Leaderboard

Hi everyone, it’s been a while. Time for a new project, tipped off by a neighbor. It was listed on Facebook Marketplace (Netherlands). A Bellfruit Full House; there was only a photo of the front, but you could see the damage to the artwork. Asking price: €20. Naturally, I couldn't pass it up. This machine needs a lot of love to get it looking good and playable again. Fortunately, the machine is complete; the instruction sheet is inside, as are the build year and serial number.

Started removing rust from various parts of the Reel today; disassembled the motor... but immediately spotted a problem. It clearly hasn't been looked after; there was hardly any grease inside. There is a worn bronze bearing, and there is significant play in the output shaft (can this be ordered? Otherwise, I'll have one machined). I'm not sure if the output shaft is supposed to be like that, though. Fortunately, the gears are still in good condition.

Starting to take shape now! It's going to be good to see the end result 👌

Nice job on the shot blasting and really makes a nice difference

So, for the past 2 days, I’ve been busy further derusting the transformer. This was so much work that I decided to take various parts to a good friend who has a sandblasting cabinet. In the meantime, I had also contacted (pb) BF74 (Ron) for a piece of schematic for a Dutch cabinet, if he had one. I received a complete schematic of the Full House; I couldn't be happier. I also ran a test, most problems were some residual oxidation on the relays and some AMP connectors that have not yet been replaced.

Thanks Dave 138, that puts my mind at ease. I assembled the reels today; they were finally clean enough. I went ahead and replaced the AMP connectors while I was at it. I also received replacement bulb holders today; the old ones were too rusty, so I replaced those right away. Does anyone know what the switches on the side of the reels are for?

When I worked for Bell Fruit, we never did any maintenance on the reel motor. I don’t know if Ron can confirm that. It was rare to have a motor problem and, if we did, we just fitted a new one. There again, the machines were not very old.

Thanks, Dave 0138 and Zulzerned. It’s a lot of work, and progress is slow. Started on the reels today. Found black, oxidized contacts, seized bushings, and rust. Needed a lot of contact cleaner to scrub everything clean again. Tomorrow I’ll take the motor apart (but first, I’ll read through Ron’s thread one more time). I’ve taken reels apart before, but this is much more complex, and I don’t want to make any mistakes. Here are some photos of the process.

What a great project .look forward to seeing the progress

Nice find. It should keep you busy for a while.

Hello, my name is Victor French Collector, and my passion for collecting slot machines, jukeboxes, and arcade games started with an old ATARI jukebox. I’m also passionate about vintage chip technology, like the TMS or the 4004. As I explored these worlds, I discovered the Ace Coin Equipment machines from the Series 100, and I fell completely in love with these models. i love making Dump of ICs and Manuals/ Schematics Redraw. i m also a good member of MO5 Assaciation of old french Machines preservation.

Lovely looking machine Marco! Can you take a picture of the MPU, is there a battery on the board?

Hi all, I think I mentioned these devices a few weeks back so I thought I'd purchase a few and have a play. If you're not aware these devices can emulate ROMs and come in all the sizes and will do masked ROMs too although I haven't got there yet. Amazing so far and so many things I haven't tried yet. They are about a tenner each but the time and effort they save it's a no brainer. The devices can be flash programmed in seconds so no waiting 20-30 mins to erase ROMs and re-burning when you're testing patches to code. Then plugging them in to test and finding they don't work! (yep we've all been there) Once installed in the ROM socket they can be re-programmed in situ via USB. Here's a pic using an MPU3 card... Also big and smaller brothers. They do devices for larger chips but I don't need them as yet. Another advantage of these is you can save multiple images which can be selected by the jumpers so changing code can be done in seconds. Of course in the case of MPU3 & 4 you can't put them in the case as it's not deep enough but that's fine just for testing purposes. Another advantage is you can put the whole image on one device and patch the CS lines to the empty sockets (not tried this as yet) but it's all explained in the blurb. I needed to use these due to trying to defeat the CHR and CRC check as burning traditional ROMs was taking all day. It can now be done in seconds. I'd like to thank John Parker for his assistance with this and taking the time to explain it. Cheers John you are a squire and a gentleman sir. For the guys out there that like hacking ROMs for changing the gameplay, I think these devices will be a godsend. It does also mention in the blurb you can change bytes on a running system, not tried that either but it's all terrific stuff.

And there's more..... Electro Mechanical (EM) - Versus - Stepper Reel Unit (SRU) As already mentioned I had succeeded in filling a vacancy in JPM's After Sales Service and had a shiny Blue Ford Cortina estate. It was one of the only estates that would get a machine in the back with the seats down, sort of guaranteed to kill you if you were rear ended but I digress. (another welshman). Work days were now in a 3 piece suit as we were ‘an extension of Sales’ as Ernie Beaver, the sales director at JPM let us know on frequent occasions. This was a new venture for me and involved, amongst other duties, taking calls from technicians in field who were stuck with a problem and couldn’t fix the machine and those were the calls we enjoyed taking! It was always a pleasure to speak with a like minded engineer who wanted to fix a problem and needed another pair of hands to assist so to speak. We would pore over the schematic in the office asking the engineer to try various things and offering our suggestions until we eventually nailed the issue! Believe me the last thing we wanted was to have an engineer left in the field with a machine that was still OOO as we called it and no idea of how to fix it. In fact several of us had been know to jump in the car after work and drive to site to be there for the next day and check out the problem ourselves if the answer was not found. This was especially true in the case of a new machine just in case it was a production issue which would be replicated. We sometimes took calls from executives of influential Companies pointing out the shortcomings of a design or a flaw in the product and demanding that we come and ‘sort things out’. Both these types of calls resulted in us often taking a two pronged approach, perhaps going to site to see the issues first hand as a PR effort, but also checking on the production facility and seeing if we could see the problem first hand and persuade Dev or production to change things. We were expected to man exhibitions stands as well in such places as Alexandra Palace, back in the day before it burnt down, Olympia and also the NEC. That last venue based near Birmingham was used only once and was the stage setting for the culmination of an important (head banging) period in JPM’s history and proved to be a turning point. More of that later Lets just step back over 40 years here Everything is no longer in black and white but it’s still sepia coloured. It’s early evening, it’s raining, and a machine is out of order. The call was made earlier in the day and the engineer turns up. First thing he does is light a fag and ask the landlord about the nature of the problem and checks out the machine. Let’s not forget before we go any further, there is no test routine per se! So, drag the machine away from the wall, create a space around the back to try and get some working space, open the beer sticky back door to the tobacco stained inside, perhaps kneel in the beer soaked carpet and wait for the usual comments from the crowd. “Ooo it’s like a telly in there,” “look at all those wires,” “can you make it win for me,” “come to stop it paying out have you?” And dozens of other well know comments He’s heard them all a hundred times If it’s payout related it’s easy, get some credit, move the reels to a payout position, hold them, hit start, wait for the game to finish, payout should happen, simples. More game related issues? He played until it came up. But then of course there was a schematic supplied with every machine and furthermore most canny engineers had a folder with the latest schematics in. By looking at the schematic, cycling the machine and following what should happen the engineer could trace the circuit and find the faulty component and here is the big difference between those days and today or at least when I finished in the industry and more’s the pity . He either went back to the car or delved in his tool box and pulled out a micro switch, a relay, perhaps even a timer motor. He might even look at the schematic and in the case of a relay related fault, check out if the contact was broken or pitted and perhaps search for another that didn’t utilise that contact or open the relay and even abrade the contact. Whatever it took. The point is in the vast majority of cases, unless there was vandalism, fire, or some other physical issue the engineer fixed the machine. He was proud of that fact, he was known for that trait. Of course with the introduction of the electronic systems many engineers, well in those days anyway, became worried. And rightly so, but their fears had to be allayed. I had already been, quite literally, "sent to Coventry" as the one person who was prepared to repair a new machine on site. The first breakdown of JPM's prototype electronic machine, the Each Way Nudge was in Thomas's Showboat Arcade in Coventry. I had a spare board with me obviously but I found that a transistor had blown and although I wasn’t prepared to actually de-solder the defective one, I scrunched it up with a pair of pliers and soldered the new one on to the legs of the old one. ‘JD’ as we say. (Job done) Lets not forget it wasn’t LSI in those days and there were many discrete components on the board. Crude?………Yes! Effective?….Definitely! Happy?……..Ecstatic! This first “repair” of the electronics in an Electronic machine on site was no small matter and was deemed as the crossing of a major hurdle for the company. I can already hear the snorts of derision here, and I don’t blame you guys, but try and figure that this was all new ground and there was a lot riding on this. In itself it proved unquestionably that the product ‘could’ actually be repaired by anyone (gee thanks), a fear that everyone had borne since the inception of the product. In practice of course (it has to be said) that the reality proved to be a lot different. The electronics system was without question more reliable. However with the delivery of the new machines and the inevitable issues with peripherals still cropping up, many of our customer's site engineers all over the country were desperately trying to fix broken bulbs etc, on this initial batch of machines by taking out (aka ripping out) the controller and ordering a replacement part in sheer terror of the unknown. This was because they had lost the traditional testing or ‘exercising’ methods that they had learnt over many years on the electro mechanical machinery. They did not read the manual, I mean what real man ever reads a manual! All of the calls to After Sales were recorded on a ‘Call Log’ and the vast majority that started the line with EWN (Each Way Nudge) had the immortal phrase RTFM written against them They didn’t know the machine could be exercised via a test routine. Engineers were far more used to robust systems and were playing havoc with the more delicate connectors, which with later hindsight admittedly were not up to the job. It became obvious to everyone that the industry would need to educate these guys, or this product and the very future of JPM and the massive investment already made would in turn fail. It goes without saying that the success of a product meant it was taking more money than any other machine and an old adage by Mick Foster of Associated Leisure was that a charity box took more money than a dead fruit machine. Due to the previously mentioned mind set it seemed that every fault was being blamed on the new technology and the product was getting bad press. JPM quickly came to realise that it was fear and ignorance as much as anything else that was fuelling the transplant epidemic which itself was introducing the aforementioned damage to connectors coupled with the huge number of circuit boards being returned with NFF but damaged connectors. So after devising a training programme with Charles Weeks and several other colleagues we went around all the ‘majors’ in the Industry pointing out how the product could best be serviced, exercised and how to fault find! Often this was on a shift by shift basis as Engineers would be on call out Rotas. My colleagues and I were tasked with travelling the length and breadth of Britain and eventually much of Europe, setting up training road shows in Hotels, Village halls, Cinemas in fact anywhere that could hold 20 or more engineers and a few machines for them to work on. I was promoted (?) to Training Officer and this constant exposure ensured that my face was well know throughout the industry. Due to my experiences I was eventually offered the job as After Sales Service Manager. Bob Old had left the role as my manager and moved over to open a new venture that JPM had entered into, supplying spares to the industry for our competitors products as well as our own. Bob Old eventually left JPM and went on to work in a Sales role for Aristocrat in London and then Australia and became truly successful in that role. So I inherited the Spare sales team as well He unfortunately passed away a few years ago. RIP Bob you taught me how to drink!

More..... As an aside to the product per se we had couple of issues to deal with that were not down to the design of the products themselves but were down to the industry we were in and products appeal to those less scrupulous characters One such issue that JPM experienced was the new products susceptibility to Static electricity and the result of that ‘attack’. We found quite early that the machine could give unexpected results to static but this was not just the gas lighter piezo cell that was being used by the public to upset the controller. Even walking across a carpet could cause an issue and this was being exacerbated by two fairly new concepts that just happened to occur at more or less the same time. With the advent of ‘banked wins’, punters ( I always hated that term) were allowed or encouraged to bank their wins. As a manufacturer JPM realised that this was a good thing as the resulting payout always seemed significant rather than the staccato clank of smaller wins, believe me a lot of people were persuaded to play when they heard that advert! Anyway, JPM had a major issue with static and it got to a head and was proving to be so troublesome that I was bundled off to an establishment called ERA Technology where we subjected the machine to a series of tests in an anechoic chamber. I don’t think the sound quality or lack of it in the room was anything to do with the tests it’s just that was the only room available at the time. It was a very strange environment in which to hear a machine payout! So we sat there for hours hitting the machine with static but nothing seemed to be getting past the earth bonds and when they did the level 3 interrupt(?) circuit performed as it was supposed to. Then suddenly the machine went haywire, pulsed out a coin and the test equipment registered a huge spike - from out of the blue. Scratching our heads we continued to play and then it happened again, but this time just as the machine was paying out, one clunk and reset and the test equipment showed a spike. As we discussed the subject of static over a coffee, as you do, the engineer from the establishment explained a little about static and how simply raising a coin from your pocket to the machine could induce static but not enough to cause any issues and in any case the new Mars mech was plastic and so it could not dissipate the charge. The answer struck me like a streak of ………. The coins were entering the coin guides and coin tube, unearthed, and then standing there like a great big capacitor ready to jump that gap between the payout slide and the casting of the payout mech when the charge was sufficient and believe me it was huge!. We tried earthing the tube with an insert and overcame the problem but then any of you that have had site experience will know that anything in the path of a coin WILL cause a coin jam, no matter how careful you are. So I took out the payout slide, inserted a rivet through the slide and filed it down, again after refitting and testing it sorted the issue, however this was not an answer. I contacted Coin Controls in Oldham and persuaded them to add a measure of graphite ( I think it was graphite ) to the plastic material before injection moulding, this gave it the conductivity of a peace of wood. After explaining what the problem was and negotiating for JPM to take the first consignment, we agreed to uniquely test it for three months before releasing it to the industry. That’s how we overcame that particular static problem first.

Well, first of all, I can't tell you what a relief it is to hear, unprompted, that you find it interesting. It was an incredibly interesting time to be in the industry and with such a great company and bunch of people, many of whom still meet now. Stegarv66, consider that we were 300 people and often the 'game' itself was down to 10 or 15 people, so although we would have seen it, in answer to your question no. Also we tried to get a new game out of the door every 8 weeks so for us it was always looking to the new machine! sulzerned, you are dead right and forgive my oversight, the SRU (stepper reel unit) controller was the controller in the EWN and you have just (by coincidence) introduced the next chapter or are you hacking my machine..... ha ha. BF74, I never did like that very crude % control. Apart from anything else, unless it was dead right you could hear the double flick of the solenoid arm as well. It was also an unfortunately simple method to keep the PO% down. Bit like cutting a stop off the old reel stop disk to make sure it never landed on a particular symbol. BTW I still have SWP's, Astra, Coinmaster and Gamesoft to go yet! ( but I'm not sure if they should go in here? ) Again, thanks people.