Category Archives: Pinball Features

Building a custom micro-controller for early Bally/Stern solid state pinball machines

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This is an introduction to an up-and-coming technology that a small group of pinball and electronics enthusiasts are developing. A custom microcontroller that interfaces with Bally-35 MPUs and allows you to write customized rulesets, even completely re-theming games. This is the first part of a journey that I hope to take everybody on.

NOTE: This is a video I recorded several months ago that I forgot to make public, so I’m much further along.. But thought it might be interesting to show this early look at the development of this technology. Now there are etched boards that can be acquired.

What’s involved in programming a pinball machine?

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After restoring a vintage 1979 Bally Paragon Pinball, I go on a quest to see what’s involved in re-programming a game like this and doing my own, custom ruleset. You may be surprised at how many things you have to take into account and keep track of. Let me show you some early progress trying to hack a pinball and re-design a new operating system and set of code.

This video goes over some general, philosophical considerations in pinball design. In future videos I will dive in deeper into the specific technology and coding.

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Bulbs Vs LEDs Which is Best? YOU decide!

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I talk a lot about LEDs and their pros/cons (mostly pros in my book) but obviously this is a heated discussion among enthusiasts. I decided to try an experiment and do different configurations of stock incandescent bulbs, along with a warm white and cool white LEDs and even a mixture. Can you tell the difference? What do you think looks best?

Before I show you a video of the process, here are random pictures of the backglass of Paragon with different lighting configurations. If you don’t want to know which is which, don’t scroll down too far…

Ok, below is the same experiment done on video.. and if you scroll down farther, you will see the lighting configurations revealed… NOTE that the order of the light configuration in the video is not in the same sequence as the A, B, C pictures. I mixed them up for the pictures so people could try and guess first without knowing.

What do YOU think? You can also leave comments on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/Rjl4fi7t8I4