Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

On the subject of TPMS, my Picasso does it on relative wheel rotation speed. So, far it seems reliable and good. I've only had it go off once and it was right. One tyre had lost a few PSI due to a very slow bead leak and it spotted it.

never had a false alarm.

Loving your new big, noisy clunky thunky thing for the flippers Zel

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon I had a patient in need of some help on my operating table.



Given that virtually all my Amiga time has been on the A1200, I always forget how tiny the A600 is in comparison.



This one doesn't belong to me. It belongs to a friend who isn't all that familiar with the platform, and was reported to not be reading disks. It wasn't even *trying* to read them though which is a big clue.

Amigas of this era have a disk presence switch so unlike on a PC, as soon as a disk is inserted the system will spin the drive up and try to mount the volume (and start booting from it if it's a bootable disk) without any user input. My guess was that this was where our problem lay as it wasn't doing anything.

Missing screws and scratch marks suggested I wasn't the first one in here, and that the problem with this drive most likely was why this machine was "parked" however many years ago it was.

A close look at the floppy drive revealed my hunch to be correct. There was a dry joint on one of the disk presence switch terminals and it had come away.



Thankfully I was just about able to sneak the smallest tip of my iron in there to solder it back in without having to take the board out - as that would have meant pretty much completely dismantling the drive, which is never high on my list of favourite activities.

Back together and sure enough, it now attempts to read any disk as soon as it's inserted.



Of course I can't find any of my physical Amiga disks (I stuck a Gotek in my A1200 a year or so back and have a feeling I put the disks into deep storage) to confirm it's now working properly, but I cleaned the heads while I was in there so there's no reason it shouldn't. We'll test it when I drop it back with the owner (or if I have a brainwave and remember where the box is). For all their reputation for being unreliable, floppy drives (especially older ones) really are surprisingly dependable so long as the heads are kept clean and you're not trying to use mouldy old disks covered in greasy fingerprints. 99% of the problems I have have been down to mould having got to a lot of my older ones at my parents house in the early 00s where they had horrendous damp problems.

Nice to find a nice, simple, easily repairable physical failure for a change!

It's also a small world. This sticker is on the bottom of it.



Keith is about 25 miles from where I call home up in Aberdeenshire, 400 plus change miles north of where I am now and where this computer has ended up, yet we somehow ended up crossing paths down here in the Midlands.

I did have to sit on my hands not to completely dismantle and clean the thing...but I'm only meant to be fixing what's wrong with it! It's actually a pretty tidy example aside from needing a clean, it's survived without yellowing far better than my A1200.

Said A1200 I need to get back back on the bench at some point to try to figure out why the hell it was behaving so erratically last time I was trying to use it - my money being on a memory problem. That's a job for future me though. This patient though appears to have made a full recovery and is ready to go back to it's owner in the next couple of days.

-- -- --

Did a little bit of pinball tinkering this afternoon as well. While the new solenoids were louder than the old ones, you couldn't really feel them doing anything which is half the reason they're there. I decided moving them onto the side of the cabinet far closer to the flipper buttons was probably a good solution for that.



Another feedback device has also gone in - a shaker motor. Basically the same idea as what makes your mobile phone vibrate but majorly on steroids.



This is actually a proper pinball part, and is a kit intended to add the functionality to modern Stern tables where it was an option on several games.



We obviously didn't need the interface board or anything, just the unit itself, fixings and the safety cover.

This has been slotted in amidships between the audio amp and the interface board.



This is something which isn't fitted to many older tables (Jurassic Park and Earthshaker are the only older ones I can immediately think of), but as with many things because it's controlled through DOF, it's functionality which had been added to many more at appropriate moments and it does actually add quite a bit of extra drama. I did have to dial it back quite a bit though as it was just far too violent running flat out!

[Zelandeth]

Big surprise - the sub £10 audio amplifier went pop this afternoon. Can't say I'm massively surprised. It clearly has absolutely zero filtering on the input based on the fascinating squealing and whistling noises it was picking up depending on what the computer was doing. My guess is this is what's killed it, it's gone into some ultrasonic oscillation which has just gone nuclear and wiped out the output stage. I kind of wish it had done this before I went to the efforts of attempting to shield the audio feed to it (which made zero difference).

Let's try fitting something which actually has any chance of functioning properly!

Can't say I was particularly surprised, I only bought that because I didn't have anything on the shelf which fit the bill (size was the biggest problem - an audio amp that would *work* for the application I could grab out the loft in about 90 seconds).

[MattBLancs]

On the subject of TPMS, my Picasso does it on relative wheel rotation speed. So, far it seems reliable and good. I've only had it go off once and it was right. One tyre had lost a few PSI due to a very slow bead leak and it spotted it.

never had a false alarm.

I too, think the ABS sensor based system(s) are pretty good. It alerted me to the blue 308's slow puncture with (tedious) regularity! (Until I finally put my hand in my pocket for a new pair of tyres!)

However, the C5 system: separate wheel sensors, each with own battery, each needing programming to their respective locations, needing not only Diagbox but another gizmo to "wake" the sensor during the programming = far too complicated.

[Zelandeth]

New amplifier turned up this morning. It's about half the size of the last one but weighs probably three times as much. Aside from the lack of strange squeaking noises, the audio quality in general is far better.

I think that means that pretty much everything is now in there. Only items still on the wish list are a set of chimes and bells. Those are relatively self contained though and I've already got a location already in mind and kept clear for them. I decided that on the strength of this it was time to do something about the rat's nest that was the wiring.

This was the view looking towards the rear of the cabinet a week or two ago.



As of this afternoon, it now looks like this.





It's definitely nothing close to the absolute artworks of meticulously woven looms you saw in a lot of quality equipment made in the 30s-70s, but I think for something thrown together by some random guy on the street I reckon it's actually decently tidy now.

Even better, testing it afterwards showed that I hadn't even broken anything during all my messing around tidying things up (this involved disconnecting, untangling and shortening quite a number of wires).



There have been a couple of random improvements made in the last couple of days as well. Just tidying things up really. The first of these was actually securing the power supply which had just been sitting in the back of the cabinet. I reused a couple of angle brackets which I think originally held the score display support frame in place to firmly wedge it in place.



The centre display looked far better when lit than the previous one I'd been using, but with any real ambient light it didn't look great when unlit as you could clearly see where the screen was.



This is because the wooden panel the panel is fixed to was light coloured.



Nothing a bit of matt black spray paint can't fix.



Much better. Yes you can still see the reflection of the display itself, and if you really look for it you can see the frame, but it's a thousand times better.



A (not unexpected) problem I had with the PC in there was the fact that it was really struggling to maintain a solid connection to our WiFi network at any usable speed. With the antenna buried inside the cabinet this didn't really surprise me. So I have added an external antenna on the back of the machine where you'll never see it once it's backed up against the wall.



This actually also helps act as a spacer to prevent it being pushed fully back flush with the wall, as doing that would block the ventilation outlets.

The next things I will be meddling with will be adding some trim along either side of the main display to hide the bezel (particularly on the left where there's a big Philips logo and a bright white power LED), tidying up the monitor mounting in the back box, and getting some glass cut I think. Then just play the thing!

We did have a pretty good session a week or so back where we had a few two player games going. Despite having never played the table in question before, my other half absolutely annihilated me!



107K to 35K...I call beginners luck!

[CitroJim]

Looking good Zel

[Zelandeth]

Had to do a bit of car work today. As the new clutch (and release bearing, given it's just a graphite bushing) has now properly bedded in in the Trabant I had ended up with the bite point very close to the floor.

Yep, having about 1/3" of free play at the arm would indeed do that.



Couple of turns on the adjuster and we're sorted. Five minutes start to finish, including finding the 13mm spanner. Now much better - hadn't realised it was dragging a bit at times before, but it's really obvious now - especially changing into 2nd. Coming up on a thousand miles now since the engine replacement, which I find kind of surprising given the car is almost entirely just used bumbling around locally. It does add up quick.

The glass for the pinball table was ordered today. Actually a lot cheaper than I was expecting, a local place has offered to supply both pieces in the correct toughened glass for £120 all in. Should be here in a week or so.

Does mean I've got to try to get most things I'll want the be messing around under there ticked off though as it'll be a bit of a chore having to manhandle a 43x21" sheet of glass so ideally I'd like that to stay put once it's fitted.

A really obvious thing I needed to address was this being right in front of you to the left of the display.



There's also a little gap there as the base of the display isn't quite flat.

This looks better now I think.



You can't really tell, but I've totally changed how the backglass display is secured.



Rather than faffing around with an actual VESA mount behind it, which was just a giant faff to deal with, it's now just sitting on a shelf with some blocks to secure it. I will probably drop it down a touch further yet. The glass going in here will get a black mask painted at the edges to hide the small gaps at the edges.

That was actually something which took me more brains to work out than I'd expected. The fact that the display is taller than the aperture it has to fit through makes it rather a faff to get it into place. Sorted now though, and no longer sitting on a couple of random capacitors to keep it level.

[mickthemaverick]

This may have some interest for you Zel: viewtopic.php?p=849819#p849819

[Zelandeth]

This may have some interest for you Zel: viewtopic.php?p=849819#p849819

Wouldn't mind one of the Amstrads...but not because I need them, but just to get the annoying, hard to find separately proprietary keyboard they use so I can test out another one I already have...

However I have now got a watch on two lots in another auction.

I'll eat my hat if either of those go even vaguely close to the estimates. The Model F keyboards with the IBM are an easy £150 a pop, and the system itself is probably £500 with a bit of restoration work done. There's a reason I don't have one.

The stack in the second lot isn't really of huge interest for the most part. Though I'm curious as to whether that's a TV or a composite monitor...if it's the latter that would definitely be useful. However there's a BBC Master just poking out at the bottom of the pile...and that IS on the wish list. Again, they're £4-600 machines these days, which is why I don't have one. The Micros are probably a hundred quid even untested...a recap, good clean and some decent photos of them running they're probably £150 a pop on eBay or similar. Don't really have good numbers on hand for what Atari STs go for these days, but I'm guessing they're similarly daft as Amigas - so I'd be shocked if that lot isn't in the £5-600 ball park.

Edit: Just spotted there are actually two Amiga 1200s in there. Chances of it going for cheap have dropped from slim to zero.

[mickthemaverick]

Just think what you're missing Zel!! :

BFTW

Details here

[Zelandeth]

Just think what you're missing Zel!! :



Details here

While that looks a lot of fun, the standard one is frenetic enough!

Kind of amusingly, mine is probably quicker if all they've done to the engine there is put a bigger carb on...

I also have my doubts about the supposed 1966 build date... I'd say 86 might be more believable.

[Zelandeth]

I really should do a 0-60 test in the Trabant, see how much quicker it really is than a standard car now. Probably find out it's actually made zero difference - though I don't think that's the case given the stock figure is 21 seconds and it feels plenty quicker than that. Given what a go-kart it is you can hussle it along the twisties quite rapidly. Enjoyably too especially given how quick the steering is.

Glass was picked up from City Glass today for the pinball machine. Though I haven't been able to fit it yet as I need to move the machine first. The playfield glass slides in from in front of the table, so I need basically a whole table of room in front of it. Given it's currently tucked away in a corner that's not possible. So I'm going to borrow an extra pair of hands tomorrow and play a bit of a game of life size slide puzzle rearrangement of the Purple Room to try to get it into a better location to use and give me room to get the glass installed.

I will want to add a bit of felt or foam to the location the backglass sits in so it doesn't rattle as the new glass is slightly thinner than the original stuff just because this is a metric rather than imperial size, but that's not the end of the world. Shouldn't be a problem with the playfield itself because it's sitting horizontally.

One very important task I need to do before it goes in though is to also clean the playfield display to within an inch of its life and TRY to ensure it's free of dog hair before the glass goes in. Going to have a bash at getting the graphics for the apron made up as well.

I think then we just actually get to play with the thing as intended. Already have been quite a bit, and working on getting the point of view fine tuned for each table - this is a bit time consuming as every table is different. Of course we're trying to create a 3D looking recreation of something in 2D, so that's going to need to take into account where you're looking at it from, and that's going to vary dependent on the size of your display, height of the table, rake of the playfield, how close you stand to the table and even now tall you are. There's also a bit of a liberty has to be taken with the scaling as we're using a 16:9 aspect ratio display and a typical playfield is actually nearer 18:9. So it's easy to end up with things looking squashed - sometimes you do just have to accept either some cropping (you can usually lose a bit of the apron or back panel without it being too obvious) or some distortion.

As you can see, it looks pretty convincing once you've got it right. Here are a handful of tables as examples.


Eight Ball Deluxe, Bally, 1984. The same playfield this cabinet originally had in it.


Firepower, Williams, 1980.


Flash, Williams, 1978.


Gorgar, Williams 1979. The first table to feature speech. This one still needs a little tweaking.


Centaur, Bally, 1981.

Not everything has been quite so lovingly rendered in innate detail, for example Victory here is a bit more basic in the graphics department - but it still plays spot on.


Victory, Gottlieb, 1987.

It's definitely been a fun project, and is satisfying to see it coming together properly now some of the final touches are being added.

[CitroJim]

That's looking awesome Zel

[Zelandeth]

This may have some interest for you Zel: viewtopic.php?p=849819#p849819

Wouldn't mind one of the Amstrads...but not because I need them, but just to get the annoying, hard to find separately proprietary keyboard they use so I can test out another one I already have...

However I have now got a watch on two lots in another auction.



I'll eat my hat if either of those go even vaguely close to the estimates. The Model F keyboards with the IBM are an easy £150 a pop, and the system itself is probably £500 with a bit of restoration work done. There's a reason I don't have one.

The stack in the second lot isn't really of huge interest for the most part. Though I'm curious as to whether that's a TV or a composite monitor...if it's the latter that would definitely be useful. However there's a BBC Master just poking out at the bottom of the pile...and that IS on the wish list. Again, they're £4-600 machines these days, which is why I don't have one. The Micros are probably a hundred quid even untested...a recap, good clean and some decent photos of them running they're probably £150 a pop on eBay or similar. Don't really have good numbers on hand for what Atari STs go for these days, but I'm guessing they're similarly daft as Amigas - so I'd be shocked if that lot isn't in the £5-600 ball park.

Edit: Just spotted there are actually two Amiga 1200s in there. Chances of it going for cheap have dropped from slim to zero.

I wasn't far off with my expectations.

IBM went for £170. Stack of assorted systems went for £500. So my guesses weren't far off. There were plainly several folks after all the older computer gear in this auction as it's all gone for decent money, some of it utterly daftly so in my opinion. I was willing to chuck £400 at that stack based on what I know I could easily move on, but £500 is just too much. Not really a surprise though if you've got the time and patience to relist stuff separately to sell on there's probably well north of a grand in there, possibly a bit more depending on the exact spec of a couple of the machines. All I was after was the BBC Master though, so wasn't getting into a bidding war!

[Zelandeth]

That has been a rough couple of days.

It is with great sadness that I have to report that we very suddenly lost one of our dogs, Tesla on Sunday afternoon. He went within the space of 12 hours from his absolutely normal self to being deathly ill with no chance of recovery.

While we weren't entirely unprepared for this given that he wasn't young any more and had had a history of having a few lumps meaning he was always going to be at a high risk of developing cancer, it's still a shock. Having said that, I'd take this any day of the week than a slow decline and loss of quality of life until the inevitable. He was happy and loved right to the end.

Here are the first and last photos I have of him.

Rest in peace my fluffy toasted marshmallow goofball. You'll be missed.

So apologies to folks at the lunch tomorrow if I'm a bit out of sorts, it's going to take a while for me to settle. Also meant that Sunday was a very, very long day and left me both physically and mentally exhausted, so that alone will take time to recover from.