this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Meet the man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/games
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is pretty cool. I just saw an article about a D&D-themed pinball machine that's being made and immediately my mind jumped to wondering just how difficult it is to maintain these things. It'd be fun to own one but I have no idea how many other businesses are out there like this one.

[–] ShawiniganHandshake 4 points 1 day ago

My family has had pinball machines as long as I can remember. I mostly played them but I also helped my dad work on them from time to time.

A pinball machine is an electrical device running on mains power, so the usual warnings like "don't work on it while it's plugged in" apply. Some machines have high voltage components like Nixie tube displays that require extra caution. I'd recommend against making pinball machine maintenance your first electronics hobby project. Those warnings out of the way, they're not super difficult to maintain if you're electrical and mechanically inclined.

All pinball machines need wear-and-tear sort of maintenance like replacing burned out lightbulbs or worn out rubber bands. The playfield components like kickers, flippers, and drop targets are driven by solenoids attached to the underside of the playfield and these sometimes fail and need to be replaced. The contacts that activate the components sometimes need adjusting since they can get bent after being bit with a pinball millions of times.

The rest is dependent on the age of the machine. 70s and older machines use electro-mechanical state machines that can be a bit fiddly to troubleshoot. You'll need the schematics if you want to maintain and repair one of these machines but most schematics are available online, either digitally or to order as printed replicas. Newer machines use electronic or computerized state machines which are more reliable but if one of the control boards fails, you usually have to replace the whole board.

If you want to get into it, buying a working but neglected machine from the mid-70s and fixing it up would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to get started. Machines that have flaws that make them worthless to collectors like cracked back glass will be the best value for money if you just want one to play with.

Oh, and they're heavy. You need 2-3 people to move one.