Home-brew Pinball

Build a pinball machine. It indeed sounds crazy, and perhaps it is. But alas, the amazing meld of electronics, mechanics, wood working, and graphic design lure me with every thought. You are probably wondering Why build a pinball machine? And the answer(s) comes in two parts, both driven by geek logic: One, because it's cool, and two, why not? 


So, yes, I'm building a pinball machine. The process of building a proper pinball machine entails quite a few hurtles, a considerable sum of cash, and a lot of time and fun.


A bit of history is owed to you the reader. Back in 2008, I had the notion of building a pinball machine, but being only 15 at the time, I just didn't get a lot of the concepts, and I was also in a position of quite limited fiscal resources. Thus, for about four years, a wooden contraption sat in the corner of our garage, collecting dust and cat hair. It was originally going to be constructed completely from scratch with self-wound solenoids, hardware store mechanics, and a plain wood design.

But a lot has changed since then. I've secured a somewhat steady income, (thus I have money) and I have had some significant brain development. (I think.)

So, in recent history I have actually been planning, building, and designing a real pinball machine. I began by pulling that skeleton of a pinball machine out of the corner of our garage, and removing all it's unusable components. Like the flippers I cut out on a band saw, and the bearing systems that were made only out of wood and carriage bolts.

I then began the re-construction of a prototype play-field on a preliminary stand. I built a 30v DC power-supply out of a simple transformer, bridge-rectifier, and some electrolytic capacitors that were too small. I was then motivated to make my first purchase. I bought a right and left flipper mechanism from a guy in Greece. From what I understand he parted out an old Gottlieb Pink Panther machine. I waited about two weeks for those to arrive, and when they did, I spent that morning installing them in my play-field, the next evening, I had them flipping a wood ball around. (I didn't have a steel 1 1/16" ball yet.)


It's from several weeks ago, but that progress can be seen in the video. Remember that this is a very preliminary prototype of the play-field. It doesn't even look like this any more.

Real planning was something that I really wanted to do from the beginning of this project's re-boot. I knew that if I planned, it could be done right the first time. (Hopefully.)


So my plans thus far are as follows:

1. Build a full cabinet.
2. Get quality graphics printed and applied.
3. Design the play-field in CAD first.
4. Use a Raspberry Pi with an expansion board to control almost every active element in the play-field.
5. Design an awesome theme.

Theme! Yes, I need to make sure the theme is awesome. Because that's what good pinball machines are all about. Benjamin Heckindorn's (Ben Heck) first build was adventurously themed Bill Paxton (the star in Titanic) and while he has done many more themes including LOST, I always admired the wild step he took with Paxton. I knew mine had to be just as epic. I got a number of suggestions, including Star Trek (which had already been done) Flo (from the Progressive commercials), a pinball themed pinball machine in a sort of Yo, Dawg fashion, but the idea that struck me most was... Rhett&Link.

Yes, my theme is going to be Rhett&Link.

While I intend to document this project's progress along the way, here's a sample of a (once again) very preliminary play-field layout and design.

So, be sure and subscribe to my RSS feed so that you can receive updates, and don't forget to tell your friends!

Innovation in 1984

The gaming industry has always been driven by impressive electronic stunts and innovative game-play. When people think personal computers and 1984, they think about text-based number guessing games, and maybe Breakout or Pac-Man.

But what few realize is that 6502c assembly actually offered quite a bit of power. It took almost genius, but if you were smart enough you could write some pretty impressive games. (for 1984)

SkyFox on the Apple IIe (6502)

SkyFox for the Apple II is one of the most impressive games I've ever seen run on a 6502. I really do have this game on a 5.25" floppy, and I really do run it on my Apple IIc. It gives a pretty good illusion of 3D while rocketing past tanks and terrain, firing a machine-gun all the while.

The game was written by Stewart Bonn, and Richard Hilleman, a couple of guys who would later go on to work as executives at Electronic Arts.

But to put this in perspective the Apple II runs a 65c02 at 1.023Mhz with 128 KB of RAM and a 280x192 hi-rez display with 6 colors. With... and introductory cost in 1984 of $1,295.

We've come a long ways since 1984 but one thing has never changed, innovation in the industry always leads to success. And it's not just the gaming industry in which this is true, in almost any area, when you can be smarter, different, and better, you do two things, you win financially, and you help the industry progress. It's innovation that improves the world.

GNU Grandma

Ubuntu, Linux for Human Beings

There are many folks who don't want to make the switch to Linux mostly because they're scarred by thoughts of editing .conf files and hacking for three hours after install just to get their wifi adapter to work. Back in 2006 that might have been the case, but not so much anymore. Ubuntu 11.04 (yes, that's the OS I referenced in my last post) is truly an OS for the twenty-tens.

So, as you may have guessed by the title, I've got one of the awesomest grandmas ever. That's right, my 92 year old grandmother is using Ubuntu Linux. So, what does that mean to the you? It means that after many long hours of hard work, thousands of bug fixes, and a lot of palm sweat, the Canonical team has finally reached their goal: Ubuntu, Linux for Human Beings.

Am I negating my last post about #! Linux? Not at all. My netbook is a... special needs computer. Yeah. It's got an 10 inch screen with 1GB of RAM and a Intell Atom Dual Core with an integrated GPU. But for your average laptop that you'd pick up at Wall-Mart, with even a couple gigs of ram, Ubuntu is really the way to go. Why? Because it works out of the box. That is, right after install, it looks nice and works. Ask anyone about install and you'll be given the same answer, "Ubuntu has the best install process."

I did it, but my grandma could have done the install herself. It's that easy. It asks if you want to use the whole HD, and you click yes, it asks you for your passwords, and asks for your timezone, and it does the rest of the magic. Then you sit back and relax while a progress bar proceeds under a Narwhal. Which, by the way, is a great conversation piece for you and your 92 year old grandma.

So are you undecided about which distro to use on your decently powered laptop computer? Try Ubuntu. It's Linux... for human beings.

What is the best Netbook Operating System?

Ooh, an operating system for that itty-bitty computer with almost enough power to run Windows 7. That's right, I'm talking about your netbook. I got a netbook last summer, and the quest for the perfect operating system for it has been a long yet fascinating adventure. There are a lot of opperating systems with a lot of pros and cons, so I'll just take you through the steps that led me to where I am today.

Windows 7 In the history of Microsoft, it has rarely been that a newer version of Windows required less resources than a previous, but Windows 7 is one of those. But then Vista was a water-logged sumo wrestler, so maybe it's not so amazing after all. But needless to say it was a step in the right direction. But still with only 1GB of ram on my Acer Aspire One d255e, it was just a little slugish. Something I couldn't bear with. Not to mention that Windows has it's quirks and is generally not very flexible. And for my little netbook with not much ram, and a 10" screen, flexibility was everything. So... repartition time. Enter...

Ubuntu 11.04 Linux and Ubuntu are almost synonymous anymore. In 2012, Ubuntu seems to be the flagship distro. Aah, here was my resting place, It was an operating system with all the features and flexibility I needed. After a few weeks, I deleted my windows partition. This was the OS for me. It was really great for several months.

But then I made the mistake of seeing my brother-in-law's mac book pro. I was never the same again. Discontented by the three second waits that I kept running into, my constant use of swap, and to top it all, Google+ Hangouts barely ran. I knew my netbook could do better than this if only it could be unchained. I wanted a computer that was like click-BANG! click-BANG! smooth scrolling, and lite enough to let me encode and decode several webcam streams at once. That's what I needed, and while Ubuntu was user-friendly and flexible, it managed to use half of my ram just idling. I knew I had to find something better, but I was at a loss. What do I run? DSL Linux? Puppy?? Oh come on... surely there's an operating system that offers 2012 style functionality without being a complete HOG!

#! Crunchbang Linux No, that's not a hash tag, and no, I'm not swearing. That's the name of it: Crunchbang Linux abbreviated "#!". If I've ever heard an operating system aptly named, this was it. It's wicked fast. It lets you crunch numbers and big programs like... BANG! Thus the name. But be ye warned, this is not for the faint of heart. It's minimalistic. Not in a functional way, in a graphical way. 

It comes with built in install scripts for Google Chrome, Dropbox, and Java Runtime. It's a very modern operating system, it just doesn't have all the baggage of something like Ubuntu or Mint. (Or Windows 7 obviously) It comes with these GUI components: Openbox (window manager) Tint2 (dock and task bar) and Conky the infamous system monitor. This os is so customizeable that it takes a little bit of config script knowledge to get up and running the way you want. But hey, it idles using about 98MB of ram, installs in about 15 minutes, boots in under a minute, and shuts down in about 10 seconds. Yet it runs Google Chrome like a dream, Skype and Google+ Hangouts stream really smooth, and it's the the fastest yet I've seen at booting. 

So, is this the OS for netbooks? Yes. I'd say so. It's very lite, very functional, and very flexible. That's what a netbook needs. I set mine up to autohide Tint2 so that Chrome can use all of my screen space -- something which is very precious on a netbook. I also changed the background, Conky theme, and Tint2 theme.

Yes my friends, this is the OS for your netbook. On lite, functional, and flexible, it's win, win, win!