“Ya got trouble, folks…yes, right here in Dallastown City."
"Trouble with a capital "T", And that rhymes with "P", and that stands for pinball!”
(If a person does not understand the relationship to this quote, not just the words, it's the 'Music Man', and has a lot in common)

Most of the old folks around the world will probably blacklist him, and the pass the information onto others, beyond aspects of the takedowns and all the removal of copyrighted material. This always seems to happen unfortunately, every 10-15 years when you get pinball revival periods and more homeshops open the shutter half doors for new business.

I am not sure I would personally would put very much credence in his website advertisement either.
This includes use of internet acquired stock photos of pinball machines he is selling.
Nor, do I trust lawyers "types" in general.
No indication he is bar licensed for law practice.

He supposedly has been operating for 28 years, not considering any breaks for additional education or other jobs.
But there are a lot of problems with this website "proclamation".

Based on the owner photograph (BTW, the other photos are OLD) and simple research data, that means he was running fairly early in his life.
He had to have established Wild Card Amusements when he was 23.
Five years after graduating high school, to be exact, but we will get to that, including his skill resume.
According to the numbers, he should be around 51 years old (18 years old in 1984), and this is definitely the same person.

How did I come up with this number?

Let's do a complete rundown on Mr. Metzner's education and experience:

Dallastown Area High School 1981 – 1984
High School, Academic
(he graduated in normal years, so he is not some type of prodigy)

York College of Pennsylvania 2003 – 2005
Bachelor's Degree, Political Science and Government
(typical period of attendance)

University of Baltimore 2005 – 2007
Master's Degree, Law and Ethics
(typical period of attendance)

Concord Law School - Kaplan University 2011 – 2014
Law
(Not sure what this is here. It is not a qualified school to train law in most states, as I conducted another quick crosscheck.)

So he ran this business while going to secondary education, multiple levels of graduate education completely unrelated to coin operation, vending, amusement, engineering, electrical work, or electronics, and while separating working in other jobs since 1989?

Isn't the internet great!
Does this make sense to anyone?

Never seen his business since collecting/restoring games starting in 1988.
Born in New York, raised in PA not that far away personally from the area even on the days before the internet and word of mouth was the means. "Everybody knew everybody."

However, the only exception I could think of is if his father/family owned the business, or with a different name, or a number of dealer/parts/brokers in the area did business for the past 30+ years such as Todd, Steve, and a few others such as M&P and the PA Gameroom Warehouse. There are not that many left. Most of the original distributors only are long gone or gobbled up by Betson.

To me personally, it does not matter, as I am not a lawyer or detective, but I know when pinball smells funky.
And this smells funky, at best.

If his goal was get full visibility into the niche world of pinball collecting and people that are knowledgeable, he received his request.
If the card game was bull$#!@, he would win instead...as a real estate agent with a law and ethics background.

Another case of an enthusiast "mom and pop" pinball "shutter shop" hanging a shingle for the world to see.

I see NOTHING related to pinball repair skills on this resume, not particularly encouraging, since again the person has supposedly been in the coin operated industry for 28 YEARS. He certainly would not need to buy Randy Fromm materials years later instead of a month ago, as he would had already had them as lot of the materials was first compiled in the early 90s.

Eric Mentzer.jpg

Looks like Mr. Mentzer has taken down the some information faster than a man using a roll of toilet paper after getting the trots due to a bad bowl of chili. However, too late against being blackmarked and whatever further legal action is conducted.

It just takes a short time, remember the rest of the world does not work like YouTube copyright strikes. Paperwork must be generated for future court action, if required. Part of the preparation. Plus, the weekend is almost upon us, so the timing is not optimal. Some people don't take action until forced, regardless of circumstance.

The date and year was accurate based a cross check and validation against other records.
It is easier to find information on anyone, if you know how properly to do it, and people don't need a special website either.
What is harder is how to get the information removed, once you put it into a system of records, even if not voluntary and required such as military, DNA, FBI, or other federal databases in the United States.
Outside the United States especially in third world countries, it's a bit trickier.

I was not digging any further, I will let time do the rest by copyright owners.

Are people in these forums fully aware that Mr. Fromm has been teaching fundamentals for electronics and arcade repair since the early 1980s (ie nearly the beginning of the solid state era)? We are talking close to four decades.

The source material by technicians was personally developed through his school and his own experiences in the industry and has been used for decades (including the "Big Blue Book") across the entire world, not just by part time hobbyists. That would be an understatement. I am also a graduate of Randy Fromm's School of Electronics.

Alternately, much of Clay's original guides were formulated for consolidation through at least 15 major contributing collectors and restorers which started in mid 1990s. Written direct publication did not occur until the very early 2000s with the expansion explosion of the internet. Bandwidth problems with downloads even in the early 2000s used to be an issue back in those days, and it cost money, much more than today. People literally printed out every single page on these guides, page by page. Leeching was still just as common as torrents today. Most people probably don't remember using a dial up modem to try and get to a newsgroup to get any sort of pinball repair assistance in the 1990s, and that was "new" back at that point. Otherwise your only option was operator friends, Randy Fromm, a few other sources, or the "School of Hard Knocks".

Some of contributors are deceased, including one recent notable provider, Steve Charland. People probably did not know of the developments/advice he provided in fixing the grounding issues, pop bumper driver boards, edge connectors, and other common problems of the SS80 systems. Vid1900 guides here on PinSide such as playfield repair and basic electronics, echo from the same sets of notes the both these sets of guides already provided.

What bothers me in this thread is that there seems to be lack of appreciation at times of what has been provided for technical support by too many new people that are not aware of the past. They simply don't know who carved out the age long before PinSide was a twinkling good idea and where this information originated, in some cases by the original technicians themselves, who were figuring it out as they went because there were no "guides" to follow, whether EM or SS.

If it was not for the major contributors, many which could be listed by name, and most do not post or want to be recognized, some of the pinball systems such as GTB SS80, GTB System 1, and BLY 6803 would have caused the games to all go into dumpster bins and landfills. Even Bally MPU-17 and MPU-35 games were on the verge of destruction due to acid corrosion on the CPU boards with no solution, if the CPUs were beyond repair even if running new tracework wires all across the backsides of the boards. These guides and research also includes electrical circuit theory of such systems as WPC and the MPU-35, squawk and talk, vocalizer, and reverb cards to name a few specific areas.

Where do people think next generation boards such as Rottendog, Alltek, Pascal, or Ni-Wumph were developed based on the understanding of the past technology?

Think about these points.

History has more value than people realize.
The number of experienced restorers is small including reputable long standing dealers, electronics third party manufacturers smaller, and they do not all "share their secrets", but know where they came from at the beginning.
It is not a mystery to them.

It is part of the way a person learns, sometimes through others, not just the internet.
If a person wants to learn, buy the materials and properly contribute to the correct sources.

Relax Clay, I was there, unless you stating whether I was sitting over your shoulder while you typed.

I am not your enemy.
Understand the difference.
I did not post your guides as my own, ever.
I did not take credit for your work, ever.
I am a pinball historian, collector, and restorer, just as you are.
Nearly, but not quite, for as much time as you have been.

I never discounted your work, and supported your efforts.

I will correct the wording so there is no confusion, and admit my wording error based on the age of the system ( MPU AS-2518-17 and Bally AS-2518-35) and the type of damage in my haste of typing.

Let's get a bit more technical...

I should have stated, "The corrosion essentially comes from a chemical reaction between the corrosive components inside the battery and the copper PC board traces. The specific rechargeable NiCad battery corrosion on MPU damages copper traces on the MPU and must be fully removed in order to conduct repairs proper in allow proper servicing for correct solder work which otherwise prevents adhesion of the new solder, not to mention continued expansion of the corrosion to further traces, ICs, and the rest of the board. Failure to fully remove this surrounding corrosion results in grayish dry granular solder hardening which does not provide proper electrical contact and poor quality repairs, ultimately making the board nearly impossible for formal repair."

This did not come out of the repair guide, but out of my head.

Is that better for everyone?
I should not have used "quick pinball jargon", that was my mistake.
They were not alkaline, nor "acid".
I don't think we need an entire formal dissertation on actual neutralization and cleanup of corrosion on this thread.

Some of the older collector folks just took time to come around, I remember the resistance when the idea was introduced.
This includes fandangling on the included photographs, which is parts of references and contributors, not just the writing, which seemed to be overlooked but in some cases just as important.

I not sure why you take things so personally based on contributions often.

You already mentioned Joe Blackwell, which I considered him a direct contributor to your DE work.
If you do not, that is your prerogative, as I don't crosscheck every footnote, and I don't know who does that sort of thing, and I have an extreme attention to detail myself.
If you want to state that everything was generated or written by you, I am not going to argue.
I am not here to circumvent or argue your biographies or footnotes, or personally attack you.

I supported your work, personally, multiple times for nearly 20 years in this case.
It was a good thing overall for the community, which I shared based on the lack of information that occurred in the early 90s.

If you can successfully get the documents copyrighted, why not publish them formally (meaning in a $#@!ing book) instead of dinking around with this situation that been the case for decades?

At this point since, they were pulled, quite a few years ago I might add, it would make better sense that they way people went around you, copied your entire website and posted in on overseas forums like http://techniek.flipperwinkel.nl.

You might even get a few new contributions for systems not included like AGC and Ted Zale "zipper flipper" systems I specialize on, based differences or uniqueness in designs. It would be a good time for a major update "upgrade". Others might add their repair directories which were left out like Zaccaria with David Gersic, base on a change of opinion. Of course, I cannot speak for others, just myself.