I’ve been working on a new project that I’m very excited about. There’s been a movement to create an inexpensive, non-destructive and simple way to mod early Bally/Stern solid state games and add more features. In this video, I demonstrate an early prototype of the system used to modify a Bally Mata Hari pinball machine to include new features such as a skill shot, modes and even a wizard mode.
Want to learn more about this project? Visit: https://github.com/BallySternOS
As part of the ongoing restoration of a 1979 Stern “Trident” pinball machine, here’s a series of videos outlining how to replace the rectifier board on these games. This varies a bit between Stern and Bally due to wire color codes. References are here.
This is a short video demonstrating a pinball head back cover I made with a piece of 3/8″ plywood. Very easy to make, and what I like about it, is the wood actually makes the sounds of bells in the head sound a little warmer and less loud, which I think works well in home environments.
This is a fun series of videos of me trying something new. Let’s replace the old gas plasma displays in a Bally 35 solid state pinball machine with new low-voltage LED displays. This reduces the power consumption of the pinball machine and cuts out the high power portion of the power supply board for the display – a whole area we don’t have to worry about any more by switching over to LEDs. The price for this as a kit is quite reasonable (and cheaper than replacing them with used displays usually). But it takes some time and skill to populate your own circuit boards. I’m going to give it a try. Let’s see how it goes!
Here is a time lapse of me doing the lion’s share of the board work:
And here’s the finished product!
Recently I decided to replace the trunk eddy sensor on Theater of Magic with something more reliable than the original Bally/Williams proximity sensors. They are prone to “drifting” and will need regular adjustment. There’s a company that makes an auto-adjusting board that I wanted to try out, so here is my video showing the installation of that new board. This should make the game a little bit more reliable.