What does this board do? E2000 IO piggyback

[ramegoom]

Plugs into the sound port of the I/O board, and a small two-wire connector plugs into it. I removed it completely, no change in the game play. I assume it's for some casino audit routine, seems to do nothing else. The E2000 machine it's in does not have the sound board option, only the bell and chime.

[dhellis]

That board is an IO Buffer board and is used to amplify and isolate the address buss, data buss and control lines
going to the sound insert display interface.

[ramegoom]

What is the "sound insert display"? The machine I took it out of has several large holes drilled into the case, then patched up with formica. It is loaded with hang-on harnesses and unknown connectors for who-knows what the casino had attached to them. I find these double row dense connectors with 30 wires scotch-locked to many wires at the I/O board. Mostly clutter, so I routinely remove all the unidentified stuff....including this little board. Seems the machines I have all have had some casino interface within them, all gutted now.

I am going to assume the machine will work properly as a stand-alone machine when this board is removed...so far so good.

My next project is to figure out how the P1 chips can be swapped between different machines. I'd *really* like to use this 93% chip on other games, if it's compatible with the rest of the machine. Soon to be experimenting.

[dhellis]

The Sound Insert Display is marked as AS-2518-90 or AS-2518-91

It has either the 6802 or 6808 processor and the AY-3-8910 sound generator

If your machines do not have sound cards then I doubt that removing the buffer will have any adverse effect.

The only thing that I am aware of that you need to be careful of on the P1 (M7) chips is that these chips
somehow or another also contain the IP IO ports and its used for a particular game. I don't know what the impact
would be if you placed a chip for a 4 reel machine into a 3 reel machine or vice-versa

[ramegoom]

I have a mix and match of several machines to play with (about 20) all are 3-reel. A couple have the big progressive display on top and a couple have the "buy-in" option, all pretty much work the same though. The lowest payback percentage is around 84, and the highest is 93, and playing them, you can definitely see the percentage in action. Since they're all earmarked for man-caves, I think the highest percentage would be the most fun to play. And oddly, most of the game chips - M1-2-3 - are the same chips. A few of the games have the P2 chip installed, mostly the progressive and buy-in machines. Pretty decent variety between them, enough to get me into trouble mixing up the insides....

On the progressive displays, I'm trying to figure out what to do with them to make them more interesting. They use little solenoids for each of 7 segments on each digit, very odd that they'd do it that way, sort of like a billboard sign. Apparently I can program that display to increment a certain amount each time a coin is played, and each win.

Out of all those machines, I have maybe two sound boards within them, and only one of them actually works. Jackpot bells are missing on some of them, so I have my work cut out to make them all work. Fun Fun.