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flash, flash rebuild, flipper coils, flippers, pinball, pinball repair, Rebuild Tuesday.

By Dermot Tynan, Thursday, August 29, 2019

So, the Flash playfield has arrived. The packaging left a lot to be desired, but overall the playfield is in better shape than I expected. Sure, two things strike you immediately. First, this machine was routed. By that, I mean it was placed in the wild to make money. That's no bad thing. Most of us first encountered pinball in an arcade somewhere, provided and maintained by a route operator. Second, since it was removed from its original cabinet, it has been used as a source of spare parts for other machines. I know it was routed because there are...

em, flipper coils, hardware, mpu board, pinball, relay, score motor.

By Dermot Tynan, Wednesday, August 28, 2019

flippers, gottlieb, humpty dumpty, oblivion, pinball.

By Oscar Scheinhauser, Wednesday, August 7, 2019

There’s a peculiar gap in the early history of pinball. Sources tend to agree that it was in the early 1930s that the first actual pinball machine was invented – as in, the coin-activated ball on a playing field that people would come to know and love.

Amazingly enough, the device grew popular, and that’s amazing because it wasn’t until more than 15 years later that flippers were finally invented.

em, hardware, jones plug, pinball, pinball repair, silver ball, smart set.

By Dermot Tynan, Friday, July 19, 2019

So, a couple of years ago, I came across a Williams Smart Set on a for-sale web site. As you can expect, the machine wasn't working. The machine is an Electro-Mechanical monster, which means it operates on relays and score motors. (Check out my earlier post on the subject of EM pinballs). Fun, fun, fun! Anyway, the machine had originally lived in an architects office where they turned on the General Illumination each day, and there it sat, unplayed and unloved. The previous owner had rescued it and had hoped to restore the game to her former glory. Alas, the moving...

bally bongo, boolean algebra, em, hardware, pinball, pinball repair, silver ball.

By Dermot Tynan, Friday, June 21, 2019

My father liked fixing things. When he wasn't teaching others how to fix television sets (something I myself have never mastered), he would spend evenings and weekends fixing the problem children of manufacturers like Bush and Telefunken. The local TV shop would set aside the really nasty problems, just for him. Often, he would fix weird and wonderful pieces of equipment as a favour, and in return he would be rewarded with some sort of bartered payment. So it was, he arrived home one day in the mid seventies with a Bally Bongo EM. In the style of Professor Caractacus...