PE+ Slant Top Video Poker Machine - Call Attendant, Low Battery

[Danger86]

Got it in my basement! Man what a project getting it up a flight of stairs and into the back of a pickup. Guy had hurt his neck so it was just me and my buddy hauling it. It's in excellent shape. Glass is all good as is the vinyl, and laminate.

I will post some pics once I get it hooked up and the monitor back in

[rokgpsman]

Got it in my basement! Man what a project getting it up a flight of stairs and into the back of a pickup. Guy had hurt his neck so it was just me and my buddy hauling it. It's in excellent shape. Glass is all good as is the vinyl, and laminate.

I will post some pics once I get it hooked up and the monitor back in

Looking forward to seeing what you got for FREE! You might want to look inside carefully for loose coins or tokens before you power it up. You'd be surprised what can be rolling around in there, gets dislodged when you lift, turn and bump the machine around. Wouldn't be the first time metallic objects were found that could have caused a short on electrical connections.

So the seller pulled the old "wish I could help but my neck was just fractured" routine?? He probably remembered how heavy that thing was when HE moved it to his place. 

[Danger86]

Low battery, door open, call attendant. So needs a battery and put a lock on the cash door so it stays shut. Hopefully that's it! If that's wrong feel free to chime in .

Wb10 bill acceptor.

[rokgpsman]

Looks like you got a good one. The mpu will be a similar situation as your other machine, mounted inside the lower part of machine but along the side wall I believe, and a different model board since the slant top is a multipoker game.  As you say the mpu battery is probably less than 3 volts and needs replacing. The slant tops sometimes have extra door security switches, I think people often disconnect or bypass them to avoid nuisance faults.

When you get it working and want to test the bill acceptor it's best to use a $1 bill at first. The other bills have changed over the years and its possible the software inside the bill acceptor doesn't work with any or some of the new $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills. Once you verify a $1 bill works that proves the bill validator is enabled and wired up ok to motherboard, then you can try other bills to access which ones the BV will accept. Sometimes there is a later software release you can load into the bill acceptor to allow it to work with the new style bills. Or you might be able to replace the WBA-10 with a newer WBA model and add that capability.

What does that pink/red placard that is mounted just above the coin slot have written on it?

How clean is it inside the lower area, hopper, button lens, glass signage, etc? People often set their drinks near the player button area and spill stuff inside. When you say it needs a lock on the cash door do you mean the one in the bill acceptor area, or the door down below for the coins or someplace else?

[knagl]

Of note, the glass indicates that the denomination of the machine is/was set to $25, although the bill validator bezel indicates it will accept $5 to $100 bills.  Those two don't match, as a $25 PE+ machine could not accept any bill smaller than $50 since it had no way to do partial credits.  I'll go out on a limb and guess that the glass is wrong.  All that said, it is quite possible that the bill validator is indeed set to reject all $1 bills, so if that's the case as good as it is to test with $1 bills, they may not work.  We can cross that bridge when we get there, though.

According to your picture, you have a WBA-10-SS bill validator.  I'm not very familiar with the WBAs, but there's lots of discussion about them on the archive site as well as the current NLG site.

Go ahead and replace the battery and re-install the board.  We can walk you through any error messages you might get after you change the battery.  Additionally, you may need to re-enable the bill validator with a SET chip after the battery change -- we'll see once you've put a new battery in.

To access the MPU board, open the main hatch door, TURN THE POWER OFF (you should always have the power off when removing or inserting the MPU board), and look along the lower left side, to the left of the hopper.  The MPU board is in the metal enclosure down there.

If your front door will open, that's the easiest way to access it.  Pull up on the pin that holds the door panel in place (located inside the machine, near the back edge of the vinyl player armrest).  CAUTION: the door panel will likely fall towards you and can potentially smash your toes.  Stand back when you're lifting up on the pin that holds the door in place, and be ready to catch the door.

If you cannot get the front door open, you can still remove the MPU, but it involves some twisting and turning.  The MPU tray slides out towards the front door panel of the machine.  You can then rotate the tray about 90 degrees and it will just barely fit to be lifted up and out of the hatch door thanks to the cutout in the hopper bowl.  It really is easier to just remove the front door panel, though.

Low battery, door open, call attendant. So needs a battery and put a lock on the cash door so it stays shut. Hopefully that's it!

Does the "DOOR OPEN" message go away when you close the bill validator stacker box access door (the door to the "cash can")?  If so, that's great.  If not, we'll likely have a "door open" issue to tackle after the battery change, but you really need to change the battery first before we can fix anything else.

[Danger86]

I believe I've found why the door open issue is there. I took the entire machine apart. (Thanks for the tips everyone). Opened both lower doors and found both door switches had no wires attached to them. Looked in the main compartment and found those those sets of twisted wires there.

To bypass the door switches I'm assuming I would just wire each set together so it completes a circuit?

Moving onto the next thing I dropped the main front door (not on my feet thankfully thanks to those tips lol). Pulled out the board and snapped some pictures. I'm wondering if this is maybe a superboard? I saw in another thread that the superboards have the big row of resistors? Illinios gaming put some tape over three chips and it looks like it will peel the labels off the chips below if I try to remove them unfortunately.

There is a cable going from the Bally's Mastercom 220 which goes into the main compartment and its not plugged into anything. I believe the mastercom is what controls the door switches and the scrolling display and card reader maybe?

I found a huge transformer in the lowest cabinet case but it looks like the switched it out for the smaller one you see inside the main compartment.

I also found a weird "fuse looking thing" made by phillips up near the bally's masercom 220. It wasn't hooked up to anything but it has terminals to hook four wires up to each side of it. I took it out being it wasn't hooked up to anything.

Also when I was picking it up the guy took out the cash box there were a bunch of old 1's, a couple old 5's, and an old 20 in there so I'm thinking it must accept 1's on up.

The coin comparator is a CC-16.
Here are some pics

[Danger86]

Here's some more pics:

[knagl]

To bypass the door switches I'm assuming I would just wire each set together so it completes a circuit?

To a point, yes.  The lower door and the bill validator door can be safely bypassed.  It's generally a good idea to have a working set of door optics for the main hatch door.  None of your pictures show where the main hatch door optics are or should be.  There should be a matching set of optics -- one that sends the signal, and the other that receives it -- mounted on the hatch door and the frame of the machine just behind the armrest.  When the hatch is completely closed, the optic pair should align and report to the machine that the door is closed (provided that the lower door and bill validator stacker door are also closed).

Moving onto the next thing I dropped the main front door (not on my feet thankfully thanks to those tips lol). Pulled out the board and snapped some pictures. I'm wondering if this is maybe a superboard? I saw in another thread that the superboards have the big row of resistors? Illinios gaming put some tape over three chips and it looks like it will peel the labels off the chips below if I try to remove them unfortunately.

Yes, it's a Superboard.  The main difference between the regular board and the Superboard is that the Superboard has both Program and Data sockets.  The regular boards don't have the Data socket.  Additionally, a regular board can't run the 5-game Multi-Poker chipsets, as they require a Data chip.

There is a cable going from the Bally's Mastercom 220 which goes into the main compartment and its not plugged into anything. I believe the mastercom is what controls the door switches and the scrolling display and card reader maybe?

The Mastercom board controls the card reader display, but does not control anything with the door switches.  You could rip all of the Mastercom stuff out and the machine would still function just fine.  The Mastercom unit was for player tracking for the casino only, and won't do much of anything for you in a home environment.  I do see that there are some wires hooked up to a cherry switch at the bill validator stacker box door that go to the Mastercom unit.  Those would have been used to send a signal across the casino's network that the door had been opened, but it would not interact with the PE+ machine itself.

I found a huge transformer in the lowest cabinet case but it looks like the switched it out for the smaller one you see inside the main compartment.

The little wall wart transformer plugged into the beige extension cord is likely the power supply for the Mastercom player tracking board.  You can test that pretty easily by unplugging it and seeing if the red player tracking display goes blank.  Again, it's not needed for the machine to function.  The silver box in the back center of the bottom of the cabinet is the main power supply for the PE+.  Very clean looking cabinet, BTW.


I presume you're aware, but the battery that needs to be replaced is next to the blue/white bank of DIP switches (don't flip any of the switches -- all of the game adjustments are done in the self-test menus on screen only).  The blue potentiometer dial next to the battery and the DIP switch bank is the volume control for the game.

[rokgpsman]

That's a good looking machine, some previous owner must have cleaned it up because they are usually dirtier than that when they come out of a casino.  The player's card panel (tracking panel) has the display lit up nicely so you might want to leave it powered up and connected just for appearance sake. It won't use much electricity. The Mastercom equipment was used by the casino as a way to connect the machine to the casino computer network so they could get some info from the machine. So it isn't required to be working for home users.

On your coin comparator you can see that it has a sample coin (looks like a quarter?). This can be changed if you want to use game tokens, just loosen the screw (don't remove it) and slide the comparator coin cover to the right to change the sample coin. Also, for casino use they keep the comparator sensitivity adjust set high so it rejects foreign coins and other quarter-sized stuff. Some home users turn this sensitivity adjust down (CCW) so players don't have trouble with a token or coin not working.

As Kevin said the big difference between the mpu superboard in your slant top and the regular mpu in the PE upright machine is the superboard has an additional eprom socket called "DATA" next to the PROGRAM eprom. I suppose the row of resistors is also an indicator of the board type. That tape on the eproms is a security thing to let casino personnel and state regulators know if the game chips had been swapped out by someone (casino employees). Another set of altered eproms could have a way to payout lots of winners to the player.

On your superboard the former dipswitch functions are now mostly done in software on the various settings screen you bring up with the machines DIAGNOSTIC/PREFERENCES pushbutton. So the only part of the dipswitch that works is dipswitch #1, it is used to select the AC power frequency you plug the machine into. The default setting is 60hz for what we use in USA. I guess that's why they kept installing the dipswitch on the superboards but they could have installed a simple jumper instead. So just set all dipswitches to OFF positions is the easy way to remember it.

Below is a photo of a set of door optics, the ones used on your slant top would be similar, they may still be in your machine. Your PE upright may have them also, my PE+ does. One is a light transmitter, the other a light receiver, sort of like the safety optics used at the bottom of garage doors nowadays. When they align the mpu knows the door is closed and when they don't the machine registers a door open event. It's a security thing.

[rokgpsman]

.....Also when I was picking it up the guy took out the cash box there were a bunch of old 1's, a couple old 5's, and an old 20 in there so I'm thinking it must accept 1's on up......

Do you mean "old bills" as in the discontinued small-head bills no longer in circulation? If so then the bill acceptor may not be updated to the "large head" bills we use now.

 

[Danger86]

I don't think it has door optics. On the main slant top opening it has the same push button style that all the other doors have.

Yes it appears it only would accept small head bills.

[knagl]

On your coin comparator you can see that it has a sample coin (looks like a quarter?). This can be changed if you want to use game tokens, just loosen the screw (don't remove it) and slide the comparator coin cover to the right to change the sample coin.

I have never had to loosen that screw, just slide to replace the coin.  Does tightening it down lock the thing in place?  I thought the spring tension is all that held the sample coin in place (and was all that is needed).

[cowboygames]

The screw only holds the 2 sides of the slide together, no reason to mess with it, spring tension is all you have to overcome to change the sample coin

[cowboygames]

Upon further inspection, that screw also holds one of the anchors for the tension spring also. Doesn't change the advice though, absolutely no reason to loosen that screw

[rokgpsman]

Upon further inspection, that screw also holds one of the anchors for the tension spring also. Doesn't change the advice though, absolutely no reason to loosen that screw

yikes! I loosened that screw one time to get the slide to move more easily (seemingly), so thought the screw locked it into place and that tightening the screw brought the comparator sensing element (copper looking disc) closer to the sample coin for a better measurement. So that slide should freely move back & forth with the screw snugged up firmly?
Like they say, live & learn. 

[Danger86]

No recent news. I'm leaving for Vegas on Wednesday morning but once I get back I'll get that new battery and solder it in.

[knagl]

Fun!  Where are you staying in Vegas?