pinball machine dimensions

New article with all dimensions, length and height and width of a pinball machine.
Also showing off how strong tempered playfield glass is :-)

About the price of the Medieval Madness pinball machine

New article published yesterday:
http://www.flippers.be/basics/101_medieval_madness_prices.html

Some people always ask what makes Medieval Madness so special and why its price seems so high compared to other games. Here's the background history about MM prices and how it evolved over the years.

Just published the article, will probably add some things to it the next days, add some nice pictures, ..

Fixed a CSS bug - text-decoration does not cascade.

A new visitor of my site emailed me with some comments, which I appreciate.
I always try to improve my site, but it became too large (over 350 pages) to review every page manually.. and sometimes changes on one page have an effect on other pages.

The remark was that links were difficult to see in articles as they looked the same as the regular text.

That wasn't correct - I know that in my CSS I define links to be dark blue and underlined.
Checked it with different browsers, different versions, and yes the remark was correct; It seems there's a bug in Firefox and also in some IE versions, depending on compatibility mode.

For the layout of my website I use CSS (cascading style sheets). This is a file that is referenced from every page on my site, that describes how html elements that make up the website look like.
If I want to change the red, white and yellow/orange background on my site into other colors, this is one change I have to do in this file and it's immediately changed for all pages.
Style sheets are cascading - you can put html elements inside others and they will inherit all settings from their parent element unless it's overruled at a lower level.

Now it seems there's a bug with this inheritance/cascading for the text-decoration property of links.
I set text-decoration:none;  on links at high level in the page layout.
This is to prevent the language links, footer links and others to not show up in blue and underlined, like links look like by default. Also on the homepage all large titles are links, but they don't look that way - as I want them to look like large titles.

On a lower level in the html layout, there's a box that contains the actual text of the article (the yellow looking background, which is inside the large white box). There I overrule with text-decoration:underline on links. And that did not work.
Seems there's a bug and once you set text-decoration on a div, nested divs will keep this layout, even if you overrule it.

I fixed it by not setting the text-decoration:none at the highest level anymore. Luckily when I made the layout for this site I put enough containers around each part (language select, footer, topper, main content, menu linsk, ..) so I can set the properties for each div and span tag individually. With a few changes in the css (and none in the html pages of each article) it should look fine now.
Header/footer and main page do not show links as underlined, but within text of articles they should be dark blue and underlined.
The css file is cached on your browser, so if you have visited my site a few days ago you have to refresh once on a page with Ctrl-F5 to see the change.

History of pinball in the USA

Just put a new article online - the history of american pinball manufacturers.
The large, known brands of pinball machines were in control of only a handful of people.
Holding companies or subdivisions went bankrupt, were taken over, ..

wpc boardset article

Put a few more articles online the last weeks.

Introduction to the WPC boardset. An overview of all boards used in the WPC games (Bally / Williams games from 1989 till 1998. In a lot of other pinball 101 articles I talk about the fliptronics, cpu and powerdriver board but never explained which board is which, the differences between revisions, ..

Different country settings and their influence on WPC games.
This article goes further on the previous one. On the cpu board of WPC games there are jumpers (or dipswitches) to set what country a pinball machine is in. Article is an overview of all the things that are influenced by these settings, which may be many more than you'd suspect or probably have ever seen..


Furthermore I've done some behind the scene changes to the website - all so it'll load faster.
Optimized the current css so it's much smaller.

Added a new css for mobile devices, so they can browse the site better. Seems to work, in June and July together I had about 2300 visitors from a mobile device, while in the first half of August I had already around 900..

Optimized the compression of all images, especially on picture intensive pages like visits to shows this will make a huge difference in loading time.

Finally played a bit with http parameters like cache settings, changed them for the different types of documents. Especially if you browse many pages or are a return visitor it'll help speed things up a bit, compared to before..

new belgian pinball forum

For the belgian and dutch people: since this weekend a new pinball forum has started: flipperforum.be.
Some belgian pinballers decided to start their own forum.
A lot of people have already registered, so if you want to meet/chat with belgian and ducth pinballers: join !
Links to the forum will be updated later this week on my site..

WPC technical articles

The start of some technical articles,
made an overview of all WPC boards and what games they were used in.

Also explained how to add an NTC to a System11 pinball machine, to prevent the main fuse of your house from tripping when you turn on a pinball machine.
It's a problem I had many years ago myself, seen it recently at someone else's place, but don't know if it has been documented somewhere online.. so now it is :)

How the switch matrix works

First in a series of tech articles: how the switch matrix works on pinball machines and why those little diodes on switches are imporant.

new articles online

Here's an overview of articles I put online the past weeks:

Use an ultrasonic cleaner to clean plastic and metal parts. I bought an ultrasonic cleaner a while ago. Now finally used it to shop a pinball machine and I'm amazed how clean parts come out! This is by far the best tool to buy (it's more useful than a tumbler) when you're cleaning pinball parts. Almost every part comes out sparkling, shining and looking brand new!

Golden Years show in Wieze
It had been a few years since we had visited this show. As it's in 2011 the only show in Belgium we visited again.

Add a real knocker coil to Cactus Canyon. To save costs, CC doesn't have a real knocker installed but the knocker sound is played through the speakers. It's easy to wire up a real coil.

Update to the hidden artwork on playfields.

What to do when you get the Factory Settings Restored error message on your pinball machine.

Repair damage caused by leaked batteries.

How to level a pinball machine and adjust the playfield angle.

More information and history of the Capcom Big Bang Bar pinball machine and its reproduction.

Flashmob in Antwerp makes a human pinball machine

A few weeks ago I was switching channels on tv and suddenly heard something about a pinball machine. Pinball machine ?? This I have to watch !
It was on a show called T.U.C.S. on MTV.
They organised a flashmob in the center of Antwerp, to create a human pinball machine.

I immediately checked their facebook group and checked their website, but only new (3 weeks later) the episode is online.

You can watch it here: human pinball machine flashmob in Antwerp on TUCS MTV.

changed site layout

100th post to this blog :-)

I've put a new layout of the site online the previous weekend.. Nothing major, the biggest difference is that the menu links changed from the right (inside an article) to the top of the page..

Main page also changed a bit in layout, the new articles part got bigger. I'm sure most of you guys have already noticed the pink ladies :-)
They're for the article of the Rosmalen jukebox show. I've posted a lot of pictures of pinball machines and jukeboxes.

Have to review and update most pages but that'll take some time.

where to buy electronic components

New article online:
buy electronic components to repair pinball machines.

I made a list of useful tools and electronic components available for sale at
Conrad.

new custom pinball machine for Metallica

Added Beatniks Koolsville to my list of custom pinball machines, it's a conversion of Elvira and the Party Monsters, commissioned by James Hetfield

History of Stern Orbitor One

I'm very excited about this new article: the history of Stern Orbitor One.

Orbitor One is a favorite game of mine. It's unique with a 3D playfield, quite rare with its low production run, and very different to play.
Not much was known about this game (only that it was not developed by Stern Electronics themselves). So when I got in touch with someone who worked on the game in its development, I really was excited !
The history of who was behind the game is very interesting - in fact when I first read it, the story sounded too unbelieveable and too fantastic, for a moment I even doubted if it was real or a hoax.. but when I started to dig in the history and could confirm some facts I was even more amazed.

At the same time I've changed my Orbitor One game review, as after all this time it still didn't have any pictures.
So I quickly made some various pictures and added it to the gamereview, hope it's even more interesting now.

more custom pinball machines

A week after the interview with Greg Freres, I have even more custom pinball machine news !

Dominique John has created Galactic Girl, a custom electro-mechanical pinball machine.

I have also added an overview of all custom pinball machine projects. Dozens of pinball collectors have created (or are still busy) making custom pinball machines.

Follow my site/blog, as within a few days I have a really very interesting article !
Don't want to post more yet (people who follow me in facebook will have read what it's about though), but it's really going to be a very interesting article about the history and development of a unique game..

Interview with Greg Freres online

Been a while since I posted here. But that's normal wit me - my pinball is a hobby with ups and downs, sometimes I'm very active and sometimes I don't do a lot for months..

I've put a new article online, an interview with Greg Freres about the Whizbang Pinball project he's working on together with pinball designer Dennis Nordman.

Dennis is one of my favorite designers (I really love Whitewater !! and many more of his games) so I really am very interested in their project and ideas.
Whoa Nellie Sweet Juicy Melons is the first game they are customising, it's an electro-mechanical game they provide with a totally new art package and layout.

wall flipper game

Made an article about a Wallflipper game I had in the past.
Sold it after it was too long in storage :(
couldn't get it working as a cpu board was missing.
Now I learned more I would use an Arduino board as controller.

pinball cut in half

Added a picture to http://www.flippers.be/basics/101-pinballs.html
of a pinball cut in the middle. Cool to see the inside, I always thought they were of the same consistency, looks like they are two different grades of steel around eachother ?

More custom pinball machines

Interview online with Ben Heck of Benheck.com who's making a custom pinball machine.

Also interviewed Jeri Ellsworth about her custom pinball machine.

Can't wait to see the final results of both !

flame polishing updated

updated the flame polishing article..
added a link at the bottom to a professional company that creates flame polishing tools.