Had to put this off for a long time. We replaced the carpeting upstairs with new flooring and other expenses kept popping up each month. I often have a hard time justifying large purchases for myself, but finally decided what the heck. I haven’t been playing on my test setup much lately since newer tables were proving too much for my old PC. It was kinda bumming me out that I had to wait to upgrade, but wait no longer! Here’s the inventory list:
Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
MSI GAMING X TRIO GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB Video Card
Corsair RM750e (2023) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
For now, I’m using an old case I had lying around in the basement. Had to drill out the hard drive enclosures in it so the massive video card will fit. Next steps is to plug everything in, install Windows 11, then all the vpin software and configure it with my setup. Then the fun of going through and adding tables.
Later this summer, hoping to build the table itself. I really enjoy wood working, so looking forward to that. Stay tuned!
Initially I thought I’d do a two screen setup. My new monitor for the playfield and an old one for the backglass and DMD (the little LED display showing the score and what-not). But the more research I’ve done I found some people will take an old laptop screen and repurpose it. Looking in the closet I found an old Dell laptop with a 15″ monitor, which is the perfect size.
Ah, but how do you use that as a stand alone monitor you may ask? Well they sell these little LCD controller inverter board monitor kit thingies. After removing the display from the laptop and getting the exact model number, I did a search and found someone on eBay who sells them. Sent them pictures of my display and they directed me to the one I need. It was coming from China, so I didn’t expect it until May, but I received a surprise eBay alert on my phone that it was delivered today!
Sure enough, while walking the dogs I checked the mailbox and there was this tiny little box. Once again, I neglected to get pics of it before hooking it up due to my excitement, but it works! So now I have a cool three monitor setup and it only cost like $25!
New three screen setup, but still on a table supported by a bunch of books.
Next up is getting the various buttons, coin door, and legs for the table. I have all the buttons and door picked out, but unsure what color I want for the legs. I can go classic chrome or get fancy. I’m also waiting a bit since we had some other expenses recently and trying to pace myself with this.
In the meantime, I installed Pinup Popper which is an awesome front-end for several virtual pinball programs and allows me to easily select a table to play using only flipper buttons. I’ve only scratched the surface with it so far with all the custom media you can add for various parts of each table. Also there was an annoying voice that would tell you to wait while the table loads, so I replaced that with a light saber turning on sound effect.
Yeah, I have 200 tables installed so far.
Also trying to go through every table I installed and make sure I have the version I want (some tables have different creators and look/play differently from each other) and then make sure each one actually works and is setup correctly.
I’m also getting tempted into learning how to build my own. Maybe start by modding an existing one and go from there. I have some crazy ideas, just need time, which is usually at a premium. Stupid work…
I took the plunge and got a playfield monitor. Had my eye on the ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q. Seen a few people on the forums mention it and this company uses it for their upgraded package. I found someone selling a used one on Facebook Marketplace that was tempting, but I wasn’t sure how much I trust that and the price wasn’t much lower than new. It also had a recent price cut and then Friday added a $100 mail-in rebate, which then made it basically the same price as the used one. So I took the plunge and ordered it with the expected arrival date of Monday. Yesterday, as I’m replacing our laundry room faucet (Thanks to whomever installed the utility sink by screwing it into the floor, he said sarcastically), the wife tells me a big box was delivered on the porch. Lo and behold, it got here early!
Empty box. Was too excited and forgot to take a pic first.
After remembering a perfect sized old table doing nothing in the basement and setting up the new monitor, I give you the new temporary proof of concept setup.
Fancy new setup.
Next step is designing the cabinet around the monitor dimensions. Gonna start old school pen and paper, and then maybe if I’m feeling feisty write it up in SketchUp.
I’ve also started creating a PC wish list, which aside from the GPU I can do surprisingly cheap (relatively). And since I’m not doing much gaming these days on the PC, I might move the current GPU to the pinball temporarily and just use the onboard graphics for the PC in the meantime.
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always wanted my own arcade, but who has the money and space? Not me, well not exactly. Pinball machines especially can be expensive, need a lot of room, and then there’s maintaining them. So the first time I found out about virtual pinball and could play some of my favorite tables on my computer (Star Trek: The Next Generation being chief among them) I was blown away! Then I saw how people took this software and applied it to a full size table and suddenly you have every pinball machine you want in one space.
Unfortunately, at the time I was living in our quaint house and after squeezing a pool table into the basement (another item I’ve wanted to own forever) there wasn’t enough space and resources for me to build one.
Fast forward to now. I kinda forgot about this until I saw a “Weird Al” pinball table announced, but the price tag is a bit…oof. It’s an interesting idea, modular pinball table. Similar to the virtual concept, being able to switch out parts so you have multiple tables in one box. Of course switching them isn’t as easy as clicking a button and you’re limited to what they offer, so no ST:TNG. Al’s table isn’t available virtually (yet?), but it still led me into looking into this again.
Today I’m in a bigger house. I have the space and resources to put something together. As a test run I took my old Sony KDL-40W3000 TV and put in on the floor, propped up at an angle with some books, add another old Dell monitor to act as the back glass, hook it all up to my existing seven year old gaming rig and voila!
My ghetto vpin setup.
You can play by keyboard, but to make it easier I used an Xbox360 controller and it works well! I even got a high score as seen above. So assuming I can stop playing for long enough, I want to take this basic design and put it into a table. First step is research and design. Luckily, there’s a good community and various resources to help. (Any links I throw in next I have no affiliation or preference, just examples I’ve seen.) You can go ahead and buy a complete table from places like this. This is the easiest, but most expensive option. Plus it’s a little frowned upon for places to sell the actual virtual tables already installed instead of going to the people who spent many, many hours creating them. So that’s out for me. Next you can buy a cabinet Ikea style and put the pieces together yourself, then buy each other component separately and put it all together. Still pricier than building your own, but easier and then still need to buy the monitors and PC. I’d rather save the money for the guts and I’m confident enough in my woodworking skills to build a box, so this is out for me as well.
This leads me to designing and building my own cabinet. Resources like mjrnet.org (considered the bible for vpin cab builds) and individual projects I’ve found here and here really gave me ideas and confidence to move forward with this. And of course there’s vpforums.org where I got some of the software and most of the tables themselves, not to mention their forums for info. You can really go crazy. LEDs that react to the ball, feedback devices so you can feel the bumpers and even the ball rolling, but I’m going to start super simple.
First step is getting a playfield monitor. The TV above was just a proof of concept. Want something newer, lighter, 4K. There’s just a few other details I need to decide on and of course how much am I willing to spend. Chief among them is the refresh rate and how much will really matter. Is 60 Hz good enough at 4K? Or is 120 Hz at 1080p better? (Video card prices are stupid, so going 120 Hz/fps at 4K is probably a no go). Do I splurge on a gaming monitor or get a much cheaper TV? Thanks to my sometimes useful, but generally annoying, habit of overanalyzing and researching all tech purchases so I can make sure I get every ounce of goodness at the lowest price, I’m currently paralyzed in indecision. This Sony X85J seems like a nice compromise, and others have used it with success. Or slightly more gets me this ASUS XG438Q. or do I go the used route and wait for a good deal on eBay or Facebook Marketplace or whatever?
Once I have the playfield, the rest will fall in place. Will design the cabinet itself around it then acquire the parts to put it all together, but I’ll detail that later. Wish me luck! Oh and time. Also, some more money would be helpful.
