Off-the-wall idea!

[gravitar 3]

An unexpected thing happened last weekend.. My wife and I went to garage sales (like we usually do) and happened upon an old 60's era electromechanical pinball game. Now, I've never been into pinball but have always liked video games. I've got several of them at home, but my wife doesn't particularly care for them. I took a quick look, and was ready to walk away.. So imagine my surprise when my wife actually WANTED it! I figured sure, whatever.. It didn't work but it was a pretty good deal so we took it home. Upon further inspection, I found quite a bit of burned wiring and a fried solenoid coil that was probably the culprit: http://home.wideopenwest.com/~vega215/bullfight5.jpg It's really a wonder the whole thing didn't burn to the ground. So much for fusing! Anyway, rather than actually FIXING it.. It dawned on me that this would be a pretty cool place to put a PLC! A SLC 500 (or maybe to keep it cheap, a SLC 150) would be right at home inside this beast. So am I the first to have this hair-brained idea, or have any of you tried automating a pinball game?

[Ken Moore 23]

Never thought of it, but it sound interesting. Plus you could program in some sort of secret cheat (hold the left flipper down for three seconds, then one right, one left, two rights etc...) that doubled the score for every target, then you could always use it to beat your wife. LOL

[TimWilborne 108]

Made a solitare game for a panelview one time. We were going to put a quarter box on the side of one our machines and make a strip poker game for it but boss stopped us saying they would never get anything done