Howdy-
Got & installed Indy Pinhead's lit Winkie mod. Nice little mod. I find this game to already be overload, way too busy, way too crowded, an over-the-top tour de force, so I'm not inclined to mod it, but this mod is so functionally important to knowing if the drop target is up, so I went for it.
I put in a slightly dimmer LED, then, after playing, I also angled the LED away a little to turn down the brightness a little more.
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A warning when replacing the drop target!
Short story: make sure your drop target switch registers solid closed when the target is down!
Long story:
After installing the mod, after playing several minutes, I got stuck in ball search, with a monkey ball up behind the single castle door.
I had blown fuse F703. Hmm, the upstream fuse before 3 downstream fuses, 1 of which controls the Drop Target Retract. Coincidence? Probably not!
I replaced the fuse. All coils worked fine in the test menu.
Played a few minutes, got stuck again.
This time fuse F710 had blown. This controls Drop Target Retract, Castle Doors VUK, Castle Double Doors, House Wall Drop.
Main suspect *definitely* Drop Target Retract!
I went into the switch test menus.
It turned out that the Winkie Guard Drop Target switch (#73), indicating drop target down would close only briefly during its drop & then return to an open switch condition. It was juuuust borderline aaalmost adjusted correctly. I'm not sure if I'd bent something a little bit or if the new target didn't push on the switch lever arm exactly as the stock target did, or if some other factor was present. So, I bent the switch control arm to get really solid & consistent behavior.
Apparently, while I'd been playing, the game had put the drop target down but didn't know the drop target was down, so it must have been really jamming on that poor little Drop Target Retract coil to really really really try to drop that target!
All better now. Played many games with no problems.
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On another note, in both the Indy & Mezel products, it's difficult to see the art relief in the clear target. I bet that a simple black vinyl CNC-cut sticker on the target face would show a really nice silhouette.
Or, maybe even a normal full rectangular art sticker printed on thinner paper--would that bleed light?
Or a full rectangular sticker printed with some clear portions on the art.
Another simple idea: a plain small rectangular sticker (or paint/vinyl/sheet metal?) "hat" on top of the target to block light bleeding through the top face when it is down. I really like the glow of the target face when the target is up, but I'd rather have the target light be hidden or muted when the target is down. I think it would be more eye-catching if it glowed when up but was muted when down.
Thanks,
-Jason