Anyone have apron card examples available- either original or custom?

Even pictures of the original cards would be helpful so they can be recreated. Thanks.

https://www.pinballrebel.com/pinball/cards/Stern/Stern_Dragonfist_instruction_cards.zip

Looked there but missed finding it. Thank you.

Almost finished with my cabinet and will be on hold until Beehive comes through.

Anyone hear current timing for the Beehive playfield?

??????
What is a Beehive playfield?

Mentioned in post #275 five months ago.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dragonfist-club/page/6#post-7805460

https://www.beehivepinball.com/

Thank you for clarifying. I only see sold out stuff.
I hope they can do justice to the reproduction of Stern's Dragonfist playfield.
I hope they can do silk screening rather than the ink jet printing.

I emailed them a couple of weeks ago to see if there were going to be any left, if they were all spoken for etc and just general info and nobody responded to me. I couldn't even get confirmation they're still being made although one would assume they are. Anyone know if they all spoken for? How long does the playfield creation process take?

It's been a bit, but I was able to get on the list sometime last year. I simply reached out to them via email. He was really nice and added me to the list. I am not bugging them about the play field as I am not really ready to take the project on just yet. It can come whenever and that will be fine by me.

Hope Mike is ok. Does he post here or anyone know him?

Talked to him yesterday, progress is still being made have no fear.

Thanks Tommy. Was just looking for any kind of update so I wouldn’t be forced to go to the dark side.

Basically done (with the cabinet) except for the task of repinning the old Meteor wire harness that’ll be used here.

Went with the DIY LISY LED displays. Not too much soldering necessary since they come with surface mount parts already installed.
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looking nice! did you get a coos or BGresto for backglass?

Thank you GoldenOreos

Went with the Coos film. Should have gone with the mirrored glass instead- better look and less trouble.

Looking very nice.

Just saw this pop up on the forums list so I thought I would add my dragonfust story:

Played in my first tournament about a month ago, very first game played was DF. Everyone plunged and basically went down the left lane without touching the flipper.

I Took that one step step further and proceeded to do that three times…ball never never even touched the flipper.

The game was set up very steep, however. I’ve never experienced anything quite like that in my life! after the tournament I played it a bunch of times & didn’t have the same thing happen of course. Don’t know what to say as I short plunged, long plunged and nudged as best as I could as the tilts are set very tight.

Dragonfist Definitely kicked my ass! What an awesome game….

It was a tournament and I had already tilted in a couple of the games when practicing earlier….2 of them wide bodies and actually tilted a couple more times in the competition.

Guess my point is …its is a seriously fast and challenging game!

The very first game I played on DF I got like 4800 points for the whole game. Ridiculously fast. When I want to play a slower playing game, I play f14.

The tilt thing you will get better at with practice there are def. some tournaments that do set them too tight (you should not do a small nudge and get warning-warning-tilt - that's too tight). Setting your home games to be really tight helps you will get to know how to still manipulate the ball but stay within the confines of a tilt.

Agreed, don’t think you get a warning on the classics though and this was a classic tourney. I barely touched Future Spa and Viking and lost two killer balls.

If there is a dragonfist for sale in decent shape in 400 mile radius of Nashville….I will be joining the club!!!

Here is my Dragonfist . It is a ball buster.

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There aren't warnings for sure, but you still will get better at nudging with a tighter tilt; or you will just tilt all the time and get frustrated.

It's a skill that can be developed, I used to think my tilts were tight and hosted a tournament for someone who warned me to keep them tight. I kept them at what I thought was tight and all the experienced players basically won the tournament and had VERY long ball times with (to me at the time) crazy saves.

Setting the tilts tighter have made me a much better player. I used to be the guy that took the tilt bob out of the machine and put it in the coin box as "it's fun to toss the machine around to save" - which is probably why I got bored of a lot of games because if you can always do some crazy slide save to save the ball, you'll never drain.

we have our games setup pretty steep and the tilts r also TIGHT with ear plugs. can't have everyone playing forever lol. dragonfist here is a is a coin flip lol but it's so fun when u get the action going. Glad u enjoy the games there. it's a lot of work keeping that many games working.

well I finally found a original! super excited. idk what's going on with this bally transformer shit but game works.

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Looks like a nice original playfield with full mylar

Pinwiki mentions this other Bally transformer- I guess it’s for later games (Kiss, Future Spa, Space Invaders) and has a different voltage on winding 4
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Quench Recently told me it was for the extra controlled lamps added on games like Kiss.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-e-122-125-whats-up-with-this-wiring-lug-s-5-amp12#post-7984799

A pinsider reach out and ask if I can do red Classic Stern Tombstone Drop Targets - short answer is yes but would need to do a bunch and then have to have 8-10 people each ordering 9-10 targets each willing to support but at a guess about $1.25 - $1.50 AUD more each target factoring the dye and time to dye the targets. Or the other option is you can get my Classic Stern Tombstone Drops and dye colour yourself using the process detailed below.

Here are my drops:
v3's on the left which are replicas
v4's on the right which are replicas but with the back of the target completely filled in.

Classic Stern - Drops 1 - v3 and v4 (resized).JPGClassic Stern - Drops 2 - v3 and v4 (resized).JPGClassic Stern - Drops 3 - v3 and v4 (resized).JPG

To dye your own follow this process as use this to dye colour alot of SLS / MJF parts with alot of success.

Basically
- you boil one lot of water and set aside in a bucket / another pot
- then you boil a 2nd lot of water and let it drop back to 92 degrees and keep simmering on heat to maintain that temperature
- add the dye (full bottle) and mix with the boiled water for 30 seconds and still keep at 92 degrees
- then add the targets in a basket / strainer and lower into the 92 degree water and simmer in the dye water for at least 45-60 seconds (maintaining the same heat) and then you have red targets - the longer you leave in the dye water on boil the more deeper red they will get
- then remove the drops and place into the 1st batch of previous boiled water to cool down the targets and lock in the new colour and then rise under cold water after 15minutes in the cooling hot water

This is the best dye for plastics and synthetic parts which I have achieved excellent results
https://www.ritdye.com/products/racing-red/

When I was dye colouring some Ghostbuster mods I did a drop target for the fun of it in purple.

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This is the thread for my drop targets in which people are getting great play results.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-tombstone-drop-targets-13a-11-any-interest

If you need any drops just let me know

Jady

Well, it is official. I am building a Dragonfist. Can someone please provide me the lengths of the 4 wood rails? I was also wondering what the correct pop bumpers caps (color) and spinner (color and decal) are. I have seen conflicting photos. Does this game use the metal playfield reinforcement on the bottom of the playfied? It should be a fun build.

Use whatever caps you like they shipped with yellow or blue and probably others that they had laying around.

The rails underneath seem to be random I've had multiple copies of various stern games some had them and some didn't all different eras as well.

I can live with that. I still need the measurements of the wood rails. Anybody have those handy?

Testing my sound board. Running slochar ver.15 on the weebly. Dip 8 background sound ‘on’.

Get the start up beeps and running through the self test it sounds like “wooshes”?

I’ve uploaded a video. Is that what it’s supposed to sound like?

SB-300 not recapped (yet). Original Meteor ribbon cables being used right now. Verified the cables are on pins 1-32. Is there a separate sound ROM that needs changed?

Test point voltages DC with ground on TP1. Target voltage in parenthesis.

TP2 = 14.05 (12)
TP3 = 9.37 (10)
TP4 = 5.043 (5)
TP5 = 2.458 (?)
TP6 = 0.016 (?)

Appreciate any advice. Thanks

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Sounds like Seawitch.

No those sound way off. All the sound tests on all sb300 games are the same except for the ones that have speech they add some speech.

As in....sounds like it needs to be recapped?

Can you shoot some audio of the game sounds

Can I get game sounds beside the solenoid test without a playfield?

No but I just tried the sound test and it sounds similar to yours. Next time I'm near the source I'll see if anything jumps out in the test doing data but afaik it's the same data that all the games use and it does sound different from the other games. With a pf you'd have to simulate switches on the connector not really worth it

I have never recapped any sound board ever but I suppose at some point I might have to

Okay thanks. I'll just wait until game is complete.

Thanks gdonovan that’s encouraging.

My apron looks great with your decals.

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Always glad to help out another pinhead!

There's nothing in the self test data that should be causing odd sounds - should be the same as all other sb300/mpu200 games. I thought there might be something where it does a sound command jump but there doesn't seem to be on a cursory glance (which always causes issues if not aware of if you are modding the software to possibly have that data end up in a different place.)

Since you have a weebly board you could put the 'stock' software back if it's there (or any game like meteor, seawitch, etc.) and do the sound test again should be the same/similar. (The earlier sound engines do not have as much capability, but the sound test doesn't really use that function - it tests each of the timers, then modifies the noise factor from cleaner to dirty)

When using the sound test you're basically looking for the absence of a sound, which indicates the 6840 or connections to it is defective, or if the sound doesn't get 'dirtier' in the one section that means the 4042 is out (iirc on that chip #)

What is saved in the NVRAM does seem to effect the test mode sound. The white noise sweeps are consistent. But the beeps vary in pitch depending on what garbage is in the NVRAM. I think playing a full game formats it, but I am not sure, but def have noticed lots of variations to the test mode SB300 beeps. From both really high pitch to low.

Go into SB300 sound test. Change game software to something different and boot once. Then when you switch back to the SB300 game.... sound test changes. Run the NVRAM clear software and it changes again. I never paid much attention to it. Doesn't really hurt anything.

Bally used the 122-131 transformer in three games: Kiss, Space Invaders and Future Spa. The reason was these games went over the standard 60 feature lamp limit and used an extra auxiliary lamp driver board. So these games required more transformer power for the total feature lamps available.
There is no evidence that the solenoid power was uprated so be careful about getting your hopes up. These transformers are better left for their specific Bally games.

Experiment! What could possibly go wrong?