The French Connection: Rally Fliptronic, ahead of its time!

[medusa]

Hallo Eckhart,

sehr schöne Fotos und man spürt deine Freude an der Sache - wie so oft, gibt es viele Spiele die unbekannt oder verkannt sind und trotzdem sehr schön und interessant

traduction

salut Eckhart

très belles photos et on sent ton enthousiasme pour la chose - et comme c'est souvent le cas, il existe beaucoup de jeux inconnus ou méconnus et qui sont néanmoins très intéressants

[milan]

:lol: Merci centaur de penser aux monoglottes !!!

Parce que Cine4Home dit qu'il lit parfaitement le français.... et ça tombe bien c'est la seule langue que je réussis à appréhender

[olivier7]

Hallo Ekkehart,

Thank you very much for this article. Following the one depicting the Playboy's wonders it is a real pleasure to read a new one from another person, especially from abroad. For years, i searched for details about such machines and here they are. thank you very much for your contribution to our knowledge. In sincerely hope that more articles will follow on these games. Viele danke.

I love the technical close-ups showing also the mechanics "behind the game". Bitte schön.

[tony49]

Thanx for your contribution

[jml]

salut !!!

"ils ont tout dit mieux que moi" :D :D

danke sehr...

@+

[Cine4Home]

Hallo,

Du bist hier natürlich willkommen. Hast du deine maschine in Frankreich gekauft ? Kann mann Rally pinball in Deutschland finden ?
Danke Sehr.

Francis

Thanks,

The Rally Girl was an official import model in Germany. It has the official importer sticker on it still. The other 4 I bought in France.

Rally Flipper are really hard to find in Germany.. nearly impossible...

Regards,
Ekkehart

[Cine4Home]

If you are the same cine4home that worf translated some of your articles about video projectors on the french HT forum, i bought a ptae500 some years ago by your fault :lol: :lol: :lol: you're doing a really nice job on video projectors too.

Pascal

Thanks, Yes I am the same one worf translated for

I hope you are happy with your PT500

Next time you might try this one he he:





Regards,
Ekkehart

[Cine4Home]

Merci à tous

I am glad you liked my first report. It is alot of fun to repair and play these machines and it is alot of fun to talk about them too. As you guys seem to be interested in the technical details too, I made some pictures of the service book.





On the left, you see the "édition provisoire", on the right a final practical book in 4 languages (geman too hehe).

The servcie book is a kind of its own too. It is full of funny images with little helpers showing how to operate the machine:




Here some close ups of these funny drawings:



Above: How to set up the cabinet.
Down: The Tilt has to be adjusted properly of course





I wish these little men would exist in reality too and fix all the pinball machines for us collectors ha ha. :lol:



The small book is more handy


Ok but now some interesting technical details... The two main inventions of Fliptronics are their unique Bumper / Slingshot design and the nixie tube scoring. So I will give some close-ups of these.

First the nixie tubes.. Each digit is in its own little box. The nixie scoring looks to the player like electronic scoring. But in reality it is nothing but EM-Scoring with a tube instead of a reel.




When you open up the unit, you see what I mean: Inside of the black box there is a small Printboard and a mechanic with a magnetic coil.





The Service manual has a detailed image of the function too:



So in reality, we have many little “units”, just like the ones in US-pinballs, but with tubes instead of reels and much smaller. The small units are very reliable, but when one is broken, it is a pain to repair. You have to open the black box (which has no screws) and try to adjust everything perfectly.

Fortunately, the replacement parts of “SAFARE” are a bit easier to handle. They are transparent so you can better see what is wrong and on the other side, they are open so you can reach everything relatively easily.



Above and below, the easier counting units



Overall the Nixie scoring system is just great. It is very quiet, fast, reliable and just great to look at. And it gave much more space for backglass paintings as you could put all the scoring under the picture. With the big reels of the US pinballs, this was just not possible.



Ok now to the special bumper mechanism: Fredc already made a great picture of the mechanics:




The working of the bumpers is just as simple as genial: Actually the bumpers are nothing but the plastic heads on aluminum poles.



Above you see one bumper and one slingshot. Actually the slingshots and bumpers use exactly the same mechanic. So the slingshots shoot in all directions too (like on Comics or Playboy where they are in the middle of the playfield).



Ok here the workings: The service book explains very well how they work.. and of course in french




In order to make the bumpers work strongly, you have to adjust them perfectly. This is also very nicely described in the manual:



By the way... in the images you can see that Rally did not use ordinary switches but special microswitches (minirupteurs).




The microswitches react very fast and give very good contact. They are much more reliable than the cheaper ones in the US models.


New old stock of Rally-switches


Oh, the third innovation worth mentioning are the lit posts, they give the playfield this extraordinary lighting. I think US-pinballs “invented” these posts when? 20 years later? ha ha :P





The manual has also a nice technical picture of these.




So I hope you like this small technical overview.. Another time I will show close ups of the miniture relais and the Up-Post, which seems to be a Rally invention too !


Regards,
Ekkehart

[jost berger]

Thanks Ekkehard, Hi all Fliptrnic Friends

I never enjoyed a pinball report more than this. Ekkehard shows us what True Love can make happen: Happyness pure!!!! :D :D :D

There are a lot of geat inventions too, the Chikago Guys copied as follows, Years later on:

• The Up Post, exactly same dimension, material and illumination was second produced by Williams after 1970.

The Star button Rollover was second produced by Gottliebs, also after 1970

Detailed Info is welcome.

The greatest invention for me is the easiest ever build Ball Lock. No Lifter as usual, no Outhole Assy as later on until now. The best way to handle the challange: to keep the Ball on playfield level with a small pin, stopping the ball 5 mm in front of the plunger top. This feature let me remind the great words of Antoine de Saint Exupery when he said: " A machine is not perfect, when You cannot put anything additional in, to use it, it's perfect when You cannot put more away, without missing the function..."

Perfect French Zitat is welcome...

Born 1949 , I discovered Rally Girl in my Youth in Viennas most famous Flipper Arcade "Prater".
The futuristic machines were always surrounded by gaffers, if anybody played a game, but most time they stood there, unused. They called them as "Moon Machine" :x , with about the same meaning as "Devils Daughter"

This was the reason of Rally's early end of productions. The Games of the High Tech Company in Nice, they worked mainly for research & Development for the French Nuclear Bomb Systems, were much too futuristic, consumers did not believe in the product they saw....

Remember the first Time Bomb Count Down System of James Bond, he used in this time: Nixie Tubes of Safare/Rally....

At least my spare Part seek for my 4 Rallies: Yellow/brown/orange Relays, about 10 illuminable posts and a sound Board for my Comic which is missing.

I can copy diagrams of 3 Fliptronics and have a spare plastic Backglass of COMICS, available to complete a machine. Offers of Club West and Flower Child are always welcome. :D :D :D :D :D

I'm collecting in Austria/ Melk, let me know when You like to visit my Neverland during Your holiday Journey...

Awaiting wit interest Ekkehards next report.

[jb]

sur le flip ce sont des vrais bumpers???

EDIT>>j'ai rien dit desolé!

sinon tres belles photos!!