So hot today, and two service calls schedualed since last week, so we got to go.

Pierre doesn't like AC because it dries his throat. Hence, we ride in his Nissan mini work van with the windows down and the AC blasting in the hot wind.. Not bad I thought, feels OK, I should try that with my old Camry, maybe the OEM compressor will finally fail. But today I am the passenger, and I am telling Pierre where to turn instead of the GPS. The south shore is my old stomping grounds and these two clients are good clients, not at all stuck up or cheap. They know the score.

So indeed, two Montreal Pinball clients on the shore that need help, - and so do I in a way. I am not a jukebox man, but Pierre is. In fact he is everything a good amusement industry tech should be. Monitors (CRT & LCD), video games, pinball machines (EM & SS) and jukeboxes from old to new. What a guy, a bit annoying to listen to along with a bad ear adding to an attention disorder, but what a tech. Just over 60 and still relevant, hell there may still be hope for me.

Our first client is a guy with an art gallery for a house and an Eight Ball Deluxe in the corner of a large living room which gives off on a pool which looked especially inviting today. As for the EBD every controlled lamp driven by the auxiliary lamp driver board was simply not working. Simple you say ? Not when the 6.5 V dc voltage is present on the bottom board which had an extra bridge rectifier added and wired as a single diode. Hacks everywhere we looked, were they related to the problem we were chasing ? Hard to tell. We managed to bring one lamp to ground from a molex cube connector on pin 10 and made the "D" light in Deluxe on the playfield light up, great, but not much else. This machine has been hacked to the point where we could not figure out what the previous “expert tech” was chasing until it became clear that the guy was another lost soul with a phone and a pair of wire snips. Pierre finally found the bug by deduction and my reading out colour codes and pin numbers from the schematics laid out on the fireplace mantlepiece nearby. We left the rest of the hacks where they were and hoping that they would not interfere with our fix after testing the machine over and over again.

Back on the road. Boy it's hot !

The next client has been one since 1990, way back to the days of Alexander Amusements (1990-1996) and before that an acquaintance since high school, so harken back over 40 years if you can and imagine that. I helped him build a gameroom back when home gamerooms were not common, or should I say, not blatantly exposed as they are now making them less special. What a beautiful place to play and to cool down with AC and water. We spent three hours there getting things to work better than they had previously.

I got onto refreshing his solid state pinball machine then fixed the sluggish reels on his Bally Twin Win Continental slot machine and then a funky fluorescent fixture on his original Ms Pacman and changed a button on his mini boy sitting on the edge of the bar. Pierre was onto the OMT 1015 CD juke and then the Seeburg and the AMI Continental 2. He was still working on the jukes into the second hour of the service call, and I went to the garage to fix a Bally Wizard, - yeah, you guessed it, a bad fuse holder that crumbled at a squeeze.

We got back to the island of the nones by 3:30 and I made it home to the refuge from the road and Pierre made his way back home from there. It is good to work with pros, there is always something to learn.

Robert A. Baraké (R.A.B.)

So hot today, and two service calls schedualed since last week, so we got to go.

Pierre doesn't like AC because it dries his throat. Hence, we ride in his Nissan mini work van with the windows down and the AC blasting in the hot wind.. Not bad I thought, feels OK, I should try that with my old Camry, maybe the OEM compressor will finally fail. But today I am the passenger, and I am telling Pierre where to turn instead of the GPS. The south shore is my old stomping grounds and these two clients are good clients, not at all stuck up or cheap. They know the score.

So indeed, two Montreal Pinball clients on the shore that need help, - and so do I in a way. I am not a jukebox man, but Pierre is. In fact he is everything a good amusement industry tech should be. Monitors (CRT & LCD), video games, pinball machines (EM & SS) and jukeboxes from old to new. What a guy, a bit annoying to listen to along with a bad ear adding to an attention disorder, but what a tech. Just over 60 and still relevant, hell there may still be hope for me.

Our first client is a guy with an art gallery for a house and an Eight Ball Deluxe in the corner of a large living room which gives off on a pool which looked especially inviting today. As for the EBD every controlled lamp driven by the auxiliary lamp driver board was simply not working. Simple you say ? Not when the 6.5 V dc voltage is present on the bottom board which had an extra bridge rectifier added and wired as a single diode. Hacks everywhere we looked, were they related to the problem we were chasing ? Hard to tell. We managed to bring one lamp to ground from a molex cube connector on pin 10 and made the "D" light in Deluxe on the playfield light up, great, but not much else. This machine has been hacked to the point where we could not figure out what the previous “expert tech” was chasing until it became clear that the guy was another lost soul with a phone and a pair of wire snips. Pierre finally found the bug by deduction and my reading out colour codes and pin numbers from the schematics laid out on the fireplace mantlepiece nearby. We left the rest of the hacks where they were and hoping that they would not interfere with our fix after testing the machine over and over again.

Back on the road. Boy it's hot !

The next client has been one since 1990, way back to the days of Alexander Amusements (1990-1996) and before that an acquaintance since high school, so harken back over 40 years if you can and imagine that. I helped him build a gameroom back when home gamerooms were not common, or should I say, not blatantly exposed as they are now making them less special. What a beautiful place to play and to cool down with AC and water. We spent three hours there getting things to work better than they had previously.

I got onto refreshing his solid state pinball machine then fixed the sluggish reels on his Bally Twin Win Continental slot machine and then a funky fluorescent fixture on his original Ms Pacman and changed a button on his mini boy sitting on the edge of the bar. Pierre was onto the OMT 1015 CD juke and then the Seeburg and the AMI Continental 2. He was still working on the jukes into the second hour of the service call, and I went to the garage to fix a Bally Wizard, - yeah, you guessed it, a bad fuse holder that crumbled at a squeeze.

We got back to the island of the nones by 3:30 and I made it home to the refuge from the road and Pierre made his way back home from there. It is good to work with pros, there is always something to learn.

Robert A. Baraké (R.A.B.)