I can remember lining up at the movies to watch that film. For a while in the 70's everything was UFO/Alien related. Played this one too.

Pinball machines tradin' paint! Back "in the old days" there were a bunch of little sandwich shops near where I worked with three or four machines crammed into a corner, head units touching.

Close Encounters is a must-see.

Must be cigarette packet foil, that's what I was taught to use as it would burn out with a proper short 🤣👍👍👍

great content :) my hypothesis for the side "red splatter" is The Andromeda Strain .....

Love the movie this classic is based on. I like that they have the Devil's Tower stenciled on the side art.

Thanks Ron! Another machine that you’re gonna bring back from the dead! Interesting to see the technology from early EMs through early Solid State and beyond.

Always interesting. Great video

I suppose the two people in the bottom right are supposed to be Roy and Jillian from the film 🍿

Man that movie freaked me out as a kid in the 80s.......suddenly got a craving for mashed potatoes😉👍

You should watch that movie Ron, it will explain some of the art.

I grew up playing pinball in the 70s and 80s and all of the Gottlieb pinball machines i remember trying to play were not working either completely or partially but all of the Bally and Williams games were working most of the time. So in my opinion that is why the Gottlieb pinball machines are in good condition and the the Bally Williams machines are worn.

Excellent video Ron, one of my favourite films of all time, thank you :)

Being a union projectionist of course I ran this movie when it came out❗️ that girl on the left when she's looking out the door in a white light she says ''they're here'', Also the tower on the playfield is the ''devils tower'' in Wyoming‼️®™️☑️☑️

Don't forget to look for that switch, gotta be in there somewhere 🤣

That’s a cool looking game. Looks like a lot of fun!

really neat machine, long, long ago

Reliable once you fix it. Best line ever!

That's a bitchin pinball machine. I especially love how funky those vacuum displays look!

Man that is one of the best back glasses!

I love the Gottlieb system 1 games. I have several and Close Encounters is one of them. They had some unique features like the vari and roto targets.

Oh my! _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ is seminal, go watch it, you won't be sorry.

The opening scene from CE3K where they show the lost WW2 planes was the best scene in movie history. Find it on youtube!

This was a pretty fun game to play when it first came out. …. I just love Gottlieb machines. Even though their early digitalis had issues, they are still very good games. I know you’ll whip this into great shape, and then we’ll see a great game in action. …can’t wait. …..what happened to that Bank A Ball that was hanging around?

0:30 And I'd die laughing it it was. Then again you're talking about you first pinball machine you fixed. If it's traded hands a few times or been well played since then yeah I'd totally see it returning for some more of your repair man lovin

How you not seen Close Encounters? John Williams score and steve Spielberg directing. We are from the UK and we were pissed that at the Devil's Tower tourist store, the pinball table was broke while camping there, they show the movie every night in front of the tower so get down there 😂

You haven’t seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind! “come on people!”

Such a good game! Ohhhhhh a Firepower how much!

Close Encouner of the 3rd count is a Steven spielberg one of his first you should see it :)

Great movie but a long one!

Love these «long form» videos, they are just perfect to sit back and relax with a beer :) Any chance there is an upcoming video featuring a Gottlieb Roller Disco Machine in the future? Got my hands on one a year ago, and slowly making progress, learning as I go (had to change the main board to one of the new remakes since none of the previous owners thought to check the battery and there was tons of leakage on the spider leg chips :/ ) Also, some brainiac who couldn’t get hold of proper connectors soldered all the connector cables to the main boards lower connector row :/ Hopefully, one day it will live again and spread joy in my quad roller skate shop in Norway, but for now it’s a slow moving project of love - but would love to see a video on restoring/fixing one of those, hoping to pick up some tricks on this video since it’s the same system :)

This I. Love ❤️

1. you HAVE to watch the movie (but I'm guessing you are pulling our leg) and 2. Close Encounters and E.T was both made by Spielberg :D (which I now heard you reference in the end - lesson learned: always watch all the way through before commenting ;)

The Gottlieb/Rockwell partnership blew up in Both companies Faces. Mainly cause Rockwell was the one trying to pull a fast one on Gottlieb and Gottlieb was advertising the usage of Rockwell's design. Rockwell Was going to use the "spider" chips in the Apollo 19 mission but that was cancelled so when the Pinball kings came knocking all their stock of Spider chips had a new home. Rockwell never intended to make more and when the supply was dried up they planned to move on. then 1979 happened. Not even 6 months in to the line up of the first solid state game did the issues start happening. At first Rockwell would service the games and this was fine until the chips ran out. then the reputation started to get sour. the rest is history as you know it.

Roadside dwellers often have missing cords because it's the easiest to snip off when walking by without getting caught. Edit: I never seen a resistor in a fuse case, interesting construction._

This game has been on my want list for a while. I saw one in Dallas a short time ago, the guy had torn it apart to restore and not finished it. I told my wife, she gave a dumb look and said no. What are ya gonna do with that???!?

Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing, have you really never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Ron, grab Joe and some 🍿 and watch one night. Too bad they did not put the classic 5 notes into the game, but looks fun to play.

Funnily enough if I remember correctly there was a couple who were hiding in the rocks like the couple in the bottom right

nice backglass, hope there are less drinks inside than mine

This might have been based on Close Encounters of the Third Kind but they pretty much went their own way... woohee. Sheesh. Still it's pretty cool.

oh man you need to watch that movie... everything on the board is referencing the movie..

@19:14 cmon people... we use "a·luh·mi·nee·uhm" foil in the UK; you say.... I say.... let's call the whole thing off.... nice video btw

ET was a retooled version of the Close Encounters followup Night Skies, which would have had a more horror take on the subject.

This means something...

its funny how every single bulb was blown on the playfield... someone must have been playing with the breakers for that to happen lol

As for the "battery," it is very possible that was NVRAM too. Dallas made a number of permanent battery chips that also included other features such as a real-time clock and NVRAM. Some PCs used those. They contained the real-time clock, the "CMOS" memory, and the battery for both, all in one package. On the cord, I have another possible scenario, though not as likely. Scrap metal thieves were bad for a while. I mean people going as far as committing burglaries just to cut off the cords of everything they could find.

C'mon... C'mon people... don't just replace half a cable, people. So funny. :)

Why would every lamp in the playfield be out? There is a very talented embedded programmer in Italy who makes boards for System 1 and System 80 games which run completely new code and add numerous new features.

You should watch the movie. These graphics would make a lot more sense.

The only complaint I have ever had on a Gottlieb pinball? Wiring.... The ones I used to work on resembled Medusa having a bad hair cut with the wiring harnesses. But once you got used to working on these classics- Not bad at all! Fairly reliable and decent earners back in the day.

Yodelayheehoo

Probably had solenoid voltage on the lamps lol

they picked rockwell because they were the only company that could design and make the boards in the time frame they had. there engineer quit and took the designs and prototypes for the system 1 and put gottlieb in a bind that hurt them until the next iteration of ss boards. ps with the cord cut like that one of the first things before putting on a new one would be putting a fuse on small transformer. My nit picky thing would be cut that battery off and neutralize alkaline and ground mods before powering that board. the big cheat would be to replace everything with a pascal janin board. the time you would save would make up for part replacement and rebuild especially of the spiders were dead already but it wouldn't be as entertaining.

I had to give a thumbs up purely because of the George Clinton reference.

I'd argue the Gottlieb's didn't get any wear because they rarely worked. Rockwell really shit the bed when they designed the control boards for Gottlieb. It's a shame because there were a lot of great games. Some of the mistakes Rockwell made when designing the boards are inexcusable. I truly believe that Gottlieb ultimately went under when they did because Rockwell did SUCH a shitty job designing the System 1 and System 80 electronics. Disclaimer: I LOVE the System 80 Gottlieb's! The two biggest problems by far are the use of card edge connectors instead of Molex connectors and the fact that the grounds are NOT tied together. The grounding issue is particularly bad. I've seen Gottliebs lock on all of the coils, frying all of them. That said, with a few modifications, the System 80's can be every bit as reliable as a Bally-35, Stern-200 or Williams system 3-11, even if you have them on location running all day, every day. It's just a shame that wasn't the case when they left the factory. The System 1 uses a proprietary IC (the infamous spider chips) that have been made out of unobtanium for decades now, so if one of those goes, an aftermarket board is really your only option. Mechanically, they're as bulletproof as ever. Gottlieb's EM's are famous for being VERY reliable, and the mechanical parts of their games stayed that way. The System 3 Gottlieb's were also VERY reliable, but by the time Gottlieb switched over to System 3, operators didn't trust them any more. They should have sued the hell out of Rockwell for designing them pure shit.

I like this channel. Makes me want to buy some broke-ass machine and not be able to fix it.

the rockwell pps/4 chipset. they put the ROMs into the IO chips which like to fail. Imagine if your mask ROMs were in the 6821's and you couldn't just swap them out when they failed. Interestingly they put "generic" pinball machine controller software into the ROMs, and the game-specific things into a small PROM (which also likes to fail, but at least it is not custom unlike the IO/ROM chips). Unfortunately these chips run on weird voltages and signaling so you can't easily make a replacement with IO and an EPROM.

JOES CLASSIC, To power the displays the power supply is 69VAC and outputs 60VDC for the larger displays and 42VDC for the smaller displays. The RMS Calculator 70VAC will equal 50VDC/50RMS. So I'm confused how they got 60VDC out of 69VAC when the RMS value of 69VAC will be 50vdc RMS. Can anyone explain this?

Are you telling me you've never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Come on now people! 😄

It’s funny because Spielberg directed both Close Encounters and ET so it being a “ripoff” isn’t too crazy! 😆

Half -a-cord is half-ass, people.

Please say you're joking that you haven't seen that movie.

Good game, but the stiff left spinner sucked

I'll be honest with you, Ron -- This game DOESN'T look much like the movie! LOL Like most licensed product, I don't think they had access to a lot of still photos from the movie or cared to use photo reference. I don't think Universal Pictures (the distributors of CE3K) care, either, as long as the pinball company paid the license fee!

George Clinton! LOL! PFunk!

For the love of god dude clean that Fluke that things filthy.