Bought Another Project

Well...I just got back from 10 hour round trip to Michigan. I found a great deal on a great new toy. I can't reveal what it is yet, but oh is it going to be great. On Saturday I'll post what it is and throw up some nice photos of it :-D

I haven't done much on Attila recently. But I need to. The boards will be back in a couple days, they were shipped out today. I have the stencils already. It's just been too cold for me to go outside and finish sanding and prepping for paint. There's no way I can be painting when the temperatures are in the teens :(

Hopefully I can find a nice torpedo heater to throw in the garage for a few days to get it to a higher temp so that I can get the paint done. As soon as it's painted, I can throw it together and play it for the first time!!

Today's Pickup...Karate Champ

Well...I kept getting calls from a guy in Buffalo who was trying to get rid of a Karate Champ machine. He said he was selling it on Craigslist for $1,100. After telling him he's smoking crack, he said make an offer. I drove out there to take a look and this thing was pretty beat up and sitting outside. I told him I wouldn't pay more than $30 for it...He said ok it's yours.

I took it home, plugged it in, and whaddaya know...it works 100%.

Cosmetically, the cabinet needs an extensive amount of work. The side art needs to be replaced, there's a lot of wood to be fixed, and it could use a repaint. The Bezel, Marquee, and CPO are all in almost perfect shape and the monitor has little to no burn in. The only issue with playability is the joysticks. They work, but the knobs were replaced with blocks of wood hahaha.

Anyway, this one will be kept in the shed for now, it's not worth it to restore it at the moment, I have other projects to attend to. Who knows, I might just resell this one.

Quick Update...

I haven't posted in almost 2 weeks so I figured I'll just give a little update as to where things stand. Right now, I have the entire Attila cabinet sanded down to bare wood. I've got to patch it up with some Bondo and attach the new pieces I had to cut. (Pictures will be posted tomorrow). I've been taking my time on it because I'm waiting for some things to come in the mail before I can do anything else on it. The stencils are on their way from Florida right now so it'll still be a few days before I get them. The boards should hopefully be on their way back from Texas within the next couple days as well.

Still don't know which company I want to go with to get a new translite/backglass printed. I guess I'll sit on that for now until I get closer to completion. Anyway, pics will be up tomorrow, just wanted to post since its been a little bit. Oh and on a side note, I'm still looking for a new camera to get some videos up...

Attila the Hun Update 08

I printed out full scale prints of my vectorized sides today at work just to see how they look and make sure all my shapes came out looking good with no artifacts or anything. I placed the prints on the machine and I've gotta say...it's gonna look pretty sweet once its repainted!

Attila the Hun Update 07

Side art vectorization DONE! It was a pain. The scanner didn't work for this so I ended up taking 3 photos of it and stitching those together. It was awful, the lens distortion caused everything to warp and I ended up having to place about 30 guide lines on in Illustrator in order to trace things correctly. But anyway, after the tedious work, here's the stitched and vectorized images of the side art. Today I'll print out full scale images of the cabinet and backbox sides at work and make sure everything matches up before I send them out for stencils.

Attila the Hun Update 06

Well, I got the backbox sides scanned in and then I painstakingly stitched them together and had traced everything in Illustrator to get a nice vector image with a layer for each color. This will make it nice and simple to be turned into stencils. I borrowed a Magic Wand scanner from work to test out. It worked surprisingly well for the backbox but when it came time to scan in the cabinet side, it didn't work out so well. Here's how the backbox looked after I stitched it, and then after the vectorization was complete. Now time to work on the cabinet art.

PONG Back Up And Running, and Attila Updates

Well, I feel kind of dumb...I got PONG working. Turns out two of the wires going to the monitor were reversed...oops. But it's back up and running. I'll finish restoring it eventually. I'm still focused on Attila the Hun right now.

I've decided...for now...that I am going to re-stencil and re-paint the entire game. I figured that since I put all the time and money into making a new backglass, and making the playfield look brand new, I might as well make the entire thing look new. So here's what I have to do on it:

• Install the boards once the repairs are done.
• Scan the artwork and vectorize the scans to have stencils made.
• Replace or attempt to remove the rust on the legs.
• Finish up the backglass in Photoshop and get a new one printed.
• Replace a couple waterlogged pieces of wood on the head.
• Remove rust from coindoor.
• Paint and assemble the finished cabinet.

Wow...that's a lot more than I thought. Looks like this project will drag on a little longer than I had anticipated...oh well, it'll be fun. I'm just very anxious to play it!

On a side note, I'm hopefully going to be purchasing a new video camera soon so I can start getting some videos up on the machines, and do vlogs on the updates...eventually.

Got My PONG Motherboard Back...

Well...after waiting patiently for 5 weeks, I finally got my PONG motherboard back. I got it all hooked up and plugged it in and it looked great...until I put a quarter in. As soon as the quarter hits, the game goes nuts. I'm extremely disappointed. I paid quite a bit to get it repaired, so having it come back broken is pretty upsetting. Hopefully I can get this resolved...

Attila the Hun Update 05

Playfield, DONE. The parts I ordered came yesterday so I had a lot of work to do the past couple days. After waxing the playfield, I cleaned all the plastics, polished all the metals, and re-bulbed everything. 127 new bulbs, a couple dozen new rubbers, a bottle of Novus #1, and this thing looks brand new! I'm very surprised at how nice it came out. The worst part were the stupid pop bumpers. Those were a pain, they come apart into about 10 pieces each, and in order to remove them from the playfield I had to unsolder them from the back (I hate soldering). Also, I rebuilt the plunger, bought a new ball, new locks, and new buttons. So now, as of now, as soon as I get the boards back from being repaired, the game "should" be playable.

A few things left for me to do include:

Getting a new backglass printed. I found a company online who can print me a new translite for $50. I'm almost done photoshopping the design.

Cabinet work...I'm still debating this part. IF I do it, I'd sand the whole cabinet down, restencil and repaint it. However, this is a HUGE amount of work and a long process to do so I'm still considering it. I have decided to sell this machine when I'm done, so I don't want to drop too much money into it, but repainting the cabinet might bring up the value.

Attila the Hun Update 04

Alright, got a little update here. I was able to get a lot more done on the playfield today. I spent a good 2 hours removing all the glue left behind from the mylars that were attached to the pf. The entire thing was pretty much soaked in Goo Gone for 10 minutes then I spent the rest of the time scrubbing all the sticky off it. It actually worked much better than I had expected. After that, I did one final cleaning with a microfiber cloth and rubbing alcohol. I also removed the drop targets. They're nasty. I'm going to take them to work tomorrow and make new decals for them, should be easy. Tomorrow I'm hoping to wax the playfield if I have time, and then start putting some of the plastics and guides back on. Can't do too much though because I'm still waiting for all the new rubbers and a new bottle of Novus to come in.

Here's the nasty looking drop targets. Tomorrow I'll make some new decals so I can clean these up and apply them.

The playfield all nice and clean. All that's left is to wax it up and then it's time to put it back together, it's going to look very nice.

Attila the Hun Update 03

Ok, here's just a quick little update on the backglass. As I just mentioned in my previous post, I've spent a little over 6 hours so far on it.

This is how it looked right after throwing all 6 scans together...notice how much color correction is going to be needed, as well as scaling and stretching to make all the pieces fit together.

After 6 hours, I had all the pieces stitched together nicely and color corrected. The color correction was a bitch to do. It was awful and I hope to never have to do it again. Also notice I've got a lot of the cracking in the paint taken care of. Still a few more spots here and there as well as most of the bottom edge.

Attila the Hun Update 02

Well, I needed to take a break from the computer. So far I've been sitting at it working on the backglass for 6 hours. It's coming along, but I needed a break...all the colors started looking the same. I decided to start the playfield. I spent a good hour and a half just stripping the pieces off of it. Man, there's a lot of parts! I've got it down to as little as possible, to make it easier to clean and wax. This thing is so dirty it was pretty gross even touching it. There's some protective mylars attached to it right now, once I'm able to remove those (without removing the paint) I'm going to start cleaning it. Hopefully it cleans up nicely even though the entire thing has stress cracks.


All the playfield pieces layed out.

The playfield after everything has been stripped off it.

Look how disgustingly dirty this thing is!

Attila the Hun Update 01

Well so far today I got a good amount done. The boards have been shipped out for repairs and I got some information regarding the backglass. I went to Buffalo's biggest print shop and talked to them about doing a reproduction backglass. For starters, they wanted to charge me $100 just to do raw scans of my backglass for me. I said no way and went to my work. I was able to remove the top half of our Xerox copier and use the flatbed scanner to scan my backglass into the computer. It took 6 scans to get the whole thing. I scanned it in at 600dpi and each file was 50 megs! Wow. Now I get the fun task of stitching all 6 pieces together in Photoshop and then touching up all of the areas that the paint is missing or flaking. Once I'm done, I'll have a really nice looking full size digital replica of the glass. From there, I'm just going to have to take it to the print shop and have them apply it to a new piece of glass!

The copier after I ripped the top off.


This is one of the 6 raw scans. This image has been reduced by 80% to upload. So you can only imagine how big it is at 100% for editing. Also notice how many defects need to be corrected.

And My New Adventure Comes to a Frustrating Hault

Well...when it comes to electronics and circuitry, I don't have the patience. I spent the past two days with a multimeter trying desperately to get the MPU board on Attila the Hun to boot. No luck. Circuitry frustrates me more than anything so I've given up. I found someone on KLOV who wants to give it a shot for me. I'm mailing him the boards tomorrow and with any luck he'll be able to get it up and running for me. Once I have the game working, I can make the call if I want to go through with the restoration or not...I don't want to dump too much money into this thing. And on a side note, I might have found a local business who can reproduce the backglass for me! They're going to be giving me a call tomorrow morning to discuss it with me, I'll keep you updated!

Oh yeah, one more exciting piece of news for me. My PONG board is fixed! About a month ago I shipped it to a guy in Florida who repairs them. Next week it should be arriving and then I can finally play a game of Pong on my machine!

I hate you, stupid broken MPU board! (It's the top right board)

Blah, my multimeter, I hate you too!

A New Adventure Begins

Well, I went out and got me a new project today. It's a pinball machines called Attila the Hun, made by Game Plan in 1984. This is a Solid State (SS) game, as opposed to an Electo-Mechanical (EM) Game like I'm used to working with. Because of this, it's going to be MUCH more difficult for me to diagnose and repair. I've never seen a SS game before let alone work on one. Anyway, I digress...I bought this off of a co-worker for $75. Not bad...until I brought it home...For starters, it was kept outside. And it's in the middle of winter in Buffalo, NY. Not the place for a pinball machine to be stored. When I picked it up, it was covered in snow. I took it home and ripped it apart right away and let the snow melt out of it. Currently it's 100% not working and physically in VERY rough shape. Most of the backbox will need to be rebuilt as it's waterlogged. The circuit boards will need to be repaired, every bit of the machine needs to be cleaned (the playfield has stuff growing on it...ew.) This will probably be my most difficult restoration so far. My biggest concern at the moment is the backglass. From the front it didn't seem so bad. It looked like the paint was starting to bubble off, I didn't think it'd be a problem, I have fixes for that type of problem, then I saw the back of it...someone thought it'd be a good idea to put packaging tape and scotch tape across most of the glass. There's no way to remove that without removing the paint. So it looks like I'll either have to live with it looking bad, or find a replacement (not easy to do). I think my first order of business with this will be to get the electronics working BEFORE I start restoration work. The opposite of what I usually do. Anyway, I'll stop here before I rant too much. Hopefully by my next post, I'll have more of an idea on what I want to get done first. Here's a few pictures of it an hour after acquiring it.

Four-Five-Six is D-O-N-E.

Wow, this project went by quickly. I'm very happy that it's finished. Not that I didn't enjoy restoring it, It's just a blast to play! It's like gambling, VERY addicting. Since I've completed it, it's received hundreds of plays thanks to myself, my sister, and my cousin. This game is beautiful, and I'll be submitting photos to the IPDB so that if anyone else ever comes across one of these, they'll have some sort of reference. I'll be posting a YouTube video of the gameplay hopefully by next week.

Time to find a new project!!

Four-Five-Six Update 08

I got a ball lift!! I received a package yesterday afternoon from a very nice guy over at the rec.games.pinball group. He donated 6 different lifters to me and only asked that I send back the ones that didn't work! So after unpacking them and trying each out, I found one that fit perfectly. I'm very happy right now. This was the hardest step in the restoration because I really didn't think I'd end up being able to find one, let alone for free! Now that I have a complete working ball mechanism, I can finally finish this project.

Of all my mechanical problems, I've got it down to just two. Both of which are as simple as replacing a spring. So, in short, I just have to replace two springs, clean some light sockets. After that it just needs one final cleaning and then I get to put it together and play it! It's very exciting to see this finally starting to come to an end.

Four-Five-Six Update 07

I got all of the mechanical problems diagnosed...now It's just a matter of fixing them. Somehow it blew a fuse when I first plugged it in after it was back together, which is why the two systems were not working. I replaced the fuse and it worked..for the most part. Here's what's wrong

1. The score does not reset properly when a new game begins.
2. Skill points sometimes do not register and don't reset properly.
3. The "Special When Lit" lights don't always work properly. (FIXED)
4. Various light sockets need to be cleaned as they currently have a poor connection.

I figured out for the most part what's causing these issues, and for those of you who would like to know more about the mechanics of this machine, I'll go into a little detail on the specific issues (with pictures!)

Alright, first up is the score reset problem. If you take a look at the first picture here you'll see a wheel with a lot of teeth. Each time you score a point the solenoid "A" engages and advances the wheel one step clockwise. When the game is reset, solenoid "B" engages and lifts arm ("C") causing a spring which is behind the wheel, to spin the wheel counterclockwise back to its start position. The reason that the score is not resetting for me is that the spring has lost its...springyness...When the arm is lifted, there isn't enough force to counter-rotate the wheel. Hopefully I can take it apart and maybe give the spring one extra wind, we'll see.

Number Two...The skill points not registering...This is something I was really hoping not to have to mess around with. There's a HUGE rotating disk with a million wires coming off of it, and about 4 total solenoids controlling this system. So far all I've been able to diagnose is why the skill points sometimes don't register. If you look at the picture you'll see a solenoid connected to about a 6'' long metal rod. When you get a skill point, the solenoid pushes that rod out advancing the wheel by one step, and hitting a set of leaf switches. That part works fine. But once power is cut to the solenoid, the rod doesn't retract. Hopefully it will be as simple as replacing that spring next to it which is used to retract the rod.

Finally, the "Special When Lit" mechanism...I already fixed this one, it was a pretty easy fix. Each time you score a point, a solenoid advances this wheel by one step. (Sounds familiar doesn't it?) But with this one, it moves two connectors across rings of contacts, each connected to a wire. Each set of contacts determines which of the special lights are turned on. Each time you score a point, the lit lights change. I used a burnishing tool to clean all of the contacts, as well as the two connectors that slide across them. It works great now.

Anyway, hopefully over the next few days I'll be able to get these issues resolved and be one step closer to finishing this project.

Four-Five-Six Update 06

Cosmetics done! Yay! That was a LOT of work but it was worth it, the thing looks great! The backbox was just as dirty (if not worse) than the rest of the cabinet...After cleaning it I put the playfield back together, and put the whole thing together to start doing some tests.

I'm still missing the ball lift and the proper shooter gauge but while I wait for those parts, it's a great time to get started with the mechanics of the game! I don't have any schematics so diagnosing and tracing wires is going to be extremely difficult for me.

I kept the backglass off so that I can more easily watch and change out light bulbs as needed. After quite a bit of testing, I've got a list of issues to fix. The two most important ones would be the entire "Skill Point" system is not working at all. Also, the blocks 1-6 do not light up when the corrosponding bumper is tripped. I have no clue where to start on those two problems so I'm going to have to trace the wires and find out which relays go with those systems.

Four-Five-Six Update 05

Ok, got quite a bit done...First off, yesterday morning I went out and bought a rock tumbler. Supposedly this will help remove rust and polish all of the metal pieces that I have. It uses ground walnut shells and a high vibration to clean the metal. I put the first batch of pieces in yesterday, and I'm going to let them run for 24-36 hours. Then after that, I'm going to put all the playfield springs in for probably about 12 hours.

Also, I'm finally putting the cabinet back together. The legs are finished, and the first batch of parts is clean. Look how shiny the leg bolts are! And lastly for this update...I cleaned off the woodrails for the sides. Wow did that make a difference. I didn't realize how dirty they actually were until I cleaned them up. Again, I used a magic eraser and Novus #1, but this time I also gave them a little wood polish afterwords.