Well I showed my buddy who has done coloring for pin2dmd and these were his thoughts. It’s missing a lot of color. Only has a 4 color max palate which could be due to ram size.

If anyone has good knowledge about coloring pin2dmd, I would love to hear some things about it. Can the coloring be improved?

Re: the ‘local min wage’ part.
I’ve been lucky enough to color several titles for ColorDMD. Coloring isn’t something you should do for the money - I don’t track the hours because it’s literally ‘months of hours’ to complete a title. No exaggeration. For me, I enjoy the challenge of finding every DMD screen and figuring out ways to color the random/interactive ones.

I’m obviously biased - but I think if you compare screens/videos of ColorDMD to anything else - it’s worth the extra money to have a title that is complete and colored consistently/accurately. Again - my opinion.

I have to agree. My buddy spent a very long time coloring Metallica for pin2dmd to make it the way he wanted it. Even though he spent a ton of time on it, he sold it and is using color dmd. Since you have experience doing coloring, how many colors are available with color dmd?

This guy has the message. When ur coloring pages, for pinball, its not about the hours - i think its something that just gets easier and more effecient the more screens are completed. Its really like restoring an older game and getting it going, hard to do it for money.

Look at Melanko that did lw3? The backstory was pretty good and he is really good spirted about how it ended up, more importantly he continued working on it 2yrs later. And he continues to be a mentor in the art community that does this for donations after being outcast by colordmds founder.

Sure. I don’t want to downplay just how much fun this whole thing is and the work that it takes to perfect it. If we were all in this to make money for our labor, well, we’d all be making fools of ourselves. I guess I just kind of took issue with Bax1 “trying to save a few bucks” and then dragging the incompletion if the other product through the mud a little. Just seemed a little like “well if its that important than just buy the one that isn’t DIY and pay the person who has already done the work.

Not bent out of shape over any of this and definitely see the other side/perspective of this. All’s good and sorry for causin’ a stir.

I bought the pin2dmd and I love it. I mean I LOVE IT!

I do have a colordmd in my gnr. Lcd version set to dmd I think. Could I swap the 2? I like RnB better anyway.

It sounds like I am the one causing the stir and was not the intent. I wanted to find out the difference between the two. If I could save a couple hundred, sure I’m in for that. My only concern with pin2dmd is will it look right. I was also hoping someone that had the color dmd would post a good video like we have of the pin2dmd. The only video out there is just a teaser and doesn’t show what things look like in game play.

Was hoping to have an open discussion on it but I guess I came off wrong. My apologies to all that I offended.

There is technically no difference in what the two do, its mainly in how they do what they do.

Colordmd built in a licensing model that requires you to purchase a license to use the hardware and i think its tied to a specific title per dmd. I am not exactly clear on the finer details but basically, the model is designed to ensure that you cannot just use the screen on its own... or if u can, its neutered.

The model is a quality feature for the dmd in that the product is plug and play and all the fonts, animations, that are displayed have all been colorized, or frames in the animation sequences and scoring have been captured and re-painted so the colordmd can display it when its called in gameplay or attract-mode.

pin2dmd is effectively the same thing.

The difference is in the colorizing or painting of pixels is done by a team of artists that are kept on retainer and paid accordingly from colordmd. This helps get the games completed to 100% and also ensures progress doesn't get lost along the way. I am sure there are other things im missing but generally, there is a high level of quality that when you are going colordmd in that every pixel has been gone over and its 100% at release, and the release schedule is announced etc.

Pin2dmd is a community driven project where the painting is done by community artists that are donating their time and talent to paint in the exact same things colordmd is doing. The difference is in, without any payment going to the artists directly, pin2dmd has no timeline when a title is started, completed etc. Further, the quality of what is considered, "complete" is entirely subjective and up to the artist. The hardware also has a small usage agreement software key that is like $10. The boards are open source right down to the pcb spec and can be prototyped and produced by anyone.

You can have a pin2dmd that looks exactly like colordmd, or one that may even look better than colordmd, or one that is incomplete or WIP for 12 months.

Or, you can even take the liberty of painting the pixels yourself with pin2dmd if you are not satisfied with what's out there!

Just squaring up my new to me rnb winter refresh project.

Was having an issue with the left flipper never making it up the right ramp.. it would hit it but it was never making it up. Polished up the pf and ramps not much diff... refreshed the coils and cleaned up all the plungers and linkages, still not really great.

Right flipper was ok and could make the right ramp and was very similar to the left flipper, no slop no play, sleeves were good.

Looked at all the fuses, flipper board fuse clips were on their way out so i replaced those, nice and tight

Cleaned down and adjusted the cab switches as well

Flipper board leds are ok, seems to test ok.
Still no dice.. weak left flipper.

Decided to swap the left and right coils to see if its my flipper board thats acting up and where does the problem manifest.

And thats what seemed to fix the problem! For some reason after swapping coils left to right, both my coils are full power and hitting the right ramp works great now!@

Not sure if anyone has had weird flipper issues, but this worked and im gonna run with it.. i read just about every data east coil, weak flipper thread published to pinside so i figure contribute a fix post. Thumbs-up

Oh and no the power just didnt go to the left flipper, both are now much stronger than before... i have no idea what happened as the original install didnt have any issues, solder joints was good etc.

Did you have different power flipper coils in the game?

No, same factory flippers coils. This game couldnt make the ramps, at all. flipper bats were cracked, and jackpot diverter was misadjusted so that vuk is brand new. Right ramp is in NOS condition down to the entrance thats still perfect. Even the Nell motor is factory and still works fine. Original belt is still there but stretched.

Every coil in the game has the period correct Bear Claw paper wrapper and the coils have the banded wrappers.

Now both flippers are great. Factory ones at that and i have the rear legs jacked to the max and the fronts are slammed.

Its a weird one that i think just spent most of its time as a glorified night light in the corner of a location and didnt move... or get played.

Solder joints could have looked physically good, but could have needed a reflow which you may have inadvertently done with swapping them. With reflowing its best practice to remove all the old solder and reflow new. This also allows you to inspect the wiring going to the coils and cutting and stripping back new wiring if needed.

Nice job on fixing it and sharing.

Ok cool. I did not know that. I reflowed the header pins on both ends of the flipper board, but it was just heating up the pads with the tip of my iron and then adding fresh solder.

I did cut and strip a fresh end to attach to those coils, maybe that was it.

After playing tonight and making sure things were good after a few games, i went to the adjustments and turned down the coil strength to LOW and played a few more games after that to make sure i can still hit that ramp.

Fixed up the nell log. Looks like the factory issue motor needs a touch of preload for the gears to operate in the correct rotation, else i was having trouble with it moving backwards. The game i have was not played much so the gear wheel and track look new. My gear wheel backed out from the axle teeth a mm, so i pressed it back in, tightend the allen head screw between the gear wheel and the pulley, then filled the gap in with JB weld. Works perfectly now, the motor gets the log to the end of the track where it zips back to the start and then continues up to the buzz saw until the timer runs out.

My timer starts at 13 but pretty sure its an adjustment setting. Just nice to see the nell log get to the end consistently, and zip back to the starting point, which makes me believe there is some kind of clutch inside the motor, why the motor has brass gears and why the motor needs a bit of spring preload to kick it off in the right direction.

Finally broke 1 billion again. It’s been awhile.

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Notice much missing fro tje pin2dmd colorization?

Didn’t know Nell was supposed to zip back to the start. I may need to tear mine apart and take a look.

What does yours do?

This assembly on mine is really factory and seldomly used. First, the flippers were out of wack, and one drop target was broken somehow, so this feature was never triggered. The gear wheel backs out from the splined section of the axle due to the way it wants to lay lateral expansion when the radial spring is wound.

Mine supposedly game with a brand new rebuilt Nell section and I've never gotten mine to work. I've had "Scott's Arcade's" new motor on my list of impending upgrades needed on my R&B. Mine acts like it wants to go back but never actually does go back all the way and just kind of picks up where it left off from the last round.

Here is what mine does. It does back up but i think its acceptable for an old game and i dont fully understand the operation as i never saw what its supposed to do when new.

It resets and starts everytime which i think is probably close or how it was to work.

My nell set was busted up so I had to buy a new motor off of ebay. The "new" motor did not work the same as the original. So mine just goes up and back and stops whereever it stops. It doesn't start at the bottom adn move towards the saw, the way it was originally designed. I spent several hours getting it working so I will NEVER pull it apart again unless it breaks.

Concerning the pin2dmd
the only color issues I notice is that on occasion a frame or 2 turns green and red for everything vs. the new colors. Bullwinkle for example is brown with yellow antlers, on a scene or two for the start of spin to win he will go red /and green for a frame and then turn back to brown and yellow. ON back in time I see Shermans head is red and green instead of the colors you see in the rest of the game.

I still think this game is 10 times more fun to play now with the color animations. (as stupid as that sounds)

So my Nell just goes up slowly and down slowly. I don’t remember it ever springing back. I’m going to mess with it this afternoon

The way I understand it. The original didn't always start at the bottom and go forward. Sometimes it wend backward.

That would be very unusual unless it wasnt assembled correctly or it skipped teeth somehow as there is a barrel spring used to set a fixed position at one end of the assembly. I do see it go backwards sometimes but it will always reset to its starting position at the bottom.

The issue i had with my motor was that it wouldnt start consistently as sometimes it would not move or move backwards from the starting position at the end of the track.

I want to say there is a very simple clutch from how one gear has an rounded arcorn fitting into the gear beside it, but i cant confirm. Through testing i just noticed that nell would only consistently kick off going toward the saw if there was a very slight amount of preload in the spring, making the motor turn against it. If there ws no preload, the motor would start in a random direction based on how much preload there was from it being sent to its starting position from the barrell spring.

I am super curious about how or why its designed this way but it appears to be really durable, so i would think the issue many people have with it is in how its setup.

U should be able to lower the motor section from the nell log track and wind the motor so there is some spring preload (where the barrel spring goes thru the gear, looks about to be around the 10-11oclock position.) And then when u connect the motor back to the nell log, it would lock the motor in gear creating a starting preload for the motor.

I could be mistaken, but here is a fix that someone created to fix that same problem.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/that-trick-never-works-rocky-bullwinkle-club/page/15#post-5230632

So I think I figured out my issue with it not springing back. I think it’s not wound enough. How can I get it apart so I can tighten the spring? Mine is wound 9 times and manual shows 14

This looked expensive, and reworks the mech entirely with a diff electronic control

Ok so I think I figured how to get it apart but if anyone else knows how many wraps their spring is, would be greatly appreciated

I can tell you that mine worked pretty good, but I decided to upgrade to this mod and it works flawlessly every time

What did urs do improperly to make u upgrade? Got me curious now!

Wait, the spring is pre coiled. When u extend either ends into one holr on the frame and other hole in the gear, is when more coils are wound when the spring gets loaded

When watching it when activated, it seems the spring isn’t getting tight enough to kick it back

Wind the spring/gear wheel assembly a couple of turns before dropping the nell rack onto the gear wheel

Sounds good. I’m going to mess with it tomorrow

Mine would go to the top and spring back, as it should. All before the timer ended, so it would start up again. Timer would run out when it was only half way up the second time, causing the spring to not developed enough tension to send it all the way back.
If I wound the spring one more time, it would work better, but on the first run to the top, it would return hard and fast.
This new system is controlled perfectly, just at the right pace. Timer ends right when nell makes it to the top.
Bonus is, it comes with new motor and gears, so you can put everything back to stock

This is what mine does also. I didn't know any different. I hate tearing that assembly apart. It's a PITA getting it back together.

Separating the rack from the gear wheel is simple! Once the two are apart, just wind the gear wheel manually and lock it with the nell log rack in the starting position at the lowest along the slot.

Looking for a nice R&B playfield. There's one over on the PPS site but it looks like a couple holes were drilled in the wrong place and someone stopped so it's missing most of the remaining holes needed to mount posts etc.

If anyone knows where to pick up a decent one please let me know. Thanks all!

Happy holidays ladies.

Ah yah, funny enough i have also been restoring mine and found this paint in my kids stuff and yup, it really matches well, good to see it was discovered a while back! Lol

May have figured out why Nell isn’t springing back. It’s for sure is the spring not getting tight enough but when I tightened it up a little bit it would work then not work. So thinking it’s the gear being stripped on the inside and not gripping on the knurling of the shaft. So have some jb weld on it and see what will happen this afternoon.

Was also curious what roms you guys are running. I have 1.3 but see there are 3.2 roms. Anyone running that software?

I also have 1.3
I also had the work and no work,

Make sure the allen key scrrw is tight on the drive shaft and the gear wheel pushed up closest to the motor side, and make sure the gear wheel isnt slipping.

Then its only up to the gears internal to the motor to keep it going.

The only thing i dont understand is why does the motor change direction and why is it designed that way

Right on. I had the Allen screw in tight and gear pressed all the way over. It would zip back but then as the spring started to tighten, it would fling back. That made me think it’s stripped on the inside. I put the jb weld on yesterday so should be fully cured this afternoon. Hoping this works or I’ll get the new system. Does seem like a cool feature that I’d like to work.

Welll, got it together and she’s working like a charm. So far the jb weld helped fix the gear and now she’s functioning properly

Congrats, good work on the fix!! I found the jb weld is great for pins lol.

In other news i got a housing for the launcher from a buddy of mine. And my cab exterior is now complete and i restored the areas that were chewed by the idiot lockdown bar x2 install...

You had 2 lockdown bars?

Oh whoops, coin door lock bars...
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Nice. I know it’s just the lens but never seen a green launch button. Looks cool

Regarding save nell timing, yes there is no variable rpm, and yes there should be fixed starting point as the nell log can travel multiple passes when engaged. This is due to the nell timer being variable from the game settings.

"is independent of Adjustment 51: “Any Drop Saves Nell”. If that adjustment is set to Yes, then dropping any target will save Nell. If set to NO, then you must drop all five targets. Even when set to NO, you still must drop all 5 targets before the timer starts to get the Fast Save Nell bonus (Light Extra Ball or +25M).

Did you know:

Game Difficulty has no effect on "Fast Save Nell"; however, it does effect the timer for the standard Save Nell.
Moderate Difficulty gives you 15 seconds to Save Nell. Subtract 5 seconds for each harder level and add 5 seconds for each easier difficulty level.
When “Any Drop Saves Nell” is set to NO, you get an extra 10 seconds on the timer.
e.g., 25 seconds with Moderate Game Difficulty set."

Source: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fractured-pinball-rules-rocky-and-bullwinkle-re-re-re-visited#post-1037831

so I have my rules set to moderate and with the 15 seconds, she will go up one and a half times now. at the end she will go back to start now too.