STORY DATE - Decmember 2013 / LOCATION - Montréal, Québec

Tonight was payback pinball service night. After a very productive day at work I was booked to go and visit our very own obtuse Mbudman. His name is Mark, and he is really a good guy, annoying to be around for more than an hour, but a good guy nonetheless. Wouldn't hurt a fly, and no matter how many faults somebody has, I can not have disdain for someone who is giving, kind and not intentionally a troublemaker or scroundrel. Regardless of all our shortcomings, one can not talk badly about anyone who doesn't harbour and/or hides some ill intent or an excessive sense of self-importance.

I got to Mark's workplace around 5PM and the receptionist buzzed me in past the glass door of some fancy looking computer/server sweatshop where many otherwise creative people sit in front of screens all day in closed off cubicals (so they can concentrate and be efficient) while helping other equally creatively enslaved people keep their networks connecting so they can work faster for more profits for people who don't actually do any work or produce anything at all. All this looked like a new kind of slavery to me which happens to pay more than picking cotton, so I guess that is OK for now. Maybe in 100 years this kind of work will be outlawed and considered inhumane.

The receptionist paged Mark and told him that his guest had arrived and was in the lobby. She hung up and asked if I was here to finally fix Mark's pinball machine. I answered, "Possibly, if the machine and Mark cooperate." She smiled understandingly and seemed to know what I know about the fact that Mark gets quite involved beyond what is reasonable in whatever he is trying to do. Just terribly over excited to get quick results, which in my mind is a precarious intention to have when trying to fix a pinball machine, especially a solid state early system Gottlieb.

Mark showed up and offered me a coffee from an Avalon automated hot beverage machine which is a shitty rip off of the amazingly efficient VK300 workhorse developed by Mr. King right here in Montreal decades ago. I know this because I was parts manager at a vending machine distributor back in 2006 when I was totally disgusted with the coin op amusement machine business and looked for an alternative to the vile business that has somehow managed to consume my time here on earth so far. Suffice to say that 2006 to 2007 was the only year of my life that I would not repeat if I could start my life over again knowing what I know now. There is nothing more utilitarian/boring than buying and selling vending machine parts, there is simply no fun nor colour to that at all, regardless of how delicious the coffee Mark offered me was tonight.

We then headed to an empty server room that had strategic holes in the slightly elevated floor in order to run cables and wires to machines that I would never understand. And there in this desolate room was a Gottlieb system 80 "Circus" pinball machine with tools, various parts and crumpled up invoices from Cineplex-Starburst scattered on the floor around it. OK, then I tried to find a suitable place to lay my toolbox down, but that was problematic until Mark offered up a workbench of sorts. I made sure that one or several of the bench legs weren't going to fall inside the various cable access holes in the floor.

Mark had read lots of stuff on the internet about memory capacitors replacing the 3.6 volt ni-cad battery on MPUs from that era, and asked me if I could solder in the capacitor he bought. OK,- then we started looking at why the letter "C" indicator lamp wasn't working on his playfield. We made sure that there was continuity from the socket itself to the driver board. There was, and when I removed the driver board from its support pins to test the associated transistor, I noticed that the edge connectors were greasy. Mark had put lithium grease on all the edge connectors to get the machine to work properly. It helped in a way, since the grease acted as a sort of cleaner and helped in dissipating some of the the dust, soot and slight corrosion which had previously prevented the machine from doing its thing. I wiped most of this stuff off, since the connections now seemed stable, but I think a good cleaning of the edge connectors on the boards and of the connectors in the housings would have worked just as well. Mark found a short cut, as risky and unorthodox as it may seem, it worked.

The transistor checked out as OK and so did the one controlling the shoot again lights (well sort of) that refused to light. So instead of spending too much time on this and trying to answer Mark's machine gun style of questioning about pinball machine repair, I suggested we have the driver board tested by Mindstorm. These lamp issues were minor and the machine played well and looked very clean over all. And me oh my, - aren't those bathing suit circus girls so very well drawn I must add, - they could easily make me forget that the 'C' light and the extra ball indicator lamps aren't lighting. Mark surprisingly agreed that the machine was OK despite these issues. We had somehow spent well over an hour chasing on site solutions and time was running short again. Mark was going to the Habs game tonight and I still had another service stop before making it back home. Packing up my tools in this sad place I thought that there was no way I was going to charge Mark a regular service call rate for soldering a memory capacitor to his board, - I had not really fixed anything, so instead he insisted on giving me gas money and I dropped him off at the Namur metro station so he could get downtown to the new forum without his car. I then headed off to the Boule Noir billiard hall on the Plateau to change a F18T8 fluorescent and an FS-2 starter on an original Midway Ms Pacman machine next to a Galaga, a Sega Outrun 2, a Bonzani foos ball and a Gottlieb 1976 "Card Whiz¨ all set on a dollar play with Régie permits on all the machines, a barcade concept aracde at the back ass end of a huge bar and poolroom in the very "now" and  hipster Plateau Mont-Royale neighbourhood. I stayed and watched some of the Montreal/New Jersey game and head home through a comfortable snowy Montreal night.

So an overall quiet night on the repair front, just excecising the maintenance thing I guess.

Robert A. Baraké  (R.A.B.)

STORY DATE - Decmember 2013 / LOCATION - Montréal, Québec

Tonight was payback pinball service night. After a very productive day at work I was booked to go and visit our very own obtuse Mbudman. His name is Mark, and he is really a good guy, annoying to be around for more than an hour, but a good guy nonetheless. Wouldn't hurt a fly, and no matter how many faults somebody has, I can not have disdain for someone who is giving, kind and not intentionally a troublemaker or scroundrel. Regardless of all our shortcomings, one can not talk badly about anyone who doesn't harbour and/or hides some ill intent or an excessive sense of self-importance.

I got to Mark's workplace around 5PM and the receptionist buzzed me in past the glass door of some fancy looking computer/server sweatshop where many otherwise creative people sit in front of screens all day in closed off cubicals (so they can concentrate and be efficient) while helping other equally creatively enslaved people keep their networks connecting so they can work faster for more profits for people who don't actually do any work or produce anything at all. All this looked like a new kind of slavery to me which happens to pay more than picking cotton, so I guess that is OK for now. Maybe in 100 years this kind of work will be outlawed and considered inhumane.

The receptionist paged Mark and told him that his guest had arrived and was in the lobby. She hung up and asked if I was here to finally fix Mark's pinball machine. I answered, "Possibly, if the machine and Mark cooperate." She smiled understandingly and seemed to know what I know about the fact that Mark gets quite involved beyond what is reasonable in whatever he is trying to do. Just terribly over excited to get quick results, which in my mind is a precarious intention to have when trying to fix a pinball machine, especially a solid state early system Gottlieb.

Mark showed up and offered me a coffee from an Avalon automated hot beverage machine which is a shitty rip off of the amazingly efficient VK300 workhorse developed by Mr. King right here in Montreal decades ago. I know this because I was parts manager at a vending machine distributor back in 2006 when I was totally disgusted with the coin op amusement machine business and looked for an alternative to the vile business that has somehow managed to consume my time here on earth so far. Suffice to say that 2006 to 2007 was the only year of my life that I would not repeat if I could start my life over again knowing what I know now. There is nothing more utilitarian/boring than buying and selling vending machine parts, there is simply no fun nor colour to that at all, regardless of how delicious the coffee Mark offered me was tonight.

We then headed to an empty server room that had strategic holes in the slightly elevated floor in order to run cables and wires to machines that I would never understand. And there in this desolate room was a Gottlieb system 80 "Circus" pinball machine with tools, various parts and crumpled up invoices from Cineplex-Starburst scattered on the floor around it. OK, then I tried to find a suitable place to lay my toolbox down, but that was problematic until Mark offered up a workbench of sorts. I made sure that one or several of the bench legs weren't going to fall inside the various cable access holes in the floor.

Mark had read lots of stuff on the internet about memory capacitors replacing the 3.6 volt ni-cad battery on MPUs from that era, and asked me if I could solder in the capacitor he bought. OK,- then we started looking at why the letter "C" indicator lamp wasn't working on his playfield. We made sure that there was continuity from the socket itself to the driver board. There was, and when I removed the driver board from its support pins to test the associated transistor, I noticed that the edge connectors were greasy. Mark had put lithium grease on all the edge connectors to get the machine to work properly. It helped in a way, since the grease acted as a sort of cleaner and helped in dissipating some of the the dust, soot and slight corrosion which had previously prevented the machine from doing its thing. I wiped most of this stuff off, since the connections now seemed stable, but I think a good cleaning of the edge connectors on the boards and of the connectors in the housings would have worked just as well. Mark found a short cut, as risky and unorthodox as it may seem, it worked.

The transistor checked out as OK and so did the one controlling the shoot again lights (well sort of) that refused to light. So instead of spending too much time on this and trying to answer Mark's machine gun style of questioning about pinball machine repair, I suggested we have the driver board tested by Mindstorm. These lamp issues were minor and the machine played well and looked very clean over all. And me oh my, - aren't those bathing suit circus girls so very well drawn I must add, - they could easily make me forget that the 'C' light and the extra ball indicator lamps aren't lighting. Mark surprisingly agreed that the machine was OK despite these issues. We had somehow spent well over an hour chasing on site solutions and time was running short again. Mark was going to the Habs game tonight and I still had another service stop before making it back home. Packing up my tools in this sad place I thought that there was no way I was going to charge Mark a regular service call rate for soldering a memory capacitor to his board, - I had not really fixed anything, so instead he insisted on giving me gas money and I dropped him off at the Namur metro station so he could get downtown to the new forum without his car. I then headed off to the Boule Noir billiard hall on the Plateau to change a F18T8 fluorescent and an FS-2 starter on an original Midway Ms Pacman machine next to a Galaga, a Sega Outrun 2, a Bonzani foos ball and a Gottlieb 1976 "Card Whiz¨ all set on a dollar play with Régie permits on all the machines, a barcade concept aracde at the back ass end of a huge bar and poolroom in the very "now" and  hipster Plateau Mont-Royale neighbourhood. I stayed and watched some of the Montreal/New Jersey game and head home through a comfortable snowy Montreal night.

So an overall quiet night on the repair front, just excecising the maintenance thing I guess.

Robert A. Baraké  (R.A.B.)