Bump on this... I'd love to figure out what chips they were using for the eddy sensors.

Barring any complications I should be able to 3d scan... and potentially 3d print... at no cost as I'm already a member at NOVA Labs. The old 3d scanner they have (a Matter and Form scanner) was cool but rarely left you with an object that was ready for 3d printing without significant cleanup. Hopefully the new structured light scanner will result in mostly ready to print objects.

I'm bringing my "Gift of Gab" toy from Dr Dude as the first trial subject and will let you know how it goes.

Question for you guys: what shaker motor is compatible with Alien? I Thought it might be from Cointaker, but I’m going on 11 days with no answer from them via multiple inquiries - so I have no idea.

Michael I have Coin takers in mine. Melissa usually responds within a couple of days.
Did you email or call her?

2 phonecalls leaving VM
2 “service tickets” through their website
2 emails directly to Melissa

Wow, you can’t do anything more than that.

I ordered Invisiglass from her a while ago, communicated with her two weeks ago, and she said she’d send it. I haven't seen it yet.

I wonder if at this point CT just doesn't want to deal with anything Alien.

Mine also has a Coin Taker shaker in it.

That’s my concern as well...

Are you sure you want to put a shaker in the game? As sensitive as these boards seem to be, I think putting a shaker in an Alien at this point is asking for trouble. But then again, if you enjoy trouble shooting broken machines, a shaker may give you hours of enjoyment!

The Cointaker red tremor is recommended; that's what I have in my game. Some of the final games shipped have a blue "Quaker" motor. Both are supported.

1.2 software adds an adjustment to select which shaker you have, and sets the power to recommended values. But there are other adjustments that you can use to fine tune it even further, for example if you still find it too strong.

You should have no trouble installing a shaker if you want one. Alas 1.2 shipped without as many shaker calls as I would have liked.

This is my plan exactly, until parts become available - don't awaken the sleeping giant.

I've got the Red Tremor in mine...works great. The boards seem quite stable, so far....would recommend changing the USB cables to "real" ones, however @kneissl's suggestion, btw).

While not a tremendous amount of use in 1.2, what is there is quite effective......

when did you get an alien? I thought you were out? Glad to hear you got one!

Link to USB cable swaps? thx

Had to google that, cool stuff. Seems like overkill for a gear, but still, pretty neat!

i seem to recall someone finding the right size replacement gear in an assorted gear purchase on ebay? I thought I read it in the main Alien thread sometime ago

You can go to Alien thread, post #22239 on how I ended up w one of the last, true LE's......amazing machine!!!

Here's a great link:

https://www.bestreviews.guide/mini-usb-cables?origin=google&google_params[matchtype]=b&google_params[network]=g&google_params[device]=c&google_params[creative]=248111844152&google_params[keyword]=mini%20usb%20cables%20%2Bbest&google_params[adposition]=1o1&google_params[adgroupid]=39699707279&google_params[campaignid]=769102232&bs=EiYEY0Ym81o_ooVXeeaajZh_3fcDYD6OT-0rDmZh07CHNuvD9YGmUP1D3bRsghijgKXV6G9nh1A=&google_params[feeditemid]=&google_params[targetid]=kwd-272627572282&google_params[loc_interest_ms]=&google_params[loc_physical_ms]=9010330&google_params[devicemodel]=&google_params[target]=&dest=0&sys_id=0|254&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7nYBRCwARIsAL7O7dFEMmJKG6Cs-cgttMhcBQVRyTtfPW3hn330eHu7aEvAd4Jq5alFvJkaAjlvEALw_wcB

My LE has a Red Tremor but my blue Standard has one from Pinball life (Spike)
https://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=3710

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7B724050-821B-4265-888A-6CA81BD334E4 (resized).jpeg

DEDFF199-D75A-4CA7-B904-E1DC7D47B09F (resized).jpeg

is there a link about USB issues?

It is pretty cool; the resolution is amazing! That being said... sometimes it's quicker/easier to replicate something by recreating directly in CAD software with some careful caliper measurements compared to 3d scanning. 3d scanning excels in recreating something that is free-form... which a lot of toys in pinball machines fall under.

Not that I'm aware of. I find taking care of the simplest things first tends to cure many problems, however. Interconnect infrastructure is always a place to start before blaming components. Many "board" problems tend to be traced to a poor connection. Simply providing an inexpensive "mod" option to take that piece out of the puzzle.

Probably customs. I've had international packages searched before. Usually they put a sticker on it that says it was inspected by customs...but...

You guys are making great progress - and quickly too!

There are many ways to backup/restore/clone a drive, but here's what we did to get 3 working PCs from the one good source.

We also ran into a small hiccup as the SSDs that came with the new PCs were ever so slightly smaller than the one we have as a working source. This really isn't an issue though, as less than 8GB of the SSD is actually used and we were working with 32GB mSATA SSDs.

1. Create file an image of the source using CloneZilla (If you have a working Alien, this is probably a perfect time to make a backup image!)

Nothing too special with this step, there's lots of ways you can do this. We opted for using an mSATA to USB adaptor and booting CloneZilla from a USB drive on another PC, just so we didn't have to work from the pinball machine.

The image file was saved to a drive on that PC.

2. Restore the image file to the new SSD. If the SSD is the same or larger than the image file you created, this would just be pretty straight forward. Essentially a reverse of step one, you select the image file and write it to the mSATA SSD.

In our case, as the new mSATA drives were ever so slightly smaller than the source image one, CloneZilla refused to restore it. So... I restored it to an external USB hard drive, and then used the linux command "dd" to copy the partitions to the new SSD, such as the following (mostly I'm documenting in case I need to do this again):

/dev/sdc = the USB hard drive with the image restored from CloneZilla
/dev/sde = the new empty mSATA SSD

Open Shell prompt from the CloneZilla boot environment

Partition the new SSD:
# sudo fdisk /dev/sde
n to create a new partition, Primary, 1, 2048 begin, 124927 end
a to make it bootable
n to create another new partition, Primary, 2, 124928 begin, 15999999 end
w to write and save changes
p if you want to look at the partition table, should be a 60M Type 83 Linux bootable (Grub? Bootloader), and a 7.6G Type 83 Linux (Linux OS / Alien game / data)

Copy the MBR (this probably would copy the partition table too):
# sudo dd in=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sde bs=512 count=1

Copy the the partitions from the USB hard drive to the mSATA SSD:
# sudo dd in=/dev/sdc1 of=/dev/sde1 bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress
# sudo dd in=/dev/sdc2 of=/dev/sde2 bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress

IMG_8936.jpg

The last bit looks very dangerous to me. The file system is very likely corrupted after doing that and you may loose data later. It would be simpler to either shrink the file system or just create a new one and copy the files using "rsync -a" to the new filesystem.

Did I mention that you guys are AMAZING?

It’s a data copy of the partitions. The file system was never mounted, and any corruption in it would have existed prior on the source. The partitions only occupy the first 8GB of the SSD anyway, nothing to shrink. What do you feel is dangerous about using dd?

Ah ok that makes sense then. I thought you just omitted the last bytes of the partition.

Hi, would you consider selling this as a product to other pinsiders? I have an Alien, but I’m not incredibly computer savvy. I would love to have a backup just in case.

Thanks Michael

I purchased one of these. Pin exactly as described, Tommy is a great guy to work with. And those 3 other ones looked nice as well. Alien has worked great in my pin palace, although my kids are a little creeped out.

I have a copy of the full iso, software if needed

Yesterday I received some info about obtaining an install image, and also Ballypinball sounds like he has an installer ISO too? If that pans out, I think we'll all be in good shape as far as SSD's dying. Let's explore those sources, and make images the 'official' way if possible.

I'm very curious about this - do you mind sharing some details? Like, how many did you order - how much? Do you think they may have more to sell? Is there a minimum order number? ...would you have spares to sell?

As many have mentioned, it appears the I/O boards may be the 'weak' link' to keeping these machines running long term, and I'd sure like to have a backup or two.

Were they just scanned in? Did that produce good enough quality?

I'd be curious to know how many IO boards have failed. I've had a pre-production machine and I currently have a production machine. I did have to get one IOBoard replaced on the pre-production machine. No problem with the production machine. In my limited experience HP IOBoards do not behave like fuses.

To a degree the Alien machine has been under the shadow of the inability to build machines in a timely manner and the acts of a desperate AH to achieve critical mass. This shadow has cast doubt on the parts and engineering of the machine.

I typically lift the playfield to show visitors to my shop how clean and solid the Alien build is.

TBH, the only feature which has had problems is the servo that moves the jaw. This bit of puppetry is cosmetic but very cool when working. I need to switch to a better servo (the $7 dollar one with metal gears recommended by Helmut, instead of the $5 dollar one) to get mine 'jawing' again. Left in the open position the Xeno still catches and swallows the ball and game play is not affected.

Otherwise the game continues to work and is one of my favorites.

This thread might be a good place (don't mean to hijack it) to tally how much IOBoard failure there really is. I'm curious. When reporting, please indicate if you were an early acquirer or someone who got a post-AH Alien production pin.

ddt

2 i/o boards down from post-AH production pin. They blew about the same time and each melted a flipper coil.

crap that sucks...what do you do now? Is helmut selling any?

I had one I/O board go bad w/in the first 10 games. Melted a flipper coil. My game was produced 10/2017 so I guess that makes it post AH, although the board did say Heighway Pinball on it if I remember correctly.

What you see from knockerlover 's posts above though is... it's not just the servo that is different. The brackets and block all changed as well.

The game does look clean in a lot of ways, but there are plenty of 'questionable' mechanical or electrical design choices too. The proof will be in their longevity or not. The jaw servo setup to me looks like an example of cheeze...