Continuing adventures in solar! Rambling thoughts while I'm working.

One of the issues I have run into was that the number of panels I have is larger than the the controller can handle (in theory) so when the conditions are just right I'll get into an "over current" condition on the display panel which will shut down charging till the power tapers off.

How to solve this?

Well a chance comment on Amazon twigged me to the concept of running TWO charge controllers with one battery bank. This is an excellent idea! You can have one bank of cells to catch the early morning sun and then have other bank to take over in the late afternoon.

Something to play with in the future.

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Pinball stuff!

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Hope everyone had a great weekend! Mine was a four day stretch!

Went to Vermont to see friends, stay over & be touristy. Home Sunday night where there were boxes waiting for me in the mailbox.

Slapped the PIN2DMD in Star Trek which I hope to color in the future, if not I'm going to just move to one of the DE pins which already has a color file available like Last Action Hero. dzorbas provided the PIN2DMD and I highly recommend purchasing one from him, awesome service.

Spent yesterday cutting trees till I burned out the electric chainsaw and then ran out of gas for the second. The electric one is much easier on my hands! Have to contact Ryobi today about a replacement motor. Only have 3 or 4 more trees to dispatch and I can move on from that particular chore that needed to get done..

The trees are ALL tall, 100 footers and in some dense patches so when you go to drop them they will get tangled up and you have to attach another strap and come-along and pull it over. It makes for a very long day and its humid again.

Gary
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https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gary-s-definitive-guide-to-installing-pin2dmd-evo-in-data-east

This is a guide I did for Data East, its very similar to Sega X-files.

I will be doing a guide for Trek as well.

Video for apron decals uploading now.

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Only in a minor way, I'll be doing some stencil work in the future.

It might, letters would be a bear.

When I can finish the house stuff 'm still slogging through I have to airbrush keylines on Flash Gordon which is basically the same thing.

So keeping a promise I made last year to Isochronic_Frost (but was unable to fulfill at the time due to back injury) this Saturday I loaded up two pins and headed to the Saratoga Silverball event. Meteor and Fireball Classic were the designated titles and performed well with more than a few people mentioning both were right on the mark. Aside from Meteor getting a quick preventive wipedown of the playfield and Fireball once or twice not kicking out a ball both machine were flawless.

Thanks to ForceFlow for attending and the other pinheads who brought some excellent games! I was able to get some quality time on Houdini, Demolition Man, Fish Tales, Deadly Weapon, Sorcerer and a few other titles.
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Going to be a busy week boys, some mischief on the horizon!

An offer has been made.

negotiations done, offer accepted.

going to be a long day tomorrow.

/drums fingers.

Time to go yet?

T-minus 22 hours

12 hours to go.

12.

Bad luck, you will know soon enough.

Deal isn't done till the truck is loaded. Or trailer in this case.

I did leave a clue.

Trust me, will be worth the wait.

On the road!

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See what did you bring home thread, still loading!

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Koi

Going to be several weeks, busy as heck

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12 pins, only one does not boot, 2 new swemmer black hole/haunted house sound boards, 1 wico pin lift, new black hole playfield window and rotating disc and other assorted goodies.

Today's haul;

*Black Hole- Auto grade repaint, nice playfields, new MPU and power supply board. Spare new playfield window and spinning disc.

Sorcerer- New plastic set, playfield protected by factory Mylar, nice backglass, other new parts, need to reassemble. (DONE)

*Grand Lizard- Playfield wear 2 small spots, missing lockbar, nice backglass. (DONE)

*No Fear- Cab fade.. (SELLING)

Roller Coaster Tycoon- Nothing wrong with it, present for my wife. (DONE)

*Rocky and Bullwinkle- Ball Launch button slightly funky, nothing else. Minty paint. (DONE)

*Kings of Steel- Nice playfield which is unusual, credit display has some burns.

*Vector- New MPU and SDB, recapped S&T, nice all around.

*Haunted House- Extremely nice cab and playfield, no broken plastics, new boards, need some work to sound board wiring.

Cyclone- Very Nice.

*High Speed- No boot, nice condition otherwise, suspect 5V regulator. (DONE)

*Jurassic Park Lost World- Pick up magnet inop, slight cab fad. (LISTED)

Two new Swemmer System 80 Sound and Speech boards with SC-01A chips (new)

And Wico pinball machine lift missing the hydraulic assembly.

Pins with the asterisk will be available more or less in the very near future so if interested drop me a line. I'm leaning towards "they work but could use a minor shop status" in regards to pricing. No Fear, Vector (which is nice and has new boards) and Black Hole already have interested parties. The ones without asterisks I plan on playing for a little bit, a few weeks at best before putting up for sale.

R&B is very, very nice and I'm aiming for a $3000 price, which is below the lowest price of pinside average $3050 - $3550 for example. Matter of fact everything here will be listed below $3000 with Kings of Steel below $2000 even though it has decent cab and backglass and the playfield is NOT blown out like all of them seem to be. I'm still thinking about that one as it doesn't get much love but examples that are not utterly blown out are scarce.

My friend Joe gave me a hand, he has a nice enclosed trailer. I was going to borrow it and he suggested since business was slow this week it was buddy road trip time.

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Pin tech show bitch geek hammer successfully applied.

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Ok so High Speed is booted up and running! I'll be diving into the MPU after work, looks like one switch column isn't working so will yank out the board and run the meter over the problem area. Aside from that, one segment is out on the display everything else works and the playfield is minty fresh.

Nice nice nice!

Another update of High Speed: Replace C30 cap on MPU along with a switch matrix driver, displays have been glued back to their pcbs and the credit display has been repaired. What a horrific mess! Like someone repaired it with a hot butter knife. All the red/yellow/green lamps on the playfield have been replaced with LEDs for a little pop, replaced the missing elastic behind the pops, fixed some GI lamps, replaced the smoked 9 pin GI connector at the power board (Trifurcon terminals of course) and now I'm poking at the flasher circuit.

All the flashers on the playfield are out aside from the two kidney flashers in the center, it looks to be nothing more though than really, really crappy sockets. Sockets have power and grounding the drivers at the MPU get you nothing. Really crappy design having them in series, have them working.

Now that the game is working, not bad. Pretty fun actually.
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High Speed is fully operational and Grand Lizard is on deck.

GL had some drop target issues which I fixed and everything seems to work aside from one switch which I'll investigate tomorrow.

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Grand Lizard is ready to ship, aside from a few flashers on the playfield I don't feel like chasing down it's good to go.

I'm think at listing at $100 below Pinside average of $2500, what say you? Most are blown out. Mint backglass, better than average playfield and everything functions aside from a few flashers.

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Rocky and bullwinkle, jurrasic park lost world are up! R&B for sale for 3k, same for Lost World.

Might be a keeper.

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Solar update!

The last three months have seen a downward trend compared to last year but still nothing to get excited about. Last month despite usage being down 19% compared to last year at this time cost was still north of $250! This month's bill comes in reflecting the solar-new refrigerator-furnace modification showed a whopping 59% decrease in electrical usage. So things are moving in the right direction.

I need to get the other 12 panels up and the addition solar controller so I can down the costs even further. Next month's might be a touch lower as there was some a/c and dehumidifier action going on in the garage and house.

59% decrease in electric equates to a $145 savings so the refrigerator will pay for itself inside 4-5 months if looking at it as the single cause. I expect the rate of return to improve frankly as it is only a matter of time before electric rates spike in the next few months.

"Furnace modification" is simply a timer circuit that cuts out hot water production when we are in bed or at work. Doubtful I'm going to need a shower at midnight so no sense wasting fuel oil and electricity. If hot water is required (more than stored in the furnace's jacket) it only takes four minutes to get to the set temp from a dead stop. This modification has no effect on the heater setting.

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So Sorcerer is up and running; I was considering selling "as is" with the playfield disassembled and after polling a few people did not like the numbers. So it made sense to invest 2 hours of my time to putting it back together. Replaced some bulbs while I was at it, glued one display that was starting to flop, cleaned the backglass, removed the grease off the drop target reset plunger (WHO DOES THAT) that was causing it to stick, removed the back plastic to replace the flashers and GI bulbs for the "eyes"

I like it, I like it a lot. Much more than Space Shuttle or Firepower.

Think it will set next to Blackout for awhile while deciding its long term fate along with High Speed.

Still going through pins though tomorrow looks like there will be a lot of tree work to get back too.

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Since it did nothing but rain all day A LOT of garage organizing went on. Not good trying to cut down trees in the rain.

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Grand Lizard is SOLD!

I swear stuff just finds me.

Yes its turbocharged. I did not even bring it home, it showed up on my doorstep.

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I am one of the original Turbo Dodge modders.

Good Morning friends!

Vector was listed and looks to be sold already, did not see that coming! Parts for High Speed (topper motor) will be here tonight, Lost World (magnet) tomorrow.

Finished a few minor issues on Vector and put Kings of Steel on deck, I kind of like it. Has factory mylar playfield so in much better shape than the vast majority.

Look at this hack that was hiding in the cabinet! Lol!

Already fixed.

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70 GTX

Lost World is all set and Kings of Steel is just about done.

Some wiring hacks that needed to be addressed but pretty fun game.

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