[By request of the original poster, I have hidden several of the
details about this project.  -jh]

> I'm building a pinball machine that's run mainly with intel-based
> PC. I started the project for personal fun, but it gathered more and
> more people, and now big operator around here asked for a prototype.
> 
> You can freely publish the story behind the machine and the fact that
> we're building this thing, but we hope to keep all the details (except
> that the machine is PC based and runs on freedos) away from public for
> now. I can't tell when we expect first machine to be in playing
> condision, but we're looking forward to bringing this thing to pinball
> expo 2001.
> 
> --
> 
> If you want to link to our homepages, mine is at http://apz.cjb.net
> and Tuukka's is at http://pinballtk.cjb.net. Tuukka's site is
> completely in Finnish if he hasn't changed it since I visited it last
> time.
> 
> --
> 
> I'm sorry but we can't publish any details about the machine
> currently, :( but I can tell the story behind it.
> 
> As you probably have guessed by now, I'm complete pinball freak with 4
> machines at home (I'm currently trying to get the fifth).
> 
> And naturally, I've had the dream of building my own pin.  Later I met
> a guy on IRC who also had pins of his own and we started to discuss
> about the poor future of pinball.  My newfound friend had been on
> pinball business for over 20 years by now, so he knew exactly how pins
> should be build.
> 
> Together we planned semi-serious plans about building our own machine.
> 
> Nowdays I work for coin-op operator aswell, and one day the boss set
> up a meeting with the owners and bosses of Pelika, the biggest
> operator in Finland. For some reason, I tagged along.
> 
> All others were wearing suits that cost more than I make a year, I was
> there with my worn jeans :) Anyway, they started to discuss how on
> earth they're going to get new games now since Williams and Sega are
> down and Stern games .. well, they just suck :)
> 
> I told them about my idea of pin and about my friend. I talked about
> 10 minutes about the machine and after that the BIGboss asked: "when
> do you expect to deliver the first machine?".
> 
> Week later, I had a very simple 3D-drawing of the machine's cabinet,
> my friend, Tuukka, was designing on hardware.  We selected fully
> integrated PC motherboard [...] the board is quite expensive but I
> doubt that normal ATX-motherboard would take the abuse all pinball
> hardware gets.
> 
> And after that, I've been working to get the cabinet assembled and
> Tuukka has been writing the software and designing the PCB's.
> 
> [...]
> 
> We're strongly believing this is going to work, since we don't have to
> hire hundreds of engineers, so the development cost is near to
> none. The main design of the whole machine is done by only 2 people,
> we may later ask some of my friends to help with the music.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The current status of the project is:
> 
> * I've just ordered the parts for the first cabinet, and I'm getting
>   ready to build first playfield from the 3D-designs.
> 
> * The game software runs but it's still buggy. Graphics include
>   currently just simple 3D-stuff. Game setup works via telnet and
>   serial cable.