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The "Today I received" Thread

Just got the final pieces from Pinbits to add the 3rd magnet to my TZ - I got a new playfield with the extra cut out so decided to go for the upgrade. I'll be doing the playfield swap early next year :thumbs:
 
Along with Dr Dave Mr houfton managed to get me some Tz decals to go with last weeks playfield. Some peachy new Tz in the NLP team soon.
 
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Another little toy from China. Took so long to get here I'd forgotten about it. It's a HAKKO FG-100 soldering iron thermometer. Allows you to calibrate your digital soldering station. Now accurate to 1 degree C!
 

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Nedreud said:
Another little toy from China. Took so long to get here I'd forgotten about it. It's a HAKKO FG-100 soldering iron thermometer. Allows you to calibrate your digital soldering station. Now accurate to 1 degree C!
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Thats quite cool but was it that far out to start with, and do you need it to be accurate to 1 degree C? What sort of temperature do you normally solder at?
 
Nedreud said:
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Another little toy from China. Took so long to get here I'd forgotten about it. It's a HAKKO FG-100 soldering iron thermometer. Allows you to calibrate your digital soldering station. Now accurate to 1 degree C!
Click to expand...

Very good! Proper temperature selection for the solder you are using is critical for the long term reliability of solder joints, as well as ensuring that components are not overheated :thumbs:
 
I bought the same iron earlier in the year and quite like it. I've got a couple of big reels of old school Ersin multicore solder which has never given any trouble which is 60% tin and 40% lead. It doesn't state an ideal temperature on the reel though, what would you recommend? I normally just set the iron hot enough to melt the solder easily without having to touch on for ages and transfer loads of heat into what ever component I'm soldering.
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aaronhicksuk said:
was it that far out to start with
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I had to set the calibration to -14 C, that is, the iron was 14 degrees under. If the display said 300 then the tip was really about 285. The guide says you should also recalibrate whenever you change tips. Being with 1 degree probably isn't that critical, but being 15-20 off makes a difference.

As for the correct temperature? You can argue about that till the cows come home! Depends what you're soldering, what you're soldering it with and how good your general technique. If you're proficient you can use a slightly hotter temp as you're more likely to be quick and not overheat.

Using 60/40 Tin/Lead, I'd for around 320 C for SMD and move up to about 350-370 for standard through-hole component work, shifting up to 400 or so for bigger power components. But then I'd also use different tips for all three kinds of work.
 
cool bit of kit, and dead cheap if you're happy to wait for a few weeks - not like its needed urgently :)

@Nedreud - whats the procedure for calibrating these irons of ours??
 
Paul said:
whats the procedure for calibrating these irons of ours??
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Basically, select the temperature on your Maplin A55KJ. Have a look in the manual for setting the desired temp on the quick select 1, 2, 3 buttons (I think you press and hold the up or down arrow for more than 3 seconds). You can see in my photo I've got them set to 200'C, 300'C and 380'C. I pressed button 2 and waited for the display to show the tip was at 300'C. Then pop a fresh dab of solder on the tip, just a bit, then hold it on the tiny metal square in the middle of the FG-100 meter. Wait for it to stabilise. I gave mine about 10-15 seconds. Note the reading; I got 286'C the first time.

Now here's where you calibrate the station. To work out the offset deduct the setting temp from the actual temp: in my case 286 - 300 = -14. Press and hold the * button then use the up/down arrows on buttons 1 and 2 to enter that value. Press * again to set it. Wait for the iron temp to stabilise and take another reading on the FG-100. It should now be close the setting temp. That's what my picture shows; a setting of 300'C and a thermometer reading of 301'C.
 
Yes, it was the one on the bay. Needs quite a bit of work doing yes, but i have loads of Fathom spares thank god.

Smells horrible too inside.. :mad:
 
Nice one, @Arv. FATHOM is a lovely game, I can see why it's your grail pin. Are they really hard to come by? I guess so as you paid nearly double what I paid for my projects, PARAGON and GOLD BALL.
 
Drat! Changing the title of this thread to "The Today I Lost Thread" because after spending 2 hours turning out every box and packet in my summerhouse I can't find the 5 x BUX84 power transistors I bought to fix the 190V regulator on my Bally GOLD BALL :mad: Double annoyed as I got them for a really good price on eBay of £2.24. Now I can only find them for that price each!
 
Nedreud said:
Nice one, @Arv. FATHOM is a lovely game, I can see why it's your grail pin. Are they really hard to come by? I guess so as you paid nearly double what I paid for my projects, PARAGON and GOLD BALL.
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You don't see that many, saying that there will be 3 on ebay next week no doubt.
 
Hey @Gaz Shiells, have you got a Spectrum? I was thinking of getting one. Keeping my eye out on eBay. I never had a Spectum as a kid, although one of my friends did. I quite fancy the challenge of writing a game in such a small memory space. Back at that time, I had an Apple II computer, and then a bit later I bought my own Commodore C64 as several friends had them and we swapped games on tape. I also had an Amiga 500 and Atari ST before finally moving on to a long line of PCs, although there was a Macintosh in there somewhere and a MacBook a few years ago! If I did get something that old again at least I'd have a use for the old 14" colour TV my wife bought with her first pay packet. It only has an RF input! No SCART or RCA.
 
Hi Peter
I was a C64 boy myself, although most of mates had the speccy. The graphics were better on the C64 but there was something about the speccy which made it cool.
I used to borrow games off my mates and record them on to blank tapes,
Ive still got my C64 but the tape recorder stopped working so if anyone has one for sale......:wave:
 
It had to happen sooner or later. We've all got it coming eventually...

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But in a clearly desperate bid to redeem himself my Dad got me this for Christmas as well:

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A Hantek 6022BE PC USB Oscilloscope. I haven't used it in anger on a pinball machine yet but it was simple enough to setup and worked perfectly well on an old Lenovo T61 ThinkPad laptop (just like the one in the stock photo above) using an audio signal generator as a test input. As I've got several Bally MPUs that need fixing I'll do a sort of technical review once I've RTFM, had a play and worked out how best to use it.
 
I received this game a couple of weeks ago but didn't play it till my birthday on Boxing Day. What a great game! Now hard to find in NZ as most were parted out when the Motorola chips on the mpu crapped out. I actually had a playfield for this but gave up hope of ever finding a Sinbad after storing the pf for approx. 9 years and not one ever came up. I Sold it early this year - Doh! Then of course a Sinbad came up a few weeks ago!!Luckily the pf in this one is very good.
 

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CliveP said:
I received this game a couple of weeks ago but didn't play it till my birthday on Boxing Day. What a great game! Now hard to find in NZ as most were parted out when the Motorola chips on the mpu crapped out. I actually had a playfield for this but gave up hope of ever finding a Sinbad after storing the pf for approx. 9 years and not one ever came up. I Sold it early this year - Doh! Then of course a Sinbad came up a few weeks ago!!Luckily the pf in this one is very good.
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Very nice, @CliveP, and sat next to a PARAGON too! I played a very nice Sinbad at the Flippermuseum, in Schwerin, Germany, near Hamburg. Great game.

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It was part of an amazing line-up of 6 beautiful Gottlieb pins. Left to right: SINBAD, JOKER POKER, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, CHARLIE'S ANGELS, TOTEM and HULK.

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Not that exciting, but fifty 390R 1/2W resistors arrived from CPC today to replace the 270R 1/4W they sent incorrectly. At least I can now finish replacing all the components in the 190V regulator :)

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lukewells said:
That's a very exciting lineup right there :thumbs:
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You know, Luke, I think it's the best line-up of a half dozen machines I've ever seen! Visually stunning. Because they're all Gottliebs from the same era (Flippermuseum is roughly organised by era, theme and manufacturer) they really stand out. It must have been a certain style at that time. Lovely colours, gorgeous artwork and they were all great games to play. I would be proud to own any of them but HULK and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS particularly. I came close as I nearly bought a CHARLIE'S ANGELS for my first pin. Who knows? Instead of being a three-in-a-row Bally Boy I could have been a Gott Nut! Mind you, my all time favourite grail pin is BLACK HOLE so there's still time to move over to the Dark Side.
 
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