Madison, WI
Quoted from JStoltz:Observation: This thread may result in the sale and shipment of more cat litter robots than completed RAZA’s.
Well, both ideas involve expensive boxes full of shit...
(Topic ID: 203700)
Linked Games
Alice in Wonderland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2013-
Celts
Haggis, 2021
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Magic Girl
Zidware Pinball USA, 2017
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland
Zidware Pinball USA, 2012
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Arcade Edition)
Deeproot, 2020
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Xtra Edition)
Deeproot, 2020
Topic Gallery
I forgot to check in on this again, but it looks like a status update is set for Dec 2, 21 for the OG Zidware people going after JPop
https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/31790337/Mitchell_et_al_v_Popadiuk_et_al
I'm surprised he can even afford a lawyer. I know Robert was paying his legal fees for the longest time, but I thought they were in process of freezing his accounts? Guess that's why lawyers like retainers
Quoted from benheck:Well, both ideas involve expensive boxes full of shit...
So CACA instead of RAZA.
/Cat Automated Crap Assistant?
If ben were still doing the sponsored youtube show he would probably have created both a cat litter machine and auto food feeder from scratch by now.
"We can rebuild it.. better, smaller, portable.. using motors and micro controllers salvaged from other devices"
Quoted from TreyBo69:I forgot to check in on this again, but it looks like a status update is set for Dec 2, 21 for the OG Zidware people going after JPop
https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/31790337/Mitchell_et_al_v_Popadiuk_et_al
I'm surprised he can even afford a lawyer. I know Robert was paying his legal fees for the longest time, but I thought they were in process of freezing his accounts? Guess that's why lawyers like retainers
Robert's stupidity really shows with how much money he pumped into the worthless corpse of Jpop"s career.
No doubt John was paid his "Williams Style" 6 figure salary to noodle so I'm sure he has SOME money left.
Quoted from benheck:Robert's stupidity really shows with how much money he pumped into the worthless corpse of Jpop"s career.
No doubt John was paid his "Williams Style" 6 figure salary to noodle so I'm sure he has SOME money left.
My journalist friend who went through some docs figured Robert was paying him more like 72k
Still too much. And that’s not counting the tens of thousands in legal fees Robert picked up or whatever other employee benefits he got.
Quoted from TreyBo69:My journalist friend who went through some docs figured Robert was paying him more like 72k
that's probably because Robert had to pay for his airfare back and forth (pretty sure he didn't move to texas). I don't know how often he went down there but I would imagine at the very least once a month for 3 years.
Quoted from bane:This is toxoplasmosis in your retina. You may want to reconsider keeping a cat in your house.
[quoted image]
Subtle
Quoted from TreyBo69:My journalist friend who went through some docs figured Robert was paying him more like 72k
Still too much. And that’s not counting the tens of thousands in legal fees Robert picked up or whatever other employee benefits he got.
And 500k funneled through Zidware (per bankruptcy docs) for... some reason? (maybe those were the legal fees?)
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Subtle
The excyclotorsion is mildly subtle. A few cat owners here I see.
New big dump of pics from within deeproot from anonymous source, this time with commentary captions. I don't know what most of this stuff is or means, so technical people please explain what we're seeing and why it's dumb.
Make sure to scroll to the bottom and click the button that says to load more images. There are almost 20 in total
Reposted for posterity:
50k+ of used equipment later...
PnP machine nozzle is dripping water or clogged with tiny little sand particles.
RM - Let sue the company that sold us non-working equipment...
Left & Right hand side of these we available. Those pins made for nice probe points, just don't stick a screw driver on it. Good thing the boards have modular, replaceable mosfets.
Hmmm, water trap seems to be working...
Umm okay but you know, there is P-Rock....
RM - Ours will be so much better that it will run him out of buisness.
Sure Robert.... sure...
RM - Lets order 100's of display so we can get the bulk discount.
Me - How do we even know people will want it?
RM - I'll force it down their throats
Ok, by when?
RM - In two weeks. Drop everything and work on that instead...
Everyone else - We can't even finish one, why don't we focus on that instead.
Quoted from ForceFlow:Reposted for posterity:
Thanks for posting that.
Those captions....just wow.
Paris
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:New big dump of pics from within deeproot from anonymous source, this time with commentary captions. I don't know what most of this stuff is or means, so technical people please explain what we're seeing and why it's dumb.
https://imgur.com/a/8oNbj2a
Make sure to scroll to the bottom and click the button that says to load more images. There are almost 20 in total
Quoted from ForceFlow:Reposted for posterity:
Don't want folks to miss the video of the screen. I had never seen their ripoff mechagodzilla before.
Quoted from EternitytoM83:Is that a wireform returning to a center drain?
[quoted image]
Looks like a little bagatelle upper playfield with three exits - one to the inlane, one back to the plunger lane, one to the outhole. That would have felt good.
Laval, QC
Quoted from EternitytoM83:Is that a wireform returning to a center drain?
[quoted image]
This would actually be a cool mech if the triangular guide near the outhole was a diverter to send the ball back up the flippers. An automatic death save.
Quoted from clempo:No, it goes to the shooter lane.
ya looking at it again you are right. In the enlarged pic it looks like that may have been the outlane. But now looking at the ball guide is there not an outlane at all? The lane guide appears to go all the way to the shooter lane...
The one over the outlane looks like it has three switches for some sort of multiball staging. Maybe it was a magnet in the center that would whip the ball up into play?
The 180 rotating playfield is bonkers. Kudos for trying something new even if 95% of home owners would have hated it.
The module board designs are hilarious. Especially the coil with a board for a connector. Like what the hell? Just do pigtails. Or the micro switch with a small board…. Again why?
So I think Robert’s cryptic comment about the benefits of surface mount with the ease of thru hole meant that he was talking about modular boards that would slot in and out to replace single transistors. So a layman could “fix” it, by just changing a small proprietary board…
Or looking at the micro switch, was the intention if a surface mount device broke, the through hole to bypass and replace it was there but unpopulated?
Quoted from bane:This is toxoplasmosis in your retina. You may want to reconsider keeping a cat in your house.
[quoted image]
Dude toxoplasmosis has to be the coolest infection possible. An infection that makes you want to go out and do superman seat grabs on your dirtbike? Sign me up!
Quoted from EternitytoM83:Is that a wireform returning to a center drain?
[quoted image]
It's a ball lock and a fancy kickback. And it just looks weird.
Quoted from proco:It's a ball lock and a fancy kickback. And it just looks weird.
Have any other interesting stuff to share? 
Quoted from proco:It's a ball lock and a fancy kickback. And it just looks weird.
Honestly, that's pretty cool.
Quoted from proco:It's a ball lock and a fancy kickback. And it just looks weird.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
Connectors for every coil instead of soldering?
Genius!!!
Connectors have never proven to be an issue in solid state pinball, especially at high vibration areas such as coils. Definitely worth opening that can of worms to make it slightly easier to replace a coil once every 15 years.
Quoted from DudeRegular:Have any other interesting stuff to share?
No, I just took the image, figured out what the mech could be and put it on one of my layouts so you all can see what it would look like in action.
Looks like Robert was going to great lengths to not have to use a soldering iron to fix a game. Sounds good on paper, but there is no way at all you could produce all these new proprietary pieces in the USA and then boast that you will sell these machines for a fraction of what a Stern Pro sold for at the time.
Quoted from DudeRegular:ya looking at it again you are right. In the enlarged pic it looks like that may have been the outlane. But now looking at the ball guide is there not an outlane at all? The lane guide appears to go all the way to the shooter lane...
It's hard to tell since some parts are not drawn. Maybe there are two inlanes and the habitrail is the outlane. Or maybe the ball goes under the piece drawn underneath the outlane habitrail, or those two lines are just a mistake in the drawing.
I know he was reinventing the wheel, and making every single thing way to costly to manufacture. But I would have liked to play the final version of the game. It looks very interesting to me. But that ship has sailed and it will never come to pass.
Quoted from frolic:Those photos really make the case for me that Robert was buying his own bullshit.
Like we've said for years now... when the company was blowing through deadlines by YEARS and they didn't show any sign of corrective action.. that was the tell they had a top management problem.
These comments just get some examples... but the consequence of those examples has been obvious for years now. The guy had no place mucking with product development or operations and proved it over and over.
All that Molex - if the fraud hadn't killed them the parts shortages would have. Sheesh.
The FET driver board is baffling. They're got a PARALLEL header going to it (welcome to 1979!) which then goes through a 74HC245 octal transceiver.
This tells us whose system they ripped off (CGC) but problem is a 245 isn't a latch (a latch stores a bit state such as "lamp on") It's a transceiver, something you'd more likely see in a Neo Geo multi-cart system or a Playchoice 10. (such as "attach the 8 bit bus to *this* ROM, or this one...")
These boards would have to connect to a dedicated driver board with persistent logic (such as an octal flip-flop) meaning even more connectors. And more integrated circuits. VS Stern where they just drive a bunch of shift registers with 3 I/O lines 
As someone said above, these connectors were likely Robert's "mental midget" idea of "SMT and THROUGH HOLE POWER COMBINED!" but again... would have cost him a bleeding fortune.
Oh, I see. If a FET blows you'd just swap out the module of 8 (they're dual FETs) Sounds good on paper but he's spending dollars on connectors to save cents on through-hole FETs (the real cost is placement not the part)
I do spy what appears to be a current sensor so that's a smart addition. (also expensive)
Someone should tell the company that DR is suing over the “defective” pick and place machine about those images.
All this over design goes back to the point they picked pricing out of thin air, and even the revised pricing wasn’t close to what these things would have actually cost to build.
So much excess on things that they didn’t need.
They have overcurrent protection to save components. Yet they also put PCB connectors on the coils, so you still need to solder or buy one of their marked up coils with the board, that surprisingly they didn’t bother to put their own on. And the transistors require their board.
So much redundancy for something that isn’t a major issue and introduces numerous possible failure points.
I can’t think of a single Spike game I’ve had to replace a coil on as a tech.
Quoted from Jigs:He’s representing himself….[quoted image]
I'm sure it will be the most whimsical and magical courtroom defense ever!!!
Oh the whimsy! Will he show up to court in a handlebar mustache and a top hat? Perhaps a big cape? Will he use old-timey mouthpiece talk and perhaps wave a cane around as the jury falls under the spell of his 19th century huckster charm offensive?
Who knows what treats are in store in Jpop's Magical Whimsy Splendiphourus Courtroom Fantastical?!?! What literal and figurative rabbits will he pull out of his giant stovetop hat in his defense?
I for one cannot wait! I pray I can send money somewhere to make it happen as quickly as possible.
Quoted from benheck:All that Molex - if the fraud hadn't killed them the parts shortages would have. Sheesh.
The FET driver board is baffling. They're got a PARALLEL header going to it (welcome to 1979!) which then goes through a 74HC245 octal transceiver.
This tells us whose system they ripped off (CGC) but problem is a 245 isn't a latch (a latch stores a bit state such as "lamp on") It's a transceiver, something you'd more likely see in a Neo Geo multi-cart system or a Playchoice 10. (such as "attach the 8 bit bus to *this* ROM, or this one...")
These boards would have to connect to a dedicated driver board with persistent logic (such as an octal flip-flop) meaning even more connectors. And more integrated circuits. VS Stern where they just drive a bunch of shift registers with 3 I/O lines
As someone said above, these connectors were likely Robert's "mental midget" idea of "SMT and THROUGH HOLE POWER COMBINED!" but again... would have cost him a bleeding fortune.
Oh, I see. If a FET blows you'd just swap out the module of 8 (they're dual FETs) Sounds good on paper but he's spending dollars on connectors to save cents on through-hole FETs (the real cost is placement not the part)
I do spy what appears to be a current sensor so that's a smart addition. (also expensive)
Ok. So the simple math is these guys have/had no idea what they were doing.
Duh.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:I'm sure it will be the most whimsical and magical courtroom defense ever!!!
Oh the whimsy! Will he show up to court in a handlebar mustache and a top hat? Perhaps a big cape? Will he use old-timey mouthpiece talk and perhaps wave a cane around as the jury falls under the spell of his 19th century huckster charm offensive?
Who knows what treats are in store in Jpop's Magical Whimsy Splendiphourus Courtroom Fantastical?!?! What literal and figurative rabbits will he pull out of his giant stovetop hat in his defense?
I for one cannot wait! I pray I can send money somewhere to make it happen as quickly as possible.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Connectors for every coil instead of soldering?
Genius!!!
Connectors have never proven to be an issue in solid state pinball, especially at high vibration areas such as coils. Definitely worth opening that can of worms to make it slightly easier to replace a coil once every 15 years.
To be fair a simple molex connector for coils is pretty nice when you're rebuilding flippers, VUKs, etc. just so you don't have to leave the coil hanging from the wires. The PCB though definitely seems like over-kill.
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