You made the right choice. I’m big into pinball and as soon as I saw your specimen I was like “wow that’s in museum quality condition “. Then I was sad to think it’s gonna get modified. But now super happy you decided to leave it live on in all its original glory. Great video.

Great video Ruby! Hope to see more fun projects from you.

Excellent walk through the insides of this gorgeous old machine. So much ingenuity. Definitely the right choice to let her creak and grow old as she is.

I almost quit watching at 3:00 due to not being able to sit and watch you strip and rebuild her. I came down to the comments and saw that you didn't gut her, but got her working under her own guts. I'm glad I went back and finished the video. The only reason I could see updating her to digital electronics is if someone else had already gutted her beyond repair. I regularly watch the KZread channel "Joe's Classic Video Games" where he routinely restores old electro-mechanical pinball machines, juke boxes and video games up to the 90's era. You should check it out. He shows how to easily follow the schematics and troubleshooting for the non-technical types.

@meltysquirrel2919

5 ай бұрын

C'mon people! Ya can't do that! C'mon now! 😅 And don't forget it's illegal to put LEDs in a wood rail machine! 👍 (nope, not gonna say "microfarad" since there aint no capacitors in it 😛)

Funny, Technology Connections just made a video about a pinball machine and its electronics today too!

@theelmonk

5 ай бұрын

As an owner and maintainer of an EM pin, Technology Connections' video is great stuff.

Hi Ruby. I always enjoy your videos and look forward to more from you. I'm glad you kept Ms Creaky original. It's amazing how electromechanical machines like this can implement gameplay. I think you should find a machine that is beyond economical repair and gut it and replace the internals with modern electronics. That would be an amazing multipart series for E14!

Happy that you keep this piece alive !

I'm so glad you came to this realisation ! Excellent :-)

Huzzah for the repairability message. Thanks, Ruby and team!

Good video. I'm an old engineer and I love seeing young engineers learning. It seems I can never learn enough. There's just so much interesting stuff out there. I'm glad you didn't change to solid state. How else would we know how older electromechanical machines work? Industrial electronics has seen the same evolution as pinball machines. Thanks!

Looks like the pinball bug is spreading across our hosts!😂

@TheElectronicEngineer

5 ай бұрын

Sure does…. Scouting the market for days now… i think a good old mechanical jukebox is next

You might consider a project to design and build a miniature recreation of the machine using all modern parts. Seems like that would make for an interesting series.

There's nothing wrong with *not* modernizing something. I had an old Grundig desktop radio and I "modernized" it to run off of a Ras Pi pulling internet stations rather than traditional radio. It was a great exercise in interfacing the old and new, lining up the old frequency dial to match the display name (city names at certain frequencies) with the internet equivalent and more, but it somehow lost its charm. Nothing changed externally, but the audio was different, the operational/tactile feel was different, the lamps that replaced with LEDs glowed different. It made me look at modernizing things differently after that.

I recently inherited an even older (and thankfully much simpler) EM machine... it has been sitting in my garage, waiting for me to get up the guts to even look at it. This video has been a great glimpse into an even more complicated machine and given me a lot more confidence on getting into it! I didn't really understand the shutter mechanism and the point of the whole thing, I thought part of the table was misaligned. Thanks for sharing the journey, this is awesome!

I love old pinball machines since my parents had an old machine in our basement when I was a kid. I guess that might also pushed me into the direction of electrical engineering. You definitely made the right choice in not modernizing it ❤ Nice video, very well presented, hope to see more content from you.

Very nice machine. I'm glad that you repaired some things and kept her original :)

Yay Ruby! Great video, thank you 🙌

@RubyZoom

5 ай бұрын

😊thanks for watching!

I loved working on pinballs and video games from the era of mid 1970s to mid 1990s. For an engineer it was a playground but the pay was so bad I eventually had to leave. I really miss that environment ❤❤

Glad to see you chose to keep the original machine and did not do anything crazy.

To start with your first sentence, this is not a pinballmachine, but a Bingo, made by Bally. I overhauled many of these machines, and later operated these machines by myself in the Netherlands. In the end, the best gamble machines you can imagine. But the most famous of its kind was 'Miss America' of course also made by Bally, who incidentally also made pinball machines.

1949 to 1968 for counties in a state of Maryland had legalized gambling. I repaired bingo pinball machines for a company that I worked for. All of the bingo machines was on cash payout. they remove the front legs and added a box on the front with two tubes in it a cash box and payout slides for the cash payout. I really enjoyed doing this. All the bingo machines that we had were OK games starting with Laguna Beach and ending with SilverSales/Golden gate.

You made the right choice!

Thank goodness! EM machines are marvels and need to be kept and restored. Don't even think about converting to electronics. If you want to do something like that, make an electronic game from scratch. I have a Williams 1976 machine. You think what you have is complicated? They got much more complex.

Bravo. No failure here. Save heroic modernization efforts for machines that don’t work and can’t reasonably be rehabilitated.

Trivia: Probably not the same Cypress Gardens, but there is a park in Moncks Corner, SC named Cypress Gardens. They filmed The Patriot, The Notebook, and Swamp Thing there.

Amazing job restoring this historic relic!

It's a pretty fun game, watch to learn about that's for sure, I hope you enjoyed your learning experience I have been restoring games like this for 20 years

Awesome video...

You did the right thing by not changing a piece of history that still works.

I'm happy you decided to preserve it. Get a more modern digital one to retro fit as digital electronic devices are more disposable.

No shame in not gutting a piece of history. I had the same thought doing my pinball video

I have similar thoughts when I look at an old code base.

really wonderful video! thanks for sharing! (RIP lamptapuss!)

Nice work. I want to get an EM machine. I own one pin I restored, a 1980 Xenon. Was a fun project, and got it all back working and spent maybe 800 in parts.

beautiful thoughts!!!! I am a mechanical engineer and keyboardist who has fallen in love with electromechanical keyboards of the early days - check out Hammond organs!! It's the musical equivalent to Ms. Creaky!! These were built so ingeniously, with such care and dedication. So proud of you and I share in the excitement!! Great video! thanks for sharing your experience with us!!!

@theelmonk

5 ай бұрын

Stick with it. There are plenty of resources on the web for both EMs and SS machines. EM machines are a lot like ladder logic - the graphical programming used for relay systems to make them easier for electricians to understand.

I do enjoy the old stuff, but have also dealt with the issues of mechanical switch contacts. I imagine the online groups have already worked this stuff out, but I'd be tempted to try to retrofit some modern microswitches where ever possible. Glad that you saved Miss Creaky from the landfill!

Whew! 😅 Thought she was gonna wreck it with modern electronics that would only last a few years but, yes, keep the old stuff around for another lifetime of enjoyment! 😎 Also, digging into the circuitry of these is VERY educational about how to design logic circuits. For example, make a video recreating the logic using a PLC (programmable logic controller) and compare it to what is in the machine - use the schematics. There are still relays in modern control systems as well as solid state microprocessor stuff. 😃 Ye olde self-latching relay is still a thing! 😅

I guess technology connections brought me here. Nice to see a girl doing this stuff. Keep on!

@17:15 These are Words of True Wisdom.

Heyy Ruby, a new face. Interesting project. I really loved seeing how everything under the hood was done without microprocessors and still worked. I can imagine they spend most of their time not on the game but on the wiring. I guess it would make most sense to build this machine from scratch using modern techniques instead of converting this oldie. Above all, this might actually belong in a museum? I think after all it was the right decision to go for a cleanup instead of conversion! :)

That looks fun

Incandescent lights will look better than LEDs

You need to watch these two channels... Joe's Classic Videos Games repairs classic video games including EM pinballs and Technology Connections has a video explaining how EM pinballs works. I highly recommend these channels to get a better understanding of they work...

Respect 55 years ago I played cypress garden regular. over the pond in Norwich Norfolk England .At 13 gambling was strictly illegal .

Hi, I’m 70, My earliest memory of pinball were that they were Dime play. These machines were most likely all early CPU based units. Can you tell what coin your machine received?

@RubyZoom

5 ай бұрын

Hey! Thanks for watching. It could take nickels or dimes.

What features would one add by modernizing it? Could such upgrades be done in a way that doesn't permanently modify the machine? (That is, one could remove the upgrade and it would then appear as if there never had been an upgrade installed, so no drilling or cutting stuff.)

I was really afraid in the beginning when you talked about arduinos and all that stuff. Happy ending after all.

I’ve never played an em pin. I think most are defective, good job preserving it

@theelmonk

5 ай бұрын

Yeah, but the defcst are simple. Mostly dirty contacts. And actually, the hardest work is on the cosmetics.

In my opinion to update an em machine to digital you have to build from scratch and examine the logic behind how things work.

It would have been such a shame to ditch the wonderful skills and creativity that these machines embody. Of course, you could always build a machine with the same gameplay using modern approaches. That would be interesting.

A friend of mine has the same machine (or one very similar) but it is not in anywhere near as good a shape as yours. We are also planning to upgrade it from EM to SS, but we want to keep the play and feel identical to the original. But after many hours of checking out schematics, it is really hard to figure out how this game work. We understand the basics and could probably develop a program that would make the game work where most people who played it would not know the difference, but I would really like to under stand how it really works.

Good decision. Clean it, adust it. play it.

Yeah I was confused at replacing vintage electronic art with cheap chinese components

We inherited one of these from my in laws. I'm too scared to even move it from where they left it.

i feel your pain :)

Good decision. You could go ahead and build one out of Arduinos and what not just get someone to cut you some wood and make your own table.

Been an arcade tech, first rule.. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Good for you. Celebrate how it was done. Plenty of newer machines around to processorise. Have you thought of building your own ? It will be easier to understand if you do the electronics yourself instead of unpicking the old ones, and you get to use the full range of your imagination in designing the play. Plenty of people have done it - you can either use a ready-made controller board or a load or arduino-style bits. And really, the design and crafting is harder then the electronics. Bring a new pinball into the world instead of killing a living one :).

Electronics engineering?. It has no single of electronic component in it! It is literally a MECHANICAL machine. But thanks for the upload.

So many of these bingo machines were destroyed by 'authorities' because they were used in bars for gambling. So sad because they were such works of engineering.