Bally Early Hopper Safety Cutout?

[markalmonduk]

Just wondered what Bally used to protect the hopper from continuous running if there were no coins in the hopper?
I notice in all manuals it refers to the cutout motor that acts as a timer and a small red light glows and power stops. Operators then pressed the button at the rear to reset.
However, there is no mention of other methods used??? I've seen numerous Bally machines that do not have such a device at the bottom left of the cabinet, including mine! When I get a winner and it pays, if no coins in hopper it just keeps going on and on spinning. How did Bally avoid this before they included a timer motor???
Just curious as no mention of it in manuals.
Thanks

[wolftalk]

the 802 schematic says there's a thermostat switch on the hopper motor, so I guess if the motor ran too long that switch would open.   However, the 802 also has a safety timer motor.

take a look at your hopper motor and see if there's a thermostat switch connected to one of the motor winding lugs.

the safety timer wasn't about shutting off the hopper motor if the hopper was empty, it was for detecting a problem in the payout that would prevent the payout counter from turning off the payout relay at the right time and thus the hopper contents would dump out for any pay.

it's a pretty safe bet that if a player didn't get paid the full amount due to an empty hopper, they wouldn't walk away ... or if they did, the next player would complain because the game wouldn't work if it's still trying to finish a pay.

the safety timer was used on games with mechanically stepped payout counters, so the only ways there would be a problem are:

1] someone fished a wire up the payout chute and is holding the roller arm the exiting coin teeter-totters up

2] the parts broke or are really gunked up, which would be extremely rare

3] electrical short keeping the payout relay powered or the payout motor running.  Doesn't really happen enough to worry about.

many of the UK games have smaller hoppers and dispensed tokens, so they didn't bother putting in a safety timer and there is no payout problem detection - assuming there's no thermal switch either.