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**Reel Slots** Gaming Machines => Bally Reel Games => Topic started by: jhoward on February 12, 2018, 10:18:15 AM

Title: Novice needs help understanding DIP switch changes
Post by: jhoward on February 12, 2018, 10:18:15 AM

I have been reading posts and looking at diagrams of changing DIP switches in order to try and change the coin denomination and payout on my Bally s5500 stars and bars machine. I attached a picture of the DIP switches I have under JW3 and JW7, to me they look like they are kind of a "one-time" only change....? like metal "bridges" are either left together or broken causing an on-or-off circuit. I'm a newb so this is just my best guess. Maybe its the kind of DIP switches I have?


Thanks in advance for your time.


Jason
Title: Re: Novice needs help understanding DIP switch changes
Post by: rokgpsman on February 12, 2018, 09:04:54 PM
Those aren't dipswitches, they are "shunts" or "links". And you are right, they are meant for one-time settings. You can break another one of the intact links of metal if you need to. But to reconnect one that is broken is more difficult, you have to solder a wire on the back of the board so that it spans the broken link. Luckily, both of those shunts are installed in sockets, so you could remove the old shunts and install real dipswitches into the sockets (photo below). Then you could make changes easily. Dipswitches are avail lots of places and they are low-cost.

Have you looked in the manual and decided with certainly that you need to change the settings?

A dipswitch is shown below, it is slide switch style. There are also rocker style. With either one you can easily change the switch position on any of the switches.

Title: Re: Novice needs help understanding DIP switch changes
Post by: jhoward on February 13, 2018, 02:05:29 PM

 :thank_you:
[font=]rokgpsman, [/font]I was curious if I could just "pry" those "shunts" out of the sockets.
So you are saying I don't need to solder the new dipswitches on in place of the socket... I'm getting a dipswitch that fits in a socket....right? Sorry I'm an idiot.


Its not that I "need" to change the settings, its just that we are using this in our home and we wanted our credits to last longer and our payouts to either be bigger or more frequent.
We have had the machine for about 15 years and never seem to get anything over bars. ITS NO FUN! LOL
It is setup for $.25 but the machine no longer takes quarters (something wrong there). It also doesn't take larger bills ($20 +) so we are constantly feeding it $1 bills.
Title: Re: Novice needs help understanding DIP switch changes
Post by: rokgpsman on February 13, 2018, 04:37:45 PM
That's ok - we were all idiots at one time, and for some of us it wasn't that long ago!   :garfield:

Yes, those two shunt blocks you have can be pried out of the sockets, similar to how you would remove an eprom or other chip. That's the nice thing about a socket, no soldering. After removing the old shunt block you can insert a dipswitch in the socket. That way you can select whatever setting you want. On some circuit boards the shunt blocks are soldered to the board, no sockets. So you have to add a jumper wire to restore each broken shunt link.

But if you don't have a need to change the settings on the shunt blocks I wouldn't do anything. You might want to get advice from a Bally expert here to know for sure how to make the changes to the machine that you are wanting to do. I'm not familiar with your machine.

Have you seen something in a manual or posting that said you need to change the shunt jumper settings to do what you want to do? If so, it is easy to remove the shunt block part and install a dipswitch. Use a small flat-blade screwdriver to carefully pry up the shunt without damaging the socket or circuit board. Then install a 8 position dipswitch. The little metal legs of the dipswitch will slide down into the holes of the socket to make the connection. The dipswitch usually has numbers written on it, so I'd install it so that the numbers correspond to the jumper numbers, that would aid in making the setting you want. You can get new dipswitches for less than $1, sometimes several of them for less than $2.

Title: Re: Novice needs help understanding DIP switch changes
Post by: rokgpsman on February 13, 2018, 04:51:33 PM
...Its not that I "need" to change the settings, its just that we are using this in our home and we wanted our credits to last longer and our payouts to either be bigger or more frequent.
We have had the machine for about 15 years and never seem to get anything over bars. ITS NO FUN! LOL
It is setup for $.25 but the machine no longer takes quarters (something wrong there). It also doesn't take larger bills ($20 +) so we are constantly feeding it $1 bills.

The problem with the machine not taking quarters can be fixed. Just elaborate on what the machine is doing or not doing with regard to the coin problem. And post photos of the inside of the main door showing the coin parts.

The problem with your bill validator only taking certain bills is probably because it has older software and it no longer recognizes some of the US paper money we now have in circulation. As you know the government has been updating the paper money and the new designs are different enough from the old paper money that your bill validator just doesn't know what it is.  The one bill that has not been changed is the $1, so it will always work. Tell us what your bill validator is (DBV-145, DBV-200, WBA-12, etc) and we can go from there. And again, photos are very helpful.

As far as changing the payout to make it a little easier for you to get bigger winnings there may be something you can do. Post a photo showing your machine's main circuit board (called the mpu board). On it there are some custom chips (eproms) that are in sockets. These chips will have labels on the top. Show us a photo of them and we'll see what your options are. On some machines you can change these eproms to improve the payout. On other machines there is a way to change jumpers or switches to change the payout. Post a photo of your entire machine from the front so we can verify it is a Bally S5500, that way we won't go too far in wrong direction.
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