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Front and back - these are the games I have left to write flash routines for - I don't think I'll have it 100% before York. There are many undocumented games as well, and rather than guess, I'll work on getting the documentation needed.

Again, games are 100% playable - I just desire perfection.

Speaking of, does anyone have a female 24 pin Bally Jones Plug?

I need it to hook up the buttons from my auxiliary drawer. Just about any game would have used at least one 24 pin female connector from the cabinet to the head. Several later games used more than one 24 pin connector to handle playfield/shutter motor features.

I need the female side only.

Thanks Vic.

Thank you! Definitely in the plans to travel with the game, and Denver is one of the spots I'd like to hit.

I've decided that there's no possible way that I can implement all the coin flashes before York. Gotta sleep, unfortunately.

So, I am implementing all the 'select now' flashes and some minor graphical improvements that I discovered that will speed each individual game. I'll keep rolling through the animations once I get the basic flashing installed.

Then, I will prioritize the 25 holers, and we'll see what I can do!

I am going to log a bug on the tracker for each game that needs animation. I've been logging undocumented games on the bug tracker as 'needs help' as I'll need someone to do a lot of testing with a multimeter to help document the game for the games older than approx. '53.

I'm going to pencil it in, for now - I would love to go. I'll put it on my work/family schedule.

I am working really hard to get a baseline set of graphical improvements set for each game... I've discovered that there is a tradeoff of an increase in loading time for the menu as I update each game. I'm about halfway through the full list and the loading takes several seconds now. Not sure if there's a way to fix that.

Another bug revealed, the timing is now off for replay count up. Easy to fix, but each game works slightly differently, so another big round of fixes needed.

I have another cosmetic change to make - on the short list!

If I have time after all this stuff and finally finishing the wiring of the drawer buttons, I'll reprogram the games to take advantage of the drawer buttons solely.

I had a thought -- what if I wired in a NC switch to the drawer that would allow me to programmatically detect if the drawer was installed............? I could automatically swap controls. Not really necessary, but I could leave my existing button stuff alone - just a fancy little final step.

Alright, back to work.

I agree! I don't need an actual switch to do it, either. The power of Jones Plugs (and a free spot on my fifth switch board).

I think I'll need to get a sixth switch board before all is said and done. There are a LOT of switches on some of the playfield hardware that I didn't think I'd need for some reason, or didn't know existed as I'd never seen the mech before. Limit switches on ball return motors, that kinda thing.

I should be able to combine them, actually............. hmm.

Alright, here's the latest: I've finished baseline graphical improvements. What's that mean? I added blinky select now lites to every game that needed them! I also sped up the render speed on every game, allowing for eventual programming of coin flash. I would LOVE to add that to every game before York, but I'm averaging two days per game of solid mapping and programming... I need to focus on what I can get done (realistically) instead.

I am now working on some other bug fixes I discovered during either graphical testing or that were previously logged on the issue tracker. Lots of little tweaks that require massive amounts of work.

Churning through, and loving every minute.

Vic, yes, please! Let me know what I owe you!

Lots of bug fixes tonight - making progress.

More bugs fixed - the heaviest bugs that were left aside from replay delay stuff are now fixed.

Specifically (bugs fixed):
1) Scoring bug with Double-Up and Hawaii 20 holer - when at max odds, I noticed that I was getting paid about 1/2 of what I was supposed to. Turns out it was exactly half because I needed yet another conditional in my scoring routines.
2) Select-a-spot - the way this works in the real games, there is a dial. As you physically turn the dial, at certain positions, if you have the feature, it will light the spotted number. In mine, I use the left/right buttons. When you first earn the feature, if you didn't change the lit number, you could be cheated out of your spot. Fixed by adding a check_spot() method that will run every time the select-a-spot unit steps. Each game (well, about 5 or 6 variations across about 20 games) has its own unique method. Written and tested with individual steps and multi-steps (I had to make sure both worked).
3) Some Mystic Lines games were showing their 'seams' when Line A was moved up and down. I make a big long strip like on the real games and simply move it vertically to reposition. You could see some of the strip behind the backglass, so I had to add blocking.
4) Super 7 and Bonus 7 scoring bugs: The star zones on these games were different than on other Mystic Lines games. Scoring on the Mystic Lines games is also extremely complex. I have to check for winners within the section and ensure that every single other number is lit before adding the star zone to a section winner. I was doing so, but with the wrong numbers! Fixed and scoring problems went away.
5) Blink() routines were not being shut off on tilt or regular_play() - if you dropped a coin when the select now light was flashing, the game wouldn't get the hint to turn it off. Part of what makes this such a challenging project is that the game doesn't react exactly as the EM games do - resetting the Magic Squares unit/timer doesn't kill the blink methods - depending on the game, there may be multiple blink methods running. In retrospect, I could've added those to my units.py file, but it's working now, so I'll save that for a rainy year.
6) Timeout routines were allowed to run after the game had restarted. Again, hitting the plunger on the timer unit and allowing all the balls to return to trough would normally reset that in the EMs. In most of the 40 step games (the majority), you wouldn't even know that it was happening, really. In the 8 step games, you'd be playing ball 1 or two of your next game and the motor sounds would completely stop. I thought I had tilted in several test games recently, but it was just in 'silent' mode.

As part of various revamps for graphical stuff, I fixed various other small bugs. I must stress that the above bugs are surprisingly minor. I'm quite pleased. And also tired.

My next 'big' bug to fix - replays are counting too quickly! When I made speed tweaks to the graphics routines for each game, replays started counting very very quickly. I've added another 5 hundredths of a second delay, which looks OK on the screen, but will need to test on the real hardware to see if I am still pulsing that coil like crazy. It's tricky business to get that kind of timing just right. I spent a long time getting it perfect last time, but I know I can get it perfect again. All the motors might end up turning the same speed for York (in the interest of time). We'll see!

I have a minor scripting improvement to make for the score and instruction screens - I think I may be hitting an out of memory condition when paging through 100 cards or so back and forth... I'll add an instruction to kill the previous card before displaying the new one and see what that looks like. I also noticed my shell scripts that handle that are not in my source repository... yikes! A minor thing, but I would like to have backups.

Again, these remaining things are pretty darn minor. I'm really pleased.

Regarding the replay count fix - I was mistaken! Seems to be localized to one game. Going to check that out and revert changes to a couple other games that I made to test.

Played a dozen rounds of Mississippi Showboat just now (won 64). Vic, are you ready to play that game again? Six ball buy-in on top of Dixieland features!

Seems like I'm a fool in more ways than one - I went through all my various parts stashes and found a female 24 pin connector. I have prepped that for install and will be working on that tonight!

I have started adding code to handle the drawer conditionally in each game.

I have also been splitting up my physical switches to try to keep within 5x16 (80) switches. Keeping the board count reasonable(ish).

I went in and installed the new switches last night. All work that I currently have connectors for except for letter E. I've checked, double-checked, rechecked and somehow I am using more switches than documented.

There were three-four switches that could not be plugged. I'll learn more tonight.

Problems with drawer buttons:
1) I need to pick up some blade stiffeners. I probably have parts sitting around - gonna check the stash first before I place an order.
2) The aluminium plates that guide the buttons are very important for proper function. I have an idea for how to rig them. Maybe.
3) What the heck did I wire extra switches to?!? I fear that I left loose wires crimped inside the connector housings, and tied up in my bundle coming off the boards. I don't want to slice those open to inspect.
4) Why is letter E dead? I can tone the button out through the first Jones Plug. Must be in the harness or to the connector on the board.
5) Gotta rewire some of the buttons within the drawer. I have two allocated for white button play and for gold button play, but they are physically distant from where I expected them to be (don't substitute wires, folks).
6) Have my 'drawer' button installed, but testing it will be difficult as I cannot open it. Perhaps I'll desolder one wire from the jones plug to test.

What bothers me the most about those extra switches is that I've tried to be pretty meticulous in the switch documentation since it's critical for fault-finding. Each switch is on my working schematic and each plug port is in my documentation. I must've added wires and left them bundled for future use. That was dumb.

I've screwed something up there and I don't have time right now to unwind it.

I'll figure it out after York sometime.

Reworked a bit of the drawer last night - adjusted switches for the first 7 switches and modified my wiring harness for the drawer switch. I'll be testing more tonight.

Tested more at lunch! Or should I say bingo time!

Played Acapulco, which was one of the first games to have full coin flash. Seeing that game light up properly, then moving the numbers with the actual buttons (A-E) is pretty incredible.

The drawer switch also works perfectly, and I've written/engineered it in such a way that the game will detect -on the fly- if the drawer is unplugged.

Were this a location game, that would be important, because no matter how rugged the game was, the drawer could be ripped out. As it stands, if the drawer physically falls off or otherwise bites the dust, the game remains playable. Pretty neat!

Got a hit for 32 then a hit for 64. My winning sections for that game are A&B in the red. I had after 5th lit on my second game, and I didn't collect in the yellow. What am I doing? Gonna chalk it up to lack of sleep.

So very excited.

My next project is restrictor plates - once those are installed, the buttons will not fall off of the switches with enough wiggling - but first, another round of coding in the conditional drawer support.

Did I mention I am having some folks over tomorrow night to test? zimjoe I hope you're bringing your nudging A-game!

Ha! Thinking back, there's no way to collect in the yellow! I forgot, Magic Numbers don't magically go wherever you want them to go: they follow a track.

All the games updated to use drawer buttons currently mechanically working if the drawer is installed, otherwise, it fails down to various oddball controls - blue and green used as a replacement for C and D, for example.

Here are the items I would like to address before York:
https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/112 - Adding a new Big Time backglass - the one I have is really really rough. I asked someone on Facebook to snap me some photos of their game and I am going to use those - just need to carve out the time to do it!

Similarly:
https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/66 - Adding a new Parade backglass - the one photo I was able to find was taken at very low resolution. okorange snapped some photos when he restored his Parade recently, and I finally had a chance to touch up the image and push it into the game. I still have to rework all the lit elements (drift as small as 1px will look incredibly bad).

https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/100 - Ball 6 will sometimes load if you hit the right set of conditions in the right order. The game knows fully well that it loaded it, too, which makes it all the more frustrating. I am going to write a universal set of lifter routines to address.

https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/63 - Redo Miami Beach portioning - games older than approx 1954/5 have almost no documentation in the manual for step units. They cover the broad strokes, which is good, but there is no information about how the rivets are wired on the spotting disc, for example. A person (@blackcatbone?) recently documented all of the portioning units for Miami Beach. For these older machines where documentation is not available, I have had to make educated guesses. At first, I was not super good at that. As I started reading up on the later games, I got a little better, and recently I went back through and tried to tidy up a little. Miami Beach in particular is still a little too 'tight' - it's hard to earn feature awards. I am confident that implementing proper portioning will make that better. I have a few other open issues marked 'help needed' where the documentation is not available.

If you own these games and are interested in helping, please contact @baldtwit. He is an absolute treasure and your work in cleaning and documenting your mixers will allow not only my game to function better, but anyone else who happens to be fixing a broken or hacked up game.

https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/65 - Redo Carnival Queen portioning - similarly, okorange has documented the first Magic Screen game. Note that even though the spotting disc was documented in this era, the portioning units (mixers and reflex) were not. baldtwit mentions that Carnival Queen was too tight and didn't give features easily enough. I've worked on one or two and don't remember that. My fudged current implementation is also pretty free with the features, so I'm looking forward to getting this accurate. I believe I implemented based on a later game's reflex and mixer docs, which probably explains why it is relatively loose.

https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/64 - Redo Safari portioning - a person, I don't believe is on Pinside(?), has recently added documentation for Safari's portioning units! Looking forward to getting those in the game as well.

It's really neat that there has been so much movement on new documentation recently. I am very thankful for everyone that adds to the collective pool of documentation.

Physical issues:

1) Drawer is a little loose in the front left side - using the drawer glides that I chose based on a recommendation (they are CHEAP) - the drawer can actually fall out if you are rough with it. I need to shim up or otherwise adjust that corner of the glide to prevent the drawer from falling on your foot while you play. (It really only happens if you jerk the drawer in or out or really lean on the buttons HARD). If I recall, everything was square before I added glides and physically installed the drawer mount, so I dunno what I messed up.

2) Drawer buttons need metal cover plates to guide them straight up and down. If you push slightly to one side or another, it can physically jump off the switch.

3) White button was painted last night, but needs physical modification of the drawer lockbar piece holding it to allow for a switch to be depressed. I may weld or epoxy on a piece of metal to the end of the button to actuate the switches.

Pre-York, I have lots of stuff going on in my personal and professional life. I hope to be able to do all the above stuff, but honestly, I could leave the drawer at home (thanks to the adaptive controls) and everything else is pretty minor (all things considered).

Post York:

1) Build Mystic Gate playfield (install connectors, make shutter board)
2) Build Galaxy playfield (install connectors and shutter board).
3) Build Miss Universe playfield (install connectors and shutter board)
4) Finish Surf Club playfield build (need one more connector)
5) Locate ABC playfield or make my own
6) Figure out how to make Hi-Fi brackets and install appropriate coils. Theoretically, I can do this on the default playfield. If it changes the play at all, I will find another playfield to use specifically for Hi-Fi.
7) Add coin flash to everything.

Lunch! Updated all the code I wrote last night and tested it out - doesn't immediately crash, which is good, and played some rounds of Night Club. Got a couple good hits (thought I had a great corners game going - squares lit to D - but I was only able to cash in three in a row with a cheap extra ball).

Looking forward to the gathering tonight!

Last night went great! Even better than expected. The only bug encountered across many many games was an errant ball 6 lifting. It was very repeatable on Frolics, so I will work to correct before York. Even if the bug is localized to the one game, I should be able to use it as a starting point. Didn't occur on any other game last night.

Multiple red letter wins in a row on County Fair. Some great dramatic moments and one good four in a row winner.

Thanks for coming to help playtest, guys!

Today I've been hanging out with the family, and napping. Tonight I may jump back into lifter code and see if there's a problem.

Sounds like you found it! In all seriousness, you should come. It's a great show.

Thank you! I was really excited to see you guys' reactions to the game.

Speaking of the game... I have been working on stuff. The lifter... I realize what the problem is now. Will I have time to fix it before York? Maybe not. I'll try.

I spent this evening updating the Parade backglass. Just testing now, but it looks about 1000% better. Thank you @okorange!

I've been to the hardware store a bunch. Got some wood, got some paint. Shimmed up my drawer to square it. The problem was the bottom board is not square, which flanged out one side when screwed down. Added shims, will paint. Chiseled out a spot for the white button in the secondary rail. Looks great! Working on adding a big switch stack so that pressing the button actually actuates the switch...

But before I get back to that, working on Big Time. That BG copy I have is really really rough. The photo I received from a FB user is really very nice.

Big Time's glass has also been replaced. Much better. Might be too bright on the screen. I've also made a fun little tweak to the score and instruction displays since Friday. Part of the reason for documenting so much is to remember what I did when.

The word persecution comes to mind. As with the one balls. That story is great reading.

Hey, last night I was on a roll - I also redid the portioning for Miami Beach using the new information.

Quick question for anyone who might have played the game:

Curtains to position 2 seems pretty loose, but the select a spot lights a lot faster than the curtains. Is that right?

Position 3 is tighter and 4 is a heckuva lot tighter. It's odd to me that they had not one but two corners scoring features that you can't use until you're at position 4 and it costs so much money to get there...

It's also weird to me that select-a-spot is enabled so quickly (typically). There are multiple positions on the spotting disc that step it to the top, which is kinda counter to how many of these powerful features work... unless the game is hard enough to justify it.

Trying to figure out why they only made one with this feature. Perhaps a matter of timing. Screens weren't that far off.

Got my Miami Beach question answered! The answer is inconclusive at the moment.

I've re-implemented the Safari portioning. Wow, it's a lot tighter than it used to be.

With that, I have a handful of 'bugs' or enhancements left. Just about everything is fixed mentioned in post 976. The accidental lifting of ball 6 is still a problem on some games. It only occurs in certain circumstances. May leave it till after York.

Next up is hardware! The drawer has been shimmed, needs the shim painted. I need to cut and sand covers for the switches to prevent fingers from reaching in and messing with the switches themselves.

I also have a little more wiring to do for the second row of drawer buttons. Will be adding them tonight/tomorrow.

Redid the coin flash animations for Big Wheel. They were backwards because the technical writer documented the spotting disc backwards (from the wiring side rather than the wiper side).

Only three open bugs left and drawer stuff.

Figured out the lifter problem. The framework I'm using has a built-in method for each switch is_active(). This registers opposite of the way you'd expect for NC switches.

I was able to remove a recurring delay method to handle my lifter stuff. Pretty fancy.

Now to redo all the lifter stuff.

It's amazing what a replay register can do!

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Starting to install plates! Bar #2 is mostly double wide buttons. One corner of one side had a broken piece of a screw nail embedded. Remember, these were junk bars, but were in ok condition.

I screwed another screw in from the bottom, then a wider one, etc. Well, that was the plan, but the first screw broke off too! Haha! So I pulled that out, and was able to get a nail in.

On bar #1, I had a couple oddities. The first was the orange button. Because of the spacing, I needed a bottom plate that was single and then a double for the plates beside. But, because of the size of that button, the typical brass insert wouldn't work. Or rather, it would be wasted. So I took a single hole bottom plate, cut it down to the size of the hole, and mounted the orange button on the higher position. Looks and works very well.

There's a double wide double button setup in the center, but I'm using single wide buttons. That means that no restrictor plate would fit correctly. Because of how difficult it would be to cut the through hole for the brass fitting, or the difficulty in replacing that piece, I decided to take a hacksaw to two single button restrictor plates. After, I filed the snot out of the edges to ensure that you can't cut your hand if you slide across to it. Looks pretty good (not perfect, but not bad). Well, you be the judge.

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I need to add some extra switches to each stack just to add some height to them to keep pressure on the buttons. I'm really excited to get it all back together and try it again.

I have some woodworking left to do in the drawer, but it's simple 90 degree cuts and some basic spray painting. So very exciting.

Huge thanks to Dennis for the restrictor plates - a million times thank you.

Into the 'F's reworking the lifter code. Going well, about 1/2 done.

Lifter code rework done.

Let me attempt to explain the complexity of the lifter code.

It is compartmentalized into basic lifter function, override, and ball return.

Basic lifter function has to wait for all the balls to settle, then lift the first ball to the shooter lane. As the lifter is motorized, I have to have logic to shut off the motor. I also have to have a way to activate the motor again when the ball leaves the gate.

The way this worked previously was that I was constantly polling the trough to see any state changes and hopefully catching them. This worked almost 100% correctly. Occasionally, if you had the balls fall in just the right way at the start of the game, it would lift a sixth ball.

To fix this, I modified the base code to have three sections - game start will poll for all trough switches. During the game, it doesn't care about any trough switch except #4. Then 3, 2, and 1 for extra balls.

Miss universe is the exception (being a three ball game).

This was great, and worked correctly except if the game was started with all the balls in the trough. Then it would not lift ball #1.

To fix this I had to change the trough 8 switch method. It will now react immediately upon closure instead of once the switch bounces.

The override function remained untouched but works off the ball count. This allowed me to test the rest of the lifter routines when ball 1 didn't load.

As you can hopefully see, all of this is nuance. A lot of work for fixing what seems to be a minor problem. Multiply certain changes by 138. All done, but each needs to be tested individually in the actual hardware.

I also painted the small parts of the drawer surround that needed repainting.

I cut small blocks of wood to back up the buttons. These are screwed to the bottom of the lockbar to remove the need for switch stiffeners. The concern is that even with a stiffener, a determined (abusive) player could still walk the button off the switch.

We will see how this holds up. I'll be play testing slightly more exuberantly than normal and I have one more external test planned before York.

A small amount of wiring is still needed, and switch adjustment. I painted a piece of wood that I will cut to cover the blank sections of the drawer, giving a consistent feel for the player. This is part of why the buttons cannot ever walk off the switches.

The restrictor plates look like a million bucks, and pressing the buttons outside of the drawer is a joy.

I'm... back! Was out of town briefly. I think the above may not adequately describe what I did or how complex it was, but hopefully you get the idea. The big problem is that I cannot evaluate the difference between ball 7 and ball 8 landing in the trough, but the game handles it properly regardless.

I have spent the 10 minutes available to me to work on the drawer! Tonight I plan to work with my kids to cut out some wood I painted last week and install. I painted my hold buttons as they no longer had the red enamel paint. I have a couple pics that I'll post later. Busy! Good to be back.

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Buttons in a drawer. Still need to find an intact 'Odd' button. Button action is great and new alignment of button bars makes it play just like the real deal. Doing some more minor wiring tomorrow.

Thanks zimjoe (you'll get there one day )! Spent this evening checking out fit and function and intentional malfunction of buttons in drawer. Works like a charm and now people can't fool around with the buttons in the drawer.

Here's a dark photo of the drawer mounted in the game.

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So smooth. Thank you and Taylor for the help with the skew on the drawer.

Not a problem, @okorange! You've all done so much for me. I'll find one at some point. Waiting on some other folks to get back to me, hopefully someone has one rolling around in a coffee can somewhere.

I'm glad that Surf Club playfield will live on (thank you again)!