PE non plus broken again. Time for MAME conversion?

[videoporker]

My PE non plus Deuces Wild machine has been slowly dying. I've been able to keep it going thanks to this site and the great people here.

The monitor, although in new shape with no burn in, now needs caps or whatever. It takes about 20 minutes for the image to come up when it is first turned on. Over the weekend the coin optics went out again so now it won't register any coins put in. Gives me the coin sequence error putting a coin in when the door is open too. I tried cleaning it good but it didn't work this time. Probably just needs a new one.

All fairly easy fixes but I've been thinking of gutting it and putting a computer in there to run all the great PE+ MAME stuff with a LCD screen anyway.

[knagl]

You'd lose the coin-in and (I think) hopper payouts if you did that.  On the other hand, it shouldn't be too tough to rig up a mechanical coin acceptor and cherry switch to trigger the keyboard input.  I don't know about powering the hopper for coin-out stuff, though.  I don't know if that's been done by anyone...

I think it'd be an interesting project to convert it over.   

[videoporker]

Yes, I'd loose the hopper pay out and coin in. I wasn't going to use coins at all anymore. I'd just use the "bet one credit" button on the machine to trigger the keyboard coin in on MAME. The max bet and card hold buttons would work normal. Have to find a new use for the "change" button. I would have a mouse or touchpad hooked up to select games and choose numbers in keno.

They make something called an I-PAC to easily hook the hold buttons and any other controls to the computer keyboard input. I've taken keyboards apart and soldered wires to make MAME input devices before, but it's kind of a PIA.

I really like your idea of using a coin to trigger the input. I could reject route the coin right back to the tray and still eliminate the hopper and other internal stuff.

[knagl]

I really like your idea of using a coin to trigger the input. I could reject route the coin right back to the tray and still eliminate the hopper and other internal stuff.

I'd be a bigger fan of that than hooking up the Bet 1 button to the coin-in input, since you'd have no way to bet anything less than max credits otherwise.

You may want to consider keeping the Change button wired in as intended -- you need it for tournament games, and there are some MAME ROMs out there that support video poker tournament games.

[videoporker]

To clarify, I'd be hooking the "bet one credit" button on the machine to trigger the "insert 1 coin" function in MAME. You can bet less than max, then push the "draw/deal" button and play the hand. But never bet less than max in case of a royal flush anyway, right? A clever fellow could find a way to have a real coin dropped in trigger the same thing too. I might give it a shot.

I guess there are a lot more poker/slot ROMS for MAME out there than the old initial release PE+ ones that I have been playing. I thought of updating my MAME release from UI32 but I can't seem to find the newer ROMS anywhere online.

Thanks for your insight and suggestions. I'll post my progress as I go.

[knagl]

I understood what you were saying for the Bet 1 button, but failed to realize that by doing that you could indeed bet 3 coins if you wanted to -- you just wouldn't be able to bet an arbitrary number of credits if you don't have a Bet 1 Credit button.

A lot of the ROMs are out there -- just Google the chip numbers found in Brian's awesome post here and you can usually find a place to download at least most of them...

[videoporker]

A lot of the ROMs are out there -- just Google the chip numbers found in Brian's awesome post here and you can usually find a place to download at least most of them...

Very helpful indeed. Thanks for that tidbit knagl.

Has anyone ever seen Money Fever(Williams?), Flush Fever or Flush Fortune variations of poker in MAME? Actually, Flush Fortune might be on the IGT Game King platform.