Play Meter

Baseball, Night Driver, all of those games, because
there are a lot of them around; they're quite
popular and fortunately, from our point of view,
they broke a lot when they were brand new. We
had to learn to fix them quickly because they were
such very popular games. So we built a special test
jig for Midway games. Of course we've also got our
general diagnostic machine for anything that's built
on an 8080. It's put out by Intel, the people who
make the 8080. It's not designed to fix game
machines; it's designed to fix computers that use
the 8080, but that is what the Midway games use.
PLA Y METER: What about schematics and other
diagrams? Do you have any difficulty acquiring
these?
BUSH: That's a good point. As a matter of fact, I
have on my desk right in front of me an invoice that
I got in the ' mail this morning COD from Nutting
Associates, to use a name. They charged me ten
bucks for a schematic, which I thought was absurd .
But everybody else will give you one, if you can get
hold of them. COD charges and air mail charges
brought the bill to $13.00. I don't really mind paying
the $13.00, but here I'm trying to do them a favor
by fixing their game for one of their customers and
they're going to charge me for the schematic. That
seems to be just a little bit on the shaky side.
Some games you can't get them for, like the
Chicago Coin games that were popular ten years
ago. Where are you going to get a schematic for
that? The people that have really strong distributor
programs, Midway for instance, want to insist that
you go through their distributors. I wouldn't mind
that if I could deal through their distributor easily,
but the distributor, State Music here in Dallas, has
so much to do that I hate to bother the guy. He
doesn't really have time to mess with me to get me
a free schematic. You know, I'd just as soon call up
Andy Ducay up there in Chicago and say, "Andy,
send me one." And he usually does. But he didn't
used to. We'd call Midway and they'd say, "Go to
State Music."
PLA Y METER: Is this true of most of the major
manufacturers-they like you to deal through their
distributors?
BUSH: Yes. And I don't really blame them,
considering their point of view, but then they're not
really considering our point of view. I don't mind
going to O'Connor or State Music to get an Atari
schematic, particularly if they've got one sitting on
the shelf, but if I'm going to have to order it, I'd just
as soon order it from Atari direct as to order it
through O'Connor, have it sent to O'Connor, have
O'Connor call me on the phone, and then have to
drive all the way across town to pick it up and bring
it back-there's a waste of time and effort. And
O'Connor is not going to make any money of it, so
why bother.
PLAY METER: So schematics are available;
they're just sometimes difficult to get hold of?
BUSH: Right. They're available except for some
machines made by those people who have gone out
of business or some of the old Allied Leisure
machines, for example.
PLAY METER: What do you find to be the major
cause of PC board failure? (continued on page 52 )
They play more
when they have
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