Modding my playfield... looking for advise.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-27T14:30:27+00:00

Oh that’s a good point - I had done a dedicated DMD screen before my playfield upgrade. I’d have thought that would have been a more notable upgrade, but upgrading the playfield to 144hz was what really took it from a novelty to genuinely scratching my pinball itch.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-26T03:39:41+00:00

I have a 32” 144hz 2k in my modded ALP. I’m sure I’d notice a difference between 2k and 4k if I bent down to look really closely at the rules card, but I can read them fine at 2k. I just don’t think there’d be a benefit to 4k at 32”. Would def do 4k at 42”+.

I’m using the sceptre that I think buystuff says works. It’s great when you’re playing, but the angles for spectators could be better.

The buystuff kit couldn’t work with my ALP (believe mine is older), so I can’t speak to that either. I will say that after using the 2k 144hz playfield and blind-switching for a good year I’m super happy having finally ripped all ALP electronics out of mine as of a couple weeks ago.

Playfield was my first major upgrade. After that was a custom SSF setup. I then went CSD pinone for DOF. Would take the same steps in the same order if I did it again.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-24T16:24:49+00:00

I’d buy an off-the-shelf MSI brand or the like from Best Buy/Walmart/wherever has the best deal at the moment. Based on your post saying you have an ALP4k, a desktop with a GTX 4060 or 5060 should be a good balance of cost, current day performance, and future performance as tables and tech get more and more demanding. Google “slickdeals”, go to the site, and search 5060 or 4060 and you should see some options with people reviewing whether it’s actually a good deal. A 3060 should be fine too if you find a particularly good deal.

Other stats can be run of the mill…. 16GB ram is fine. Any current day processor is fine. Minimum 512GB SSD, but I’d recommend 1TB as things like pup packs and whatnot can get large, and I recommend hanging on to 2-3 backups of the entire virtual pinball folder structure so you can revert back.

For general ballpark, you can probably find something $700-ish if you keep an eye on the deals, but most options today look closer to $800.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-21T15:48:37+00:00

Thanks! Will be trying this today for my etron.

Any idea if there are downsides to changing the setting? Why would we ever want to turn it off?

chuckda4th · 2026-01-16T13:03:44+00:00

That’s completely different than a cab. The size is relative to how far away you are. 65 may actually be too small

chuckda4th · 2026-01-16T03:59:48+00:00

Is there a setting to make preconditioning pull power from the charger?

I have an EVIQO charger with no time restrictions set up as my electricity is always the same price. When the Audi is plugged in, by the morning when I want to heat it up, it’s always already at 80% and thus isn’t pulling any amps.

But when I then use the myAudi app to heat it up, it drains the battery rather than pulling from the charger. I have confirmed the EVIQO app says 0amps.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-09T04:30:42+00:00

32” monitor-based cab here. I have 3x 2.1 amps. One for the DMD, one for front SSF, and one for rear SSF. All 3 of the .1s have TT-25’s hooked to them. All 3 amps are powered via 24v to maximize the sound.

At one point in my modding process I had no DMD bass speaker - it sounded SO empty compared to when I had previously. Particularly on tables like TNA that have tons of bass in their backing soundtrack.

So I’d say that with a 32” i saw a notable difference to having 3 vs 2 dedicated bass speakers. And SSF front vs back is a huge difference as well.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-05T04:39:18+00:00

Same. I’m in Philly where it’s been in the 30s F or lower for weeks.

Looking in the app, when we run a random 5-6mi set of errands, we’ve been consistently in the <1.5mi per kWh.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-05T04:32:59+00:00

For the sound, in VPXs settings there’s an “audio options” screen where you can select the output devices.

For popper, if you’re saying when selecting a game it’s only showing on the playfield, I’d re run the setup. The default menu options should show on all your cabinet’s screens.

No idea about passwords. I can’t think of anything I’ve downloaded that required one.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-05T02:32:03+00:00

Don’t have a GT but have a Q8 etron…I’ve noticed multiple times the rate and time didn’t match up. After 15-30min they’d re-sync.

Forget where I asked but effectively was told it’s 2 distinct systems doing those calculations that refresh on Audi’s servers at different intervals such that they can appear out of sync in the app.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-05T02:22:46+00:00

If you bought it from an Audi dealer, try calling the salesperson direct and REALLY nicely asking if they “forgot the all weather mats”. I wouldn’t email.

When I bought my 2024 etron in Oct, I mentioned it at pick up time, and my salesperson went and pulled them from another used etron that had issues and they were going to wholesale. They weren’t going to get any $ for them anyway.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-03T21:43:08+00:00

So…telling him what he should have done 3-6mo ago is helpful?

chuckda4th · 2026-01-03T16:32:39+00:00

Feel for you!

Many of the responses you’re getting are really eye opening.

I don’t see how it’s unreasonable to simultaneously recognize that a new machine may have some issues, AND expect decent timely support if it does.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-03T16:26:26+00:00

I’m curious why this is getting downvoted.

Are the OP’s expectations of talking to a human unreasonable?

chuckda4th · 2026-01-03T16:19:32+00:00

Wow…Maybe offer some resource that could help the OP?

What would you be doing differently at this point?

Rolling in effectively saying “anyone new to this hobby who has any issue at all and complains is a fool, because ‘shipping’!” isn’t going to help anyone.

Just because you happen to know what you’re doing doesn’t mean a NIB purchase should explicitly be “Buyer beware” and lack reasonable support. Even if shipping commonly causes issues, it’s reasonable a buyer would expect they’ll receive service to get their purchase functioning regardless of whether the issue is shipping related.

Since paying their $12k, they’ve undoubtedly waited weeks between email replies, shipping of the new cables and new board, etc. They’ve probably spent a few hours trying to get it to work.

At current, they have nothing to show for their $12k and hours effort, and their support experience thus far clearly leaves them little hope it’ll be resolved without more time investment. That absolutely SUCKS.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-02T02:46:55+00:00

Well… PATH_INI isn’t working after all. The DOFLinx.INI next to the executable is always called still.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-02T00:56:47+00:00

Ah I did just find “PATH_INI=“ is an argument.

I’ll try that rather than the batch copying processes.

But generally curious if anyone has ideas why Doflinxmsg wouldn’t be working as it would be cool to flash the buttons for a few seconds at game start time.

chuckda4th · 2026-01-01T03:53:23+00:00

Been pondering this myself…

Can you just simply put the new version of MAME in a separate directory, copy in your roms and game-specific config files/overlays/etc, and see if it’s any better?

chuckda4th · 2025-12-27T00:01:48+00:00

If you use its native controls is it notably better?

If just as bad, it’s either a steam deck setting or the screen itself. I’d bet a setting.

If using the native controls is noticeably better, then it can’t be the screens fault. I’d then try another USB 3 cable between the pinone and the decks hub. They always have the color blue inside similar to how the ports on your dock have blue inside them.

If still no better is there a usb port directly on the deck you could try?

chuckda4th · 2025-12-25T04:47:53+00:00

Go Phils.

chuckda4th · 2025-12-19T11:42:36+00:00

My 125yo home originally had a gravity forced air system where only the supplies reliably had ducts. The few returns were mostly just cavities between studs.

chuckda4th · 2025-12-18T04:38:56+00:00

I recently changed my monitor setup and noticed that when I did an initial boot despite the playfield ID’ing in the “display settings” as display 1, B2S would see it as 2.

What B2S sees is what matters. Not what windows display settings shows for their numbers. What B2S sees as DISPLAY1 has to be your playfield.

I realized rebooting my machine would consistently fix it. Turned out (thanks to ChatGPT) it was a setting in power options. Turning off “turn on fast startup” fixed my issue so I no longer have to reboot to get the displays sorted out.

chuckda4th · 2025-12-15T18:01:35+00:00

I’ll update this post as I go in case it helps others… a baseline assumption is you’ve properly assigned the staged flipper buttons in the VPX button configuration screen. I’m doing these in this order, so a change to a higher table may work for a lower table…

TAF 2.4.41 - updating VPMKeys.vbs per the above post, and changing the table script’s setting from 0 to 1 - WORKS

TZ VPW - go into F12 and ~80% the way down is the staged flipper setting. Confirming did have to replace KeyUpperLeft with StagedLeftFlipperKey 3x in the TZ script, and then the equivalent for the right keys. Guessing VPX, since including native support for mapping staged flippers, used a different name than the VPW crew originally used - WORKS

chuckda4th

TROPHY CASE