Stern
Pinball
Integrated
Kinetic
Engine

Sorry, love trying to figure these things out. lol

Anyone notice that the battery holder is mounted vertically on the PCB so it sticks out and away from the PCB when mounted? Coin batteries aren't a huge leak risk anyways, but that was brilliant.

Feel free to drop it off at my house for a while bud lol.

That's JJP's fault for there not being enough separation and too much being in the center channel IMO. DE Time Machine is in stereo and it felt obvious to me, but I'm sure that some audiophiles will chime in and say that at the distance to the backbox to ears it's not wide enough to be REALLY effective or something lol.

God, is it just me, or does anyone else really hate these animated gifs where it's got the text on the bottom like a silent movie, but THE LOOP DOESN'T ACTUALLY SHOW WHAT'S TYPED DOWN THERE? GOD! /throwingstuff

For real..was it that hard to do the extra 1 second where he's saying "Life uh,"!?

CAN'T, or wasn't convenient for you to do with your available tools that were designed to do through-hole soldering? There's a huge difference. People are going to have to play catch up and learn to work with SMT boards, and get the appropriate tools. It's inevitable. I know you're going to be of the opinion that ops and techs don't want to spend another 500 bucks on yet more tools just for one machine, but this is the present reality of technology. Through-hole has been on life support for YEARS.

SMT components are cheaper, more reliable, easier for manufacturers to use..it's not going away. I would place good bets on being able to find the appropriate SMT LED replacement in quantity for around 25 cents a pop. I found 100 5050 RGB @ 39.6 cents a piece from a hobby supplier. I would expect cheaper for non-rgb (doesn't seem like Stern made the full switch yet... /sigh) and for more bulk. The repair side in 5 years is going to be a non-issue once people actually develop the skills and start having the common parts on hand. Right now it's a mess because most of us DON'T have either, because we're stuck in La-la-land on old tech and haven't been forced to adapt.

The real question, like you pointed out, is "Does this system have a way around the serial LED issue?" I think a physical jumper pin would be awesome if they could implement that to allow the data to pass by the crapped led while making the system think that it's still functional, or have a way to disable it in software.

It's been tested in automotive control systems for 20+ years, to the best of my knowledge. How many times have you had to pull your car computer out and reflow joints? I tried to do it once, it was laughable and didn't work, it was just bad components. Point is, I'm pretty sure the computer in my dashboard of my Civic is exposed to way more vibration, electrical noise, and temperature shock than any pinball board ever will be.

You're right about trying to do SMT in the middle of an arcade. It's not very feasible, short of having a spare board then taking the other one to the "shop" and fixing it. Were the LED issues on WOZ the fault of the LED components, or the volatge source/controller? Wondering the same thing about your AC/DC experience, but I would bet Stern isn't going to tell you, are they? =\

Clearly, these things have some kinks to be worked out, but ultimately, it's really hard to see it NOT being more reliable in the long run.

I delivered pizza full time for close to 6 years... never had a single computer-related failure with that car....my current car is pulling up on 200k miles, no computer issues..

It's not just the time in spans, it's cumulative. SMT *is* more reliable not just in theory, but in actual practice, than through-hole. The issues we are seeing with pinball-related SMT stuff isn't due to the nature of SMT, the issue is with the control systems that are running these components, like the drivers for the LEDs. SMT has nothing to do with the serial bus interface issues either. These things need to be address with ops, like Modern, to figure out how to get this symphony to play nice together, not to sound like a fourth grade class. We're not there yet.

Fun fact, I am legally compelled to thumbs up ANY MST3k reference.