Since you have some inside info from JJP, can you tell us if they will ever address the Dialed In patch issues on the early machines and why they decided to upgrade the processor and increase the memory mid production, effectively screwing all the early buyers of Dialed In? It's awesome that a good number of Dialed In owners are stuck on 1.57 and haven't been able to apply patches 1.60, 1.61 and 1.71 because our hardware cannot support it. Anyone buying a NIB JJP machine should be aware that they have done this and could do it again in the future. Terrible business practice if you ask me.

I don't want ti hijack this thread, but to answer your question, you can get a used one on ebay for < $100 and hope it works and wasn't abused. A new one is > $100. Not to mention the fact that most pinball owners don't have any idea how to swap out a processor (I do, fortunately).

But the price is really not the point. I and other DI owners have already paid (like, A LOT) for a machine that would work with their very own code. But they don't work with the latest 3 patches (without major issues) and it's all due to their unwillingness to code the damn game to the hardware specs THEY selected. Instead, they chose to upgrade the hardware knowing full well that they were shitting on the customers that bought into this game when there wasn't a lot of support for it from the community. In return for those of us believing in this game earlier than most, they screwed us over.

Now back to the crappy playfields...

MB: MSI H81M-P33
CPU: LGA 1150 socket, people are using 4th gen Pentium processors as replacements

Sorry, I may have misunderstood your question. All Dialed In games are shipping with that motherboard. They only changed the CPU from a Celeron to a Pentium and added an additional 4GB of memory mid production. I don't believe the MB ever changed. Early owners with Celeron chips are replacing them with 4th gen pentium chips i3-4xxx, i5-4xxx or i7-4xxx. I hope that clears it up. If not, there's a ton of info on this on the Dialed In owners thread.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dialed-in-owners-and-fans-club

I'm actually surprised to hear you say they've already done the exact same thing on The Hobbit. What complete assholes. So this is CLEARLY part of their business model, test with early production machines and change out parts mid production. Wow, I will never be an early buyer of a JJP game again. Shocking.