Ever since he was a young hacker
[Mark Gibson] has messed with the silver ball.
From Soho down to Denver
he must have fixed them all.
But we ain’t seen anything like this
in any amusement hall.
That darn devious hacker
sure hacks a mean pinball.He hacks it like an expert,
Becomes part of the machine
Automating all the bumpers
Always wiring clean
His table plays by automation,
And radio control for all
That darn devious hacker
sure hacks a mean pinball.
He’s a pin ball hacker
There has got to be a twist
A pin ball hacker,
With an automated cue listHow do you think he does it? I don’t know!
What makes him so good?
He uses internal power
Relay triggered buzzers and bells
To set those lights a flashin’
I hope it all goes well
I hope it gets a replay
And doesn’t fail at all
That darn devious hacker
sure hacks a mean pinball.
Awesome write up of an awesome project!
Best ever writeup! Nicely done XD
+42
I remember Bally’s Wizard pinball machine fairly well. Don’t know if it was the very first “digital” pinball machine, but it was the first I ever worked on. First at a Bally repair seminar, then later when I took over all electronic / electro-mechanical maintenance for a large amusement hall. Either way was first pinball machine I remember that had a CPU board instead of relay logic. I THINK it was a 6800 based CPU board. Probably used 6821 PIAs. (Hey, talking mid 70s here!) I do recall it was a very fun game to play. After that Williams and others came out with their own digital machines.
Says here that Bally Wizard was an EM table:
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2803
They *may* have had a one-off converted Wizard for training techs on, but it’s probably more likely you are thinking of Fireball, as that’s the first Bally Solid State pinball made in any great numbers:
https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?gtype=SS&mfgid=47&sortby=name&searchtype=advanced
Never worked on a Fireball. Emphatically DID work on a Wizard, and not in the repair seminar. It was fully digital. What I do recall was subbing in 3055 transistors to replace stock OEM numbered parts that kept failing.
Lucky you, you must have found a rare solid state converted Wizard then, as no others seem to exist.
This is ridiculous. Decent linked article, but terrible writeup. Almost completely uninformative. Someone thought they were being cute, and failed to to inform readers with even the most basic of synopses. Is this crap going in the “peer-reviewed journal”?
Thanks everyone for the comments and discussion. I had a great time doing it and I’m glad you enjoyed reading about it.
As far as I know a solid state Bally Wizard is unknown to the wider pinball collector community. If you have details you can share I hope you’ll do so. If not here then perhaps somewhere on https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/list or even PM me on hackaday.io or my own web site.