Short payout on Jackpot, other payouts are pretty close

[wolftalk]

As Wolftalk mentioned, the payouts are marked on the board.


In the photo the 25 receiver strip appears to be where the contact blade is missing.

the blade is missing on the 7 trace on the opposite side of the contact plate.   The low res image limits on this site make it hard to see, but the slot payouts are 2, 4, 6, 10, 15, 25 and 50. 


the counter has two sets of wipers, and a 25 pay is 90 degrees worth of wiper rotation.  A custom board could have been used with just the pays they needed and one set of wipers, but they went with a generic unit that supported lots of payouts.  The generic board looks like it has trace lengths for 2 (x2), 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 25.   Looks like a wire is soldered on the 5 trace, which may be needed for change making function?



they could also use multiplier circuits to use a shorter trace like the 25 and double it, but cheaper to use the pin switch for the one pay that is greater than 25.


bally did almost all of their slot payout counters with an outboard wiper carriage and a ratchet/wiper setup that rotated more than 360 degrees (david's pic in post 5).  Because of that requirement, bally couldn't use pin switches over the ratchet. 


similar to this game tho, bally used a 100 step payout counter design on the bingo pinball machines.  Most of those had a single set of wipers and an "open at 96" pin switch which was involved in some payouts that were multiples of 96.


on this game, the traces support 90 degrees of rotation and the pin switch covers the 180 degrees needed for 50 steps of the unit.  For a 50 pay, the circuits must be designed so the wipers stomping on other traces starting at around 120 degrees of rotation doesn't bother anything.

[Steve Broad]

As Wolftalk mentioned, the payouts are marked on the board.


In the photo the 25 receiver strip appears to be where the contact blade is missing.

Ah, old photo :-) I swapped the arms shortly after taking the photo so the missing wiper runs on an unused track. This solved some of the problems but not the 50 jackpot.

[Op-Bell]

Your machine, like most of these rebuilds, is a modified Sir Prize. This was a late 1960s hold and draw pub machine that gave two games for sixpence and paid out only in tokens, which were good for one game. On the left hand side of the mechanism you'll find a small coil and a ratchet, which is the 2-games-for-one-coin counter - manually reset it, and you'll probably get two free games if it hasn't been disconnected.

Maximum legal prize at the time was five shillings, worth ten sixpences or twenty tokens, so the hopper PCB didn't have a track longer than 20. In order to give it a payout of 50 they had to put a cam switch on the plastic ratchet to open at 50, which I see you've got. All your problems with the 50 pay are associated with that switch and nothing to do with the PCB or wipers.

[Steve Broad]

Your machine, like most of these rebuilds, is a modified Sir Prize. This was a late 1960s hold and draw pub machine that gave two games for sixpence and paid out only in tokens, which were good for one game. On the left hand side of the mechanism you'll find a small coil and a ratchet, which is the 2-games-for-one-coin counter - manually reset it, and you'll probably get two free games if it hasn't been disconnected.

Maximum legal prize at the time was five shillings, worth ten sixpences or twenty tokens, so the hopper PCB didn't have a track longer than 20. In order to give it a payout of 50 they had to put a cam switch on the plastic ratchet to open at 50, which I see you've got. All your problems with the 50 pay are associated with that switch and nothing to do with the PCB or wipers.

Nice to know its heritage :-)


The yellow/red switch rotates (opening and closing two microswitches whilst reels are revolving) so I don't know how it can control the 50 payout. I assumed that it was something to do with the hold/draw feature.

[wolftalk]

I think op-bell's "cam switch" is the same thing that I've been calling a "pin switch".  What the red arrow is pointing to in post #3.


what I don't know and maybe op-bell can answer is what is in the circuit between the reel wiper boards and the open-at-50 switch (purple arrow, post 3) ... if anything.


if it was a bally game, the circuit would probably look like this when the reels were on 50 pay symbols (melons?):


wire 90 -> reel 3 wiper -> reel 2 wiper -> reel 1 wiper -> open at 50 switch -> payout relay coil.


wire 90 can be thought of as the "payout enabled" wire, and per your pic below you do have a solid grey wire on reel 3 (which should also connect to the other reel wiper boards for cherry wins).  No guarantee it's the same function as bally wire 90 tho, but below assumes it is.


unfortunately, you've got a bank of relays in the way of seeing the wiring.  What you need to do is determine on which rivets the wipers sit when you have a 50 pay and follow the wiring.  The wipers will connect the grey wire to some other wire color that goes to reel 2 ... follow that wire and repeat the process to see what color wire the circuit pops out on at reel 1.  If it's not the yellow/green wire going to the open-at-50 switch, then you've got something else in the circuit - maybe a relay - and you need to follow the wire from reel 1 to see where it goes.



if that doesn't make sense, email me another pic of the reel 3 wiper board wiring side with the relay bank removed so all the wiring can be seen.  Also say or take a picture of where the wipers are on a 50 win.  I'll post it and someone can give you specific example of tracing the wiring.


the usual issue is the wiper->rivet connection is cruddy so you get intermittents.  If you haven't cleaned the rivets (green scrub pad and alcohol works) and made sure the wiper fingers are pressing down on the rivets with a bit of force, do that.  Lift a wiper with your fingernail a little and let go .. it should "plink" back down onto the rivet.  Since other pays all work, the finger pressure should be ok assuming they didn't use a different set of reel wiper fingers for the 50 pay.

[Op-Bell]

wire 90 -> reel 3 wiper -> reel 2 wiper -> reel 1 wiper -> open at 50 switch -> payout relay coil. Exactly. Instead of a track on the wiper board that opens at 50, the 50 pay wire goes directly to that switch.
The cam switch is something else entirely. It controls "random hold". In the Good Old Days you could hold some or all reels on every game providing that (a) you didn't hold on the previous game and (b) that the previous game wasn't a winner. The former was controlled by leaf switches on the hold solenoids behind the reels, and the latter by a "close at reset" switch on the hopper. The sequence was controlled through leaf switches on the left of the reel mech. As the handle was pulled the "hold enable" relay was first dropped out, and then energized as the handle pull continued, the circuit being routed through the hold solenoid leaf switches and the hopper switch. As the pull was completed the hopper was electrically reset, and the hold solenoids mechanically reset after reel 3 stopped. If there was a winner the hopper stepped and opened its contact and the "hold enable" relay dropped out. So if you had previously held, or had a winner, the "hold enable" relay was out when you dropped the next coin, otherwise it was in and you could hold.
One day in the 1970s the British government decided that having hold and draw was an inducement to play more coins, which it was, and so decreed that the player could not know whether it would hold or not before dropping a coin. The answer was "random hold". A cam timer decided whether the hold would work or not on any particular game. That's what the yellow knob cam does on this game. Pretty much all UK slot machines with hold and draw were retrofitted with this modification or they couldn't be used.

At the back, where the photo shows three ice cube relays, originally there were two open frame relays. One was the token relay that closed when a token was dropped to enable handle pull, the other was the hold enable relay. Since they're gone now I can only assume that the cam timer controls one of the new three.

[Steve Broad]

I think that my small brain is about to melt! :-)


I am printing all of these out so I can study them in detail when I sit down and start following wires.


The reel buttons are clean and I have adjusted the fingers so they make proper contact with them. So far I have only checked for proper contacts and cleaned switches. I have yet to get down and dirty with wire tracing.


Thanks again guys for your time and patience. I will update on progress, when there is some.

[Op-Bell]

I will dig in my notes and send you the original hold and draw wiring diagram if I can find it.

[Steve Broad]

I will dig in my notes and send you the original hold and draw wiring diagram if I can find it.

That would be brilliant, thanks!