Old Aristocrat Caribbean Gold

[terry5732]

 I recently acquired this relic. Label says 1992 build , range microstar , serial DY (or maybe X) 6647. It is working fine aside from a sticky change button. The hand pay is set to 200 coins. I would like to increase the hand pay level. How do I go about that?

[Amechanic]

You might just want to remove your change button from your game to take it apart and clean it. I’m sure a few drinks have been spilled on the game. It gets inside the buttons and causes them to stick. Soaking in hot water and clean with an old tooth brush. Not sure on your other problem.

All most forgot... 

[rokgpsman]

Post a photo of the entire front of the machine, someone may recognize the model and be able to give advice on the handpay question.

[terry5732]

Not real worried about the sticky button, just the changing payout level

[Paul]

Pm me your email and ill send you the manual
for this machine and the hopper dip settings are on page 3-28

[terry5732]

The dips were all initially set to off. Setting them to where I wanted the hand pay level to be caused play errors. It would only accept one coin and drop any others. Played around some more. Now it doesn't show any credits on the screen and drops any win.The board layout is a little different than the manual.

[terry5732]

On dip bank two, 4,5 and 6 should be for jackpot  lock up amount. Having 5 or 6 on makes it only accept one coin. Having 4 on didn't affect this way but didn't set the amount to 300 like it should have either.

[Heihachi_73]

Coincidentally, this exact same chipset (3VXEC449) is emulated in MAME, although the emulation isn't perfect yet.

Hopper pay limit for this game should be via dip bank 1, switches 2, 3 and 4 (switch 1 doesn't seem to do anything in MAME even though it's supposed to reject coins inserted above 5 credits when enabled, and I don't think switch actually 4 does anything either as it has the same hopper/hand pay results whether it's on or off). Turning switch 5 off will disable credit play (and hides the credit display) and all wins will be cashed out immediately via hopper or handpay like an old school reel slot - I think that is what happened to your machine. Switch 5 must remain on if you want to retain credits.

Hitting cashout with 1-199 credits always cashes out to hopper regardless of switch settings. The game seems to be 1 coin = 1 credit with no tokenization. By the way, which coin does it use, nickels or quarters? It says 5c (nickels) on your machine but the game program inserts 4 credits via the bill acceptor as though it's inserting a $1 bill on a quarter machine. Edit: This is probably emulation-related, the bill input hasn't officially been hooked up to this game yet, so toggling bills sends the default "00" which corresponds to 4 credits as per the manual (page 3-31) - later games (540/MK4) work fine with $1-$100 bills in MAME.

Testing in MAME:

Switches 2 and 3 on cancels credits (hand pay) at 200
Switch 3 on (2 off) cancels credits at 400
Switches 2 or 3 on cancels credits at 600
Switches 2 and 3 off allows hopper pay at any amount (tested up to 2000 credits)
Switch 4 doesn't affect switches 2 or 3 at all (same results with 4 off or on)

Emulation note: The game looks different in MAME compared to your photo as the original slot owner couldn't dump the color PROM (labeled 1CM12/40) with their EPROM programmer so the background colors are wrong e.g. no solid green around the reels. The lack of a time and date display in the menu is correct, as evidenced by your machine - not all boards came with a real-time clock chip.

You mention that the board layout is different to the manual. This is interesting as MAME's Aristocrat emulation also has a few minor bugs with this game (and this game only) which causes a logic door open error, which closes when you insert a coin (it's a bit touchy so it might not fix itself first time; the coin input is also a bit finicky) - apparently early machines like this must be ever-so-slightly different to later 2.5s/MK4s/540s when it comes to memory locations (specifically, the coin inputs and dip switches) as no other games have this emulation error.

[terry5732]

This is a nickel machine with no bill accepter.
My main concern is increasing the jackpot lock up. It is currently at 200.
Switch 5 ON on dip bank one is what made the credits disappear from the screen along with automatic ejection of any winnings.

[terry5732]

I got it
SW1 is dip bank two and SW2 is dip bank one. Now the settings work as per the manual if reversed.

[Heihachi_73]

I should have re-read that, I misinterpreted jackpot pay (maximum win possible before a hand pay is required) as hand pay (hopper pay limit).

[terry5732]

I got a second 500 win and it went into jackpot lock up because I hadn't upped the hopper limit. But now I know which is the setting for that.