User:The Hammer

Larry Hammer has been working on pinball machines since the early 1970's. His first pin was one that his father-in-law gave his wife when she was a kid. It was a Gottlieb Atlas EM.

His hobby has always included electronics. He first played around with his parents "black and white" CRT TV and brushed against the B+ voltage which threw him back against the wall. He was 8 years old.

Through the years, he built many HealthKits, Dynaco, Eico, and others. These kits included stereos, FM tuners, "color" TVs and several others including test equipment (signal generators, oscilloscopes, etc.), all without getting killed once.

He later repaired electronics equipment for friends, family and himself for fun.

After playing around with early generation computers, the pinball bug bit him again hard and he feverishly collected them during the 1990's and on as the arcades shut down.

Now, during retirement, he volunteers at the Roanoke Pinball Museum and tries to help out more than he annoys, not always successfully.

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Remove once resolved... Nice diagram in the opto operation area. You did all the research. Is this sentence correct? "If the column is strobed and the opto is blocked, the output of the LM339 is left floating and the MPU senses that the switch is open."

When an opto is blocked, the game sees that as a closed switch. It's a bit confusing because the WPC software inverts the opto state for switch open/closed as is seen on the DMD during switch test.

Chris Hibler