More wiring complete - about 1/2 done with SAL now.

Shawn, I know I should, but then what would I complain about?

Thanks @noquarters, all in a night's work.

Oh, vectors? I was thinking calipers, a pencil, a drill bit and some MDF. But I've got a feeler out for the specific parts I need. That said, I've got plenty I need help with soon! Hope you don't mind me bugging you shortly...

Well, don't learn how to buy quality tools from me.

(Except that wire stripper - still a good purchase).

Shoot-A-Line's playfield is 100% wired up.

I learned some tricks by making the harness completely from scratch that I'll apply to the other playfields in the queue.

Here's an interesting note: Shoot-A-Line does not have the shutter limit switch present on every other game I've ever worked on. The shutter board itself does have mounting holes for the bracket, but the playfield is not drilled for the screws to hold the switch bracket!

I need that limit switch... my code relies on it to help determine if the shutter is open or closed. What to do....? Well, the shutter motor itself has multiple cams.

My code only cares about a single switch on the shutter motor (the runout switch). I wired up a switch on the third cam, which happens to open with the shutter closes, and closes when the shutter is open. It provides the same functionality, in other words. This also saves me the headache of locating or fabricating switch brackets for the NOS playfields that I have sitting around.

At this point, I can put the original 25 hole playfield in and play again (now that I have a template for my other playfields)!!!

But... I should take the time to wire up the new drawer switches and playfield switches in the head while I have the game pulled out.

Well, a couple things, really:

1) Don't wire from switch to plug, wire from plug to switch (to ensure reliable lengths of wire).
2) Stiffly lacing three Jones Plugs into a particular shape/order is difficult.

I did a little work on the game last night - mainly to test fit of new playfield.

There was a little bit of overspray from the front onto the right side corner - I masked and sprayed just the affected area, but as spraypaint is wont to do, a little got on the front despite my best efforts/intentions. I should probably quit while I'm ahead...

I'm dead tired, but I have a lot of wiring in the head to do. Got a new skinny soldering iron, so I'm ready for the task. This one is not as convenient as my poor departed iron. I prefer an iron that will balance without setting the cabinet on fire if I set it on the bottom board. Unfortunately, the majority of the ones sold that are not the cheap junk I usually buy do not have that in mind. Hard to go back to a soldering iron stand after so long of being pampered without.

Oh well. Hard to complain (too much) when I'm doing something fun!

Definitely. My friend and bingo mentor Steve told me that long ago. Great advice.

I wired up the head tonight and plugged in the new playfield.

It fired up and all switches registered right away, which means I made no errors in my harness. Pretty darn exciting.

Now, as this is the first alternate playfield, the issue I found was that I cannot detect the value of the Jones plug for playfield selection until after the menu is loaded. Catch 22. I'll have to figure out a way to make that work...

This playfield was the dirtiest one I've ever seen (in a bingo). The only reason I'm not playing shoot a line right now is that one of the shutter switches is dirty. It registers just fine, but it stutters.

I've got another exciting thing I'm working on with the game, but this was a pretty major milestone!

IMG_20170428_000304_544 (resized).jpg

At lunch today, I finished removing the original harness for Gayety. I have the normal wiring duties for this game, plus the 'figuring' about how to set up the Pockets unit. The pockets unit is fairly straightforward - one coil to push all left, one to push all right, and one specifically to push hole #7 right.

I'm missing the hardware for the hole #7 coil (including plunger, spring, and coil value), but I can probably figure it out from my Gay Time. The pockets unit I have is from a Gay Time, and the Gayety playfield I have has no return hole at the top. I wonder if this is truly compatible...?

I won't really know until I have it working.

Anyway, the plan for this weekend (which is kind of fluid), is to attempt to wire up another playfield. I don't have any code for Gayety or Gay Time yet, but the harness was partially removed on this one previously.

Then it's on to the 20 hole playfield, then the Surf Club. Surf Club will be the last playfield I can wire at the moment as I don't have all the needed hardware. Still working on that - but it's not a dire emergency. I have lots of programming work to do!

I am beyond excited.

This weekend was very busy (mostly in a work way), but I did squeeze in some time tonight to work on the Gayety playfield.

I finished the harness for the main playfield features - 25 holes, lamps, rollover switches, lane switch, gate switch - and mounted the pockets unit to see how it would fit.

I found out a couple of things:

1) the plunger and spring that I thought were missing from the #7 hole were actually flipped around inside of the pockets unit and wedged underneath another portion. Freeing them, they are completely usable. Just need a coil to keep going there.

2) the shutter is more unique than I thought. Apparently this playfield had a standard shutter motor mounted on it and I'm just blind or something.

The arm cannot squeeze through the pockets unit.

I need to take apart my gay time to figure out how the shutter arm moves the shutter. It either has a linkage that does fit through the unit or something similar.

The pockets unit is mounted with twelve screws. I need to make sure that it cannot move, as if it shifts, it will damage the playfield.

Ava helped me wire the first connector and a half. She did the soldering and wire stripping and I read the plug chart.

Tomorrow, if I have a moment, I'll finish up the pockets unit (it needs a little cleaning), then move on to the 20 hole playfield.

With those three additional playfields wired up, I will be able to program another 18 games (the majority remaining).

Oh hey! One other thing to note about pockets - the unit is comprised of 5 total coils - two appear to be used for indexing.

My initial schematic/driver setup didn't contemplate those, so I'll need to see what happens if I do not energize those coils...

My thought is that since the computer is controlling the movement, I don't need to pull in a relay to wait for the control unit to swing around before pulsing left or right... which appears to be how the originals are set up.

I think those index coils are 50V. The hole #7 coil is 120V as well (though less monstrous).

The coil sleeve is not replaceable (it's part of the base of the coil), and it brass. Not a problem, no burrs, smooth as butter.

So! You may ask... how in the world am I going to make this work?

Relays. I will build a left and right relay, which will short 120VAC directly to the coil. The relay will be driven by my driver board. This will function the same way as the shutter or lifter motors (but with higher voltage).

I will need to build in some kind of protection against pressing left and right at the same time. I wonder if that is the reason the index coils exist. The schematic makes note of a motor cam switch that would automatically regulate pulses to the big coils. Well, if neither the index nor the control unit exist...

Just kinda thinking out loud here...

Wonder if I should intentionally make a delay before firing the coils after pressing the button? I'm not sure how I'll do that, other than with a delay method.

Any ideas are welcome. I haven't started on the code for these games as I wanted to see the physical construction of the pockets unit first.

I think I have the code figured out for the pockets. What a complex unit for 1955.

So, the way the unit works ordinarily - even if you have pockets qualified, if there's not a ball in holes 1-7 (proximity relay), then the pockets won't fire.

Well, now that I sat down and thought about it (and bounced some ideas off of the custom pinball community - thanks fellas!), I realized that I could do basically the same thing in software without having to add additional switches or coils.

If there's not a ball in hole 1-7, don't fire the coils. This will prevent cross-firing of the coils, which would destroy the pockets unit.

The outlier is hole #7 - it only fires to the right at the end of the game - so I just check to see if there's a ball in hole #7 and fire that coil, otherwise, don't...

It's more straightforward than I made it in my mind. I am just scared of ruining this rare unit with stupidity.

I spent last night cleaning the pockets unit itself - moves like butter now.

I attached it to the playfield and cleaned up the wiring. I also stripped and cleaned the topside and re-rubbered, etc. Looks great!

This playfield has formica attached to all the visible wood - I am going to leave it for all but the right-hand guiderail. That piece was missing from this playfield and I have a couple spares. They don't quite match visually, but I think it'll be ok.

I've got to take a meter and make sure that the hole wiring and hole commons are not buzzing continuity through the pockets unit - it's a big metal cradle. Definitely don't want to do something dumb accidentally... if I can avoid it.

Next up is the 20 hole playfield - less wiring? That's the hope - but only five fewer wires. The ball sensor boards are split the same way, so the same number of jumpers are required.

I'm thinking about the dynamic score and instruction cards... they make the most sense for the standard 25 hole playfield and for the 20 hole playfield. Everything else has a maximum of three games. And since the screens are hard to find now, I may just get some NOS score/instruction cards for the primary game using that playfield and leave it at that (for now).

So, for example ---

Surf Club/Palm Springs/Ice Frolics... this one is the biggest challenge due to the vast differences in gameplay. I'll think on this one.

Shoot a line and Shoot a line '63 - very minor scoring differences.

Galaxy - only one.

Roulette games - no differences in scoring, but one has extra ball buyin.

Mystic Gate - only one

Miss Universe - only one

Gayety/Gay Time - one extra Magic Line on Gay Time, otherwise similar feature sets. Will likely use Gayety S/I Cards.

20 hole playfield: one connector is wired! The top arch has a hole pre-drilled for the wires for the ball gate, but the hole needs to be enlarged, slightly. I'll get on that.

Aside from that, I have to install the lamp sockets.

Then I'll work on wiring up the Surf Club playfield. That should hold me over for a while! Once all that's done, it's time to start working on code again. I've still got my menu issue to address, then the dirty switch on the S-A-L playfield to clean.

I've got something interesting cooking with a cosmetic piece! Hopefully more on that soon.

Feels like I'm moving slowly, but lots going on with life at the moment. I wired up a second connector on the 20 hole playfield last night.

I have a couple of plugs left and I'll start on the Surf Club playfield. Then, it's back to coding.

Today, I'll wire the last and lace the harness together. It's so satisfying to go from a jumbled mass of wires to a nicely laced harness.

I've been thinking about my menu.

There are 132 electromechanical and one solid state bingo pinball games that will be emulated using this system in total. 106 of that number use a standard 25 hole playfield.

My initial idea was to restrict my menu to only those games playable on the playfield installed... but that might be short-sighted. I can add logic to each of the games to allow/prevent based on hole layout. For example, each of the 106 games mentioned above are actually playable on a Magic Pockets playfield, but the startup sequence is different for each (kick balls over in the top row vs dropping them).

This would allow me to restrict the 26 games by dimming them in the menu - not a huge hardship.

Still thinking about it as the issue with having to know the state of switches before switch handling is initialized is still present.

Finished 20 hole playfield and wired up a little over 1/3 of Surf Club last night.

Surf Club has an older style shutter/shuffle with leaf switches attached.

This means that I need to run switch common to one side of each leaf switches for the 25 holes. Luckily Bally has nice wire management for moving vertically across the shutter. I installed new clips across the playfield where the originals snapped.

I'll be working on new code improvements and new games next! The next month is going to be absolutely insane with work, family and other life commitments. I'll be updating here as possible.

I spent this evening polishing the code for Shoot-a-line and Shoot-a-line '63. The games had an R button (which I hadn't programmed in) and needed graphics polishing.

This game looks so difficult. I'll be playing it soon to test for bugs.

Next up - work on Gayety and Gay Time (I think).

Thanks Vic!

Fired up the game last night and pulled down the latest code for Shoot-A-Line and Shoot-A-Line '63.

I was excited to play and see what I thought of the geometry.

Fired up the game, switches still read ok, game started. I waited for the balls to return. No balls lifted.

I have a broken wire on the lifter relay. I'll pull the game away from the wall and take a look.

No broken wire, maybe I should check the state of the switch for the shooter lane. A change from NO to NC would break it for sure. Haha!

Quick swap in code and I was playing. Well... Except that the shutter is now misbehaving. It will not remain open nor closed. Switches are sensing and I thought there was a problem with the cleanliness of the switch. Apparently not. It is sensing properly.

Got that fixed, too and I've played a few rounds. What a hard game! I've been enjoying just having my hands on the nice new siderails and playing. It's been a while!

Lunchtime bingo! Been a while since I've been able to do that. Racked up about 170 replays on Shoot-A-Line at lunch. As with most of the games, learning the layout is the real trick. You can always pause between balls to find the next number you need.

Remember on Shoot-a-line (and most of the 70s six cards that would come almost a decade later), you have progressive awards. In SAL's case, it gets lucrative even on a three in a row if you are on one of the bottom cards. Since those cards are mostly made up of lower numbers (physically on the playfield), you stand a pretty good chance of at least earning your .60 back with a three in a row hit -if- you can steer the ball properly, and the layout doesn't really help you out there.

The colored line (precursor to the super lines) sweetens the pot, and four in a row is amazing.

Got two four in a row hits and discovered a bug on the lifter logic. I might have something wrong with trough switch #8, though. Don't know! My ball return works just fine, except if it is the last ball. I only figured that problem out a year ago or so... glad it's back.

Running... out... of... steam. Working on another game, and it's going super slowly. I have no idea how I was knocking out a game a night, but I hope I can get back up to speed soon.

I'm working on graphics for a game that I'd previously written the code for. I have four games total that I can put graphics on and be finished with, so I'm trying to knock them off the list.

It's really starting to come together! You haven't been since I've had the game painted, and now that I can swap in multiple playfields, it's really taking shape.

On the one hand, I am thrilled. On the other, I am having a hard time finding my groove. I'm gonna blame the cabinet artwork for that, since I agonized over it for so long. Last night I sat down to color-correct and clean up a backglass and I was only able to do that. Didn't even get to the lit elements or positioning. What's wrong with me?

Though I am nearing the end (I counted 30 games left to program last night, if I don't end up making custom playfields for a couple of near-cousins to the bingos), I still have a mountain of work to do. Bugtesting/fixing, code cleanup, improved graphics, some cosmetic surprises, and more. This is an absolutely huge project, but I have a hard time looking at the big picture for fear of giving up.

A bite at a time, this elephant is being eaten!

Anyway, all that said, come on over when we're both free.

Thank you @noquarters. I truly appreciate all the kind words everyone has had for me and for this project.

I had some time, between Mother's Day celebrations, to work on the game today!

I found all the coding issues on the Shoot-A-Line games, and have fixed them all. The most glaring issue was the ball return: it stopped functioning because the gate switch was bouncing. I adjusted the timeout on that switch to make it extremely reliable. I may end up cracking that open and adjusting the switch for a better/more permanent fix.

After that, I noticed a hardware problem: the bottom board (ball return board) is not large enough on a magic screen game to return the balls on the extreme left and right side. Ball #28 drops right through into the cabinet bottom!

I'll have to fashion one to swap in. Or find a real shoot-a-line return board.

The gameplay is quite interesting, though. I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it.

I swapped the regular 25 hole playfield in as I was expecting company. I played a handful of games on it, worked like a charm. Looks incredibly sharp in the freshly painted cab, too!

As far as new games, I'll begin work on Gay Time and Gayety next, then on to the 20 holers. I think I mentioned above, but I have four games complete (code-wise) that need graphics. I'm working on those first.

I finished the code and graphics for the first production bingo pinball this evening! A-B-C by United was quite different from the standard bingo pinball layout that we know and love today.

It used a Roulette-style tub with 25 holes arrayed around a pop bumper. If you managed to avoid the holes on your way down the slope of the bowl, the pop will push the ball into one of the holes.

Play control looks tough, but like with Shoot-A-Line, I'm really interested to give this game a shot.

Unfortunately, I do not have a roulette-style playfield (yet), and they are much smaller than the standard bingo pinball playfields, but I have a trick or two up my sleeve...

Bolero, the second (and last) roulette bingo is also complete. The gameplay was rehashed for the standard layout version, Leader.

Interestingly, both A-B-C and Bolero were redone as Zingo (no extra balls) and Leader (extra ball buyin).

United implemented their first extra ball buyin back in 1951, but on a guaranteed basis. If you add X number of coins, you get an extra chance.

The trick, though, is that diagonals do not score on these four games. Tough.

I really want to try using a roulette playfield.

One more for tonight - United's 3-4-5 was the first United game to use the Bally 25 hole layout. It's different from the more standard gameplay found on Leader/Zingo - one coin enables two cards at once.

The card layout is the same as on cards 1 and 3 of A-B-C/Bolero.

There were no photos available of the backglass, so I had to take the black and white flier image and touch that up to use for the game. I only know of one person with this game. I'll update the image when they have a chance to photo it.

Only one complete - but it's a big one! United's Serenade was just discovered at the beginning of this year. It's a unique game, where you can select one of two cards for scoring.

This game looks like it will be particularly good in a home environment. The Lite-A-Name carry-over feature will push your odds to the top and your spotted number selections to position #4 on your next game. The rollovers, when lit, will grant you your first extra ball for free.

Without details present on the schematic (this has not yet been found), I implemented using the same portioning as United's Manhattan.

I'm down to 26 games total left to implement.

I didn't mention this last night, but that Serenade was the last United game I had left to implement!

Aside from the card-style games (close cousins of the bingos), I have every United, Keeney and Williams bingo produced (or not) in the Multi.

Pretty exciting! I have those couple of handfuls of Bally titles left to go, and I'll be working through them as I am able.

Then will come the (lengthy) polishing stage - putting the right sounds in the games, setting the game to blink lights appropriately instead of just toggling them, and setting up the coin flash unique to every game. Lots to do, but getting the initial pass at graphics and portioning done is really the largest portion of the work.

Thank you, Dennis! It looks like a really fun game that is hamstrung by the

26 == 1
27 == 2
and so forth. Geez.

Unfortunately, you'll have to do the mental math on that yourself while playing. That's why I theorize it never made it to production, though. Too hard to keep track of what you're doing - especially when alcohol is involved!

To alleviate this, and I don't know if this is correct compared to the real game, my version will light up both the number on card A and the number on card B simultaneously (like on Manhattan). When you have the feature lit, you can swap the card indicated to score - only one card will score and if you do not have the feature lit (usually lit within a small handful of coins), it will only score on card A. I suspect this is exactly how the real game works and is another nail in its production coffin. Again, you get the, 'why didn't this dang-blasted thing give me my replays?! I was cheated!!'

The rollovers are hard to light (any of the UMC features are pretty tough), but they are very lucrative. Earning your first extra ball with the rollover should be a pretty nice reward.

The lite-a-name reward works similarly to Frolics, oddly enough - or maybe Ice Frolics (haven't done that one yet): the game will advance your odds to the top for the next game, and award you several steps on the selection feature unit.

Aside from Tropics, there are very few games that play with the odds in such a way that they are advantageous to the player. I like it.

The implementation of those features are not assumption, either, as there are relatively clear photos of the instruction cards on IPDB as well!

Very excited to have such a nice collection of rare games housed in one cabinet.

I started work last night on the backglass for Ice Frolics. This is a game that doesn't come up all that frequently, and is one of the trio of ball return games made in '53. More detail when the game is done, but I find this particular game pretty interesting.

I've played the other two ball return games, Surf Club and Palm Springs, and very much enjoy the gameplay and artwork on those games - Ice Frolics is one of two ice skating themed bingos (the other being Spot-Lite), and has quite a few features. Whereas Palm Springs has super cards, Ice Frolics has three full cards. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have 6 more games that use some variation of the 25 hole playfield - Palm Springs, Surf Club, Ice Frolics, Hi-Fi, Gayety and Gay Time. Palm Springs and Surf Club are code-complete, but need the backglass artwork done. The others I have not touched yet.

Honestly, I'm a bit nervous about the 20 hole games after that. The 20 holers have a new mechanical animated unit, along with their own unique portioning (5 mixers), and a LOT of added complexity. I guess I should say that I'm simultaneously nervous and excited, like a first date (is that too weird to say?).

Beyond those, I have the oddball 'screen' games like Miss Universe and Galaxy.

OK, got my illuminated layers done for Surf Club and Ice Frolics. Working on Palm Springs and I found one great image online. Most of the real glasses are pretty trashed.

Anybody see the interesting element in the reflection?

Screenshot from 2017-05-21 23-13-19 (resized).png

Ice Frolics is done! What an interesting and challenging game.

Three cards, and your fourth coin will enable super scores. You can also select which of the three cards use the odds (by changing the selected super scores), either before shooting your first ball, or before shooting your fourth ball. That's quite the advantage!

If you don't have super scores enabled on your winning card, you have a standard payout of 4 for 3 in a row, 20 for 4 and 100 for 5.

The game has the hold feature from Palm Springs, which allows you to retain only the odd numbers shot, only the even numbers shot, or all the numbers.

It also has rollovers, which will grant you 3 scores as 4 - across all cards. So if you don't have super scores enabled on your winning card, you can still boost your replays via the rollovers!

Up to 3 extra balls, and corners score a flat 200 replays. This also gives me a great head-start on polish for Palm Springs and Surf Club.

Oh, it's coming! Not sure if I'll finish up Surf Club or Palm Springs first...

These games are so incredible.

From the hardware side, I'll be driving the massive 120V shutter coils via a relay. Right now in my code, you hold down a button for ~2 seconds, and if you have the hold feature, the shutter will move and drop 1/2 the balls. You can also press 'All' and just obtain a straight bingo score.

The hold feature is a great implementation of risk/reward. You may have an in-line winner that you have to sacrifice in order to get your balls back!

The hold feature on Ice Frolics is fairly liberal. It lights within about 8 coins, typically.

Alright, another one down - Surf Club - one of my all-time favorite games, is now complete.

For some silly reason, I've done the hold feature games in reverse order. Surf Club builds on Palm Springs, which I haven't discussed yet. Haha! Alright, let me step back and give you some context for why this is a great game.

Start with a single bingo card - 5x5.
Add in two super cards - 3x3 (Super cards score as 4-in-line on the regular card)
Throw in spotted numbers - 9, 14, 15 (15 is the center number on the main card)
Then, add a 'super line' - pick any three of 6 numbers. If you manage to get two in line, you'll score as 4 on the main card. If you get all three, you'll score as 5!
Corners score a flat 200 on the main card.
Rollovers are also lit by default - yellow will light super card 1 if not lit, and red will advance to super card 2 if you already have super card 1 lit.

I can't believe this - that's not enough for you?

Ok.

How about a relatively easy to light hold feature? Only four steps on the unit to light it!

...

Still not enough?

...

You drive a hard bargain. Ok. What if I let you drop all the odd or even balls already shot TWICE in a single game?

...

Alright, one more feature. But that's it. You can purchase up to three extra balls.

As you can see, there's a LOT to do on Surf Club. It has beautiful artwork. It has extremely compelling gameplay. And it has the hold feature, only used in this form on three games. I'd say it's a winner.

Whenever I've played the real game, getting a super line win was quite the feat. It's like making three very difficult called shots. I've seen someone else pull it off, though! Very exciting. Lots of cheering.