Ibtl

PinballHelp, I saw you site a few days ago without realizing it was you who was posting to this thread. Very nice site, and the videos are great. That's one feature I wish pinwiki had.

Hopefully some of your issues with pinwiki licensing will be resolved, or at least addressed.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to put together your site - good stuff.

The important thing to remember is that Pinwiki is available and it's helping to get machines repaired & back in play.

But is anything ever truly "finished"?
I think posting and updating would benefit the Community more than waiting for everything to be finished and perfect. But Kudos to you and the others for what you are doing. Just my 2 cents.

Thats right ...... lets keep this topic on point and off the rocks - thanks

http://pinball.wikia.com/wiki/Pinball_Wiki

http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Pinwiki is quickly gaining valuable information. Not in Clays league yet but at this rate it eventually will be. I'm not sure what the deal is with the top link but it seems it's an alternative place to contribute to if you don't like pinwiki.Not much there at this point but there could be.

Obviously there are lots of resources online for people to get help. Clay has a bunch of his guides up. I don't think he intends to pull them from the net, he's just been going over everything to avoid any more claims about having unauthorized content.

As for my stuff, I never claimed to be in Clay's league or anyone else's. In fact if you visit my site, you'll see I clearly credit a number of other people and sites. I think this is basically the way it is everywhere. We are all grateful to every resource that's online. And PinWiki is another really nice resource. I especially like some of the way the information there is formatted. I hope it stays around.

I still consider my informational videos to be somewhat "amateur" - I never meant for them to be any type of professional advice, and I've said that since day one. My stuff is more of a, "Let's watch as this guy tries to fix his machine." What I really wanted to do more than anything else is give complete chronicles of all the trials of getting a machine working, so my videos often start right after I've unloaded a new game from my truck, and along the way as I figure out how things work.

With my work, usually by the time I finish a video, I'm like, "Wow, I could have done that much better..." and there's not a single video I've shot where I didn't want to erase it and start over, but I also realize that if I staged everything, I'd not get anything done and there'd be nothing up, so if even one person appreciates the stuff I've uploaded, I'm grateful. And in almost every video I usually talk about how I look at Clay's guide or PinWiki or ask questions online... that's the nature of how it's done. All these resources are great.

Which guides of Clay's are up. All I see are these few, not a bunch.

pinrepairguides_6-19-12.JPG

I haven't checked lately because I have them printed out from a long time ago... I didn't check to see what was up and what wasn't. But it doesn't hurt to drop some money to the cause at http://pinrepair.com/donate/ You never know what you might find.

I get the impression the more people dis him in public, the less motivated he is to put more guides up (but this is just my opinion, I do NOT speak for him and have no idea what his plans are), but I am grateful for what he's done and since he's always been a good guy to me. I believe his critics are a minority and we all want those guides back online for the rest of the community to enjoy. Showing a token by going to the donate page probably also helps.

Donations help out a great deal!! and Clay deserves every bit of it!! What you'll find is a username and password for his Awesome PinBallNinja Site which is filled with excellent info and Videos too.

Clay has put a lot of time and effort into this hobby with the best info around!! Period!!
Keep up the great work Clay!!

so how much is a nice donation to Clay? wouldnt mind donating but it seems as if you have to donate a certain amount to get access to the forums. Also does he have the guides up in the forums? Would gladly donate for that.

20 bucks or more...Keep in mind donations are a huge help and give as much as you can.
There are no guides there but Theres so much info there it's unreal over 650 repairs very well documented and lots of info on all the systems,Some with videos too...Trust me it's worth every cent!!!

I would gladly donate if he has something on gottlieb system 3's. cant get any help anywhere for those. have a sound problem on my teed off for a while now. might have to go check it out.

He does....There are plenty of repairs on gottileb system 3

+1 to the pinball ninja site. Well worth the $20.

Another +1 for Pinball Ninja. He's started to include more videos in his repairs, too.

always like his site

Pinball ninja def worth the donation

Is Pinwiki down?

Yea, bummer too. Needed some info on data east sound board repair.

It's back up - http://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Jim

Does anyone know if pinwiki is still accepting contributors?

I've got lots of pics I'd like to submit, and maybe even add some useful content as well.

I sent my request through the system on the site, but I never heard back. This was about a month ago.

Always looking for new / more contributors. Your user ID request may have been lost in the mix, but I don't want to speak for Casey. I will alert him of your post.

Jim

I went through the steps, and I think I'm still waiting for some kind of confirmation email. I can't recall exactly where I left off, but feel free to have Casey PM me here if need-be.

It's been 7 years since this thread was started. Pinwiki seems to still be alive and well.

Are there any other serious competitors for freely available repair information?

Some of Clay's Guides are back (or for the first time):

http://www.pinrepair.com/

EM Guide

Gottlieb System 1 guide

Gottlieb System 3 guide

Bally 6803 Guide

Game Plan Guide

Zaccaria Guide (new)

There's some scattered info usually written by individuals researching or experimenting with something specific, but for the most part, pinwiki is probably the largest repository of info.

While dormant, Clay’s repair blog details almost 900 repairs. It does (or did) require a $20 donation to gain access.

http://www.pinballninja.com

I learned a ton from reading those.

Pinball Ninja is so worth the money. Clay did an excellent job on some of the repairs and videos. I highly recommend reading the entire thing. His Facebook posts are ok, but they usually have very little detail to them compared to what he was doing on his blog.

How does one get access to contribute to PinWiki? I tried getting an account but couldn’t get it to work.

Accounts are manually approved periodically. If you just registered, it might take a week or more for the account to be approved.

I went to this link:
https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=PinWiki_Contributors_ReadMe

And clicked this link to register:
https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Creating_An_Account&action=edit&redlink=1

And get this message: “This page has not been created yet.”

So have not been able to figure out how to request an account to be created. Any tips?

Just click the link in the upper right corner that says "request account".

Thanks - was not visible on iOS Safari!

In the table of Bally SS games, the order listed is apparently chronological but a few of them are out of order.

Example: Kiss was released after Star Trek, not after Dolly Parton. At least according to the Bally parts catalog linked on the site, and Mr. Pinball, and it also tracks with my memory of it. By features it seems logical too because Kiss has many of the same sounds as the previous Lost World, 6M$M, Playboy, Voltan, Supersonic, and Star Trek. Then the three games after Kiss have a different set of common sounds (Paragon, Harlem, Dolly).

Easy enough to fix. All set: https://www.pinwiki.com//wiki/index.php?title=Bally/Stern#Bally

Here's the early Bally games ordered by production date: https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?mfgid=47&sortby=date&searchtype=advanced