Got a cap from a beer or water bottle? They will work with a zip tie.

Haha, yeah Water hottle for sure… just prefee the cleaner look of a oem mod, lol.

Do you think that shortening the rod by sanding will provide the same effect?

No, I think the issue is the stroke is too long, if you sand it down you’ll make it longer and probably cause issues with the coil sleeve. You can also try gluing a 1/4” thick small wood block taped or maybe hot glued to the back of the plunger to see if that works.

you got me confused now....
so you are making the stroke shorter by adding something to the back of the plunger, would not sanding the tip of the plunger make it short as well?
sorry I am not questioning your fix, I am trying to make sense of it in my head, lol.

I didn’t see anything else about this and was curious if anyone did anything about the click in the relay?

I shot a quick video yesterday, sorry, I know this is not the best quality but it will give you a good idea what the colourization looks like.
Please note, that any glitches/artifacts shown in the video shown as I move the camera or as it vibrates while on the game, are generated by the actual camera shutter and the nature of digital video. There are no glitches nor errors in this colourization. This is truly the best pin2dmd animated game I have seen.

The colours are also much vivid than what is shown in the video.

Again, this is a quick cell phone video shot with an old iPhone 7. Yes, it is an old phone but I hate spending $ on phones. lol

Anyway!! here:

Looks great
Is the install easy?
Any modifications required?

Thanks

No not really, there are no modifications needed other than perhaps removing the spacer washers that hold the plasma dmd in place.
The plasma dmd is thinner so it needs washers to get it up close to the player and the translucent cover of the frame. Depending on your game and the thickness of the translucent protector at the front you might not need to remove the washers.

I also include an adapter board that connects into J116. The board is not my design, I print them and do all the soldering. The board allows you to connect the wire harness on it and get power for the screen without hacking or making any mods.
Super clean install and if you ever want to go back to the original DMD just remove it and bob's your uncle. Done.
No permanent mods of any kind.

A few posts above I posted pictures of what the board looks like, there is not really a good way to photograph the installation but if anybody needs help I am happy to assist.

The only difficult part really was removing the old plasma, and thinking that I would remember the order of things after taking everything off...
I did not take enough photos so I had to some trial and erro lol. These games have the video board attached to the dmd and the bracket is a bit of a contraption with a few screws and posts of different sizes. Just take lots of photos and you are good or if you have another whitestar stern use it as reference, I do not.
Take photos of everything because let's say I did not make a mental note of the orientation of the ribbon cables (for example) not saying that I did butttttt.....lol so I had to try a few times until I got it right.. so do not do what I did, take pics! make a mental note of the ribbon cables (just 2 cables) lol

What’s the difference between a Color DMD and Pin2dmd? I feel my Colordmd looks a lot better than the Pin2dmd. Maybe it just the setting.

Color dmd has 2 versions. Led and Lcd. Most people buying color dmd buy lcd.
Colour DMD is more expensive.
Pin2dmd is open source.
Pin2dmd is just LED thet mimic the same dots on the plasma.
Colour dmd can be configured with dots too.

I prefer some games with lcd and some with led, for the most part, games 15+ old I just prefer with LED.

It is just personal taste?
Modern Sterns with animated LED starting, 2011 and forward are probably just better with color dmd lcd. For most other games i cluding most bally/williams, pin2dmd is great.
Not all games have been colorized for pin2dmd whereas colour dmd has probably the most games done.

Maybe I am missing some points, but thet covers some.

Thank you for the info. I like the dots on my POTC. I suppose Pin2dmd would have made a good choice for that and save some money.

A big price difference here in Oz. $350 pin2dmd compared to Colordmd delivered close to $1k. On the Simpsons I would prefer a colordmd LCD but I will do with a Pin2DMD due to costs and ease of supply.

Hey! I have had my machine for a year. And absolutely love it. In the middle of a game I noticed that the upper right flipper has stopped working. I performed the coil test and it wasn’t firing. I then noticed the attached picture which is the coil for the garage. Not the flipper. The wire was initially resting on it but the solder had broken off.

When it was completely removed I noticed the right flipper for the upper play field now stopped working too. I’m assuming all of these are related?

And I’m assuming that because this solder broke off in the middle of the game initially the upper right flipper stopped working? and then the upper right playfield stopped working? I’ve never soldered anything before. But if that one wire is responsible for both flippers stopping then I’ll have to try to solder it back on.

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Do not practice soldering in your game. It really isnt hard to learn how to solder, just dont learn on the game.
Get some wire scraps and old electronics, and solder desolder.
Get a good iron. A good iron is $60-$100.

Watch some videos on read the soldering tutorial here on pinside.

It is very satisfying to fix your game, and more so when it is done well.

That being said, that repair/solder job would not be very demanding. While I do agree with Fandango to some extent, soldering a wire to a lug does not require much finesse and I have done it many a time with a portable 10 dollar butane solder iron

However, getting a good soldering iron for future repairs and learning to solder is a good start to embracing this hobby. You will be thankful if you follow fanD advice as it opens up a whole new part of this hobby, one that many of us love as much as playing the machines. Maybe a friend with skills can get you started

In reply to BB 14, yes one wire that’s disconnected can disrupt multiple solenoids. I have not had a chance to go through the schematic for that but I would start by resoldering the wire on the appropriate leg. Sometimes as well the fuses can blow so if that does not fix the problem check the associated fuses. The manual for the game which shows what fuses control what area is on the website IPDB.org

As a sidenote, I really got started in the hobby when I bought a pinball machine from another state for my game room and I had it shipped. During shipping a diode broke and I had no idea what it was. I started reading the rec games pinball site and studied the old guides on Pinball. Pretty soon I was buying routed machines that I knew required work and now I enjoy that part the hobby maybe even more. As others have said, now with the proper equipment which is a high-end soldering station and desolder station, I can repair pretty much everything which makes things less costly in the end and quite frankly more fun. It is a process to get adept at soldering on the circuit boards so I do strongly agree with practice and training on boards that don’t matter before you work on some of those that do

Thanks for the advice. I agreed with you, I did not want to try my first solder on the machine but my options were very limited. I believe I successfully soldered the wire back to the lug. And I replaced both fuses for both of the flippers. The upper right playfield right flipper now seems to be working fine. But the regular upper right flipper fired and then stayed in that position and then the fuse blew. So I’m not quite back to square one but still not sure what’s going on.

Just found these. I think I must not have soldered it correctly

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You have a short somewhere

I may not be able to get you through this completely as it is late and I have an anniversary tomorrow

I took some pics of mine. Even though your wires come from different side of fuse I don’t think that is problem

I would check for other wires that may be touching each other or metal

Look at diode on coil shown on pic of right upper flipper solenoid and see if blown.

May want to post as a separate thread and guys like Lloyd who have been walking people through this can further guide you to look at transistors as well

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Oops the diode pic is from upper left playfield solenoid

In the club. Again never to be back out

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Just want to give a shout out to Pin_Fandango for all his help with a Pin2DMD. The price was fair, the shipping was quick, and he’s been super responsive and helpful with all my questions.

Really great guy who goes above and beyond. Thanks again!!!

Thank you! That is very kind.
it was a fluke really how I have stumbled into making these but the desire of learning for myself and adding them to the dmd games I have owned was my main motivator.

It turns out helping other owners is something I have been enjoying very much as well and I try to go above and beyond to make sure you are happy.

If anybody here is interested please just send me a msg.

Thank you!

I’ve had 7 machines with Pin Stadiums on them and I just wanted to say they look beautiful on TSPP.

Lamp matrix test. https://imgur.com/a/XRWnCZf

The start and buy in buttons flash as expected despite being disconnected? The Command Decision light stays constant lit. Based on the previous molex photo, it looks like that board got wired into the GI at some point.

I think the Color DMD is a better product (have one in my Ghostbusters) however I will note that I put a Pin2DMD in my Simpsons, Addams Family and Jurassic Park for about the same cost that I spent on the ColorDMD for my Ghostbusters alone (which I believe was about $400-$425 USD).

Aside from hardware differences (Pin2DMD is an open source project) the big difference is that the Pin2DMD relies on people to make the color files. This means once you build your DMD you need to either make your own software or buy a colorization someone else did. For Simpsons there is a GREAT file and I believe the man that made it only charged like $20 or $25 for his work in the form of a license fee. Very reasonable for the number of hours it probably took him.

I enjoyed doing the Pin2DMD project that I did, but unless you plan to do 4-5 games all at the same time (or have friends' games to put them in) the time / labor / effort probably doesn't pay off for just one single DMD.

Yup that sums it up well.
That said GB just have been colorized for pin2dmd by the same person that did IJ, AF and others. Great author!
NetzZwerg is the man! And his work is awesome.
(He did not make simpsons just to clarify)

5 family members to qualify.
You also need to complete the rest if the game before youbget there.

Would someone please be kind enough to post some pics of their connectors J2 & J3 on the Power Driver board? See pic

I have a loose pink wire which I think has come off a connector which goes to the J3 AUX IN PORT
Thanks!

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Hi there

These are the pictures for J2 and J3.

Hope it helps
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Just installed led ocd board. I had the part for many months but was afraid to start the project since i had to move the pinsound board.

30 minutes later, everything installed and works perfectly.

Its night and day difference.

Perfect, thanks

Rules sheet I crafted based off of Bowen’s written rule sheet. Hope it helps!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pf9hwkgrsiu959v/TSPP%20Rules%20v3.1.pdf?dl=0

Thanks for sharing!! Much appreciated

Plugging my recent Simpsons game where I got over a BILLION (warning: possible game spoilers!)

Such a fun game

Shut up everybody! We got a player here!

pretty awesome. I enjoyed the game for the few months I had it, it was fun learning the rules but found it too clunky for my taste and sold it. I really enjoyed the level of work and attention to detail the code had and the dmd animations were absolutely perfect.

So. Thinking about trading a game and joining the club. Inspected the game tonight and here's issues I've gathered and too me they all seem simple with my experience but just wanna throw them out there.

1. Ball search on start up and probably in-between games. Assuming cold solder/bad opto/ just needs to be resoldered yes?

2. Right sling shot switches don't work but coil does. Wire color is white/blue. Found a detached wire of matching color elsewhere under the playfeild, assuming resolder the wire to where it goes and that circuit should complete, fixing the slingshot. Yes?

3. Flippers need to be rebuilt. Have some still in package for stern spike 2, I believe they use the same parts as whitestar yes?

4. Found detached wires under playfeild, figured look at manual and reattach.

Besides that, needs different LEDs installed in certain spots and a clean and wax and it'll be in great shape.

Any regular issues with this game I need to be aware of.

Check the ramp inside the garage. Very commonly broken and nearly irreplaceable. Cliffy has a fix tho.

When a game has that many random issues you have to assume an owner took zero care of it and let everything break. Did you look at the batteries? Chances are this owner hasn't changed them. Did you remove the batteries and look for signs of damage? If you buy the game put in a $20 NVRAM and never change batteries again. In this game no soldering is required for NVRAM - simple swap out.

If you buy the game - price it as a project. If you found all those issues I suspect you have more and will be buying parts and spending time repairing. If priced right you have a nice opportunity to buy a mostly working game and fix it up.

Also, this isn’t the easiest game to do a flipper rebuild.

nor the cheapest, especially these days.

I want to say I spent 200$ on rebuild kits.

Anyone change their garage door coil to a stronger one? What coil did you use?

Stern issued a service bulletin. Check their website.

Just joined the club a few weeks ago and wanted to upgrade the incandescents to LED. I know how badly these flicker, so I got a Comet kit with bulbs and an LED OCD board. I spent the afternoon putting the color matched insert LEDs in and was just watching the machine and seeing how great the LEDs look. I brushed up against the flipper button and suddenly I hear Homer say, "Oooh! Look at all the pretty lights!" I gotta say I love this game already...

Just ordered the same and have the LEDs arriving just in time for my next wax job. I love this game.

Stern, make an insider connected kit for this and LOTOR. (Lol)

Congrats! TSPP is my grail pin, I was so happy when I got it so I know the feeling! The LED bulbs and OCD board make a huge difference. You should also think about grabbing a ColorDMD and donut shooter rod https://mikes3dthings.com/product/donut-shooter-rod/

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So pulled the trigger on that trade and now I'm officially part of the club.

Fixed all the issues I stated previously first night I got it home, all supper easy fixes.

Game was 90 percent LED'd with bulbs from pinbulbz? Some cool ones like color changing bulbs but their bulbs seem dim, so started swapping out the color changing with on hand comets.

Rebuilt the upper playfeild flippers, pretty simple and super strong now. Rebuilt the other flippers aswell, my bottom right one seems like it's still a little weaker than the left one so I'll adjust that the best I can

Thinking on swapping my led ocd board from my LAH to the TSPP until I wanna order another cause I hear it makes it great. Got a color dmd lcd and pinsound in my demo man that I thought about swapping over but I think for the time being I'll keep those in the demo man and just wait to order those.

Still got to go and reset and adjust settings, I believe the code is v3, I think there is a v5? Much of a difference there?