Planning out the cabinet
When I first decided to build a virtual pinball cabinet, my plan was get a low cost used old pinball machine and remove the insides. After looking online, eBay, Craig’s list and asking around I could not find a low price standard size pinball machine to use in south Florida. Then one day I was putting an old bunk bed down to the curb and got a crazy idea! I removed the drawers, dis-attached the back, laid it down horizontally and wa la, it was a virtual pinball machine! Well at the point it needed a lot of imagination!
I’m calling this my prototype machine and keeping the cost down low by used old equipment and making whatever I can.
Yes my pinball cabinet started off as a dresser, 4 drawers and three sock drawers!
The pre-prototype
So the first couple of months, I used whatever was available to see if I could get something working, a pc, lcd screen and a my old family Sony lcd hd screen laying on its back in a spare bedroom, I set up a proof of concept. I was at the point I realized how tricky it was to setup all the required components on the PC.
My Idea to create a Virtual Pinball Machine
So it all started growing up and enjoying pinball. I was very lucky to have an arcade within bike riding distance growing up in Jacksonville and would spend many hours playing pinball after school, that along with creating my own BBS on my TRS80 computer.
I was also very fortunate that one day my Dad bought a real pinball machine home. I remember it clearly, it was called Stop & Go and was a electro-mechanical machine. Of course back then I would use tape to block the exit lanes since it was extremely hard keeping the ball in play!
That pinball machine and eventually programming on an Apple II let me to eventually create my first virtual pinball machine.
A great deal!
There was one other event and machine that helped get me when I am today. Back in the early 2000s I was out to lunch with my family at a local restaurant called and owned by Pete Rose. ....