Happy Friday everyone! The Knapp household experienced yet another blackout this morning, so rather than work in the dark with limited Internet my youngest son and I called an audible and headed on up to the World Famous Rock Fantasy record shop in Middletown, NY to play some pinball.
We’re back now and I’m relaxing on my deck, so I figured why not share today’s pinball news with everyone? I have two items for Jersey Jack and one for Stern.
Let’s kick things off with Stern and its Factory Friday. Today, Stern shared pictures of Iron Maiden Pro on the line at its factory.
I just played some Iron Maiden Premium myself over at Rock Fantasy. Not particularly well, but I played it. I did manage to put up score #2 for the month on JAWS.
Wow these screen captures come out a lot clearer when I do them on my phone than on my PC.
Now onto Jersey Jack Pinball. Some astute code diggers over on Pinside found the following note in the code for an April update on Elton John:
(Included in 2024-04-04 image)
added ‘jq’ (requested by folks working on Pinball Connect)
Very interesting. So from this we can not only tell that Jersey Jack’s programmers are hard at work on their internal replacement for the Scorebit system that they removed a year or two ago but also its name (at least it’s tentative one) “Pinball Connect.”
Here’s the code:
Speaking of Jersey Jack, the other day I fell down a complete rabbit hole on the internet when I figured out that random individuals like myself have the ability to look up the U.S. Customs reports on the parts and products imported by various companies. I was shocked.
I was only able to find details on the last several imports for some pinball manufacturers without paying, but I did manage to find this recent shipment to Jersey Jack Pinball from China:
It is for a “Stretched Bar Screen Driver Board Kit”. I then looked up what that part is on the Chinese company’s website and apparently it’s the board that drives screens like this:
Now I realize that it is entirely possible that this is just the driver board that JJP uses for its backbox screen, but it is also possible that they are planning on using it for some sort of back of the playfield screen like Barrels of Fun is using the screens that it bought from Deeproot for or possibly as part of a a topper.
Anyhow, I found both the fact that you can tell what parts manufacturers are importing online and this particular part interesting. I should pay the twenty bucks to unlock all of the orders and really dig into it 😂.
I will leave you with pictures of my trip to the World Famous Rock Fantasy in Middletown, NY earlier today. Such a great location!
Just for posterity's sake: the back screens on Barrels of Fun games are NOT unused "pinbar" screens. I've personally compared the two.
that Pinball Connect info is the full install ISO images for all of the games and it's not in the main update what is new. No it's deep in the folder layout of the ISO images. \home\partimag\img\README.txt This image directory is the updated 21.10 OS that should be used for all
releases.
Changes from original:
(Included in 2023-05-18 image)
- New JJP USB driver for the topper (fixes flickering of coil-driven lamps)
- Uninstalled PulseEffects (no longer used)
- New JJP-specific systemd files in /etc/systemd/system
- Allegro 5.2.8 library
- Some extra cleanup of unneeded files. Third parition size reduced by 200MB
(Included in 2024-04-02 image)
- New JJP USB drivers for I/O, BAG, Topper, ACC, CAB, LilyPad, Stepper
(Adds communication er…
So after seeing where you got the Import info on the JJP parts, I decided to check on New Wave Toys and it appears our Zoltar machines had 2 shipments arrive in 6/14 and 2 .ore shipments arrive in 6/25...so hopefully we will finally get them in our hands soon! Been a long wait!
Hey, what’s your Venmo?! I’ll pony up that $20 if you’ll do the sleuthing. Love the rumor milling.
Does anybody know why Stern is not doing more B66? It seems there would have a market for it. Licensing issue?