#18, probably the First one in Germany?

full of anticipation I already built a topper for my TBL......it´s just the wrong pin underneath the pin.....

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Silence

Hey Burningman, good to hear from you. Can you shed some light on the apron issue???

oh, I thought you were working for DP?? Maybe you can tell Barry that removing the starry apron will not stand!!

"We also created an alternative for the soundtrack of the machine. Jules did his magic and there will be five songs in the game (instrumental versions)."

5 songs??? Am I getting something wrong?

Hopefully, but we´ve been at this point a number of times over the last 6-9 months. And - speaking for myself only - my enthusiasm died down quite substantially over that period and especially over the whole video-song-license crap . I still want that pin (mainly because I´ve paid for it ), but I´m far from convinced that it´ll be the great machine that I was expecting 6 months ago. And I´m not biting my nails anymore to get it as soon as possible like I did back then.
But before somebody asks: I´m not offering my place in line here.

would be interesting to hear whether they managed to finish those 3 machines that were scheduled for this week.....

They wish.....

When and where did he say that?

I heard from Barry that they are confident to build 5 TBLs/week from this week on.

I´m still waiting (#18) although I was told that it was in production the week before last.....

just got note that mine´s gonna ship on Mon/Tue.....

still no sign of any shipment

"Where´s the pin, Lebowski?"
"It´s gotta be down there somewhere, let me have another look."

they told me last Friday it would ship Monday/Tuesday. Since then I´ve heard nothing. I sure hope the game´s better than their communication......but we all know that, don´t we?

The eagle has landed!!!

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and it´s now sitting in my parking garage and I have to figure out a way to get this 160kg beast into my flat on the 4th floor....

I´ll probably remove the backbox because separated they fit into my elevator.

A first look inside:

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more to come.....

Hi Nilroc, thanks for asking, I´m doing fine. TBL has arrived on the 4th floor. After taking off the BB it was not such a big problem anymore.
Taking off the BB is much easier than we are used to. A few screws, a few connectors and off it goes. And once you´ve taken the backglass and the LED panel out the BB doesn´t weigh much anymore anyway.
Unfortunately I had to leave for the weekend after the transport, so putting it back together and starting the first game will have to wait til tonight.

I tried to document the steps that are not in the Quick Setup Guide Barry sends you when your pin is on its way:

To disconnect the backglass (be careful, it´s much heavier than you might expect) you have to remove the left part of this connector:
P1080311_(resized).JPGP1080312_(resized).JPG
Don´t worry about reconnecting it, it only fits one way.

To remove the Speaker Panel you have disconnect the 4 horseshoe from the lower left of the soundboard, the big blue VGA connector from the LED panel and the other half of the little yellow connector:
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Reconnecting is also easy. The speaker cables are marked "left" and "right", red goes on the "+" connector, black on the "-".

To remove the backbox from the cabinet you have to disconnect a few more cables:

1.) 3 white, 3 black and 1 black/purple cable from the power supply:
P1080295_(resized).JPG
Just to be safe I marked the white and black cables, but I assume they can go anywhere as long as white goes to "V+" and black goes to "V-".

2.) 4 subwoofer cables from the lower right of the sound board:
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I marked them, because I wasn´t sure if they can be interchanged.

3.) The black USB cable from the mainboard:
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4.) The blue ground strap from the backbox hinge screw:
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Now cut a few tie wraps and remove the nuts from the backbox hinge screws (be careful that the hinges don´t scratch the cabinet) and you can take the backbox off the cab.

Hope this helps.

Herbert

The power switch

Since Monday evening my TBL is reassembled and sitting in my living room and I keep walking over to play a few games although I should be doing other stuff.
There were a few minor things that escaped DP´s quality control (some loose screws, 2 legbolts missing) but apart from that the machine is very solidly built and just plain beautiful.

There were also two bigger issues I want to mention in case one of the achievers also runs into them:

1. The upper flipper was wrongly wired which caused it to be very weak so I almost couldn´t make the ramp on the upper playfield (if that happens to you Barry will send you a PDF how to fix it yourself or a new cable)

BTW, the machine is very service friendly, all coils and lamps and switches have connectors and can easily be removed for inspection or replaced.

2. The diverter on the left ramp gets stuck on the ramp so that you can´t get into the lock behind it. It took me a while to figure out what´s happening, but Barry reacted promptly and they already identified that problem as a general one and they´ll send me a post that keeps the ramp better in place so this can´t happen again.

Considering that we´re playing on v0.44 of the software the pin is already a lot of fun to play, but of course there´s a lot of stuff not yet implemented (e.g. extra balls). Ball times are rather long (e.g. compared to my Tommy ) and there´s always something interesting to shoot at (and miss, of course).
In the absence of a rule chart, though, I´m quite frequently confused what I´m supposed to do now. Maybe one or the other of you have figured that out already so I´m posting some of my questions here, because according to Barry the rule chart will be released with v1.0 of the software which may be some weeks or even months away:

- what´s the Nihilist mode about, what should I shoot at during that mode?
- how do I get Nihilist lit at the scoop in the first place?
- how do I get Mistery lit at the scoop? I get it many times, but I never know how I did it.....
- what do I do when the car is out? Shoot at it?
- what exactly am I supposed to do in the bowling alley and what´s the difference between the characters I choose before I´m going to the alley?

Maybe we should start a TBL rules thread??

Hi Tom,
can you explain what you mean by "stacking White Russians" and "collecting White Russians". All I figured out so far is that I get a bonus for hitting all 4 WR targets on the right side and a callout "White Russian for you, Dude". What else is there I need to know about them?

I also haven´t figured out much about the "car mode". I know I get it lit by twice hitting the two targets on the upper playfield. And then the car comes out when I shoot the ball into the hole on the upper playfield. But I´m totally lost on what to do then. Hit the car as often as possible? When does the car move back again? Is there a timer involved?

Maybe we should open a rules thread on TBL because this one here gets also cluttered with all kinds of other stuff?

My TBL is still waiting for a few parts from Barry incl. a new slingshot plastic. One broke already thanks to the too strong coils that were built into the first TBLs. When I removed the broken slingshot plastic I noticed that there weren´t any washers underneath them and the underside of the plastic was already pretty scratched by the rough edges of the posts it´s sitting on. Anyone else noticed that they forgot the washers?

Herbert

Hi ectobar,
thanks for the explanation. I figure I´ll have to play a bit more.
Have you also figured out the car mode?

And yes, I agree, the gameplay gets kind of boring after a while......

Herbert

I just had a very nice game on my TBL, completed all characters, almost all rug modes (damn!!!), nihilist showdown, two multi-balls and ended up with close to 15 mio. I was still far from collecting all balls (think I had one) and even further from all Mark-it-Zero´s. Getting five Mark-it-Zero´s seems almost impossible to me, but really good players may prove me wrong.
Getting many points is really hard work on this pin as there are not yet any opportunities to really score big. At least I haven´t detected them. So scoring big is almost exclusively down to keeping the ball in play as long as possible rather than building up big jackpots or else by applying sophisticated strategies. But maybe that´s the whole point to this game. Enjoy playing and watching the animations and don´t worry so much about how to reach that special super jackpot.

I´m looking forward to the next software versions. Very curious to see what they are coming up with.

HighScore 150916 (resized).jpg

I´ll go for chrome ones, think they´ll look great on that cab

1M jackpots are indeed huge compared to the normal scoring opportunities. How do I cancel the MB with the launch button?

Your problems with the bowling alley are a bummer. Mine works 99% of the time and with the new code it seems to register the hits better. I had one instance where I clearly missed the front pin and it still registered it. So it´s still not a 100% perfect.

With the car I had one instance where it got stuck half way out of the garage, but otherwise it seems to work. I still haven´t figured out when it actually should go back in..... Timer? # of hits? No clue.....

The leaf switches are the same problem in my TBL. The bend much too easily. One day I´ll replace them with standard Williams switches from one of the shops.

The other problem I still have to tackle is the STDMs from the Donny lane. I didn´t have them in the beginning but now they are more the rule than the exception. Since this also seems to be a known issue I´d really appreciate a guide from DP how to bend the laneguide so that these don´t happen anymore. They´re very frustrating.

Finally I´m looking forward to the new diverter and the replacements for my broken slingshot plastics.

Has anybody spoken to Pinbits if they´d be interested in making a plastics protector set?

Ups, now I´m confused. Are you talking about STDMs from the Maude lane, then?

What happens on mine is the following: I shoot a ball up the Donny lane (leftmost lane), it goes through the left gate above the MAU(de) lanes, hits the right gate above those lanes, rebounds back down the Donny lane and disappears between my flipper bats.
It only happens when it´s a pretty hard shot that rebounds fast.

Is that the same problem you have?

More news on my Donny STDM issue.

Barry wrote:
"If you shoot the Donny shot, the right ball gate (top right of the Maude lanes) should open fast enough to let the ball pass through from the Maude shot (the yellow arrow). It is possible that when the ball is going really hard, the gate doesn’t open fast enough, but under normal circumstances it should open fast enough."

With that information I took a closer look at my right gate and saw that the spring had come loose. Fixed that and now much less STDMs.

I also asked how the left gate is programmed right now. Here's his response:

"The left ball gate opens when you choose the “Rug Skill Shot” (when you launch the ball with the left flipper button pressed).
It also opens the left gate when you shoot the Maude shot (yellow arrow) in the Rug Mode “Goodnight Sweet Prince”."

Great score, burningman!!!

Neither have I. Hope to get to it next week, but I´d contact Barry anyway if I was you.

This week I got around to replace the old diverter with the modified one. The new one has exactly the same dimensions as the old one as you can see on these pics:

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I took the ramp out to install it, but as Tom wrote that´s not necessary. The new one fits like a glove, but it still a fine line between too high (the ball hits the diverter on its way into the lock) and too low (the diverter gets stuck under the ramp). I took the support bracket, which was the first attempt to fix the diverter issues, back out again and now it seems to work almost 100%. We´ll see if it stays that way.

It looks like your replacement is slightly wider than the original. When you look at my pics in the TBL Owner´s thread you´ll see that mine are exactly identical. Another owner there reported a similar problem as you. That´s probably the reason why it´s getting stuck. It´s just too wide for the slot in the ramp.
Since I have the (correct) replacement in my machine the diverter didn´t get stuck anymore, neither above nor underneath the ramp.
I´d sugest to contact DP to get a correctly sized diverter.

from the pictures it doesn't look like it´s bent differently, but only Ectobar can confirm that

These different diverter issues are really disconcerting. I was obviously lucky as my diverter replacement fit perfectly and it didn´t get stuck a single time since I installed it. I also removed the ramp with those 4 screws and getting the two top ones back on is not particularly easy. When I tightened them I made sure that the slot in the ramp left enough play for the diverter to move. No more issues with it since then.

One other fix I did today was for the upper right gate above the MAUDE lanes. The spring that opens that gate kept falling off for some reason I don´t really understand. According to Barry he never heard of anybody else with that problem. I secured that spring now with a nylon washer which is used on spinners usually. The Williams part number is 03-7796 and I had to drill the hole a bit wider because the gate wire is 1.4mm in diameter. This is what it looks like now:

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I hope this resolves my issues once and forever. The first few games the spring stayed on at least.

puuuh, that Koen´s left is really bad news, even for those of us who already have their TBL....

The re-design of the "big board" will mean, that the board better holds up forever in the first 50 TBLs as there will probably be no replacement. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?

The code is kind of complete except the "Dude Abides" mode which is the final and is not implemented yet. But there´s also a lot that could be done to make the game even more interesting because currently the points you can achieve are pretty much linear to your ball time. No really big shots that give you big points. Only one way to get an extra ball. But certainly more complete than some Stern games when they first come out.

The silence from DP is deafening......

May I show off my custom TBL topper?

It´s using two LED strips which can be individually controlled by an Arduino. The video just shows a few ideas what could be done with them. I haven´t yet decided what lightshow I want to put on. It would also be nice to tie the lightshow to the gameplay (like flashers, coils etc.) but I haven´t explored that either. Lack of documentation doesn´t make that particularly easy.
There are also two white flashers to illuminate the bowling pin.

Let me know if you like it or you think it´s a piece of crap.