Bride of Pinbot for trade

I'm considering to trade one of my two Bride of Pinbot pinballs against an arcade cabinet. I don't want to jinx it, so I'm not going to reveal the title of the arcade game until I know if the deal is happening. But here are the pictures of  the BOP which is for trade. I'm of course keeping the other one, which has a rare diamondplate playfield.

I sold my first pinball!

You read the headline correctly. I've just sold the first pinball machine I ever owned. I bought the game of my dreams, Bride of Pinbot, in the summer of 2003. I had been dreaming of owning my own pinball machine ever since I was 8, and it finally came true!



Don't worry though. It's not a sale I will regret. I have one more, which is in better condition (with diamondplated playfield), so I have just sold a duplicate. It still feels a bit strange, though.. :-)

Magic Castle #2

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I bought an absolutely beautiful Magic Castle from Germany last year.
...and then I sold it this summer. I'm not even sure if I have a picture of it.

I need to cut down on my collection, and my target is to sell the following games in 2011:
The Machine - Bride of Pinbot
Star Wars Trilogy
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Judge Dredd

Bride of Pinbot DMD? Wow!

A friend tipped me about a pinball project which for me is the most exciting ever. I haven't been much online for some months, and this totally blew me away.
Some talented guys are changing Bride of Pinbot, utilizing a DMD, new sounds, rules and animation. The video mode looks amazing. And three ball multiball, finally! I'm almost speechless. BoP is definitely among my top 5 favourite games, and the first one I purchased. I can't wait to get my hands on this! I actually have two BoPs at the moment, one of them being a diamond plate.

For more information, take a look at the promo video at http://www.dutchpinball.com/ and read their blog at http://dutchpinball.blogspot.com/.

Beating the bride

I was expecting visitors, and played a couple of Bride of Pinbot rounds to kill time. I have a (quite rare) diamond plated BoP at home, but I haven't gotten around to shopping it yet.

Anyway, I was having a great second ball, joining the billionaires club and still retaining one of the balls, when the doorbell rang! I was forced to let the ball drain and end the game so I could entertain the guests.

Sometimes I wish these machines had a pause button..

(For those of you who ask why I didn't play the last ball after the guests left: They also wanted to try the game..)

New hiscore!

I joined the billionaires club again! I was actually already a member, but I had since removed the batteries from my BOP, and all the scores reset.

Although I'm no Tommy, I'm getting noticably better. The metamorphosis used to be something  impossible for me to achieve (I think I did it one time since 2003), but the last couple of weeks I have consistently gotten the metamorphosis at least every third game.

The Machine: Bride of Pinbot

My gameroom friends and I were approached by a group of pinball enthusiasts some weeks ago. They had a non-working The Machine: Bride of Pinbot, and they asked us to have a look at it. It was obvious that they were very good at playing, but had little experience with repair. Quite the opposite of my gameroom friends and me.

We agreed on a fixed price for the work: One case of beer. They drove quite far, 62 US miles, to deliver the game.

We quickly discovered that it had a switch matrix problem, which was solved by replacing the ULN 2803A chip at U20. It also had a problem getting balls from the through to the shooter lane, which was easily fixed by changing a coil sleeve.

We played a couple of test rounds, and I was happy to call the owners to let them know that they could pick BOP up the following week. Then.. problem struck! They soon discovered that the game had a problem with some of the upper playfield swithces. I was unable to locate the error on such short notice, I just saw that there was no contact between a pin on J207 and the aforementioned U20. As I said, they drove far to pick up the game, and I wasn't ready to disappoint them, so I switched their CPU board with mine.

I actually have two BOPs: The first pinball I acquired, in 2003, and a more recent, diamondplated one. You may ask why I would trade a perfectly working CPU board for a broken one, but it doesn't matter that much. The next day, I soldered a jumper wire on the backside of the board, and everything was working perfectly again.

And.. I will sell that BOP anyway, and probably to one of those guys, who was interested in purchasing it.