Back To The Pinball - Zaccaria Donor Cab

[passatuner]

Greetings!

After building my first Pinball Cab, the Pin Devil, i decided to go one step further and build a Full Size Visual Pinball cab, based on an old cab built by Zaccaria, an former italien manufacturer of pinball machines. The Soccer Kings will be the donor cab, to carry a 37" LED-Screen as playfield, a 28" TFT-Monitor as backbox and a 10" Photoframe-TFT as DMD.

/Update: As it wont fit very well with the 17" TFT i will go with a 10" Photoframe by Samsung as Mini TFT. Its a bit smaller, but the backbox is still foldable.

Update: No, i will stick with the 17". The 10" photoframe is way too small, and to slow in screenupdates"

And as it was planned fot the Pin Devil but never finished, i will do the design this time, as i wanted before.

And as I'm a big fan of "Back to the Future" i will be a theme based on this.

This is, how my cab hopefulle will look, when finished:

Today a started filling some holes and scratches in the cab.

This is the Soccer Kings Donor Cab i will use to make my Back to the Pinball Cab.

Well, hrm, this is stuff that was in the minipin pin devil, Better in there, than chaos in the room

Most parts will be reused, except the screen, as the new screen will be 37" instead of 32".

And this this is the only part of the old cab that i will keep. I will reuse this one as a shelf in my gameroom. Pictures will follow, as soon i have done this.

This is just the start, and i will try to take some more photos this time.

Updates will follow as soon it progresses.

Greetings,

Passatuner

[mameman]

love the artwork, never had a BTTF but always wanted one.

[Ext2k]

I love your Idea BTTF best world movie. Now avaliable in Blu-Ray!!!!

Good Work passatuner.

[passatuner]

Today i mounted the screen in the backbox.

I'll use a 28" TFT as translite. This screen has in fact been my monitor at my PC. Now it will be used in the new cab and the old 24" screen that was used in the old cab I built before is now used as the new screen for my PC

Keeps the cost down and i hove no screen that is standing around unused. After 1 hour i got used to the a little bit smaller screen.

Nice detail: the screen got some holes in its frame, that made it very easy to mount it

Unfortunately I'm running into a little problem. I want the backbox to be easy foldable, as it is with a real pin - well, hrm, more real than the virtual tables later at last - so i first thought to put it slidable or something like this, but i cannot to this as i wanted, cause of fact how the Zaccaria Cab is build. There is simply no space under the Backbox, as the metall hinge sits under there, where the screen would go down to the big cab.

So i have to keep the screen only in the backbox, this makes it possible to fold it down easy, just like a real pin, but i may have to put the screen somewhat sloped or - if it should be leveled, about 5cm/2inch behind the front glass. I dont think that this is a big problem, I don't believe it will be visible much later when the glass is in front of both screens.

I also made the artwork for the buttons.

This is how they will look:

That's it for now...

Greetings,

Passatuner

[passatuner]

love the artwork, never had a BTTF but always wanted one.

Me too. But i have not found one to sell yet..

I love your Idea BTTF best world movie. Now avaliable in Blu-Ray!!!!

Good Work passatuner.

Best Movie ever, thats damn true!

I allways see the box with the blurays when I'm in the shop, but allways say to myself: "No, dont buy it, you allready have all the films on DVD. It's still the same movie!" But hey!It's BTTF! So one day i will have the box in my basket, I'm sure.

[njay]

I am going to follow this closely our cabs seems the same system 11 and yours

[passatuner]

It's a Zaccaria Cab - 2nd Generation., no Sys11. Zaccaria was an italian manfacturer of pinballmachines and arcadecabs in the eighties. The company was later named Mr. Game and did some modern looking pinball machines, like Motor Show:

But my cab seems indeed quite equal to a Sys.11

[njay]

wow weird cab shape... cool

[passatuner]

And they even had a small CRT-screen in it, to play some minigames like on an arcade! Just like the other pins with a DMD, but in color!

Just have a look on the other picture at the Internet Pinball Database:

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=3631

If they would fit better to the normal design of pinballs I would buy one, but so it would allways look like an alien in my small gameroom

[njay]

Lol... well good luck with your build and thanks for answering my questions

[passatuner]

You're welcome.

/update in the progress:

My buttons got delivered from arcadeshop tody.

the screen was sent yesterday, one week after the order. Note to myself: Never order such things two weeks before christmas.

Also ordered the vinyl and the printed plexi for the backglass today from a local company that allready does some other works for my company.

The best is: I will get the vinyl and the plexi before christmas! And as i will close my office next week until january, I'll have lots of spare time to work on my cab.

Hurray! I can't wait to get home start painting the cab and make it ready to put the electronics in it!

[passatuner]

Some little progress made...

I put the electronics into the cab, so the PC and its coresponding hardware is installed, but i have not wired any buttons yet.

I did sand the cabine a little bit, to get a nicer surface to put the sideart on, which should arrive on wednesday or thursday.

I did also a little test with the 17" DMD, how it would look, as it will sit about 5cm/2inch behind the plexi.

I was afraid that i would be very visible that theres some space between screen and plexi, but i wasn't, its completey ok, as seen in this little video I made.

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So i will keep using the 17" for the DMD. Tthe backbox is still foldable and detachable, as the 17" TFT is mounted in the backbox completey, nothing in the cab itself.

The 10" Photoframe i got meanwhile which wanted to use at first is very small , it would not fit with the sizes of the other screens, and be way too small compared with a real Dot Matrix Display.

Today I drilled the holes for all the buttons and mounted them to see if it does look good and if I like it.

Well, i do like it I will go with the round buttons, not with the rectangular as planned.

The screen for the playfield has not arrived yet, its has been on its way since one week now, hopefully i will get it on monday or thursday, im getting eager to play the first round of party pinball

[passatuner]

Got my LED TV delivered today.

It's 37", a LG 37LE5300, and its fits great decased.

[njay]

Mounting pics please !!!

[passatuner]

The paint is dry, i continued witth the build.

I have decased my 37" LED-TV that will be used as playfield.

I fits really good, only about 0,5cm space to the side of the cab.

The frame of the panel is quite strong, so i decided to just let it rest on the top and the bottom, doesn't seem to bend. If there will be problems later, i can still go to make a more stronger rest for the frame.

It's stilll easy to remove, as it just rests on the two wooden bars, so working IN the cab in the future, for adding LED-Wiz, flashers, solenoids and so on, will be an easy thing, maybe I'll even make a hinge to lift it up like a real playfield

Starts looking like a Pinball machine:

Wooden Bar where the Playfield rests on. I'm going to add a hinge there in the future, so that the playfield can be opened like it can on a real pinball machine.

The wooden bar at the front.

The screen cant move down while playing, as there is a 'corner' in the frame, that keep it on place on the bar.

View from the Front:

The first time i started the Cab i was a little bit disappointed by the picture quality on the LED-Playfield.

I connected it via HDMI, but it shows that it will allways be a little bit blurry via HDMI, as the TV seems to try to anhance the picture

I then tried connecting it via an HDMI to Analog Adapter, and the picture quality is very good now. I can not see any ghosting or similar, the colors are fine an the image is sharp and crisp, even if it gets its signal analog now.

Going to wire the buttons now...

[njay]

Try to disable all picture enhancers !! disable motion plus and all of that crap

Switch the tv to game mode if is has it !!

[passatuner]

Did that before, did not do any difference when connected via DVI -> HDMI

But i thought, that there should be a solution, and I found it.

I switched the GFX275 to a GF220 with newest driver (which happily work with VP!) which has a HDMI Port and connected the TV via HDMI directly. Now the picture quality is as it should be! It was allready very good via VGA, but now its even better"

I've always been told that HDMI is backwards compatible to DVI, but it seems it isn't, at last with this TV.

So now I'm nearly happy.

Only nearly because I had an accident with the screen after discovering this. Took away the panel, wanted to put it at side and then our small dog came and i fell over her.. Now i have a small strip going from the left to right, where blue does not work anymore.

Fortunately its nearly at the side where the apron is displayed, maybe 20 pixel from the side, so its nearly unvisible, as the most used color there is black...

Now I'm going to wire at last two buttons - left and right flipper, have to play something now after that little shock

Greetings,

Passatuner

[passatuner]

Finished the wiring of the buttons yesterday.

Today i switched on the pin to play a little bit before continuing with more work - lamps, solenoids, tilts -and a miracle has happened over night!

The screen is working completely again! No missing stripe of blue color near the side!

Yeehaa!! The gods of pinball have heard my prayers!

I also switched back to my 275GTS as the 220GTS is somewhat slower and the stuttered a little bit an some tables. It was worth a try, as the 220GTS has 1GB instead auf the 896 of the 275GTS and is a bit quiter. But speed and a fluid gameplay is more important.

I had to go back to VGA instead of HDMI, but that doesnt matter to me. After playing a few tables with HDMI and then going back to VGA i like the image quality with VGA better just because of one reason:

the ramps do often look ugly in VP, as there are no transparencies in VP, but if connected via VGA the ramps do look transparent, as it is 'antialiased' a little bit as the analog signal does not give good enough information for that chequered simulated transparency, so its blurred with the background and look like it is transparent. Difficult to explain, i hope it is understandable.

The rest looks as good as via HDMI, at last i do not see a big difference - maybe a need new glasses

Greetings,

Passatuner

[passatuner]

Today the sidearts and the plexi for the backbox were ready to get at my befriended Screenprinter and Signmaker.

So i got on my way there, despite the fact that is was snowing a lot and the streets were icy and there were millions of other cars on the streets one day before Holy Night.

What i got was worth the money and all the effort. It just looks great printed in original size and put on the cab. I did allready like it on the pc when i designed it in corel draw, but now i just was speechless.

Here are some picture of the sideart and the cab...

At first the legs had to be removed. As i was alone i asked a friend of mine to help holding the cab while the legs were gone. And as im thirsty after working, he was very nice friend today

Thats the printed and laminated self adhesive vinyl to be put on the cab.

Looks nice.

First side done. Wow, is this is the old Soccer Kings i had a week ago? It just look great imho.

The speakers are glued to the back of the plexi for the backglass as i did not want to have any skrews visible at tre front. Just a flat plexi on the front as the cab had as it was new, just like the EM and pre-DMD pinballs had.

This is how the cab looks now on its place:

More to follow.

Merry Christmas,

Passatuner

[njay]

Nice work there, looks clean !!

question the playfield monitor seems to lie deeper then your apron.

Are you going to up the monitor more?

[passatuner]

No, i want it to be a bit lower than the apron, its gives me are more feeling a real machine.

On a real machine the scorecards on the apron are directly under the glass and the playfield is somewhat deeper than the scorecards on the apron, and as the screen is the playfield I have i a little bit deeper. about 2inch, to give it a little more three dimensional look.

I will maybe also put the upper side a bit lower, I think its a little bit to much slope, and to have a little more space to put the rom driven flashers later.

Merry Christmas,

Passatuner

[passatuner]

I played a little bit with the setting of the LCD-TV LG3LE5300 in my pincab, trying to get the best visual experience.

After going quite down with brightness and illumination and up with contrast i got a good look of the screen, where the illuminated areas like inserts etc. look illuminated and the other parts of the playfield look more unilluminated.

Made some videos to show it, unfortunately the effekt is not as good on the video as it is in real.

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[jdsabin1]

I played a little bit with the setting of the LCD-TV LG3LE5300 in my pincab, trying to get the best visual experience.

After going quite down with brightness and illumination and up with contrast i got a good look of the screen, where the illuminated areas like inserts etc. look illuminated and the other parts of the playfield look more unilluminated.

This is a post I can really sink my teeth into. Can you be more specific as far as settings go? Was there anything else besides brightness and contrast that you settled on?

[Ext2k]

Wow fantástic job!!!!

I love this pinball!!!

[passatuner]

This is a post I can really sink my teeth into. Can you be more specific as far as settings go? Was there anything else besides brightness and contrast that you settled on?

My TV does have an extra setting called illumination, which does put down the brightness of the LED-Lights, the setting brightness turns down the brightness of the picture itself, but the led remains the same brightness.

I put illumination to around 10%, thats quite less light from the leds, so darker parts of the screen do not brighten up es much as they would normally. Not every TV does have this setting, sometimes its called Power Save oder Energy Save, some other dont have this at all.

I put contrast at 90% - this makes the lightning parts of the playfield very bright compared to the unilluminated areas.

At last i put Brightness very low to 20% - the TV renders the darker areas of the picture itself darker now (as explained illumination/brightness) but keeps the lights parts light.

Generally the way to go is to move contrast up and brightness down.

But there's a disadvantage also: you may loose some details on dark and bright areas when contras is cranked up.

I also found have a setting on my TV to change the size of the picture on the screen, so i made it bigger to the right.

I do lose some lines to the bottom of the playfield now but the flippers move down quite a bit to my apron in the cab and I get rid of a part of the extra apron an the screen and so it gives me a bigger playfield

DE Star Wars before:

DE Star Wars after:

The ball stays round, it did not get egg shaped, at last not on the tables i tested.

I do loose halve of the text of "FREE PLAY" in Hyperpin though, but that's not important to me, as i now it's free to play

Wow fantástic job!!!!

I love this pinball!!!

Thank you