Recently joined the club. Game is in pretty good condition except some wear in couple inserts and cabinet decals need replacing. Loving it so far, what a joy to maintain vs older Williamses. Everything comes off so easily.

A question about bulb brightness. I have incandescent bulbs everywhere and they seem to be quite dim. I'm wondering if they're supposed to be like this or if my driver board needs some service. A bit hard to describe the brightness so I attached a pic with 44 and 555 bulbs showing. The spotlight brightness is normal but the 44 in the back is really dim compared. Could anyone share a similar comparison pic? A DSLR camera with same settings would help. This one I just grabbed with cell but can take another if someone can help to compare.

Reason I started doubting if this is a normal brightness at all it is that I had a weird glitch with 8A column lights suddenly getting really bright while rest stayed normal. Switched the machine off, inspected wiring and driver board w/o finding anything and retried with everything back normal again. Driver board does need a wash but it's not terribly dusty, so I wonder if ULN or TIPs could have had a one time lock (which sounds odd to me).

EDIT: There was some reason for driver board to get upset. I replaced all bulbs when I did a full PF tear down and clean up and used pinball center's bulbs, which seem to be really poor quality. One of then had double internals and game reported it as short, see the pic. Few just didn't work and one was lit really dim but still was getting extremely hot. You can see it in upper left corner of the attached pic, inside the apron. The dual head mutant bulb wasn't in the column the got really bright but the hottie bulb was, so wonder if the high current could have affected the circuitry without blowing a fuse.
IMG_20191230_202548 (resized).jpg
IMG_20191230_210018 (resized).jpg

Yeah, understand that it's intentionally quite dark but then again why are 555's bright and 44's dim?
As I did have that one hiccup of 8A column I replaced its TIP. The original had an odd small black blob on its gate pin, a bit like melted plastic. Transistor itself looked fine and didn't see anything wrong with it externally and it measured fine too. Switching the TIP didn't affect the brightness and haven't experienced any more of those hiccups either so, dunno.

I don't want LEDs on this thing in any place, not even to inserts as they're dimmed too and flicker like hell with LEDs. Well ok, I did place LEDs to those two hazardous GI spots where incandescent bulbs get blown to pieces by the ball every now and then.

About computers and monitors. My original PC and CRT were okayish but wanted to preserve the originals and went for Pinbox, 2.2 software and 24" LCD (Syncmaster 2493hm). Monitor was a perfect fit without any modding. Width is spot on with absolutely no play and then I just left it resting against the lower screws of original monitor assy. Will make some small clamping brackets for it tho for transporting.
Update to 2.2 was definitely worth it and really like the changes it comes with by default. My game came with 1.5 and kept that on the original PC. Usually I prefer everything as original but these changes make RFM even better.

Must say, the old Samsung LCD I threw in is much brighter than my CRT was and now the reflection is somewhat at the level of what it should be. This could be because the CRT needs recapping but mostly because I don't have the original PF glass, but a normal smoke tinted one. Anyhow the reflection is so good I have zero need to pay the money for a repro p2k glass. Tinting doesn't much affect the brightness on the lower PF either (tested to compare with a clear glass).

As for the PC I went for SSF Optiplex 980 (RFM running on i5 feels a bit strange idea). Bought Optiplex 970 as a spare of spare but also tested with old HP Elitebook 2530p with its dock that has a parallel port. That worked fine too as the external parallel port still showed up at address 0x378.

Installation was a breeze, thanks to this guy here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=159188.0

After installing with the pinbox installation guide, I just blindly followed his steps and everything worked, except for the screensaver disabling which I had to change. This is what I used:

sudo su
sudo sed -i -re 's/([a-z]{2}\.)?archive.ubuntu.com|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
apt-get purge lxdm
mv /etc/lxdm /etc/lxdm.orig
apt-get install lxdm
cp /root/pinbox/scripts/pinbox.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart
rm /etc/init.d/pinbox

reboot

### sudo apt-get autoremove --purgexscreensaver* <-- not working, use next instead
sudo apt-get remove xscreensaver

reboot

Made a 6 ball mod card based on Williams original design. The original board uses 1 channel of LM339 to pull down the +input for the rest so that the column signals are there already before the row is fully sinking. I don't have scope and have no idea how strict the matrix scanning timings are, so I'm not sure if it matters and might be that new BJTs/FETs can switch faster without the extra circuitry but wanted to play safe. I asked MyPinballs about it but unfortunately they got mad at me for not buying their board at that instant so I just made my own so didn't get any clarification if their board took it into account .

Anyway, thanks MyPinball for another update!

I played few quick games and 6 balls seemed to work great. I did have a glitch at start though. I updated to 2.22 and activated the 6 ball mode without playing a single game in between. When I started the first game I got 2 balls launched right from the beginning (it was Paris mode). I tried to force a new game (held start button) and it did the same. I then finished one game by letting balls drain and the next games after that started normally and I managed to attack mars on my second game and play few more modes after that without noticing any other 'too many balls glitches'.

Another note about the update: Payback seems to be still buggy in some cases. E.g. if there's Martian Attack ready when you hit the scoop and get the Payback, the ball wont eject from the scoop until Payback runs out of time.

I also noticed a new bug that I haven't seen before with earlier versions. Can't unfortunately recall after which mode this was, but I think it was after a regular or bonus wave mb. The up/down post stayed up until ball seek sequence dropped it back. It does not seem to be mechanically jamming so fairly sure it was a software bug.

Not a place to argue about it but please don't distort my words. I asked if you were willing to share the schema in a public forum thread because at that time I didn't know that it was for sale only. Then in a private chat I asked about the total price shipped and just told that atm with my several projects going on I can't buy it for budget reasons. You said "jeez" after that.
Then as you didn't answer me anymore after that (to the question about the matrix timings), I thought I probably shouldn't bother you anymore. Couple of days ago I decided to try the original Williams schema. If this community is not for discussion or diy or modding, then sorry, I won't disturb anyone anymore with this stuff.

And like I also said I had earlier already donated for the software.
To each of their own but I'm more for the free sharing in hobby community.

I asked about the current hw designs possible issues with the timings 2 months ago and didn't get an answer. I didn't reverse engineer his work, I just used what is already there in the manual. I really didn't think it's forbidden to build something myself, just like you build your own shaker. But I got the idea now. I just need to keep paying someone asking money from modified Williams source code and shut up. I'm sure he payed the original creators too.

I can't see myself as the aggressive one here or what nonsense I've spouted? It was just a question reflected from my own findings and I just said you didn't answer it. I didn't complain not getting support for it. I mentioned one glitch I found and you can say it's because my switch is different from your switch if you wish. I didn't argue about that either.
I just fail to see why it was such satan's work in here. Think about a sim racing brake pedal. Some shop sells a ready product but someone decides to build one of his own and release the plans for free. Or a 3d printer addon part that someone designs himself instead of buying a ready made part from the manufacturer.
But, third time, I'll never ever post anything I've made myself here again.

Everyone can read my posts on this page and decide if I've done something to deserve to be called "aggressive, cheeky, trolling leach" or if I have somehow arrogantly requested something from someone.
The original question about the schema is here:
https://www.pinballinfo.com/community/threads/rfm-updates.41048/page-8#post-378956

I just asked because like said I DID NOT KNOW whether it is to be shared or not and because there was instructions how to build every other hw thing before it so how stupid of me to even think that it would be shared.

If this is not enough I can share the private chat too to show how aggressive and cheeky leach I was there.

@mrmikeman, where here did I ask how to copy their design? Did anyone even read my first post about the thing? I just mentioned that I did it this way instead and that I'm not sure if it needs to be this complicated.

@PoMC, I'm happy to share the design but not sure it's wise seeing what a wave of downvotes and s**t throwing I managed to get just by posting a picture of the board or mentioning it.

@sven, For the love of god one last time: I have not asked him any help for my own design, ever! The private chat we had was about me asking the price of his product and in there I just asked if he had considered the matrix timings as possible issue as he deviated from original design. Never ever after that have I asked him anything or have I told that I asked. My schema has zero thing from his, it's all different and based on LM339 as the original opto board and works fine like said. Then I'm stupid enough to wonder out loud about the matrix scanning timings here and fall into this weird upside down world.

==================

Edit:
I cannot anymore edit / add this to the first post and don't want to make any new post about this this farce but after being accused for all sorts of things here for things I've not done, I feel quite obligated to at least try to set things straight. It's up to the reader to decide if I'm lying or if I've done something wrong here.

1. I asked if the hw mod is openly shared or if it's to be sold only (there was no info of that and previous mods were openly shared) and got the answer the it's not to be shared.
2. I asked the total price privately and got a quote of total 118€/140usd.
3. I told that I have to postpone_ this for now due to several other projects as I didn't expect it to be quite that expensive. I'm not exactly a poor person but I had >10 other projects going on that needed parts, adding up thousands and still some other more important around the corner so yeah, it was just postponing some of the purchases.
4. Seller sent a frustrated reply and didn't answer to my further messages. So no, I didn't continue asking him anything anymore, not that time, not later.
5. Two months later I found time to get back to this and just thought add the two inputs myself. I used the switch info from 2 year old posts and RFM operation manual schemas to build this module of my own. It is not reverse engineered from his board and uses whole different principle. The info is out there for anyone.
6. As I had supported the project by donating for the software I really didn't see anything wrong in this but apparently I'm not allowed to build stuff for my own machine myself.

I'm baffled how I got flamed down for this but I guess it just is how people act in internet nowadays.
I got some supporting messages here but even those managed to still blame me for some detail that didn't happen.
I got called being all sorts of things and all my posts got down voted for an unknown reason by people who just decided that I'm lying. Meanwhile this happened I somehow was the one blamed for being aggressive, trolling sob.

I actually did get two contacts outside this thread telling that they feel bad about what's happening here and that they've actually have had their own sad encounters with the person in question.
Too bad they decided not to go public but one of them told that it's just wiser because of this angry mob here.

Anyhow, I think this is it for me and this forum or any further support for this project.