The timing of this thread could not be better !
I went to a kids' play center today and found a Southpark pinball with all three balls stuck in the outhole and the broken plastic and lamp socket wedged in there as well. No contact number on the machine, and the staff were not interested in the problem once I reported it. So I turned the game off. Five minutes later, the staff turned the game back on ! As long as the coin acceptor works, then the game is 100% fully functional.
I was in contact with an operator that "operates" machines in the northern suburbs recently, and he confirmed the fact that "as long as the coin mech works, the game is 100%". I looked at a TOTAN and it had electrical hacks that were disgraceful and 8 Amp Slo Blo fuses throughout the driver board which should have been 4 Amp Slo Blo. The game played worse than the worst container pin that had not been cleaned or serviced for 20 years. Needed a flipper kit, but only the bare minimum was acceptable - so only one flipper was rebuilt - and only because the coil burnt the coil sleeve and eventually burnt the coil completely.. This game was a fire risk. i explained everything to him, but his biggest concern was setting the game to $1 for 3 balls and setting it to "hard"..
From that day on, I promised myself I'll never ever work on an operators machine. They make container pins look like "NIB" pins..
