Tony's Arcade

So, in my previous post about Future Spa, I had a power problem — the MPU board wasn’t getting +5VDC any more. The “steady” lamps were on, but noone was home! I checked the pins of the power supply’s connector that goes to the MPU and they were tarnished pretty bad. This happens over time and the pins can act as resistors, preventing the proper voltage from flowing to the rest of the game. Unfortunately, my problem wasn’t that simple. Checking TP3, I saw that I wasn’t getting the 12VDC needed for the 5VDC regulator which supplies power to the MPU. It looked like maybe one of the bridge rectifiers was bad. Following the recommendations at This Old Pinball I decided that I should rebuild the power supply instead of just fixing the 12VDC. The last person to repair the power supply used spade lugs to mount the bridge rectifiers and soldered crimped spade sockets to the PCB. That had to go! This Old Pinball has some other recommendations to “beef up” the power supply, so any benefits that can add longevity to the game is a plus!

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I’ve never really been partial to pinball games. Until now. This is probably due to when I played them as a kid, I was awful. I can remember being 9 or 10 years old and getting frustrated at playing pins at Great Skate. I didn’t understand there’s more to just pressing the flipper buttons to get the ball to go where you want (well, most of the time.) In the 1980s, video games were the thing for me… joysticks and buttons with invaders from space were easier for me to understand. A few months ago, I finally gave in to my friends’ peer pressure to get a pinball game. I did some research and I never realized how awesome the artwork is on pins. Looking at a pin from the 1970s is like peering into a time machine as to what the culture was like back then. I decided I needed to get a pin from the 70s in all its butterfly collar and disco glory. Enter: Future Spa.

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