Alec, make sure the ball plunger soft tip is in good shape. Once the rubber wears too thin, the ball gets pitted / dented and the playfield artwork will get scratched and worn by the ball. Playfield wax helps a bit, but make sure the ball is perfectly smooth and the plunger tip is decent. They are cheap compared with the damage that can occur to to the playfield artwork.
Not debating the accuracy of all that, but curious how that’s possible, don’t they use stainless steel ball bearings for the pinball? They’re hard AF, how do they get dented just from the plunger?
@@heyspookyboogie644Usually Carbon Steel. Pinballs get pits fairly commonly, mainly on machines used on location that don’t get regular rubber replacements and maintenance.
@@AcornElectron I can do some stupid advise to balance things out. Once a month you are suposed to use a meatball as a a ball, this is to apply grease over the playfield and protect it. You have to make the meatball hard enough so the plunger doesn't explode it when it hit it, but soft enough so it can lay down the grease.
I had a wife before this channel, a family. I gave them up so I could keep watching this step-by-step logic of pinball machines and technology videos. They simply got in the way.
😂 I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get my kids to school this morning because I couldn't stop watching. And now I'm reading the comments instead of working.
Well, why did you bother having a family in the first place then if you were so committed to watching these?? You might as well wait unil 11pm in the evening to watch these and such, and watch it in parts and such (about 15 to 20 minutes apart and then stop).
It boggles my mind the amount of work it must have taken to dissect this machine and its schematics, figure out where everything is irl vs the circuit diagram, and build a whole script to actually explain it to general viewers and film it all to demonstrate it. We’re clearly not in no effort November anymore.
He said something under another comment about replacing parts multiple years ago, so I assume you'd be correct in thinking it took a long time, I've found that lots of longer term owners of machines like this, seem to learn and understand a TON about these machines.
@@goosenotmaverick1156 ineed, I fixed my first EM pinball machine when I was 10 and I can diagnose Williams games faults by the sound they make. The diagram and placement of parts and circuits is pretty logical and easy to follow. It was made for common people (arcade tech guys) to work with after all. On the other hand, Gottlieb machines are a nightmare to service ^^'
This has the energy of "I had to look at this schematic for days and now you have to as well." And because it's Alec, you bet your pinballs I'm going to watch it all.
It's videos like yours that have made me appreciate just how incredibly clever, complex, and elegant technologies and systems that seem "old fashioned" truly are. It feels like a common misconception that people were somehow less smart in those days when they were anything but.
... And yet things were still repairable because components were accessible and serviceable. Today if a 10c capacitor on a TV breaks it goes straight to the dump
@@YourFavouriteComment Only if you're not willing to find and replace the part. Problem nowadays is that replacements are so cheap it's often not worth the time to have a pro work on it
And they designed and manufactured all of this without CAD and simulations! That’s what always amazes me most, especially when it comes to big machines or buildings.
i was wondering about that and figured my screen broke - no!! just more BRILLIANT accessibility from technology connections. can’t rave enough about it!
With all the relays, contacts, and bulbs with very real limited lifespans, it's pretty amazing that these things actually worked well enough and long enough to make any money for the owner at all.
Well, yes, but "in the day", things were generally overbuilt. ISTR someone saying, for instancce, that later studies have determined that the Empire State Building actually used about four times as much steel as was really needed. In the absence of "modern" abilities of metallurgy, structural analysis and calculation, the idea was just to "build it stronger". Look at the size and thickness of the contact points, for example. Those babies will take many many more cycles of break and make than nowadays.
AFAIK the pinball machines were built for a 5-year lifecycle… and don‘t forget these „beasts“ had to work for a reasonable time w/o operator intervention. The rugged design of all the parts helps to achieve that goal, and we are lucky that even 60 or 70 years later they still are in working condition, thanks to that ruggedness!
lol it’s amazing any of the new ones work for more than a day with all the fragile electronics in them. These older ones are built to last. Hence why they still exist in working condition today. It sure if you noticed the cycle counter on this one. Do the math on it.
I intend to talk about this in part three - these are WAY more reliable than you think. I have much, MUCH more trouble with my solid-state machines - mostly because they have more intricate mechanisms and the ball moves faster, but partly because electronics are old and tired and they were being pushed to their limits. Everything in this is electromagnets and a single motor. About the only thing that goes wrong with them are issues with switch contacts - either they're getting dirty and need sanding, or they've gotten out of adjustment. And switches don't even get that dirty - they are all self-cleaning! They're designed to overextend with each actuation precisely so the contacts rub against each other and scrape carbon deposits off. As a matter of fact, I actually had Aztec on location in a restaurant for a couple of years. In thousands of games, not a single issue with the controls popped up beyond it occasionally eating a quarter when the coin unit didn't step up correctly. Otherwise I had to fix a broken flipper and adjust the kickers a couple of times as they slipped out from behind the rubbers.
@@TechnologyConnectionsthat’s a really good point and makes me wonder some times. So many modern semiconductor based devices are run or optimized to be so close to their red lines and limits even though they are actually much reduced ware items just because they can be and it’s cheaper (to make money like you said) that it make me wonder how far something could go if it was designed instead for long lasting lifespans and endurance rather then just lighter/more powerful/efficient/cheaper BOM. Like could we really actually see devices that could run for centuries or millennium with our technology like we see in sci-fi stories sometimes? But I guess we only really get to partially see that in some things that nasa sends out in space, where the environments are far harsher, there’s no maintenance and so they still really only designed lifespans to last out the limited power sources because they are still concerned about weight.
My Dad bought a Bally Wizard for our house when I was in highschool. I always remember opening up the cabinet and seeing that mess of wires underneath it, wondering how the heck it worked - especially how it could tell if you had the double bonus lit and award you double points when the ball went out of play. Thanks for scratching a decades long mental itch!
19:39 The fact that it’s split 8-12 and not 10-10 is likely another artifact of the original design having 16 reels: it would have been 8-8. When they tacked on another reel to each bank, they just paralleled it up with one of the banks, because redesigning it to do a 10-10 split would have been a much larger architectural change.
I feel like even in a 20 reel original design, they would have done 8-12 given that the lower 3 on every score ticks together. If they did 10-10, it would have required running whole scores together or else have some scores tick differently than other scores. Maybe they didn't care enough about aesthetics to worry about that, but I would have certainly chosen the current option over a 10-10 implementation unless there were power limitations.
Another great educational video! However, using this pinball machine for educational purposes violates its clear and centrally stated "For Amusement Only" directive. Per pinball law your fine must be paid in quarters.
hey alec, if you’d ever like to do a video regarding automatic pinsetters in bowling centers, let me know and i’d love to help and even invite you to my center in metro detroit. AMF machines are electromechanical entertainment at a borderline industrial size. many of the electrical stuff on my machines have been converted to integrated circuit boards, but there’s still machines near me running off steppers and relays such as these. there’s an entire center as well in iowa i think that runs Entirely off steppers and relays and still retains all of the original functionality.
Hell yes. The first time I went bowling as a kid, I was so transfixed by the pin setter that my parents got them to take me back behind and show me the workings. I seem to recall pins being sent through a track that does a loop-the-loop at some point, but not knowing why.
My parents got us a "home" version of the AZTEC machine from a local pinball distributor. The home version was modified to add a push button that would add players rather than having to insert coins. The machine was delivered with all schematics. It was serviced by the distributor as needed until I was old enough to assume the care and feeding of the machine. Alec, if you didn't know it, if you flip the power switch off and back on quickly when the last ball of the last player went out of play and the machine had not yet finished counting down the last points, it would finish counting down and then give a free ball. Infinite balls if you did it correctly. Enjoy. :-)
Pinball exploits! I didn't know about that one. We had a rather ugly hack to get free plays: If you lifted the machine up a few degrees and dropped it, the impact would cause the coin lever or wire to swing down as if a coin had been inserted. It wasn't exactly discreet, but in a loud environment full of drunk people we'd get away with it. I didn't really like that method as it felt like it would damage something sooner or later. Instead, I eventually learned to master the "Devil's Dare" by Gottlieb and could play all night from a single coin. Unfortunately it was hard to find a pub or arcade with that specific model.
Regarding the free ball trick - that wouldn't work with the coin-op version. There's a relay in the machine known as the Lock Relay and its only job is to fire the game over relay trip coil on power-up. Literally all it has is a single normally-closed switch feeding the game over relay trip coil, and the relay is always energized whenever it's powered on. But since its switch closes every time you switch the game off, when you re-apply power the game over relay trip coil will always fire. It's there for the very reason you've identified! If it weren't there, it would be pretty easy to cheat.
I'm not not 100% sure whether this would work on the coin-only version, unless I take a look inside mine or look at the drawings. The home AZTEC version _does_ have working coin slots, so you could use either coins or the special home credit button to give credits to start the game. You had to be very fast when flipping the power switch off and back on at the end of the game (simulating a momentary power glitch), or the game would, as you said, flip the Game Over relay if you were too slow flipping the switch.
The OG Reset Glitch Hack before you yung whipper snappers came along with your Xbox 360 and your yoohoo tubes. Back in my day we played with real money that we made from delivering bicycle loads of newspapers before breakfast. I had a real good throw, I tell you, and it made me a good pinball player. Microtransactions were what they paid us, and mine all went on pinball, icecream at the beach, and bicycle parts. That was the grind, kids! That was the grind.
I was an industrial electrician before I retired. I cut my teeth on relay logic programming and troubleshooting, needless to say I had to go through complex schematica on a daily basis. These pinball videos take me back to my early years before the machinery I worked on were controlled by PLCs. Your explination on relay logic operation is spot on.
@2barrell How did this sort of thing get planned? Trying to keep all those sequences going and in the right order is one (nontrivial) thing, but then reducing down to a minimal set of cams seems very challenging. I can't imagine doing it without a formalized way to what drives what, as a dependency or Gantt chart kind of thing.
@@joshmyer9 Probably a fair amount of incremental changes from earlier, simpler designs too, rather than designing from scratch. Not "let's make a whole new pinball machine," rather, "let's make some slightly better pinball machines than last year's."
@joshmyer9 I always started from the motion back to all the conditions needed to control it. Preliminary drawings will get the project started and then redrawn as it is manufactured. After AUTOCad came along it made drawing and editing much easier.
@airthrowDBT I never worked on pinball. My career was in the manufacturing realm. The controllers for machines that made items or for the packaging of them.
@@joshmyer9I imagine a lot of these things are done as a state machine, where you make abstraction of a lot of this stuff and can lump groups together. Similarly, you can make abstraction of some of the building blocks. Think of how complex the routing of individual transistors in something like a ALU would be, if you don't first make abstraction from transistors to logic gates, then logic building blocks (eg, 1 bit adders), which in turn get abstracted into larger blocks (32 bit full adders) and so on.
TC is always remarkable with their captions. At 19:30, the captions were even bumped up so you could see the subject in action! Thank you so much for making good captions.
@@AweoeTwo things. One: They is in fact grammatically correct in the singular case, and two, even if it wasn't, you assume Alec is the only person working on these videos.
I worked in a shop cleaning and repairing these machines in the '70s, and I am blown away by your detailed knowledge and clear explanations. Damn, man. You're the best!
Congratulations! Back in the 1970s, I worked for an amusement and vending company and had to learn all of this. In watching your video, I can easily state that you are far better at explaining the operations of E/M machines than any of our instructors/co-workers. (who would usually tell me to just lay the schematic out on the floor and "figure it out") Yes, finally got good at it, but a video like this would have been worth it's weight in gold back then. (which would have been a lot as it would have to have been on 2 inch quad R-R tape!)
If I were an armchair psychologist, I would diagnose Alec with ADD & state that electromechanical devices are definitely a subject of great interest to him. Source: My own ADD and obsessive need to understand how mechanical devices work. If you find a subject your fascinated with, you can do amazing things that a neurotypical person would never even think of.
Re: stepper motors Back in the mid-80s, I was working for what was then AT&T Microelectronics. At our plant, we made microchips and I worked in the chip testing department. Chips were manufactured thus: the circuits for a number of chips were etched onto thin silicon wafers, about the size and shape of a DVD. The chips were then tested on the wafers in machines that would spin the wafer to set each chip into position for very thin probes to contact it and run various inputs into and take outputs from the chip. The wafers were then literally sawed apart into individual chips, which were placed into their familiar centipede-looking "packages", then tested again in the packages before being shipped out. At some point, the plan was to also have bar codes etched into the wafers for inventory tracking. Bar code readers were fit to the testing machines for this purpose. But the bar codes consistently failed to scan properly. It didn't take long to figure out why: the machines used stepper motors to position the wafers for the probes but stepper motors are lousy at the smooth rotation required for reading bar codes. Panic ensued. (Well, people got kinda worked up about it, anyway.) Then my cubicle mate, Dave, a great and very smart guy, found a solution. He researched a mathematical formula that produced a sinusoidal curve which, if cut into a drive shaft, provided perfectly smooth, uniform back and forth motion for a pin riding in the groove. What made the formula unique was that there was no acceleration/deceleration at either end of the shaft, which was necessary for proper reading of the bar codes. He designed a small motor with this shaft/pin configuration, which could be mounted on a test machine to spin the wafer independently of the stepper motor to correctly read the bar code. This ingenious solution got Dave a patent. It was very cool.
@@lordmemester8798 Sorry, I don't know the patent number or anything that might help find it, except Dave's name. I don't want to publish that because privacy, of course.
@@MichaelPiz the patent number would hold Dave's full name no? If I'm correct then it's a little weird to say "for privacy reasons" in regard to something that is public
@@randomsomeguy156 True, but I don't know the patent number and, the internet being what it is, I don't want to be the one to give out any identifying information without permission. As of today, I have no way of contacting Dave to get permission.
Just fascinating what was done before micro processors were used for these games! Of course, part of the fun was the noise the relays, steppers, solenoids and motors made. Thanks for the detailed explanation!
It becomes a bit less fascinating when you realise that those processors are programmed with the exact same operations, just in text form instead of wire diagrams. There are some really amazing electromechanical marvels, but this machine is not one of them. Other than every condition operating in parallel all the time, instead of being triggered by program flow and being sequential, they are exactly what one would put into a computer program. In fact, it would be trivial to translate those schematics into a computer program. Ironically, the sequence wheel, which looks the most like computer programming, would be the hardest part of that.
Mechanical "memory" in these EM pinball machines is really complex... and amazing. You have done an excellent job explaining all of this... the 6 foot long schematic for these machines is insane. This is a great resource for me, since I have a Williams 4 player EM machine from 1977, _Argosy._ Very similar schematic and functionality, with different playfield and backglass. Thanks again!
@LakeNipissing -- Amen. I also had a Williams machine from that 1970s era. (Don't recall for sure, but it might have been Grand Prix, which was *insanely* complicated.) I don't have the machine any longer, but without someone like Alec to make the schematic even moderately understandable, I might as well have been trying to figure out the Saturn V booster! LOL. Cheers!
Electro-mechainical aka relay logic was how the world worked up until the 1950s. This type of stuff filled rooms in factories, power plants, and pretty much everything. Relays, and roller cams are simply 1s and 0s which is what we do with solid state processing now. Love this!
I work woth wiring diagrams and schematics every day and this... Makes my head hurt. It's massive and complex. Amazing effort you put in to understand this.
Hi from Italy, one of those countries where pinball was banned because of coin counters. It's quiete an interesting story, can not wait to hear your take about it :) One "funny" thing about reset procedures is that is the simply the most "broken" thing on a EM pinball: if you put a coin or press start and you hear the main drum running without stopping, you know one of the score drum is not opening it's zero-switch. I've witnessed a lot! And, a little bit of trivia: in this one, the ball counter reset to "Game Over", then goes "up" one by one via every ball played. Older pinball like Gottlieb ones, "upped" their ball counter steppers and went down when the ball drained. Some pinballs ever attached animations (like a horse kicking on Buckaroo) to this one, doubling both as an animation for start and an animation for extra balls. Keep going, I adore this series!
That is really interesting; your post prompted me to do a search as to why Italy (and other countries) banned pinball. It seems that the award of extra plays was considered gambling - even though there was no cash prize as such. Some machines were allowed if they removed the possibility of winning a replay. I have to say, having never played pinball, this has turned in to a surprisingly fascinating subject from the electromechanical and social point of view!
@@rossthompson1635 American companies even created pinball machine custom made for Italy and some other places (Italy being the biggest market). Those "Add-a-ball" even have the phrase "Senza ripetizione della partita" (Without replay)
@@TheAlby87Project Thank you - interesting. (And hello from the UK to you in bello Italia - I have very happy memories from a wonderful visit last summer).
Never been this fast to a video. Your first part was so good and I found it so interesting I bought a pinball machine. I’m currently restoring a 1967 Williams Beat time and can’t wait to play it!
Love the electro mechanical age! Where you can actually see and hear the logic in action. Machines like this definitely have a certain charm and feel about them. Unbelievably complex relay/stepper logic for the time and not a capacitor in sight to dry out, so they age very well and are theoretically infinitely serviceable! 😃
I've gotta wonder about the degradation of all the arcing contacts though, and the heat generated by all those electromagnets and incandescent bulbs changing material properties over time causing things to crumble. Still, the presence of _actual schematics_ and design for servicing probably greatly assists their lifespan by making any failure easy to correct, and these were probably built with magnets and contacts far larger/more expensive/more robust than would be typical these days, where relays are generally designed to be compact, low-drive-current, and most importantly cheap above all else.
I absolutely love ladder logic electromechanical systems and wanted to *understand* how pinball tables actually worked - but couldn't find the life force to buy a machine, and follow it all through. You really are doing such a sterling job in this. This series is absolutely my favourite of your episodes, and I'd love to see you do the same with other vintage gaming machines too.
I played an Aztec machine at the pinball museum in Seattle. It was so neat feeling the mechanics move around and hearing everything. Thank you for this awesome deep dive!!!
I would be interested in seeing a similar breakdown of an old slot-machine. It would be neat to see how the jackpot & payout rates could be tuned with just relay-logic.
This is a great series. I used to work on pinball machines for a summer job but never got into this depth of understanding. The guy I learned from used to troubleshoot by opening up the top and running a screwdriver over the relay contacts until he found a dead "zone" as he called it. He worked backward from there. Looking forward to part 3, and if necessary, part 4.
I love these long videos. My favorite videos on this channel are long ones that sound boring when I tell people about them, but are actually super interesting, like the one on rice cookers.
I love his videos too, and the rice cooker video is actually one I've sent to friends irl! One in particular who had given up cooking rice cuz of failed attempts. Alec definitely got a few people to try out rice cookers who wouldn't have otherwise! 😁🍚😋
I work in an engineering company and have a bunch of guys that I work with and every time there's a new technology connections video, we shared amongst ourselves. We're not here for short form content, We are here for every glorious pedantic detailed infused and overcomplicated nuance. Also for hatred of blue LEDs.
@@becauseimafan I worked in a Chinese delivery restaurant for 5 years, and my wife is Filipino, and it is the only way that I've ever seen anyone in Asia make rice.
@@geoffreychadwick9229 blue LEDs have driven me crazy since they came out. My eyes can't focus on them, so they always look out of focus and I hate it. Neighbors that use all blue LEDs for Christmas lights are the worst.
@@Alexander_Evans I have a theory about the focus thing, since I have the same problem and I've talked to/heard from others who have as well. We have the fewest short wavelength sensitive cones in our eyes out of the three kinds most humans have, and since LEDs are monochromatic, blue LEDs only stimulate that small subset of cones. Since cones are responsible for high resolution vision, having most of them inactive results in a blurry image. Just a theory, of course. Even if this is true, doubtless there are other factors involved.
It's incredibly rare to have a topic I actually can follow with and KNOW what you're talking about. I recently restored an old Williams Space Odyssey for my kids and learned a TON about these machines. I love hearing your perspective and knowledge on them.
Imagine being an engineer on a project like this, and your game designer comes to you with a new feature they want in the next project. LIke, you're on the project that has the first "bonus game" feature... Instead of a couple lines of code, you need to work out which relays you have to interrupt to add the new logic, and you have to consider how it interacts with every other feature that could interact with those relays. Crazy.
The ability to change out coin mechanisms is also how you can get coin mechs that only accept *specially made tokens for the arcade*! I've been to an arcade or two that used tokens instead of quarters before.
Tips and Tricks Magazine had a "Token of the Month" feature that showcased the various designs that those tokens had. (Also apparently, a whole lot of people kept sending in tokens for Pak Mann Arcade in Pasadena, CA not knowing that it already did get featured.)
My grandfather had a company that specialized in coin operated games, seeing this video gave me such a flashback to when I used to hang out with him and watch him repair pinball machines and juke boxes
I had the absolute pleasure of playing one of these a few days after thanksgiving and I got to have a wonderful conversation with the owners of the arcade where it was. I showed them your video and am looking forward to show them this one as well.
Wow, this takes me back. I restored an old broken down pinball machine that I bought from another kid when I was in middle school. I learned how to read the schematics by just looking at the machine. I think that might have started me towards my career as an EE.
I've played a lot of old pinball machines and always just assumed they were magic. Today I learned! If anyone who's made it here somehow doesn't know about the pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, btw, I highly recommend it! It's not just a museum, you can play all the machines, classic and modern alike. On the east coast we have Allentown pinfest, although I've heard from friends that it's kinda crowded and annoying the past couple years, but might still be worth a trip if you're nearby!
Well, you just convinced me that I need to attend the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Vegas this April. I'm retired, but I think - nay - KNOW I will go to that museum.
@@becauseimafan Old arcade cabinets, too. There was a traveling exhibit going pre-pandemic. No idea if it's still going around these days. Makes you appreciate how easy video games are these days!
These pin ball videos are phenomenal and in my opinion your best work ever. They must have taken hours to research/shoot/edit etc. I appreciate you doing them, thanks.
Fascinating! being in my 60s these electro-mechanical pinballs were just being phased out - in our Student-Union building there were several pinballs - an electromechanical 'KISS' themed one, a crossover between mechanical and early solid-state 'Black Knight' and a wonderful all-singing-all-dancing 'Alien' with no screens but fantastic quality sound and a play-field the size of a pool-table. Ahh, happy days..... they must have cost me at least one grade on my degree, if not 2.
I would like to start a petition for you to make a “Sights and Sounds” episode of this machine on your second channel. I would love a 10-20 minute video of *just* this bad boy in action. I love hearing those “ka-CHUNK”s.
Been watching part one and was amazed. Now part two: fantastic! Love the in depth- look at this fascinating machine! I own a 1968 Gottlieb „Rockmakers“ and maintain it myself. Works like a charm now for more than 50 years. One thing: Looking at that flaking backglass of your machine makes me sad… Alec, if you ever need a replacement for it: I can provide the scanned and retouched AZTEC backglass artwork, so you can have it printed on glass at a local printer. This is not a business thing, I do these retouches just for good friends, on a private basis, no money involved.
i just need to take a moment to thank Alec for how much thought they put into the captions at 19:30 the captions being moved is the first time ive seen a creator do that
I've only ever played modern pinball machines, and only once or twice, but this series might be my favorite that you've done. The schematic animations to add to your incredible explanations, all the cool mechanical logic on display for all to see, and those kick-ass spinning ones that look like arcane sigils. Incredibly cool!
Yah, I've mostly played modern pinball machines, growing up in the 1990s. But one youth group had a 70s electromechanical machine a lot like this one (though its theming was more Dakota-ish teepees rather than Aztec). It was probably 20+ years old at the time, but it still worked just fine. I think it was set to free-play too, rather than using its coin slots. 5-digit scores IIRC, though the last digit might've alternated between 0 and 5, rather than being a true 0-9 or just a dummy like here (not sure, been ~25 years since I saw it). (They also had a small built-into-a-table Pac-Man machine where the two players sat at opposite ends, albeit with Ms Pac-Man graphics on the joystick panels.)
I've worked on many relais-operated machines back in the day. I don't envy the guy who had to solder all of this into place. Kudos to Alec for another concise and easy-to-listen-to dissection of the inner workings of this pinball!!
Imagine one lousy *ground wire* connection happening...I had taken a one week vacation from a plant I worked at...a relay control panel stopped working...they called in electricians...couldn't fix it! Plant was down for 3 days until I got back from vacation...LoL!
Im liking the videos on the old electromechanical games, i work for a company that operates and repairs a bunch of these old pinballs and ball bowler games that use alot of the same mechanics, the wiring and analog logic in some of them are mind blowing
I can only imagine a handful of people to explain a vintage pinball machine in such detail and make it so interesting that i would watch it for hours. Magnificent job!
Thanks so much for this. As a onetime pinball repair tech, and current programmer, I think understanding the logic in such a system would be a fantastic way to teach many programming techniques. Especially debugging! Looking forward to pt 3!
I am so thankful for you making this. These machines are so fascinating. I have a few EM machines so this is giving me a better understanding on how they operate. You’re awesome!
You have successfully turned a wiring diagram into a 42 minute video. I (mostly) understand schematics but could never explain one to another person within an hour. Bravo sir.
I love these videos. I had an old Wurlitzer 950TA, a beautiful electromechanical organ with schematics almost as. Once you get into signal modulation with electromechanical parts, not to mention the tone-wheels on older machines, the space of what can be done without solid state electronics explodes. I would love to see you do a video on tone-wheel, or really any electromechanical organ. Sound generation is just fascinating!
Ooh I've been so excited for part 2 of this! Deep dives in to how complicated electromechanical stuff works are one of my favorite sorts of video on this channel.
It's incredible how these remind me so much of an old style telephone exchange, it's essentially the same concepts applied for something completely different. I can imagine actual telco engineers being involved in the design of these things back in the day.
This video ended too soon. In all seriousness, thank you for putting together a second part to this. I've become obsessed with pinball lately, and setting how the guts of an EM table work just hits all the right spots.
I was lucky enough to have one of these as a kid growing up. My best friend's dad sold it to us, Jungle Queen, and I can still hear the sounds of every hit and bonus point. I can remember so vividly peering behind the front door into the vast glowing cave of wires and electronics that I couldn't nor desired to make sense of. Anyway, thank you for this video ❤
Absolutely brilliant! I love old school pinball and this is real treat to any pinhead. Thanks for such a rare Christmas gift. A few years ago, I discovered another YT channel, "Joe's Classic Video Games", where I do sip my pin addiction, on deep diving repairs of gorgeous pins. Maybe you two could get together and produce an unique specialists special. Pinball machines do deserve it, as they encapsulate history, technology and art, like no other American folklore artifact. Nothing comes even close. And hey, it's an European writing this words... Thanks for all the enlightening videos. You really deserve a "special" for this one! Cheers 🍷🇵🇹
dude i absolutely love electromechanical machines. the effort the engineers must have gone through to make simple yet extremely convoluted machines like this.
Your channel is just such a wonderful source for learning. Your channel is how TV channels like Discovery, The Learning Channels and other 'big names' should be. Just about an hour of solid material explained clearly and at a very pleasant pace without starting with showing e.g. a pinball machine from 50 different angles in the first minute, switching to ads again and spending the next 5 minutes talking about what was talked about in the 5 minutes before the ads. 😜 I really, really thank you for creating and sharing this hight quality content with the world and I already wish you and your channel the very best for 2024! 🙏😊
2:05 Coin acceptor pron😋 I used to be one of the go-to guys in the area for rebuilding coin acceptors. Mostly laundromats, but I've got a couple pinball servicing under my belt with the help of a true master. They really are brilliantly done.
absolutely loving this extensive pinball coverage on here as of late, as i've been getting increasingly into the hobby and having a blast (albeit not with physical machines since those are hard to find near me; thank goodness for VPX)
What fascinates me the most about this beast, I think, other than the sheer intricacy and cleverness with which it is designed and built, is the degree of handmadedness of its construction. All those incredible bundles of wires and connections had to be soldered by a real, live human being (using lead-based solder no less - uugghh lol). All the little gizmos and apparatuses that make up the innards - hand assembled. And so on. What a fabulous machine! I'm old enough that I technically experienced the mechanical pinball era, but I don't think I ever actually saw any such beasts as a young kid. It was only later in the 1980s, when I was a teen and control systems had already moved over to electronics that I made my first contact with pinball that I am aware of. I did encounter a mechanical pinball machine once as an adult though, but it was broken down and non-functional, so I never got to experience all that clicking and clacking and buzzing, and ding-ding-ding:ing... :D Maybe some other day, who knows.
My late father would have loved your channel, especially this video. He was an MD, but was also an avid do-it-yourselfer who loved to learn how things worked. He was also a kid during what many consider the golden age of pinball. I've never been all that interested in pinball, beyond playing the occasional game, but even I loved watching and learning this.
Amazing, My father used to run a business, servicing these things some years ago. So complex, pretty much a mechanical computer inside. The team who designed these things must have been ingenious. What a shame we don't still have them machines, would be worth a bit now. 🧐
Hmm. Ive gotta go check joe hills' minecraft pinball machine to see if its mechanical. This is all super redstone-able though, with the steppers being piston feed tapes, and the relays being pulsed sticky pistons
I've found the pinball videos immensely interesting. The way you drilled down, following circuit paths, makes you appreciate how this was all done mechanically. You have a Thanks! coming before the end of the month. Looking forward to Part 3.
I love the design of this. Its amazing how much complexity you can get out of a few hardware if statements and for loops. Edit: (slightly more than a few)
14:47 don’t think I didn’t notice you change the names of the Reset Relays 1-3 to the Bump Relays on the schematic. Your attention to detail with your videos never fails to amaze
That knock when you get the match always gave me a jump because it sounds like something hitting the glass and is completely unique to that event, so I look forward to the explanation of what it is in the next video.
I have two old pinball machines. I love them, but I find them so mind-numbingly complicated to work on, even with the schematics. Your videos are very helpful.
Such a cool process. A guy from my gym repairs old pinball and arcade machines, and after watching both parts of this series that now seems a lot cooler
Alec, I appreciate how you dissected the logic for each of the functions performed by the input switches, relays, steppers and cam switches sequencing, etc.. The engineers had to have written up text of all the operations this pinball machine is to perform, before they came up with the hardwired relay logic programming. Amazing how sophisticated, this old technology machine is! 😯🎰
This series is so detailed, I wonder how much time it took you to get this all figured out and recorded. I thank you for showing this stuff, really makes you appreciate how much work went into getting these machines working, without having a single computer chip in there.
Amazing break down of a very complex old tech. working on these would take a lot of skill if the usual obvious sighs of failed components like discoloration and arced contacts wasn't present. You do such a fantastic job, Old school TV tech here and you continue to teach me things I never fully understood.
When I was about 10 yrs old, (my dad was a carpenter, one of his clients owned a TV repair shop. This man gave me a pinball machine to take apart, I was in heaven! Dozens of solenoids, relays, miles of wire, stepper switches (solinoid operated) and other goodies. One of the things that got me started in electronics and Ham Radio......
i am so glad i found your channel. the way you deliver dead pan zingers and one-liners is incredible. i love learning about all this stuff and the fact you include electrical schematics really helps me catch on to what you're saying almost immediately. thanks.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
Alec, make sure the ball plunger soft tip is in good shape. Once the rubber wears too thin, the ball gets pitted / dented and the playfield artwork will get scratched and worn by the ball. Playfield wax helps a bit, but make sure the ball is perfectly smooth and the plunger tip is decent. They are cheap compared with the damage that can occur to to the playfield artwork.
This Guy Pinballs
Actual useful advice in the TH-cam comments? What witchcraft is this?!
Not debating the accuracy of all that, but curious how that’s possible, don’t they use stainless steel ball bearings for the pinball? They’re hard AF, how do they get dented just from the plunger?
@@heyspookyboogie644Usually Carbon Steel. Pinballs get pits fairly commonly, mainly on machines used on location that don’t get regular rubber replacements and maintenance.
@@AcornElectron I can do some stupid advise to balance things out. Once a month you are suposed to use a meatball as a a ball, this is to apply grease over the playfield and protect it. You have to make the meatball hard enough so the plunger doesn't explode it when it hit it, but soft enough so it can lay down the grease.
I had a wife before this channel, a family. I gave them up so I could keep watching this step-by-step logic of pinball machines and technology videos.
They simply got in the way.
😂 I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get my kids to school this morning because I couldn't stop watching.
And now I'm reading the comments instead of working.
Good man! (I'm assuming sir mongoose is a guy!8-)
Lololololol
Well, why did you bother having a family in the first place then if you were so committed to watching these?? You might as well wait unil 11pm in the evening to watch these and such, and watch it in parts and such (about 15 to 20 minutes apart and then stop).
@@SuperFlashDriver 🤦♂
It boggles my mind the amount of work it must have taken to dissect this machine and its schematics, figure out where everything is irl vs the circuit diagram, and build a whole script to actually explain it to general viewers and film it all to demonstrate it.
We’re clearly not in no effort November anymore.
Indeed, it was a clear and cogent explanation of a complex, mechanical logic scheme.
He said something under another comment about replacing parts multiple years ago, so I assume you'd be correct in thinking it took a long time, I've found that lots of longer term owners of machines like this, seem to learn and understand a TON about these machines.
@@goosenotmaverick1156 ineed, I fixed my first EM pinball machine when I was 10 and I can diagnose Williams games faults by the sound they make.
The diagram and placement of parts and circuits is pretty logical and easy to follow. It was made for common people (arcade tech guys) to work with after all.
On the other hand, Gottlieb machines are a nightmare to service ^^'
Maximum Effort Mecember.
this is clearly Damn, that's a lot of research December.
This has the energy of "I had to look at this schematic for days and now you have to as well." And because it's Alec, you bet your pinballs I'm going to watch it all.
Perfect summary; that's exactly how it felt.
It's videos like yours that have made me appreciate just how incredibly clever, complex, and elegant technologies and systems that seem "old fashioned" truly are. It feels like a common misconception that people were somehow less smart in those days when they were anything but.
... And yet things were still repairable because components were accessible and serviceable. Today if a 10c capacitor on a TV breaks it goes straight to the dump
@@YourFavouriteComment Only if you're not willing to find and replace the part. Problem nowadays is that replacements are so cheap it's often not worth the time to have a pro work on it
And they designed and manufactured all of this without CAD and simulations! That’s what always amazes me most, especially when it comes to big machines or buildings.
We stand on the shoulders of giants
@@YourFavouriteComment Indeed, just to get access to that capacitor is a nightmare.
The fact that the captions were raised at a few points so as not to block some of the visual details made my day. Thank you.
i was wondering about that and figured my screen broke - no!! just more BRILLIANT accessibility from technology connections. can’t rave enough about it!
With all the relays, contacts, and bulbs with very real limited lifespans, it's pretty amazing that these things actually worked well enough and long enough to make any money for the owner at all.
Well, yes, but "in the day", things were generally overbuilt. ISTR someone saying, for instancce, that later studies have determined that the Empire State Building actually used about four times as much steel as was really needed. In the absence of "modern" abilities of metallurgy, structural analysis and calculation, the idea was just to "build it stronger".
Look at the size and thickness of the contact points, for example. Those babies will take many many more cycles of break and make than nowadays.
AFAIK the pinball machines were built for a 5-year lifecycle… and don‘t forget these „beasts“ had to work for a reasonable time w/o operator intervention. The rugged design of all the parts helps to achieve that goal, and we are lucky that even 60 or 70 years later they still are in working condition, thanks to that ruggedness!
lol it’s amazing any of the new ones work for more than a day with all the fragile electronics in them. These older ones are built to last. Hence why they still exist in working condition today. It sure if you noticed the cycle counter on this one. Do the math on it.
I intend to talk about this in part three - these are WAY more reliable than you think. I have much, MUCH more trouble with my solid-state machines - mostly because they have more intricate mechanisms and the ball moves faster, but partly because electronics are old and tired and they were being pushed to their limits.
Everything in this is electromagnets and a single motor. About the only thing that goes wrong with them are issues with switch contacts - either they're getting dirty and need sanding, or they've gotten out of adjustment. And switches don't even get that dirty - they are all self-cleaning! They're designed to overextend with each actuation precisely so the contacts rub against each other and scrape carbon deposits off.
As a matter of fact, I actually had Aztec on location in a restaurant for a couple of years. In thousands of games, not a single issue with the controls popped up beyond it occasionally eating a quarter when the coin unit didn't step up correctly. Otherwise I had to fix a broken flipper and adjust the kickers a couple of times as they slipped out from behind the rubbers.
@@TechnologyConnectionsthat’s a really good point and makes me wonder some times. So many modern semiconductor based devices are run or optimized to be so close to their red lines and limits even though they are actually much reduced ware items just because they can be and it’s cheaper (to make money like you said) that it make me wonder how far something could go if it was designed instead for long lasting lifespans and endurance rather then just lighter/more powerful/efficient/cheaper BOM. Like could we really actually see devices that could run for centuries or millennium with our technology like we see in sci-fi stories sometimes? But I guess we only really get to partially see that in some things that nasa sends out in space, where the environments are far harsher, there’s no maintenance and so they still really only designed lifespans to last out the limited power sources because they are still concerned about weight.
My Dad bought a Bally Wizard for our house when I was in highschool. I always remember opening up the cabinet and seeing that mess of wires underneath it, wondering how the heck it worked - especially how it could tell if you had the double bonus lit and award you double points when the ball went out of play.
Thanks for scratching a decades long mental itch!
19:39 The fact that it’s split 8-12 and not 10-10 is likely another artifact of the original design having 16 reels: it would have been 8-8. When they tacked on another reel to each bank, they just paralleled it up with one of the banks, because redesigning it to do a 10-10 split would have been a much larger architectural change.
I feel like even in a 20 reel original design, they would have done 8-12 given that the lower 3 on every score ticks together. If they did 10-10, it would have required running whole scores together or else have some scores tick differently than other scores. Maybe they didn't care enough about aesthetics to worry about that, but I would have certainly chosen the current option over a 10-10 implementation unless there were power limitations.
Another great educational video! However, using this pinball machine for educational purposes violates its clear and centrally stated "For Amusement Only" directive. Per pinball law your fine must be paid in quarters.
But education IS amusing
@@necromancer2367not if you go to an American school
hey alec, if you’d ever like to do a video regarding automatic pinsetters in bowling centers, let me know and i’d love to help and even invite you to my center in metro detroit. AMF machines are electromechanical entertainment at a borderline industrial size. many of the electrical stuff on my machines have been converted to integrated circuit boards, but there’s still machines near me running off steppers and relays such as these. there’s an entire center as well in iowa i think that runs Entirely off steppers and relays and still retains all of the original functionality.
I for one would love to see this!
same!
I would love to see that one day!
Hell yes. The first time I went bowling as a kid, I was so transfixed by the pin setter that my parents got them to take me back behind and show me the workings. I seem to recall pins being sent through a track that does a loop-the-loop at some point, but not knowing why.
That would be cool. I worked on 82/30 pinsetters way back in 1977. Would have been a neat career but I went another way.
"2 bits of trivia," immediately following the discussion of the quarter mechanism, was an awesome dad joke. nicely done!
And now that I've made it to the end, I see it's explained in the closed caption. Also, nice! (And, so, yes, at least one of us caught it.)
I both caught and appreciated that joke, it was quite good.
I don't get it
@@mlalbaitero "Two bits" is old slang for 25 cents.
My parents got us a "home" version of the AZTEC machine from a local pinball distributor. The home version was modified to add a push button that would add players rather than having to insert coins. The machine was delivered with all schematics. It was serviced by the distributor as needed until I was old enough to assume the care and feeding of the machine. Alec, if you didn't know it, if you flip the power switch off and back on quickly when the last ball of the last player went out of play and the machine had not yet finished counting down the last points, it would finish counting down and then give a free ball. Infinite balls if you did it correctly. Enjoy. :-)
Pinball exploits! I didn't know about that one. We had a rather ugly hack to get free plays: If you lifted the machine up a few degrees and dropped it, the impact would cause the coin lever or wire to swing down as if a coin had been inserted. It wasn't exactly discreet, but in a loud environment full of drunk people we'd get away with it. I didn't really like that method as it felt like it would damage something sooner or later.
Instead, I eventually learned to master the "Devil's Dare" by Gottlieb and could play all night from a single coin. Unfortunately it was hard to find a pub or arcade with that specific model.
Pinball lifehacks
Regarding the free ball trick - that wouldn't work with the coin-op version. There's a relay in the machine known as the Lock Relay and its only job is to fire the game over relay trip coil on power-up. Literally all it has is a single normally-closed switch feeding the game over relay trip coil, and the relay is always energized whenever it's powered on. But since its switch closes every time you switch the game off, when you re-apply power the game over relay trip coil will always fire. It's there for the very reason you've identified! If it weren't there, it would be pretty easy to cheat.
I'm not not 100% sure whether this would work on the coin-only version, unless I take a look inside mine or look at the drawings. The home AZTEC version _does_ have working coin slots, so you could use either coins or the special home credit button to give credits to start the game. You had to be very fast when flipping the power switch off and back on at the end of the game (simulating a momentary power glitch), or the game would, as you said, flip the Game Over relay if you were too slow flipping the switch.
The OG Reset Glitch Hack before you yung whipper snappers came along with your Xbox 360 and your yoohoo tubes. Back in my day we played with real money that we made from delivering bicycle loads of newspapers before breakfast. I had a real good throw, I tell you, and it made me a good pinball player. Microtransactions were what they paid us, and mine all went on pinball, icecream at the beach, and bicycle parts. That was the grind, kids! That was the grind.
I do love the "thats right! The XYZ relay!" it really reminds me of putting the shapes in the holes...
I was an industrial electrician before I retired. I cut my teeth on relay logic programming and troubleshooting, needless to say I had to go through complex schematica on a daily basis. These pinball videos take me back to my early years before the machinery I worked on were controlled by PLCs. Your explination on relay logic operation is spot on.
@2barrell How did this sort of thing get planned? Trying to keep all those sequences going and in the right order is one (nontrivial) thing, but then reducing down to a minimal set of cams seems very challenging. I can't imagine doing it without a formalized way to what drives what, as a dependency or Gantt chart kind of thing.
@@joshmyer9 Probably a fair amount of incremental changes from earlier, simpler designs too, rather than designing from scratch. Not "let's make a whole new pinball machine," rather, "let's make some slightly better pinball machines than last year's."
@joshmyer9 I always started from the motion back to all the conditions needed to control it. Preliminary drawings will get the project started and then redrawn as it is manufactured. After AUTOCad came along it made drawing and editing much easier.
@airthrowDBT I never worked on pinball. My career was in the manufacturing realm. The controllers for machines that made items or for the packaging of them.
@@joshmyer9I imagine a lot of these things are done as a state machine, where you make abstraction of a lot of this stuff and can lump groups together. Similarly, you can make abstraction of some of the building blocks. Think of how complex the routing of individual transistors in something like a ALU would be, if you don't first make abstraction from transistors to logic gates, then logic building blocks (eg, 1 bit adders), which in turn get abstracted into larger blocks (32 bit full adders) and so on.
TC is always remarkable with their captions. At 19:30, the captions were even bumped up so you could see the subject in action! Thank you so much for making good captions.
His
@@Aweoeplease tell me you did not get offended by a word
@@AweoeTwo things. One: They is in fact grammatically correct in the singular case, and two, even if it wasn't, you assume Alec is the only person working on these videos.
They is not in fact grammatically correct when the gender of the subject is known, and yeah he's independent right now@@Ziess
@@Aweoe You know the gender of the captioner? Single they is also grammatically correct and has been for centuries, get a grip.
I worked in a shop cleaning and repairing these machines in the '70s, and I am blown away by your detailed knowledge and clear explanations. Damn, man. You're the best!
Congratulations! Back in the 1970s, I worked for an amusement and vending company and had to learn all of this. In watching your video, I can easily state that you are far better at explaining the operations of E/M machines than any of our instructors/co-workers. (who would usually tell me to just lay the schematic out on the floor and "figure it out") Yes, finally got good at it, but a video like this would have been worth it's weight in gold back then. (which would have been a lot as it would have to have been on 2 inch quad R-R tape!)
It could have been on U-Matic Cassette :-) There again fixing those would have probably been better paid.
Fixing too complex devices like this should have been very nightmarish challenging. I'm respecting to who invented, built and fixed these devices.
If I were an armchair psychologist, I would diagnose Alec with ADD & state that electromechanical devices are definitely a subject of great interest to him. Source: My own ADD and obsessive need to understand how mechanical devices work. If you find a subject your fascinated with, you can do amazing things that a neurotypical person would never even think of.
Re: stepper motors
Back in the mid-80s, I was working for what was then AT&T Microelectronics. At our plant, we made microchips and I worked in the chip testing department.
Chips were manufactured thus: the circuits for a number of chips were etched onto thin silicon wafers, about the size and shape of a DVD. The chips were then tested on the wafers in machines that would spin the wafer to set each chip into position for very thin probes to contact it and run various inputs into and take outputs from the chip. The wafers were then literally sawed apart into individual chips, which were placed into their familiar centipede-looking "packages", then tested again in the packages before being shipped out.
At some point, the plan was to also have bar codes etched into the wafers for inventory tracking. Bar code readers were fit to the testing machines for this purpose. But the bar codes consistently failed to scan properly. It didn't take long to figure out why: the machines used stepper motors to position the wafers for the probes but stepper motors are lousy at the smooth rotation required for reading bar codes. Panic ensued. (Well, people got kinda worked up about it, anyway.)
Then my cubicle mate, Dave, a great and very smart guy, found a solution. He researched a mathematical formula that produced a sinusoidal curve which, if cut into a drive shaft, provided perfectly smooth, uniform back and forth motion for a pin riding in the groove. What made the formula unique was that there was no acceleration/deceleration at either end of the shaft, which was necessary for proper reading of the bar codes. He designed a small motor with this shaft/pin configuration, which could be mounted on a test machine to spin the wafer independently of the stepper motor to correctly read the bar code.
This ingenious solution got Dave a patent. It was very cool.
Neat! Out of curiosity, would you happen to know where this patent can be found (if at all)?
@@lordmemester8798 Sorry, I don't know the patent number or anything that might help find it, except Dave's name. I don't want to publish that because privacy, of course.
Dave seems cool.
@@MichaelPiz the patent number would hold Dave's full name no? If I'm correct then it's a little weird to say "for privacy reasons" in regard to something that is public
@@randomsomeguy156 True, but I don't know the patent number and, the internet being what it is, I don't want to be the one to give out any identifying information without permission. As of today, I have no way of contacting Dave to get permission.
Just fascinating what was done before micro processors were used for these games!
Of course, part of the fun was the noise the relays, steppers, solenoids and motors made.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
Someone should really revisit these classic designs with modern steppers and such
All the sound, the third the electricity!
It becomes a bit less fascinating when you realise that those processors are programmed with the exact same operations, just in text form instead of wire diagrams. There are some really amazing electromechanical marvels, but this machine is not one of them. Other than every condition operating in parallel all the time, instead of being triggered by program flow and being sequential, they are exactly what one would put into a computer program.
In fact, it would be trivial to translate those schematics into a computer program. Ironically, the sequence wheel, which looks the most like computer programming, would be the hardest part of that.
Mechanical "memory" in these EM pinball machines is really complex... and amazing.
You have done an excellent job explaining all of this... the 6 foot long schematic for these machines is insane.
This is a great resource for me, since I have a Williams 4 player EM machine from 1977, _Argosy._ Very similar schematic and functionality, with different playfield and backglass. Thanks again!
@LakeNipissing -- Amen. I also had a Williams machine from that 1970s era. (Don't recall for sure, but it might have been Grand Prix, which was *insanely* complicated.) I don't have the machine any longer, but without someone like Alec to make the schematic even moderately understandable, I might as well have been trying to figure out the Saturn V booster! LOL. Cheers!
Electro-mechainical aka relay logic was how the world worked up until the 1950s. This type of stuff filled rooms in factories, power plants, and pretty much everything. Relays, and roller cams are simply 1s and 0s which is what we do with solid state processing now.
Love this!
Yeah, sadly only the older stuff gives you a symphony as it works 😢
Check out the ANITA calculator. A fully electronic calculator that used neon logic !
I work woth wiring diagrams and schematics every day and this... Makes my head hurt. It's massive and complex. Amazing effort you put in to understand this.
I'd like to meet the people who designed these
You need to study time travel !!
Hi from Italy, one of those countries where pinball was banned because of coin counters. It's quiete an interesting story, can not wait to hear your take about it :) One "funny" thing about reset procedures is that is the simply the most "broken" thing on a EM pinball: if you put a coin or press start and you hear the main drum running without stopping, you know one of the score drum is not opening it's zero-switch. I've witnessed a lot!
And, a little bit of trivia: in this one, the ball counter reset to "Game Over", then goes "up" one by one via every ball played. Older pinball like Gottlieb ones, "upped" their ball counter steppers and went down when the ball drained. Some pinballs ever attached animations (like a horse kicking on Buckaroo) to this one, doubling both as an animation for start and an animation for extra balls.
Keep going, I adore this series!
That is really interesting; your post prompted me to do a search as to why Italy (and other countries) banned pinball. It seems that the award of extra plays was considered gambling - even though there was no cash prize as such. Some machines were allowed if they removed the possibility of winning a replay. I have to say, having never played pinball, this has turned in to a surprisingly fascinating subject from the electromechanical and social point of view!
@@rossthompson1635 American companies even created pinball machine custom made for Italy and some other places (Italy being the biggest market). Those "Add-a-ball" even have the phrase "Senza ripetizione della partita" (Without replay)
@@TheAlby87Project Thank you - interesting. (And hello from the UK to you in bello Italia - I have very happy memories from a wonderful visit last summer).
Never been this fast to a video. Your first part was so good and I found it so interesting I bought a pinball machine. I’m currently restoring a 1967 Williams Beat time and can’t wait to play it!
Oh I love Beat Time if for no other reason - The Bootles!
As an old school EE, I really love these deep dives into old electromechanical systems.
Love the electro mechanical age! Where you can actually see and hear the logic in action. Machines like this definitely have a certain charm and feel about them. Unbelievably complex relay/stepper logic for the time and not a capacitor in sight to dry out, so they age very well and are theoretically infinitely serviceable! 😃
I've gotta wonder about the degradation of all the arcing contacts though, and the heat generated by all those electromagnets and incandescent bulbs changing material properties over time causing things to crumble. Still, the presence of _actual schematics_ and design for servicing probably greatly assists their lifespan by making any failure easy to correct, and these were probably built with magnets and contacts far larger/more expensive/more robust than would be typical these days, where relays are generally designed to be compact, low-drive-current, and most importantly cheap above all else.
I absolutely love ladder logic electromechanical systems and wanted to *understand* how pinball tables actually worked - but couldn't find the life force to buy a machine, and follow it all through. You really are doing such a sterling job in this. This series is absolutely my favourite of your episodes, and I'd love to see you do the same with other vintage gaming machines too.
I played an Aztec machine at the pinball museum in Seattle. It was so neat feeling the mechanics move around and hearing everything. Thank you for this awesome deep dive!!!
I would be interested in seeing a similar breakdown of an old slot-machine. It would be neat to see how the jackpot & payout rates could be tuned with just relay-logic.
Ooh this would be interesting to see!!
I might just do that when I restore my Slot Machine I bought this next week. Thanks for the idea, I’ll upload that on my PribsPinballRepair channel
The old non electric one armed bandits were works of art outside and in.
@@blindsofficial8347just subbed, looking forward to seeing it
I was thinking the same thing seeing this, be interesting to see how it does "random" rotation and win detection
This is a great series. I used to work on pinball machines for a summer job but never got into this depth of understanding. The guy I learned from used to troubleshoot by opening up the top and running a screwdriver over the relay contacts until he found a dead "zone" as he called it. He worked backward from there. Looking forward to part 3, and if necessary, part 4.
I love these long videos. My favorite videos on this channel are long ones that sound boring when I tell people about them, but are actually super interesting, like the one on rice cookers.
I love his videos too, and the rice cooker video is actually one I've sent to friends irl! One in particular who had given up cooking rice cuz of failed attempts. Alec definitely got a few people to try out rice cookers who wouldn't have otherwise! 😁🍚😋
I work in an engineering company and have a bunch of guys that I work with and every time there's a new technology connections video, we shared amongst ourselves.
We're not here for short form content, We are here for every glorious pedantic detailed infused and overcomplicated nuance. Also for hatred of blue LEDs.
@@becauseimafan I worked in a Chinese delivery restaurant for 5 years, and my wife is Filipino, and it is the only way that I've ever seen anyone in Asia make rice.
@@geoffreychadwick9229 blue LEDs have driven me crazy since they came out. My eyes can't focus on them, so they always look out of focus and I hate it. Neighbors that use all blue LEDs for Christmas lights are the worst.
@@Alexander_Evans I have a theory about the focus thing, since I have the same problem and I've talked to/heard from others who have as well. We have the fewest short wavelength sensitive cones in our eyes out of the three kinds most humans have, and since LEDs are monochromatic, blue LEDs only stimulate that small subset of cones. Since cones are responsible for high resolution vision, having most of them inactive results in a blurry image.
Just a theory, of course. Even if this is true, doubtless there are other factors involved.
I never received such high quality lessons at engineering university. We humans need more people like you Alec.
It's incredibly rare to have a topic I actually can follow with and KNOW what you're talking about. I recently restored an old Williams Space Odyssey for my kids and learned a TON about these machines. I love hearing your perspective and knowledge on them.
Imagine being an engineer on a project like this, and your game designer comes to you with a new feature they want in the next project. LIke, you're on the project that has the first "bonus game" feature... Instead of a couple lines of code, you need to work out which relays you have to interrupt to add the new logic, and you have to consider how it interacts with every other feature that could interact with those relays. Crazy.
The ability to change out coin mechanisms is also how you can get coin mechs that only accept *specially made tokens for the arcade*! I've been to an arcade or two that used tokens instead of quarters before.
Tips and Tricks Magazine had a "Token of the Month" feature that showcased the various designs that those tokens had. (Also apparently, a whole lot of people kept sending in tokens for Pak Mann Arcade in Pasadena, CA not knowing that it already did get featured.)
… and foreign currencies for export.
We had one of these pinball machines in every « café » here in France.
My grandfather had a company that specialized in coin operated games, seeing this video gave me such a flashback to when I used to hang out with him and watch him repair pinball machines and juke boxes
I had the absolute pleasure of playing one of these a few days after thanksgiving and I got to have a wonderful conversation with the owners of the arcade where it was. I showed them your video and am looking forward to show them this one as well.
Oh that's so cool! 😊
a girl!!!! RUN! 😂
Wow, this takes me back. I restored an old broken down pinball machine that I bought from another kid when I was in middle school. I learned how to read the schematics by just looking at the machine. I think that might have started me towards my career as an EE.
I've played a lot of old pinball machines and always just assumed they were magic. Today I learned!
If anyone who's made it here somehow doesn't know about the pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, btw, I highly recommend it! It's not just a museum, you can play all the machines, classic and modern alike. On the east coast we have Allentown pinfest, although I've heard from friends that it's kinda crowded and annoying the past couple years, but might still be worth a trip if you're nearby!
Shorty's in Seattle
Asheville NC has a playable pinball museum too
Well, you just convinced me that I need to attend the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Vegas this April. I'm retired, but I think - nay - KNOW I will go to that museum.
Today I learned pinball machines have museums, and that they just might be
The Coolest ™️ cuz you can play them!
Interactive museums for the win!
@@becauseimafan Old arcade cabinets, too. There was a traveling exhibit going pre-pandemic. No idea if it's still going around these days. Makes you appreciate how easy video games are these days!
These pin ball videos are phenomenal and in my opinion your best work ever. They must have taken hours to research/shoot/edit etc. I appreciate you doing them, thanks.
Fascinating!
being in my 60s these electro-mechanical pinballs were just being phased out - in our Student-Union building there were several pinballs - an electromechanical 'KISS' themed one, a crossover between mechanical and early solid-state 'Black Knight' and a wonderful all-singing-all-dancing 'Alien' with no screens but fantastic quality sound and a play-field the size of a pool-table.
Ahh, happy days..... they must have cost me at least one grade on my degree, if not 2.
I never thought I'd be so invested in an old-school pinball machine video essay series. Great job breaking this stuff down!
"2 bits of trivia" might be one of your most niche puns to date.
I would like to start a petition for you to make a “Sights and Sounds” episode of this machine on your second channel. I would love a 10-20 minute video of *just* this bad boy in action. I love hearing those “ka-CHUNK”s.
I just joined the Patreon this week. What an amazing first early release for me!
Been watching part one and was amazed. Now part two: fantastic! Love the in depth- look at this fascinating machine!
I own a 1968 Gottlieb „Rockmakers“ and maintain it myself. Works like a charm now for more than 50 years.
One thing: Looking at that flaking backglass of your machine makes me sad… Alec, if you ever need a replacement for it: I can provide the scanned and retouched AZTEC backglass artwork, so you can have it printed on glass at a local printer. This is not a business thing, I do these retouches just for good friends, on a private basis, no money involved.
Man, it is actually amazing how much thought had to go into designing these - and without a computer to help optimize!
i just need to take a moment to thank Alec for how much thought they put into the captions
at 19:30 the captions being moved is the first time ive seen a creator do that
Alec sure plays a mean pinball video.
From Soho down to Brighton, he must have played them all.
👍🎶🎵
He's a Wizard.
And owns a pair of giant boots, probably.
Plays by induction, the digit relays click
I've only ever played modern pinball machines, and only once or twice, but this series might be my favorite that you've done. The schematic animations to add to your incredible explanations, all the cool mechanical logic on display for all to see, and those kick-ass spinning ones that look like arcane sigils. Incredibly cool!
Yah, I've mostly played modern pinball machines, growing up in the 1990s. But one youth group had a 70s electromechanical machine a lot like this one (though its theming was more Dakota-ish teepees rather than Aztec). It was probably 20+ years old at the time, but it still worked just fine. I think it was set to free-play too, rather than using its coin slots. 5-digit scores IIRC, though the last digit might've alternated between 0 and 5, rather than being a true 0-9 or just a dummy like here (not sure, been ~25 years since I saw it).
(They also had a small built-into-a-table Pac-Man machine where the two players sat at opposite ends, albeit with Ms Pac-Man graphics on the joystick panels.)
These 2 pinball machine videos were among my favorites on your channel. Im excited for the third one. Thank you for the content!
I've worked on many relais-operated machines back in the day. I don't envy the guy who had to solder all of this into place. Kudos to Alec for another concise and easy-to-listen-to dissection of the inner workings of this pinball!!
Imagine one lousy *ground wire* connection happening...I had taken a one week vacation from a plant I worked at...a relay control panel stopped working...they called in electricians...couldn't fix it! Plant was down for 3 days until I got back from vacation...LoL!
Im liking the videos on the old electromechanical games, i work for a company that operates and repairs a bunch of these old pinballs and ball bowler games that use alot of the same mechanics, the wiring and analog logic in some of them are mind blowing
I can only imagine a handful of people to explain a vintage pinball machine in such detail and make it so interesting that i would watch it for hours. Magnificent job!
5:50 quick correction: that's the wotorola logo actually
Sounds like Wario founded it.
You deserve a TH-cam award for just understanding how it all works and then for how you presented it.
It's finally here! I really enjoyed the first pinball video, so I'm looking forward to this one.
1:00 I really appreciate your forthright commitment to brevity and your communication of that commitment.
Thanks so much for this. As a onetime pinball repair tech, and current programmer, I think understanding the logic in such a system would be a fantastic way to teach many programming techniques. Especially debugging! Looking forward to pt 3!
In the end this is kind of like a very basic programming language in physical space.
I am so thankful for you making this. These machines are so fascinating. I have a few EM machines so this is giving me a better understanding on how they operate. You’re awesome!
You have successfully turned a wiring diagram into a 42 minute video. I (mostly) understand schematics but could never explain one to another person within an hour. Bravo sir.
So eagerly excited for part 3!! This has to be my favorite recurring series on your channel so far
I love these videos. I had an old Wurlitzer 950TA, a beautiful electromechanical organ with schematics almost as. Once you get into signal modulation with electromechanical parts, not to mention the tone-wheels on older machines, the space of what can be done without solid state electronics explodes.
I would love to see you do a video on tone-wheel, or really any electromechanical organ. Sound generation is just fascinating!
Ooh I've been so excited for part 2 of this! Deep dives in to how complicated electromechanical stuff works are one of my favorite sorts of video on this channel.
It's incredible how these remind me so much of an old style telephone exchange, it's essentially the same concepts applied for something completely different. I can imagine actual telco engineers being involved in the design of these things back in the day.
This video ended too soon.
In all seriousness, thank you for putting together a second part to this. I've become obsessed with pinball lately, and setting how the guts of an EM table work just hits all the right spots.
I was lucky enough to have one of these as a kid growing up. My best friend's dad sold it to us, Jungle Queen, and I can still hear the sounds of every hit and bonus point.
I can remember so vividly peering behind the front door into the vast glowing cave of wires and electronics that I couldn't nor desired to make sense of.
Anyway, thank you for this video ❤
Absolutely brilliant!
I love old school pinball and this is real treat to any pinhead.
Thanks for such a rare Christmas gift.
A few years ago, I discovered another YT channel, "Joe's Classic Video Games", where I do sip my pin addiction, on deep diving repairs of gorgeous pins. Maybe you two could get together and produce an unique specialists special.
Pinball machines do deserve it, as they encapsulate history, technology and art, like no other American folklore artifact. Nothing comes even close. And hey, it's an European writing this words...
Thanks for all the enlightening videos.
You really deserve a "special" for this one!
Cheers 🍷🇵🇹
I'm so happy you released that second part on the Pinball mechanics. I have been looking for that video every week.
Feel like another Xmas present.
dude i absolutely love electromechanical machines. the effort the engineers must have gone through to make simple yet extremely convoluted machines like this.
Your channel is just such a wonderful source for learning. Your channel is how TV channels like Discovery, The Learning Channels and other 'big names' should be. Just about an hour of solid material explained clearly and at a very pleasant pace without starting with showing e.g. a pinball machine from 50 different angles in the first minute, switching to ads again and spending the next 5 minutes talking about what was talked about in the 5 minutes before the ads. 😜
I really, really thank you for creating and sharing this hight quality content with the world and I already wish you and your channel the very best for 2024! 🙏😊
2:05 Coin acceptor pron😋 I used to be one of the go-to guys in the area for rebuilding coin acceptors. Mostly laundromats, but I've got a couple pinball servicing under my belt with the help of a true master. They really are brilliantly done.
absolutely loving this extensive pinball coverage on here as of late, as i've been getting increasingly into the hobby and having a blast (albeit not with physical machines since those are hard to find near me; thank goodness for VPX)
What fascinates me the most about this beast, I think, other than the sheer intricacy and cleverness with which it is designed and built, is the degree of handmadedness of its construction. All those incredible bundles of wires and connections had to be soldered by a real, live human being (using lead-based solder no less - uugghh lol). All the little gizmos and apparatuses that make up the innards - hand assembled. And so on. What a fabulous machine!
I'm old enough that I technically experienced the mechanical pinball era, but I don't think I ever actually saw any such beasts as a young kid. It was only later in the 1980s, when I was a teen and control systems had already moved over to electronics that I made my first contact with pinball that I am aware of. I did encounter a mechanical pinball machine once as an adult though, but it was broken down and non-functional, so I never got to experience all that clicking and clacking and buzzing, and ding-ding-ding:ing... :D Maybe some other day, who knows.
I love the sounds of those old mechanical pinball machines.
My late father would have loved your channel, especially this video. He was an MD, but was also an avid do-it-yourselfer who loved to learn how things worked. He was also a kid during what many consider the golden age of pinball. I've never been all that interested in pinball, beyond playing the occasional game, but even I loved watching and learning this.
Amazing, My father used to run a business, servicing these things some years ago. So complex, pretty much a mechanical computer inside. The team who designed these things must have been ingenious. What a shame we don't still have them machines, would be worth a bit now. 🧐
Fascinating machine. Nothing feeds creativity like lack of options.
Hmm. Ive gotta go check joe hills' minecraft pinball machine to see if its mechanical.
This is all super redstone-able though, with the steppers being piston feed tapes, and the relays being pulsed sticky pistons
I've found the pinball videos immensely interesting.
The way you drilled down, following circuit paths, makes you
appreciate how this was all done mechanically.
You have a Thanks! coming before the end of the month.
Looking forward to Part 3.
I love the design of this. Its amazing how much complexity you can get out of a few hardware if statements and for loops.
Edit: (slightly more than a few)
14:47 don’t think I didn’t notice you change the names of the Reset Relays 1-3 to the Bump Relays on the schematic. Your attention to detail with your videos never fails to amaze
New Technology connections videos are always a treat!
How are these comments 1 day old tho? Shows video just uploaded?
@@timmersoftPatreon prerelease
Yeah, I’m pretty sure theyre from the patreon prerelease
That knock when you get the match always gave me a jump because it sounds like something hitting the glass and is completely unique to that event, so I look forward to the explanation of what it is in the next video.
I have two old pinball machines. I love them, but I find them so mind-numbingly complicated to work on, even with the schematics. Your videos are very helpful.
I can barely imagine. Have you ever called in a pro for help? I assume it's a pretty rare skillet these days
Go check Joe's classic .....
Ron has many videos up fixing these machines
@@DirtyRobot I follow that channel. He’s really good.
@@dielaughing73 I’ve asked a couple friends who are electrical engineers. Even they find it a bit overwhelming. But I’ll eventually figure it out.
@@jayducharme not really in the wheelhouse of your modern-day EE
Such a cool process. A guy from my gym repairs old pinball and arcade machines, and after watching both parts of this series that now seems a lot cooler
This dude really spent 0:40 to 1:09 to tell us he tried to make the video as short as possible in MLA format 💀💀💀💀
You win the comment section!
Alec, I appreciate how you dissected the logic for each of the functions performed by the input switches, relays, steppers and cam switches sequencing, etc.. The engineers had to have written up text of all the operations this pinball machine is to perform, before they came up with the hardwired relay logic programming. Amazing how sophisticated, this old technology machine is! 😯🎰
18:14 Nice!
This series is so detailed, I wonder how much time it took you to get this all figured out and recorded.
I thank you for showing this stuff, really makes you appreciate how much work went into getting these machines working, without having a single computer chip in there.
Time for new flipper rubbers!
Amazing break down of a very complex old tech. working on these would take a lot of skill if the usual obvious sighs of failed components like discoloration and arced contacts wasn't present. You do such a fantastic job, Old school TV tech here and you continue to teach me things I never fully understood.
It's really relay time!
When I was about 10 yrs old, (my dad was a carpenter, one of his clients owned a TV repair shop. This man gave me a pinball machine to take apart, I was in heaven! Dozens of solenoids, relays, miles of wire, stepper switches (solinoid operated) and other goodies. One of the things that got me started in electronics and Ham Radio......
that's a lot of... stufff
i am so glad i found your channel. the way you deliver dead pan zingers and one-liners is incredible. i love learning about all this stuff and the fact you include electrical schematics really helps me catch on to what you're saying almost immediately. thanks.
I love that TH-cam keeps un subbing me from random content creators. Either that or my child run amuck!
I particularly loved listening to Alec describing in no fewer than 100 words, his intention to be concise.
Today IS a good day to die....I mean watch a 42 min video about pinball machines!