The Addams Family Pinball

Whirlwind Shooter Cover

I’ve been so involved in sourcing an apron for my TAF that I had completely forgotten the shooter cover (the part to the right of the apron, covering the shooter/plunger and with a window through which the shooter tip is visible). If I were to “produce” a new apron I definitely would want to produce a matching shooter cover.

A quick look on the internet revealed nothing, so I headed over to RGP and made an enquiry. Sure enough within a very short space of time I received a positive response and so purchased a Whirlwind shooter cover.

Well I now have two aprons which, in order to convert to a proper TAF apron, require me to paint, apply decals and finally apply a clear coating.

The only problem is I don’t like the standard decals that are available for the TAF apron and which you can easily buy on the internet, as they’re too thick. What I’m after is something more similar to the original – a transfer decal.

Things are never easy though and with the TAF apron the requirement is for a white decal on a black background, so printing on a transparent transfer foil (like a tattoo foil) isn’t an option as printers (both inkjet and laser) can’t print white ink. An option could be printing onto white transfer paper, but once again this isn’t ideal, as the decal would need to be carefully cut out and may leave a white border at the edges.

To look for an alternative, I’ve already trawled the internet and found the potentially ideal solution: PulsarProFx sell a dry transfer kit (DecalProFx) which can produce very thin decals – even in white – using nothing more than a laser printer and special transfer paper. The process is complex but the results look good.

I purchased a DecalProFx kit a while back and have tried over the last few moths to produce the decals for the TAF apron. However to date I haven’t succeeded, unfortunately, even with the help of the manufacturer. I will continue to persevere with this, but am beginning to lose confidence in this method as a viable solution.

I finally received my Hurrican Apron today and can confirm that, like my recently acquired Whitewater Apron, it is a direct replacement for the TAF Apron (but doesn’t have the star post and has a complete wire frame).

I just need to paint it, apply new decals and apply a finish to it now….

Surfing on flippermarkt.de (my favourite forum) last night, I discovered that it could be possible to make some repro plastics for my TAF.  “But why?” I hear you cry; why should I want to do that? Yes, despite the fact that I’ve nearly got two complete sets of plastics in addition to the one on the pinball machine, there is something I would like to change, as far as the plastics are concerned:

Despite the fact that I want to keep my pinball as true to an original TAF as possible, one thing has really bugged me in the short time I’ve had it, namely replacing the flasher bulbs under the “permanent” flashers. These are the ones with the plastic flasher cover riveted to the plastic directly, meaning that to change the flasher bulb means removing the plastics. There are three candidates here: the flasher next to Thing’s flipper, the flasher behind the telephone and the flasher behind the train wreck target. Despite the fact that I’ve already changed the last two (which also happen to be the most difficult to change) so that they probably wont burn out again in my life-time (they’ll burn out tomorrow now that I’ve written that) I really would like to change these flashers to the ones with the removable caps (as on the ramps, for example). This would give me a couple of advantages, firstly, I could easily change a broken bulb, and secondly I could try out different coloured bulb and cap combinations easily, to see which I like best. However, there’s a problem…

Replacing the Flasher Covers

It turns out that the footprint of the screw in flasher cap (ie the hole required for the bulb holder which allows the flasher cap to be inserted) is almost 15mm larger (in diameter) than the hole for the “permanent” variant, meaning that to substitute the screw in version would require making the bulb socket hole significantly larger (the rivet holes are almost the same distance apart). Whereas this wouldn’t be a problem for the flasher behind the train wreck target, the phone flasher seems like it would be too close to the ‘phone plastic. And the hole for the flasher next to Thing’s flipper would in fact be too big for the location on the plastic, where it currently is.

Therefore in order to replace the flasher caps with the screw in variants will require me to relocate the flasher holes. Hence the need for some homemade plastics.

Watch this space…

Since receiving my pinball I’ve been working on it and playing it with the glass removed. In fact I’m not expecting to replace the glass until I’ve completed my renovation.

Reading through RGP and several forums, however, it would appear that light reflection from the pinball glass can cause problems and detracts from the gameplay. Apparently reflection of the DMD is a significant problem and some people even produce glare guards in order to prevent such reflections.

So it was interesting to find on flippermarkt.de a pinball fan selling specially treated pinball glass which reduces the reflections dramatically.

This I have to try….

Spiderman with normal glass

Spiderman with specially treated glass

Despite not having Thing’s hand attached, the pinball continues to play well (the pinball automatically adjusts itself to play with a broken – or in my case missing – hand). So I had a few games last night. However I discovered an interesting phenomenon:

As I was getting to the required 3 Train Wrecks and 13 Bear Kicks to light the Extra Ball, all of a sudden the flippers appeared to weaken making the shots more difficult to achieve. Needless to say, I didn’t achieve them.

So what was this? Added intelligence preventing me form reaching my goals?

So I opened a thread on RGP and flippermarkt.de (my favourite stop off points for such questions) and it wasn’t too long before it was clarified to me that if you use the flippers a lot, they tend to warm-up and thereby get weaker.

So that’s another fact I’m going to have to take into account on my way to becoming a pinball wizard!

It turns out that Illinois Pinball is planing a re-run of TAF playfields. Fantastic. So I’ve put my name down for one and hope I’m
lucky.

They don’t have pricing available yet, as the price is apparently “dependent on the cost of production” which is not yet known.

Call me skeptic, but I think it’ll be a case of them waiting to see how much interest there is and then price the parts accordingly (a so called Reversed Dutch Auction)!

Following on from my success at programming an Eprom for my MMP at the begiining of the month, I bought some 4 MBit (512k Byte) Eproms on eBay from a seller, who happened to just live around the corner from me. As such, I was able to pick up the Eproms immediately.

I chose the 4 MBit type, as this is the variant required for the newer versions of TAF software. I say newer, because the original (L-2) software in my TAF came on a 2 MBit (256 kByte) Eprom.

The Eproms I picked up were all Intel D27C040. This Eprom was immediately recognised by my programmer software and configured itself automatically.  I downloaded the L-7 software from the Pinball Database at www.ipdb.org and loaded it into the software programme on my Windows XP computer. It was then just a case of hitting the burn button and waiting the 2  minutes for the programme to be burned to Eprom and the programme then verified. Easy.

However, when I plugged this newly burned Eprom into my TAF and switched the machine on, nothing happened! The pinball machine just didn’t turn on. Something was wrong.

Time to fault find.

The only things which occured to me could have gone wrong were:

1. The Eprom was defect
2. The downloaded programme was incorrect.

The first could be easily checked with the programmer (verifying the contents with the progamme loaded in the software programme). It checked out OK. The second proved to be more difficult.

Could it be that the software from the Pinball Database couldn’t simply be burned onto Eprom, as I had done? Was there a trick, maybe?

To check this, I downloaded the H-4 version of the software from ipdb.org to a local file on my computer and also dumped the software from my actual H-4 Eprom to another file using the programmer. Now I only had to check that both of these files were the same, or if not, what the difference was. But then I face another problem…

To compare two text files in Windows is easy. There are plenty of freely available programmes to let you do this. However, I was after a Windows programme to compare two binary files and (if possible)  to easily see where the differences were (not forgetting of course, that we’re comparing over 4 million pieces of information here). And all this with a free programme.

I spent the next three quarters of an hour looking for a suitable progamme online, without success. In the end, I had to settle for a shareware programme, which although it would compare the contents of both files would only show the first 256kBytes of the files (until, of course, I had paid for the programme). My reasoning was that if there was a descrepancy between the files, that this descrepancy would in fact be in the first few bytes of the TAF software.

However, when I came to load both files into the software to compare, the software complained that the file sizes were different. Strange. However, when I looked at the attributes for both files in Windows it was true: the dowloaded file size was 512k Bytes, whereas the dumped Eprom code had a file size of just 256k Byte. Now I was really confused. Why should the dumped Eprom code only be 256k Byte in size?

To cut a long story short, the problem lay with the programmer’s software. The D27C040 was defined in the programme as belonging to the 27C020 family, meaning that the programmer thought that the device was a 2 MBit part instead of a 4 MBit part. This resulted in the programmer just dumping the first 256k Bytes of data rather than the full 512k Bytes of data. It also meant, of course, that my 4 Mbit Eprom was only being programmed as a 2MBit device, meaning that half of the code was missing from the Eprom.

So I got a new 4 MBit Eprom, set up the device in the programmer as being a TMS27C040 (which had the right size) and programmed (and verified) the device.

When I inserted this Eprom into my TAF and switched on, there was an enormous boinging sound. The Eprom had been recognised and the boot sequence started, which, because of the new Eprom, reset all of my saved settings – including the volume setting! But at least it worked! Yippee! I now have L-7 code on my TAF. Wonderful.

PS Isn’t it just typical: the first time I try to programme my TAF, I purchase the only Eprom type that’s set up incorrectly in my Eprom programmer. What’s the likelyhood of that happening? Probably one in over a million. Maybe I should play the lottery this weekend…..

Whitewater apron with clear starpost

I have now verified, that the mechanical dimensions of the Whitewater apron and that of the TAF are identical, so that I can use this apron in my TAF. Only one slight problem, the Whitewater apron has a star post at the top right of the apron (see photo – courtesy www.ipdb.org).

No great problem here, but interesting.

Whitewater Apron

Received the used Whitewater apron today having successfully won it on eBay. I’ve bought this to replace my exisiting apron.

I need to first check how this compares to my exisiting TAF apron (mechanically) before starting with the work of painting and applying decals….