for some odd reason and found a Silverball Mania in my area. Told the wife that I would like it as a birthday present, had it in the garage that evening.

Within six months, acquired six machines. Four of them from 78-80, favorites of mine from the era when I played a LOT of pinball. I've been playing since about '72, when the arcades were 95% pinball machines, with maybe an air hockey and claw machine. Video games didn't arrive until '77?, with Space Invaders and Asteroids. I continued to play in local arcades through the 80s, seems like they started disappearing one by one in the late 80s/early 90s.

Have learned a lot already, have done two full playfield overlays (Flash & Supersonic), some component/board level repairs. Flash was a total non-working $100 machine, ended up needing a new 40 pin MPU/CPU chip socket. Helps that I've been in electric/electronic trades for years and can troubleshoot from schematics and solder. Actually enjoy fixing the EM machines the most, kind of fun chasing through all those relays.

Only one arcade left in my area with five machines (fairly large metro area - Tidewater,VA), but I've done a lot of research and have located about 40 machines in the area, with about 25 physically verified. I really like the map feature on this site and will add these locations to it.

Randy