Newtown, CT
It is great to see some actual progress at this place. Hopefully after you leave it won't degrade back to the "warehouse" atmosphere.
(Topic ID: 343117)
Quoted from cfh:Myself, Skip, Mr. bally spent the morning at the pinball Hall of Fame, shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic. It actually came out really well. Luckily Tim was at the Salvation Army today so he wasn’t there to tell us not to do this. I have a feeling when he shows up and sees what was done he may not be happy…
What we did is make the furthest row now completely half dead games, and completely open. We moved all the working video games out of that row. So that one back row is now just nothing but dead games or open.
Advantage to this is pretty striking. For one removed dead games out of the main rows, and into the dead row. But there’s also a huge open area to work on games. When the people come from banning, they will now have a clear in free work area. That’s out of the way of customers. Also, Skip said he can open up a row which will allow clean passage to the workshop and the parts area, without having to navigate through the public rows.
The only question is, will timkeep this area clear and keep this methodology intact. That is to be seen. Hopefully he doesn’t order another 10,000 rubber chickens to take up the free space…
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Sort of a "Game Hospital". Especially for machines that need a lot of work. Roll 'em over on the stretcher for the surgeons to do their work. And, if the surgery is unsuccessful, the game Cemetery is right there.
Those bare white walls are painful to look at. At least the old place as cramped as it was felt like it had some character...If this is the vibe he's going for those walls are not it.
Quoted from cfh:vegas is all about how things appear... except for the PHoF. Now this has some appeal, that in-fact it is *not* a highly polished venue. But on the other hand, you don't want it to look like a dump either. So myself and Skip are trying to make a compromise in this, and get a *slightly* more polished look, without losing the "look and feel" that tim is so in love with. As Skip told me, tim wishes for the old days where people would fight to play the next game (with quarters on the lockdown bar), and chicks wearing holster tops and dudes smoking. Obviously none of that is going to happen, but tim really is "old school" in this regards, and wishes for those old days.
Quoted from vid1900:A dead game row is a good idea... As long as it is accessible to the public; because for many people, that will be the only chance in their lifetime to see any of those rare games in person.
Signage development is in process.
Quoted from MrBally:Signage development is in process.
Bally man!?!?
Man...look at all that free space to put boxes of t-shirts and rubber chickens! 
Serious...great idea! I don't know Tim could be against this. Can't wait to check it out next week.
Quoted from Whistles:Bally man!?!?
Don't I wish....
Photo taken by me around 1976....
20210307_201820 (resized).jpgQuoted from cfh:now have a clear and free work area, that’s out of the way of customers.
That's good and bad. Good for people that don't want to look at broken games getting worked on. But I remember as a teenager peering into the workings of an EM next to a game my friend and I were playing in a bowling alley. A tech guy was fixing it and all I remember was the complexity of all those wires and relays under the hood. I was in awe and still remember that from over 50 years ago.
So moving the broken games out of the public eyesight may prevent some young kid the opportunity to see a repair in progress, and thus possible inspiration to become a pinball tech some day.
Quoted from allsportdvd:There are 2 machines (Monopoly and an early 80’s SS I can’t remember) at a pizza place on the top floor of the food area between Aria and Cosmopolitan but they are practically unplayable
Shhhh, it's a secret.
Secret Pizza that is...
Gottlieb Vegas is the other pin.
20240115_134831 (resized).jpg20240115_134852 (resized).jpg20240115_134902 (resized).jpg20240115_135837 (resized).jpgQuoted from cfh:Myself, Skip, Mr. Bally spent the morning at the pinball Hall of Fame, shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. It actually came out really well. Luckily Tim was at the Salvation Army today, so he wasn’t there to tell us not to do this work. I have a feeling when he shows up and sees what was done, he may not be happy…
What we did is make the furthest row (left most row as you walk in) completely dead games, and a section of this row completely open. We moved all the working video games out of that row. Now that one back row is just nothing but dead games, or open.
Advantage to this is pretty striking. For one removed many dead games out of the main rows, and into the dead row. But there’s also a huge open area to work on games. When the Tech people come from Banning, they will now have a clear and free work area, that’s out of the way of customers. Also, Skip said he can open up the row which would allow clean passage to the work bench and the parts area, without having to navigate through the public rows.
The only question is, will Tim keep this area clear, and keep this methodology intact. That is to be seen. Hopefully he doesn’t order another 10,000 rubber chickens or tshirts to take up the free space…
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Sorta makes me want to take a red eye flight to be there to see Tim's reaction.
Quoted from JethroP:That's good and bad. Good for people that don't want to look at broken games getting worked on. But I remember as a teenager peering into the workings of an EM next to a game my friend and I were playing in a bowling alley. A tech guy was fixing it and all I remember was the complexity of all those wires and relays under the hood. I was in awe and still remember that from over 50 years ago.
So moving the broken games out of the public eyesight may prevent some young kid the opportunity to see a repair in progress, and thus possible inspiration to become a pinball tech some day.
Easy solution: Take a peace of crap EM and create an informative *display*. Prop the play field up (making sure it's super secure) so every one can see all the guts. Take the head off, turn it around, put it on some sorta secure stand so all the score reals and crap can be seen. Start with some simple arrows pointing to stuff with simple explanations.
The perfect embodiment of this idea would include a TV monitor with a video explaining how all guts work.
... or we can have Clay stand there all day long pretending to be *fixing* the game. 
Quoted from cfh:Myself, Skip, Mr. Bally spent the morning at the pinball Hall of Fame, shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. It actually came out really well. Luckily Tim was at the Salvation Army today, so he wasn’t there to tell us not to do this work. I have a feeling when he shows up and sees what was done, he may not be happy…
What we did is make the furthest row (left most row as you walk in) completely dead games, and a section of this row completely open. We moved all the working video games out of that row. Now that one back row is just nothing but dead games, or open.
Advantage to this is pretty striking. For one removed many dead games out of the main rows, and into the dead row. But there’s also a huge open area to work on games. When the Tech people come from Banning, they will now have a clear and free work area, that’s out of the way of customers. Also, Skip said he can open up the row which would allow clean passage to the work bench and the parts area, without having to navigate through the public rows.
The only question is, will Tim keep this area clear, and keep this methodology intact. That is to be seen. Hopefully he doesn’t order another 10,000 rubber chickens or tshirts to take up the free space…
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More pics of the Game Hospital/Surgery center/Cemetery.
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20240115_120219 (resized).jpgQuoted from nsduprr:Sorta makes me want to take a red eye flight to be there to see Tim's reaction.
Clay or I can pick you up at the airport....
Quoted from JethroP:That's good and bad. Good for people that don't want to look at broken games getting worked on. But I remember as a teenager peering into the workings of an EM next to a game my friend and I were playing in a bowling alley. A tech guy was fixing it and all I remember was the complexity of all those wires and relays under the hood. I was in awe and still remember that from over 50 years ago.
So moving the broken games out of the public eyesight may prevent some young kid the opportunity to see a repair in progress, and thus possible inspiration to become a pinball tech some day.
That's exactly how I got into this. I started repairing 'em when I was a kid. My parents drove me to the Doctors and Lawyers homes in the Detroit suburbs as back then very few blue collars bought pins.
Quoted from JethroP:That's good and bad. Good for people that don't want to look at broken games getting worked on. But I remember as a teenager peering into the workings of an EM next to a game my friend and I were playing in a bowling alley. A tech guy was fixing it and all I remember was the complexity of all those wires and relays under the hood. I was in awe and still remember that from over 50 years ago.
So moving the broken games out of the public eyesight may prevent some young kid the opportunity to see a repair in progress, and thus possible inspiration to become a pinball tech some day.
When I've repaired games in public, I've had many people stop and take a look, and several have asked some questions. There's a lot of curious folks out there.
Quoted from ForceFlow:When I've repaired games in public, I've had many people stop and take a look, and several have asked some questions. There's a lot of curious folks out there.
In other news, Kennedy was assassinated.....
Also see:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-hall-of-fame-is-a-joke-/page/29#post-7970134
Quoted from cfh:i was at the PHoF this morning till about noon fixing stuff. lots of smiling faces and happy people.
You didn't happen to fix a couple urinals while you were there did you? I think that would put a smile on lots of faces.
Brisbane
Quoted from MrBally:Shhhh, it's a secret.
Secret Pizza that is...
Gottlieb Vegas is the other pin.
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That’s it! Went to Vegas 4 times last year for work from Australia and discovered this on visit 2. The machines are putrid but the pizza is good
Quoted from JethroP:That's good and bad. Good for people that don't want to look at broken games getting worked on. But I remember as a teenager peering into the workings of an EM next to a game my friend and I were playing in a bowling alley. A tech guy was fixing it and all I remember was the complexity of all those wires and relays under the hood. I was in awe and still remember that from over 50 years ago.
Yeah… but imagine being the tech trying to work and having someone over your shoulder or trying to have a conversation with you every 5minutes.
The public is the biggest detriment to actually getting work done in the arcade. It’s friendly enough, but people don’t seem to realize while it’s fascinating to them… the tech is actually trying to work and figure stuff out. They aren’t just BSing over a car project…
London
Quoted from The_Pump_House:Which is just a horrid idea. e-transactions siphon off an ever increasing amount of money from transactions. 10 years ago our processor rip on credit cards was < 2%. Now it's well over 3.2% (my processor tried to take us to 3.8% this year before I got them to back off to 3.2%)
There's absolutely nothing to stop processor middlemen from arbitrarily cranking rates. How do you think that will go when all transactions are 100% reliant upon a processing middleman?
Further, the processors are buying up all the point of sale companies and removing the ability to use any other processor with the systems they snatch up. The ability to get a competitive rate from a different processor is eliminated unless you want to do a wholesale change on your point of sale system (which only locks you in to a different processor). I use FuturePOS which was purchased by Shift4 (a processor). The mad dash for processors to buy up POS providers was triggered by the processors push for EMV (chip) compliance under the guise of combating fraud (which was a lie as the overwhelming majority of credit card fraud happens in card not present transactions where the chip never comes in to play). Once EMV was mandated it forced merchants to upgrade hardware (chip reader) and the software (EMV compliance) at which point those updates locked out the ability to change processors for a better rate. This was the true intent of the push for chipped/EMV cards.
Since Shift4 took over Future and locked out competitors my processing rates have skyrocketed.
A great example of the abuse is those points/miles you love so much on your cards. The card companies decide they want to lure more and more transactions from cash to card to increase their revenue by giving the end user rewards. 1% cash back? No problem, we are just going to give the merchant absolutely no choice and raise our rip 1% and take it from them. The credit card companies fought very hard to prevent merchants from charging a credit card surcharge because they do not want the end user to actually know what it costs them to swipe a card. Right now lawmakers are trying to put a stop to credit card reward programs and the Card companies and processors are fighting tooth and nail to put a stop to it. You may have even seen the television commercials about how the big bad government is trying to take away your FREE REWARDS OMG!!
Card users are stoked to get 1% cash back because the Card Companies do not want the transparency to let them know they are paying a 2+% premium to get it.
people think cash is free, it isn't - its super expensive to run the cash system. way more than what the CC charges are. its just lost in all the other shit we get taxed for.
Quoted from NeilMcRae:people think cash is free, it isn't - its super expensive to run the cash system. way more than what the CC charges are. its just lost in all the other shit we get taxed for.
I disagree. It costs about $100 billion dollars per year to run the cash system in the United States. In 2022 merchants paid approximately $126 billion in processing fees, a 20% increase over 2021. Consumers paid another $38 billion in interest on credit cards.
That disparity in cost will continue to grow.
Toronto, ON
Kind of burying the lede here - yes it's great that you created the dead game row and a place for techs to work. But the fact that you had to wait until Tim left to do it, essentially hide it from him to make it happen, speaks to the whole issue.
The entire design of the place is wrong - it's a giant square box with bare white walls and a concrete floor, with no side rooms or a 2nd floor. It's the strip mall arcade aesthetic blown up way beyond sustainability.
But hey, it's Tim place and his money to decide to do what he wants with it, while everyone works around him to actually get anything done. Coins still drop and Tim is still spending his valuable time collecting them. It just sucks knowing it could be better.
Quoted from jwilson:The entire design of the place is wrong
The "entire design" included (IIRC) storage containers out back, which would have functioned as both storage and maintenance workspace. When the airport vetoed those, it forced those spaces back inside, screwing things up.
Quoted from jwilson:But hey, it's Tim place and his money to decide to do what he wants with it
Yep, and without Tim it wouldn't exist, so give him credit where credit is due.
Quoted from JWJr:The "entire design" included (IIRC) storage containers out back, which would have functioned as both storage and maintenance workspace. When the airport vetoed those, it forced those spaces back inside, screwing things up.
Not too hard to imagine some practical solutions here. He could have immediately bought some rack shelving. Still can. Perhaps adjusted his floor plan sooner to account for inside storage, or even left/relocated some dead games in off-site storage.
today Skip, Mr.Bally and myself set up some new games. a World Poker Tour and Nascar. the Nascar i have to fix the CPU board, as it had the original AA batteries, which have leaked badly. But we worked on the *other* side of the building today, moving headless or clearly dead games out of the main rows, and into the "dead" area. There's still a ton of work to do, but it's looking better, at least to me.
Turns out *everyone* liked the changes that myself, MrBally and Skip did. Tim was overwhelmed by the volunteers' positive vibe on the idea, that he caved and let it stand, without any resistance. Even Charlotte seemed to like the idea. So that's good (because she yelled at me two days ago for attempting to do this work.) Sometimes you just have to do it, and hope that everyone sees it as a positive.
Today tim conducted a tour of school kids (arrived on a big yellow bus.) The kids were given the assignment to create their own pinball machine (on paper) with ideas from all the games.
Quoted from jwilson:The entire design of the place is wrong - it's a giant square box with bare white walls and a concrete floor, with no side rooms or a 2nd floor. It's the strip mall arcade aesthetic blown up way beyond sustainability.
It's all about square footage.. the building is as big as they could do on the lot. So you maximize how big of a building you can get and still be able to pay for it. And for no side rooms, etc... they had planned for storage to be outside... until that plan got blown up.
Quoted from cfh: Today tim conducted a tour of school kids (arrived on a big yellow bus.) The kids were given the assignment to create their own pinball machine (on paper) with ideas from all the games.
Appears Tim found himself a new PR man. Catering to children? A regular Willy Wonka he is. Did he provide fizzy lifting drinks so the kids could get a close up view those Big Ass fans of his?
Quoted from greenhornet:Appears Tim found himself a new PR man. Catering to children? A regular Willy Wonka he is. Did he provide fizzy lifting drinks so the kids could get a close up view those Big Ass fans of his?
Big Ass Fan Co., Lexington, Kentucky...
You know, this brings up something I've always wondered about....why can't a mezzanine be built, say in the far end of the floor plan? He would, in effect, double the floor space for that area. Will it be cheap? Nope. You have to re-route the sprinkler system, etc. But floor space is valuable and the interior height of the place is tremendously wasted. I've done this my own business condo units and believe me, using that wasted space is enormously efficient.
Quoted from CubeSnake:You know, this brings up something I've always wondered about....why can't a mezzanine be built, say in the far end of the floor plan? He would, in effect, double the floor space for that area. Will it be cheap? Nope. You have to re-route the sprinkler system, etc. But floor space is valuable and the interior height of the place is tremendously wasted. I've done this my own business condo units and believe me, using that wasted space is enormously efficient.
Do we forget already they blew all their money to build what they have? And borrowed to get there too? They took donations to help fund the gaps and overruns.
Whose paying for this big construction project, and all the downtime?
Don't you think they want to actually bring their debts down a bit before thinking they can just keep pilling on new dreams?
And I think the high ceilings are done to be MORE efficient with the HVAC... they didn't decide to waste all that money in extra material for the hell of it.
Quoted from CubeSnake:why can't a mezzanine be built, say in the far end of the floor plan?
Quoted from flynnibus:Do we forget already they blew all their money to build what they have? And borrowed to get there too?
Right, and is the primary issue really a lack of space, anyway? Or a lack of time/labor/money to get the entire existing collection working?
Quoted from CubeSnake:You know, this brings up something I've always wondered about....why can't a mezzanine be built, say in the far end of the floor plan? He would, in effect, double the floor space for that area. Will it be cheap? Nope. You have to re-route the sprinkler system, etc. But floor space is valuable and the interior height of the place is tremendously wasted. I've done this my own business condo units and believe me, using that wasted space is enormously efficient.
I know I wouldn't want t climb up any stairs to get machines, parts, supplies etc. Those rubber chickens are in 30# bundles. The plastic pellets for the Mold-A-Ramas are in 40# bags. All of it would have to get up there first.
Oh, why not a $200k freight elevator since it isn’t our money?
Quoted from MrBally:I know I wouldn't want t climb up any stairs to get machines, parts, supplies etc. Those rubber chickens are in 30# bundles. The plastic pellets for the Mold-A-Ramas are in 40# bags. All of it would have to get up there first.
Oh, why not a $200k freight elevator since it isn’t our money?
It was a constructive suggestion.
Quoted from MrBally:Oh, why not a $200k freight elevator since it isn’t our money?
I know you are being phosecious here but someone mentioned in an earlier thread a electric cargo lift that was like $13k installed, was kinda neat, but it would likely be insurance cost stopping mezzanines and this type of stuff you're right.
Quoted from flynnibus:ask cfh about his histories with mezzanines
Those stairs were so much fun to carry machines up. At least we had an electric drill motor powered elevator to lift supplies up for storage.
tim already has a mezzanine above the rest rooms, and it's pretty big. he stores tshirts and plush up there. it's a really cool view of the entire facility. but the only way up is via a metal permanent ladder. he uses kind of a fork lift type thing to get items up there. you can't see that though because it's in the alley behind the bathrooms. that's alley is where the pinball parts are stored, and tim's office.
frankly tim is not out of space. he's just poor with space management. also the storage of rubber chickens and the like is poorly done. when tim sees a deal, he buys in huge bulk. but that stuff should not be stored at the facility. instead it should be at the Big Hit Shed. originally it was going to be in outside storage in containers, but with the airport fiasco, that all fell apart. but even still, with a little work, he could have a lot more playable game space. just right now i keep stressing to him that he needs to be in maintenance mode, not acquisition mode. As MrBally said to me today, tim is a classic hoarder. i mean it's cool stuff, but he needs to say "no" to freebies. People donate machines all the time. But the Big Hit Shed is full of that stuff. And frankly the PHoF has way too much of that also. Free is not really free if you are getting machines that need work (and sometimes A LOT of work.)
A more rare donation case just happened... Someone from San Diego donated some modern Sterns. Now you would think that's a good thing, being home use only machines. But Tim had to drive a truck to SD, load the games, and drive back (all in one day.) and the owner left the games on 24*7... EVERY SINGLE LIGHT BULB was burned out on both the Nascar and the World Poker Tour (haven't check the Sopranos). And the owner never changed the AA batteries on the Nascar, and they leaked badly. Even though they are HUO games, they need significate work. And sterns aren't like Bally/Williams... on BW games you can change nearly every GI bulb from under the playfield using a nut driver, and do it quickly. you can't do that on a Stern as the bulb sockets are stapled to the bottom of the playfield... you have to take the top side of the playfield apart to get at nearly every GI bulb. This is time consuming... and while you have the game apart i'm sure you end up cleaning everything... so it turns into a total shop job, which takes hours and hours. there's no quick exit to this...
bottom line.... free is never free. and tim is short staffed, so now there's new sterns that were donated as "working" and in reality, they are not. but often EMs get donated. and some of those are complete disasters. tim just can't say "no", so they end up at the PHoF taking up room, and clearly will never be fixed. yet here they are, stored in $1000/sqft space on the Las Vegas strip... it's frustrating...
Quoted from flynnibus:ask cfh about his histories with mezzanines
ahhhh...yes...The Tilt Town mezzanines. Those were the good o'l days! Black lights, posters, glow in the dark carpet. All most as fun as the older 7-Mile *Detroit EM Club*/ ex drug store hangout.
IMG_0002 (resized).jpgIMG_0017 (resized).jpgIMG_0019 (resized).jpgIMG_0020 (resized).jpgQuoted from nsduprr:ahhhh...yes...The Tilt Town mezzanines. Those were the good o'l days! Black lights, posters, glow in the dark carpet. All most as fun as the older 7-Mile *Detroit EM Club*/ ex drug store hangout.
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Some great memories right there. Then, thanks to someone (who shall not be named), we had to move everything a block away in a short period of time.
There is no spoon....
Quoted from MrBally:Oh, why not a $200k freight elevator since it isn’t our money?
A 12' rise open wheelchair lift would be code compliant and do the trick for around $30k.
Quoted from MrBally:Some great memories right there. Then thanks to someone who shall not be named, we had to move everything a block away in a short period of time.
There is no spoon....
From the Tilt Town mezzanine live cam. Occasionally some of the older folk had too much pinball fun and had to take a nap.
OK enough of Tilt Town, back to the PHOF discussion...
778792_10200602329364457_1198246677_o (resized).jpgQuoted from The_Pump_House:A 12' rise open wheelchair lift would be code compliant and do the trick for around $30k.
I'm talking a commercial freight elevator, in a concrete shaft, which is required for freight lifting in a storage, non-customer accessible area. This is necessary in the zoning area where PHoF is located. It needs to fit an assembled pin as well as pallet jacks with at least 4000# capacity. The pallets of rubber chickens and plastic media for the Mold-A-Ramas weigh quite a bit.
Quoted from HoneyBadger:They are redemption prizes at the PHOF
So after you've spend $5.00 in quarters playing pinball, you are awarded a 50 cent rubber chicken? Awesome!
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