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My
friendship with Russ:
Some 7 years ago, I opened up my email one day to find a letter from Russ
giving me a few clues on some Bingos I listed on this site as “unknowns”
and in the email he included his phone number in case I ever wanted to
chat……lol……
Being
completely new to the game I had absolutely no idea who he was, but as all
of you I quickly figured out that Mr. Jensen was clearly one of the leading
experts of all time on the coin-op industry and games…….
I don’t
think we emailed each other more than four or five times and gabbed on the
phone but twice, but the next thing I know – I am getting little things in
the mail here and there, including a true treasure: A taped copy of the Don
Hooker interview he did in 1984 with Dick Bueschel, which I’d be glad to
send you a copy if you email me your mailing address.
One thing
that really struck me as neat about Russ was his casual demeanor, he was
real real quick at gruffly telling you to go read his website verses
answering your question, if the information was something he already
recorded somewhere
lol………you
couldn’t help but like this guy!
Some Cool Things He Shared
With Me:
He used
“webextract” to down load entire sites – all of the HTML code – etc.
Charles
Babbage and Sir Issac Newton were his idols and he always encouraged me to
read about these guys.
He used
“PointSpeak” to read into his computer and have it print out the various
articles and document he authored at a pretty price of ~$40 USD
To learn
more about Bally and a little more their Bingo history, he recommended that
I read the new book “Bally –
The worlds Game Maker” and I
had a feeling that he contributed to this book and spoke from first hand
knowledge.
New Internet
Russ Links:
From:
HistoryHawk on rec.games.pinball
Jesse Kujawa, has posted a memorial page at:
http://www.firstgiving.com/pinballmemory,
And is inviting people to make donations to the American Cancer
Society which can be done through the memorial page.
Also, there was a suggestion to make donations to IPDB in
Russ's name.
I have been in contact with Jay and Wolf at IPDB. They have posted a
link page and have made Russ's entire web page available and stored on
IPDB servers. This is a wonderful idea since Russ's family has no
interest in pinball and will probably not maintain his AOL account. I
would assume that when the account expires his page would be removed.
Congratulations to Jay and Wolf for conceiving of and consenting to
keep Russ's page for all to reference and enjoy. The link to IPBD's
page and Russ's entire web site is located at:
http://archive.ipdb.org
To view the many great comments about Russ from the Rec.games.pinbll
group use this link:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/browse_thread/thread...
Pinball News also made a nice tribute here:
http://www.pinballnews.com/news/jensen.html
Russ's Bio as Russ wrote it for the first article he wrote for
the
premier issue of AMUSEMENT REVIEW in March 1979) is available on his
web page at: http://members.aol.com/rusjensen/myfirst.htm
My Original Russ Jensen Page:
Russ wrote me an email one day and pointed out that
his "EM Trouble-shooting Guide" had a lot of good information in
it that could aid the Bingo owner.
One day I asked him how did he get interested in pinballs and in turn, he
pointed toward his website and suggested that I read some of the articles.
Well! Clearly some of the best advice I have ever received :)
One of my favorite things on his site there is one area where he
reminiscences about being a young engineer and interested in the Bingo
technology, so he wrote the Bally folks for a schematic to study...........
You gotta love that!!!!
It's clear Mr. Jensen knows the history of pinballs quite well, along with
the players, and the machines. You can bet, I'll be sending away for one of
these books as soon as I can get to it:
Russ Jensen's PINBALL TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE:
The book covers electro-mechanical (E/M) games only. (The Table of Contents
is shown below.) Although many of the example circuits are patterned after
1950's era games, the theory and detailed component descriptions cover all
eras of EM games. There is some basic circuit theory, detailed descriptions
of pinball components, descriptions of typical circuit
configurations used in pingames and detailed descriptions of
troubleshooting procedures using home-made test equipment.
If want further information about the book you can Click here to email me
or you can phone me (except Saturdays and Sundays after 8:30 AM Pacific
time, or Weekday mornings before 10AM PST) at 805-482-3875.
If you just want to purchase one, send $20 (or $21 if you want FIRST CLASS
postage) to:
Russ Jensen
1652 Euclid Ave.
Camarillo, CA
93010
CONTENTS
1 Schematic Diagrams
................................................... 1
2 The Power Source
..................................................... 3
3 Relays And Stepping Switches,
Etc..................................... 7
4 Motor Units
......................................................... 13
5 Switches
............................................................ 17
Switch Configurations, 17
Switch Applications, 19
Playfield Switches, 19
Stepping Switches, 19
Switch Maintenance, 21
6 Basic Circuits
...................................................... 23
Switching Circuits, 23
Switch Connections, 23
More Circuit Theory, 25
The Zero Ohms Test, 27
Voltage Drop, 27
Common Power Circuits, 29
7 Circuit Configurations
............................................ 31
Coils In Series, 31
The "Hold On" Circuit, 31
The "Relay Race", 33
A Complex Game Function, 35
8 Troubleshooting Techniques
........................................ 39
Test Light Techniques, 39
Clip Lead Testing, 43
Test Example, 45
Continuity Testing, 45
Wire Tracing, 47
Switch Testing, 47
My Original Russ Jensen Links:
Inside Your Bingo
Russ's Website
Multi-coin Machines
It's "OK"
Bally's Bikini
The "End" of an Era
Pingames and Gambling
This page
last update 02-18-2008
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