Purchasing game chips for a pe+

[chuck300x11]

Jim has a post for pe+ game chips. I have some questions about whether or not my board can use these chips. I have posted some pics of my game and board below.
1. Jim mentioned that he has both 256 and 512 chips. Will both types work on my board?
2. Will other game types such as slots, black jack, etc. work with my video poker button deck?
3. Do I have to do a clear to switch from game to game?


Thanks in advance,
Chuck

[knagl]

Chuck,

1. In looking at your pictures you posted here, you have a superboard.  Either capacity EPROM will work -- the games that require the larger graphics chips can be used by moving a jumper on the board.

2. Yes, PE+ blackjack and slots will work with your existing button deck, you will just have some extra non-functional buttons when running those since fewer buttons are used for blackjack and slot games.  The only type of game you would not be able to run with your current setup would be keno games, since you'd have no way to select numbers.

3. You do not need to use a clear chip to switch between games.  There is an easy procedure you'll have to do if you switch between games, as the machine will throw an error message or two after the chips have been changed to a different game.  The procedure just involves pressing and holding the self test button for about five seconds, closing the door, turning the jackpot reset key, and possibly repeating those steps a second time -- nothing to it.

However, I just noticed that you have a dollar bill validator.  You will need to use a SET chip to re-enable the bill validator after you do a game change.  The procedure for doing so is documented in this FAQ post: http://newlifegames.com/nlg/index.php?topic=334.0

[jay]

You can buy a Keno Pen and the connection board (usually sold together), and there is an extra chip you need to add to your board to make it play Keno Games.
To mount the keno pen you need to drill a hole in the game, and ground the mount really really well.

[chuck300x11]

With some of the research I've done I saw something about having to match up a cap or capx chip with any game I want to install or the colors might be completely wrong. Am I correct on that?

[jay]

There are two boards.
The standArd board has a program chip, followed by MXO,MRO,MGO,MBO and a cap chip.
You need all 5 of the chips to be compatible with the program chip to get your Colors right.
Sometimes you can get custom card backs which is a change to the 4 M?O chips with the cap rom remaining the same.

The super board is the same BUT
You use both a program and data chip and a CAPX instead of a cap.

As per the earlier thread you can use non super game sets on the super board by moving a jumper restricting the memory to 256 and leaving the data chip slot empty.

So a game set is 6-7 chips large.

Some games were only ever offered as a non super board game like blackjack.
I have bought some old non super boards and just keep these chip sets in them as this is better than swapping out lots of chips.

[knagl]

With some of the research I've done I saw something about having to match up a cap or capx chip with any game I want to install or the colors might be completely wrong. Am I correct on that?

The CAP PROM provides the available color palette to the machine.  If you use the wrong CAP(X) chip with the CG/graphics chips (MRO, MGO, MBO, MXO) you will typically get incorrect colors.

Many of the poker-based games typically used the same color palettes, so it's generally not as crucial to swap out the CAP chip (or even the CG chips) when switching between poker games, as they tended to frequently use graphics and colors that were somewhat "universal" to many of the CG sets.  It's more of an issue to have the correct CGs and CAP chip for non-standard games (Shockwave, Jackpot Poker, etc.) and slot games.

As a side note, it is possible to build a small board which will allow you to use more easily available EPROM chips to give the machine the CAP data.  That's described in this thread, although it pretty much requires that you also have a EPROM burner to burn (create) custom EPROMs with the CAP data.  Basically, this would be something to tackle once you've gained a little more knowledge and experience with your machine and wanted to go to the next level.