Were heading there for the weekend. Currently visiting Palm Springs and noticed a few places advertising it with posters in their windows which I thought was pretty awesome!

Anyone know if there will be a DI there? I really want to try that game (although my wallet my regret it if I do)

About 300 miles away currently packing up my tools, we will be heading over first thing in the morning.

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Also a red shirt and having a blast! I think this is more fun than playing.... well not really, but it certainly enhances the experience.

Haven't really been bothered (or really noticed until it was pointed out) by the glare. Its an awesome setup! We will definitely be coming back next year!

Man can not live on hamburgers alone, especially when they take 45 minutes to get. For food a little over a mile away is a family run sub shop called Super Subs. We went over there for lunch today and it was delicious.

Speaking of the Marco tent I loved how they had a strong showing with a lot of games. It was a lot of fun getting to play all Sterns latest games. Aerosmith is actually quite a bit of fun.

Anyone who enjoys working on games I do encourage you to get in touch with chuck. I had originally signed up for Friday only but had so much fun halfway through Saturday I decided to grab my tools and get back at it. About to grab breakfast head over and go straight back in as a tech again.

They have tons of common parts at our disposal to get the games back up which is great but it's impossible to stock everything so the machines staying down are mostly due to some specialized part having had given up the ghost.

I'm all for helping out again October, that was the most fun I've had in a long time. Besides the assorted switch adjustments, connector reseating, clearing stuck balls and talking with lots of people about their games there were several memorable moments:

- I got to reform the anti gravity ramp on that poor overcooked strange science (it was warped/melted so bad it would shooting it would simply trap the ball).
- First game fixed once I went on the floor was Superman. Having never worked on an Atari before that was a kick.
- Got to resolder a few broken connectors and re route the coil wires on a Black Knight 2000's upper playfield that were snagging balls in the shooter lane. That is an ingenious way they mounted the upper playfield to make it easily servicable.
- Visited my old friend Frontier and reworked the coil wires that were hanging on by a thread.
- Found a very creative drop target reset in Bad Cats that was unfortunately beyond repair.
- Battled TZ's through the weekend. On Friday I found it with a weak flipper. Check switches checked out but coil was melted; swapped the coil and it played great. Then Saturday I was still hearing people complain about it so checked it out again and apparently the coil I pot in also got melted and now another tech had come in and put a third coil in. Finally with some additional help traced the root to bad flipper optos and finally had it consistently playing decently (without overheating coils) Sunday morning.

There are others I'm forgetting but those stick in my mind as I reflect on the weekend.

Its definitely different fixing games in an active environment like this. You go in cold with no history of the game, do your best resolve any immediately visible issues, maybe put half a game in to check your work and then let it loose.

All of the techs were awesome, what great group of guys. I'm jellos of those who live in the area and can help out more, although my wife probably appreciates that were don't live nearby.

If a major LED supplier were to help out with discounted bulk buy in exchange for some sort name placement or whatever that could be a win/win.

Its no small chore though. It would probably take replacing somewhere over 10,000 bulbs just to cover all the back-glasses.

But accounting for reduced game stress, using less power and reduces stress on the A/C system it might pay off reasonably quick with the right per LED price.

I don't think he was talking about LED's in general, rather the LED light color.

The cool white leds behind backglasses causes a color shift in the colors of the art. Warm white LED produce a color tone that is more natural and in line with how the artwork was originally intended to be lit.

A decent side by side example can be found in the (I think) paint section (or maybe the lighting section) of most hrdware stores where they will put three bulbs with different tones of white side by side with some paint swatches underneath.

It's pretty striking how three bulbs... all "white" can drastically change the color of paint... some colors get highlighted with one bulb while another bulb will wash out the same color.

So swaping out backglass LED's powet savings guess...

I figure 12,000 bulbs (since many newer pins used other lighting sources i figured 400 pins at 30 bulbs each)... maybe high but will use the power draw for a 47 which is a lot lower and there are likely many 44's in the mix still...

So check my math here...
12,000 bulbs * 0.15amps per bulb (150milliamps) = 2,000 amps being drawn currently... just on backglass lights.

Someone please check me here because that seems really high but then again its amazing how stuff adds up when were talking this kind of scale... I mean thats like 100 electric ovens running.

Does anyone know what an LED draws? Assuming the draw is a quarter of that were talking 1,500 fewer amps plus all the heat savings.

Yeah and you have to account for voltage as well which I ignored...

I'm going to guestimate 250kWH to run just the backglasses for the weekend show.... but power calculations isn't anything I have any sort of experience in.