Category Archives: Bally/WMS

Bally Theater of Magic: Fixing a broken trunk and bulletproofing

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I’m finally getting around to fixing my Bally Theater of Magic pinball. In this case, as is typical, the trunk stopped working. The trunk is not working at all, so let’s find out what’s wrong and I’ll also go into replacing the trunk opto board with a new and improved, German-made board. Will this fix all the problems? Watch and see….

Part 2: Work continues on the Bally Theater of Magic pinball – in this case, we’ve figured out why the trucnk wasn’t working even after installing a brand new, improved, aftermarket trunk board. The motor driver controller was shot! Now, while we’re bulletproofing the game, this is a good time to install the special Cliffy Protectors around the trunk to make sure there’s no damage to the plafield. In this video I go over how to lift the trunk out to be able to do this, among other things.

We finally got everything working on the Theater of Magic pinball – here’s a summary of everything that’s been done, along with an odd problem I had with an aftermarket proximity sensor.

How to add a switched power outlet to your pinball machine

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These days modding games is all the rage: adding fancy toppers, custom lighting, subwoofers and powered speakers and more. But many pinball machines don’t have a facility for you to plug in extra stuff in your game. Many games do have a “service outlet” inside the game, but this is what’s called “un-switched” meaning it’s on all the time – mainly so technicians can use a soldering iron on the game with the power off. In this video I go over the process to tap into the switched power lines of the game to add your own extra outlet(s) that come on when you turn the game on.

Pinball Feature: Custom Side Art Blades

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This is a neat way to add extra art and visual appeal to your pinball machine using what are called side art blades. This is an area where many third party artists & entrepreneurs are finding clever and creative ways to mod pinball machines to increase their value and appeal. I talk about this and show you some examples.

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Pinball Stories #8: I have to move that from where?

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If you’ve been doing this for awhile, you’ll eventually run into your first set of “killer stairs” and vow you never want to go through that again. Also, the next time you ask a friend to help you pick up a game, they’ll suddenly have something much more important to do, like get their back waxed.

WPC game doesn’t boot up? Let’s diagnose this Gilligan’s Island.

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You turn on your game and… “BLECH!” that’s what you get? That’s not good. Let’s try to figure out what exactly is happening:

Armed with more information, later on I have some time to pull the driver board and diagnose things further:

Replacing a DMD on Williams Slugfest Pitch and Bat game

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I’ve had this game sitting around for awhile and finally got around to looking at it. I shot a few videos awhile back and forgot to publish them, so here’s a useful short video on how to access the DMD in Slugfest. It’s nowhere near as easy as you’d expect as it is in a regular pinball machine.

Pinball Stories #7: Amazing top 5 pinball pickup!

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This is one of those pinball pickups that we all dream about. It took me awhile but I finally had one of those experiences. A top-5 grail game, in HUO condition? Way below market value? Sign me up!!

This is also one of those games I’ve toyed with selling on and off because it’s so beautiful and desirable, but so far, we’ve kept it.

Here are some pictures of the game showing its condition: