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INSIDE those OLD pinball machines
(www.youtube.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I can't wait to watch this having restored an early 90s Williams machine years back. Doubly so with it being a TC vid, his channel is excellent.
I wanted a machine in college but knew I'd have to understand and maintain it with so many moving parts, thus shelving the idea pretty quickly. Years later, I stumbled into an arcade abused cabinet with a decent playfield and had to have it. It was a challenging few months but a decade later it still works great and I've grown comfortable with crawling in there. Great forums like Pinside were also a tremendous help, I wouldn't have taken the gamble without the Internet.
My god, if you understand how these systems work, I'm impressed.
I'm good with DC stuff of this era (switches, relays, etc) and man I have to work hard to visualize these things.
I'm seriously impressed with the engineers who designed these crazy complex electro-mechanical systems.
I have some older relatives who were aircraft engineers back when these types of systems were used... Aircraft up through the 70's. I've read some of their manuals... Staggering complexity.
Well, I'd say I understand enough to get by but I did also grow up building RC cars and later working on electronics/computers, so that definitely helped. That said, there's been more than a few times I had to break out a wiring diagram and consult with folks online because I was too scared to break something.
With all those noises moving parts inside, playing an OLD machine felt like tickling a hippo.