AREA 51 help

[61Wally]

Well. Now I see why there’s so few posts. My first time hearing and seeing one of these. I was given this machine recently. First thing, I replaced (1) dead #2032 battery. I turned on machine and this is as far as I’ve gotten to. I get this message on the screen. Any thoughts/suggestions of where to start learning about this brand? I can’t believe how its been So well kept, Very clean. I would enjoy learning about this one, It’s got the CD drive like the Sigma machine I recently repaired. Thanks to NLG members.

[Chris-socal]

Hey team, I’m boiling this post back to the top hoping someone has some insight about theory concept of operation on this IGI game.
61Wally set this game to the side after making the original post, and we are hoping to get it working.
It appears to use a PC mainboard like some other machines, Sigma, etc.
if anyone can give us some insight about theory of operation, how to reset, etc.
its a really good looking machine and we hate to see it get trashed because we can’t find any resources.

Thanks if you have any information.

Chris

[Dirtguy]

That screen comes up on reel touch machines. I guess I would start by looking to connect a keyboard to it and hit f1 and see what happens.

[Stayouttadabunker]

I agree...I see that screen on IGT Visions as well.
However, yours is showing a CMOS checksum error on the last line.
I'd reseat the CMOS chip onboard... hopefully it's only an oxidized chip leg or socket hole that needs to be cleaned?
Because of a fault on a chip somewhere, the boot-up sequence is halted where it won't get past the "Press F1 to Continue, DEL to enter SETUP" line on its own.
Check to see if it has one of those Dallas NVRAM chips onboard.
Those specialized chips have batteries built in under the plastic cover.
We all know, batteries don't last forever.
Finally, check the MPU battery if you don't see a Dallas chip....if too low under 3 volts, it could have possibly set off that CMOS message.

Hooking up a keyboard may help you get past them but may hang up again because of missing programming instruction to continue.
Are you missing a CD reader for IDE Primary Slave or IDE Secondary Master?
Would you know if it needs anything more than the single CD player?
Sorry I'm not able to help you more than that.... never played with one of these.

 

[Chris-socal]

Thats great direction. It does have a IDE CD Reader in it.  I think you are right, we first need to get the computer bios set so it can continue.
NVRAM too. Very interesting.
Am I correct that the entire game s stored and run from the CD?
Does the machine require anything else to reset, a dongle or anything?

We will update as we get back to this.

Thanks a ton.

Chris

[Stayouttadabunker]

I think the bonus round part of the game is run from the CD.
CD's have more programming space than prom chips, so I'm going to bet that's where all the graphics are stored.
However, the game commands could probably be coming from gaming chips on the MPU?

One of the reasons I said that the problem might lay with the CMOS chip is because the battery had to try to hold its memory all this time the machine was OFF.
Many casinos had dead batteries in their machines when they started back up the casinos after Covid.
Where I work at, was no different.
I remember we had young folks running out to Sam's Club buying multiple packs of coin cell batteries... lol

[qbert]

I see the check sum error on Reel Touch when the top box battery is dead. Open top box replace the battery.
Plug in a ps2 keyboard turn on keep hitting the delete key until it goes into the bios screens. Set the time and date, save. Hitting the pf key that says load optimized defaults.  Save and reboot. Reel Touch runs off of a hard drive and does not use the cd. Is there a CD disk in your machine?

[Chris-socal]

Dan and I were working on this today, we plugged in a keyboard but it is completely unresponsive, the keyboard doesn’t power up so we can’t get into Bios. We verified the keyboard works in another game so this is definitely a problem with the bios or motherboard.
We also found another lipo backup battery on one of the boards but it is amazingly strong, 3.7v.

I could use some direction identifying the cmos we can try re-seating it. Pictures attached.
Any suggestions on how else to proceed?

Chris

[qbert]

Chris,
My experience is with Reel Touch so the information I give you may or may not be useful.
Is your keyboard a ps2 plug or a USB?
USB keyboards do not work on Reel Touch.  They must be a keyboard with a ps2 plug. The bios on Reel Touch does not recognize the USB even though there is a USB socket on the motherboard.
I believe the bios chip is the one labeled 54120020.
Need a clearer picture of it.
Interesting DFI is also the manufacturer of the Reel Touch motherboard.
Rich

[Chris-socal]

Yes we are using a ps2 keyboard. There are two ports, ps2 and a 5 pin din.
Funny, I didn’t see the word Bios on the IC in person, I only noticed in the picture when you pointed it out, I thought bios chips were the little square ones. Lol
I guess we should re-seat that one. 

Chris

[61Wally]

Hello to Everyone at NLG. CHRIS/SoCal has been So Nice and helpful in trying to get this AREA 51 machine going. Finally figured out that It needs to have the 5 pin din to mini 6 pin adapter cable to use the keyboard. It’s So close to firing up, accept for 2 errors. #1) “Hopper Tilt” and #2) Bill Validator lost Communication”. I don’t even remember if it came with a hopper. If Anyone can help Me to find a service manual or schematic, I’d like to troubleshoot these issues and see if We can move forward. There’s a relay mounted next to the hopper connector and it would be nice to know the wiring pattern. Thanks to All.

[Chris-socal]

It has been an interesting month pondering this machine but Dan and I made major progress this afternoon.
After figuring out the keyboard and getting bios set up we were stalled by the hopper and Bill Validator. Since we don’t have the correct hopper we cleared the error by jumping the coin switch so it thinks there is a switch present. Took care of that error.

Now the big one we need help with. We don’t know the correct protocol for the WBA bill validator. Does anyone happen to have one of these IGI/IGCA machines who can tell us the version? We suspect its a 22, mostly because its the one Dan doesn’t have! LOL
We tried several different IGT and Bally. The IGTs will cycle when booting but throw a “lost communication “. Which locks you out of the game.

We cannot find a way to turn off the BV altogether so it hangs the game from playing unless we are in Tournament mode. It was great to be able to play it in Tournament mode but we need to get the BV working.

Chris

[Chris-socal]

Is there a way to fool the computer into thinking there is a BV connected? Does anyone know what interface it is looking for?