Gorgar: Speaks.

The opening lines of this pinball machine. And now, my father, running out of room to store new (old) pinball machines, has let me take this one home to work on as my own project. Thanks, Dad!

Gorgar Sideview

As promised, here is a picture of the actual machine, and not some picture from the Intertubes. Again, it’s missing the backglass, but it is still awesome. The play field is interesting, it’s not empty, and it’s in good shape, too!

Gorgar Playfield

Scary. One of the feature I find the most interesting about it is the electro-magnet at the top left. The “snake pit”. The ball gets caught for a bit, then gets let go of and rolls down. I’m really hoping that I can fix this machine up, maybe it is something as simple as dirty contacts (after all, it is over 25 years old, and antique, if you will). Here is a video of me playing it. Not a great angle at the beginning, but you can hear the sounds of the game. One of the first electronic pinball machines, with electronic sounds. Before, all the machines used bells!

Note: Sorry for the, ahem, shitty video. Using Windows 7, I no longer have the well designed, fully functional, and advanced Windows Movie Maker found in Windows XP, as such, I have no control over export options, and the transitions and titles are all different (and quite frankly, nowhere near as good).

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Sunday, December 6th, 2009 electronics, pinball, projects

4 Comments to Gorgar: Speaks.

  • M says:

    How is windows seven working i was thinking of switchng because it might work better then XP with my 64bit cpu?

  • Dan says:

    Windows 7 works quite well, however there are some issues I have that I didn’t have with Windows XP. First example is the fact that Windows Movie Maker in Win 7 sucks.

    Second, there are serious driver incompatibilities with older sound cards, for example, the Sound Blaster cards made prior ~2004. I need these cards because they have MIDI ports, now I have to use my USB to MIDI adapter.

    Also, some programs don’t work the same, for example, Propellerhead’s Reason, which I use to record my music, isn’t able to find the locations of samples that don’t come in the built-in sound banks. Once I respecify the locations and save it’s ok, but it’s bizarre since my hard drive and folder structure hasn’t changed at all since I had XP.

    About going to 64-bit, you won’t really notice much performance gain. Unless you have Adobe Photoshop x64, or do video editing with a 64-bit software, there is little performance to be gained, as the majority of programs, including games, run only in 32-bit for now.

  • Dad says:

    Glad you are enjoying the pinball Dan!
    Maybe the exposure will help in finding parts for the machine.
    The music you composed is really good.
    Have a nice day!

  • Dan says:

    Thanks Dad!
    Maybe we can find some more, local, pinball enthusiasts.

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