Tag Archives: ToM

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.

Pinball Stories #5 – Theater of Magic – “Pinball Karma is real”

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We all have our stories of good deals, as well as the deals that get away. This story is a parable about people doing the right thing and why it’s so important and meaningful. Some people believe, “a deal is not a deal until money changes hands”, and other people believe “your word is your bond.” If you’ve been in the pinball community long enough, you’ve run into both types of sellers and buyers. I am a firm believer in choosing honor over profit, and I believe if you treat people well, it comes back around to you. This is one of those deals that landed in my lap that I like to think is the result of all the times I treated others fairly. And it’s a pretty cool story of a very ethical seller.

Upgrading eddy/proximity sensors on Bally/WMS games (Theater of Magic)

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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.

The Great Switch Matrix Wild Goose Chase!

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Here are six videos of an 8 part series of clips I shot this past week while working on restoring a Bally Theatre of Magic game.

What’s interesting about this series is you can really follow along with me as I fumble around trying to figure out what’s wrong. This is an all too common path many enthusiasts take which often leads them back to the beginning of the trail and emphasizes a number of common troubleshooting principals.

At this point, I have a working game except for two minor glitches with switches: An opto in the ball trough is not working, and it’s causing the game to kick balls into the shooter lane when powered up, and the EOS switches on the flippers are not being registered by the MPU. The solution to both of these issues was finally found and may or may not be what you expect. Watch the series to find out!