None to One

KayM77

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Feb 19, 2024
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Hi everyone, I created an account today because I was looking for information on the internet about my grandfather's odd pinball-esqe game, and I stumbled upon the VAPS's page on it: https://www.arcade-museum.com/Pinball/pro-score . I helped work on it with him 7-8 years ago, and got it running for a bit before we had some solenoid issues and kept popping fuses. It's been sitting in his garage for quite a few years, but now that I'm 23, and he's 89, we're probably going to pick it back up and try to get it running consistently again. I took some rushed photos of it yesterday, but even though the machine is nearly 80 years old, it's still in pretty good shape. Not sure if it's cool news to anyone else, but I guess now there's confirmation that at least 1 of these rare machines still exists. I can go into detail about the backstory of this particular machine if anyone has any interest, but for now I just wanted to show modern, non-black and white photos of it. Whenever we get around to fixing it up fully, I'll post some official looking pictures that can go on the game's page. Not sure when exactly that will be, but someday soon in the near future.

Pro-Score WIP 1.JPGPro-Score WIP 2.JPGPro-Score WIP 3.JPG
 
Apparently, my great grandfather (who was an old-country plasterer/carpenter) bought it from a shop owner in the 40s-50s on the East side of Cleveland, hoping that he could salvage the wood from it to make cabinets for his kitchen. When he got it home and found out that it was just laminated birch plywood, he gave it to my grandfather to tinker with. My grandfather hand-copied the crumbling circuit diagram on the back, and proceeded to bring the broken machine back to life. Not sure how long it was operational, but he brought it with him when he moved into his current house, and it has sat in the garage since. My grandfather went on to become an engineer at NASA, and he quipped yesterday about how reading the circuit diagram of this machine as a kid gave him practice for understanding the test consoles they used for rocket engines (cause of course it did :LOL:). Not sure if that says more about the design of this machine, or the technology they were using at NASA in the 60s. I remember the diagrams being confusing when I was a teen, hopefully things make more sense now that I'm an engineer myself. How hard can it really be? (famous last words)
 
Wow!
A cursory glance at pinside doesn't even bring up anything.
Curious to know what thing actually is myself!
Glad that you will preserve it and even more fun that you can do that with your grandfather.

Welcome to the group.
 
Apparently, my great grandfather (who was an old-country plasterer/carpenter) bought it from a shop owner in the 40s-50s on the East side of Cleveland, hoping that he could salvage the wood from it to make cabinets for his kitchen. When he got it home and found out that it was just laminated birch plywood, he gave it to my grandfather to tinker with. My grandfather hand-copied the crumbling circuit diagram on the back, and proceeded to bring the broken machine back to life. Not sure how long it was operational, but he brought it with him when he moved into his current house, and it has sat in the garage since. My grandfather went on to become an engineer at NASA, and he quipped yesterday about how reading the circuit diagram of this machine as a kid gave him practice for understanding the test consoles they used for rocket engines (cause of course it did :LOL:). Not sure if that says more about the design of this machine, or the technology they were using at NASA in the 60s. I remember the diagrams being confusing when I was a teen, hopefully things make more sense now that I'm an engineer myself. How hard can it really be? (famous last words)
Reading schematics is reading schematics. What I learned about schematics in nuclear power transferred directly to arcade and pinball repairs.

The opposite is also true.
 
Reading schematics is reading schematics. What I learned about schematics in nuclear power transferred directly to arcade and pinball repairs.

The opposite is also true.
EM schematics can be confusing for someone who's never seen them before & only used to discrete logic. But there's good YT videos out there that can explain them pretty well.

Also it appears rod90's link has a few sections on reading them as well.
 
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EM schematics can be confusing for someone who's never seen them before & only used to discrete logic. But there's good YT videos out there that can explain them pretty well.

Also it appears rod90's link has a few sections on reading them as well.
Nah. A schematic is a schematic.

So far, I've seen them in:
Nuclear power plants
Latte machines
Aircraft
Pinball EM
Pinball Electronic
Arcade games
EM phonographs (tubes)
Electronic phonographs
Stereos

If you can read one, you can read almost any of them.
 
Awesome! I don't know if that Kirkland Costco 5w-30 synthetic is good for your pin lube needs, but you have an awesome machine and get it done!
 
Have you seen EM manuals? Light weight oils are listed in the lube requirements.
 
Hi everyone,

Not sure if this post will revive the thread, or if I'll have to make a new one to search for answers. So I got to work on the machine with my grandfather, and we found out that the main culprit in the machine not working is an old transformer that is no longer operational. I was able to get a high-res scan of the schematics my grandfather copied over, and found that I'm apparently looking for a transformer that can take 120V and dual output 27v and 6v, or I will need two seperate transformers that I can link together. I'd love to just use these two transformers: 120V to 27V & 120V to 6V , but my grandfather was concerned with the wattage, and thought that they were too weak. I added the schematic file to the Pro-Score's KLOV page here: Pro-Score Page, sorry I can't link it below, I think the file size is just a bit too big. Should I be looking for something with a lot higher wattage, and are there any options out there that I'm not considering?

Transformer 1.jpg Transformer 2.jpg
 
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