Leaderboard

At the moment,The only early adverts with pic I can find are from 1974 showing Gemini and Kaleidoscope However I have found advertisements in 1976 with a number of listed used Barcrest's. King 40 Crackerjack Spellbound Stuntman Winnerama Solitaire Contrasts Masquerade Extravaganza

Next we have the dongles, as mentioned before they are rs232 so have the small 8 pin chips as level converters and the pic listens for the code supplied to it and answers with a different one, if this matches in the software game continues otherwise its 'contact maygay!' inside

May 1985.

A couple of my grail machines acquired today massive thanks to mike

You should be ok as most of the time these machines are switched off because they don't work

hello all from center of France, searching for informations about virtual fruit machines to complete my own personnal pub

To Magik. We're all with you Peter. Get well soon mate.

I know this thread is OLD! But a few more to add to this list I have Queen Vic - CK000233 Italian job - CK000309 Fight Night - CK000304 Superpots - CK000234 Unknown - CK00083 Not sure this is really relevant any more as the roms can be hacked to remove the dongle check now, I know it can be done as so far I have managed Donkey Kong, Fight Night, Italian Job, Queen Vic so far

In this case yes, it's a non runner 🙂 But I don't think it's a particularly "sought" after machine

Yes, that was the Ace Coin 100 Series.

Ok so here is my short video showing the events. I don't talk endlessly on what I am going to show you! Queen vic bootup with dongle, you can see it boots and works DONGLE removed so you then see it boot and CONTACT MAYGAY appears! Program card is changed for my hacked rom version, NO dongle is in place! it boots and runs perfectly! just need more rom files where the dongles are needed to see if I can do the same with others! I like Maygay M1!!!! Chris what version is your dongle rom?

And these are the other 2 program cards that I know of for M1 A FM sound card And finally what must be the very early type where the onboard sound Chanel is used (1989)

ok so there are the different ESP program cards, first the standard one next the 'high security' one which has to have dip 8 on the M1ab board on for it to boot up. this was introduced in some later machines to prevent hopper fraud as it monitors much more closely the hopper operations for fraud. special software used for these to work this is a close up of a duff security board add on still to be repaired

Sorted!! What a relief that was, it's been driving me nuts. It was something silly in the end which I would have sussed a lot earlier if I had a reel deck. The fact was everything was working fine and with a real reel deck I would have never hit this issue. Basically because the LED's were flashing on my Arduino I assumed the pulses were getting to the sensor inputs. What I didn't check was that the inputs were being permanently held down so the software must have thought the reels were stuck and wouldn't continue. No error messages or alarms though? This also explained why the door switch didn't do anything. When switched on with both door switch and test switch it obviously didn't care about the reels and booted fully which is why the door switch was then able to reset the machine. This wasn't the whole story though.... Once I sorted the state of the outputs to the sensor it still didn't work but I wondered whether the pulse widths were too narrow. Slowing down the Arduino a tad and everything burst into life. Again thanks to all who made suggestions, even if it was to jump in the Thames.

With my limited experience, I agree that Epoch is not a 'bad' tech and I do wonder if the modular design behind it was possibly to some extent inspired by the car industry at the time when central ECUs were becoming more often smaller distributed modules that talked to a much smaller data-only ECU (if that crossover sounds too far fetched, one of the (building) alarms I used to install used wiring / multiplexing technology originally developed by the Jaguar just after it split from Rover). What lets Epoch down is that even the smallest battery leakage tends to cause a LOT of damage, then Johnny Facebooker goes and buys another one from eBay where Jimmy Fly-by-night promises it has no battery damage, honest guv, it works for 5 minutes maybe and then it's fooked again. Johnny Facebooker declares it a crock and smashes it up. That and the fact that other than DOND the likes of Maygay / Epoch brought us licencing deals such as the Simpsons machines and Italian Job, the brand recognition means they are ever aging popular machines that tend to end up in the hands of absolute Joe Public beginners with zero tech skills, which doesn't help. If Epoch had used primary cells, and I simply can't understand why they didn't, I think it would be up there with MPU5 in terms of bombproof reliability well past it's chuck by date.

The thing with Epoch, the whole ethos was to have a system with very low cost boards that were rapidly interchangeable... An operator would have had a lot of spares ready and waiting and its very easy to change the boards over. I've built up a collection of tested spares and keep them ready to go and I personally think it's easy to get an epoch working. The 4 broken machines I've brought it's all of 20mins spent per machine getting them working. Fault diagnosing is difficult sometimes granted. I think Epoch sometimes gets a bad name because people have no tested spares ready and just chuck money and untested parts when they don't know what the problem is and just label it as shit tech when they can't fix it. I'm obviously a massive fan of scorp4 too, with hindsight we know that formula of everything on one board and quality made stood the test of time better. Global did really well out of Epoch so in my mind it's still a great successful tech with a lot of good games.

Thankfully they still are.

When I worked at Bell Fruit Manufacturing, My depot was at Westerhope in the West end of Newcastle. Apart from a service contract to look after a few one arm machines in bingo halls, Every machine both in manufacture and on site operations were electro mechanical. No merging or takeovers from other companies, no other manufacturers machines like juke boxes pool tables or video games to look after. Only BFs own manufactured fruits. Obsolete, badly damaged and scrap machines were returned to Nottingham. Working in workshops until I passed my grade 4 then just one week later I arrived one morning not to work in workshops but taken to the stores where I was handed two bespoke wooden spares boxes containing a good selection of electro spare parts then shown outside to take possession of a new mk1 white Escort van ( all service vans including installation transits were white and only the large vans were sign written). In the van was the first time I had ever seen a two way radio never mind used one but after some good instruction soon got the hang of taking the service calls. On returning to depot you handed the spares boxes over to stores where they would replenish all the used parts and ready for you to pick up again on your way out. I was to cover area engineers sickness and holidays until assigned my own area so got to see the whole North East operation. Not including the bingo contract along with sited club machines, the AWP machines were sited in Brewery managed sites, brewery tenanted and free trade. All rented no sales.

If you have no luck and want to stand the postage both ways I can test it and sort out the GAL chip if it is problems, but I do work and don't feel like doing much in the evenings so likely to be a weekend before I sort it

Some more progress, currently waiting for some new turned pin IC sockets to arrive...

I will second that.All the best dude

I have managed to find this version of Donkey Kong with a dongle, it works in my tube version of machine so will see if I can hack this now I have also got a donkey kong which has the extra high security board on the back but that wont even start to boot! perhaps this type is for the hopper version....

Something you’d never see ! (Especially in present day)

Scary! edit: the fucker got away lol, it’s still inside the machine somewhere

I've attached it to this post, I'm sure no one will mind lol. oo3.1x.zip