Quoted from CaptainNeo:send me pics in PM or post them here. It's off topic kinda, but keeps the zaccaria thread alive anyway.
Okay CaptainNeo asked for it, way off topic but here it is; my 1985 NSM Löwen Hot Fire Birds. The NSM Company from Germany made and still make, jukeboxes, vending machines and in the 80’s also a few pinballs (5 different ones I think). I believe 850 of these were made.
They have an all steel body with faux wood vinyl all around.
Most of the underside playfield components are Gottlieb but the boards, software and design were all their own.
I stumbled upon this particular one some 6 years ago, my first pinball machine, something I always dreamed of. It didn’t start up but I took it home anyway as decoration in my living room as happy as I could be.
Some lights worked but no sound no displays and no startup. It tried to fix it, checked the fuses, traced all the wires, tapped on the boards here and there but I had no clue whatsoever where to start.
I called around and send emails to various local pinball repair shops and people in ‘the scene’ and they all started laughing without exception and told me NSM machines are pieces of crap. One shop advised me to put it in the garden and plant flowers in it cause that’s all they were good for (I kid you not).
As it turned out later this machine had been travelling trough the pinball circuit for well over a decade, went from owner to owner and no one could fix it. That’s why I got it for exactly $100,-
It sat in my room for a year like that turning it on every evening and watch the few lights come on until a colleague of mine visited me and suggested to bring over his oscilloscope to just check some components, he soon recognized a RAM as such, (I didn’t have a clue) and a few minutes later he thought he found the problem in the shape of the RAM being dead/empty/broken. We checked the ram’s no. and found one online for $1,79 and replaced it, a manual in pdf was also found online.
The manual stated the need of a ‘service-box’ wich you connect to the machine to program it’s memory / settings, these ‘service-tastaturs’ are also used to program the companies vending machines so I found one on Ebay for $50,-, we hooked it up, followed the guidelines from the manual and after a few hiccups it started right up !
It sure needed some tweaking here and there, the battery had leaked but didn’t do any damage. I cleaned and waxed the playfield and installed about 100 new lamps and a set of rubbers and I played on it on a weekly basis for the last 5 years, it still looks great with little to no wear on the playfield, some old school German reliability there.
I still love the Sci-Fi ‘Owl’ theme, has great sounds, a drop kick, and a dual ball option on certain high scores, and still is challenging enough for me.
I received some emails from those people I first contacted over the years mocking me if I ever got lucky in getting the NSM working .... well, yes (my colleague) did !
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