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Hi guys,I've decided to build myself another conveyor,I'm currently searching for the bits and have some already.i made 5 in 2010 but rarely come up for sale.this is scratch built Inc cabinet and even make my own payout mech.so who is interested in a thread following the build of this.

Hi chaps, and chapesses. As I get MPU3's in various states of damage one of the most usual things is the cart holder is either missing or broken. As everyone knows without the holder intermittent faults abound due to vibration. Trying to find spare carts is more or less impossible so I thought I'd have a go at knocking up a 3D version. Here's the 2nd attempt, the 1st one the mounting holes spacing were about a 1mm out. I can probably use it but wanted a good one straight off the printer. Having said that it does need a little filing to ease the connector in but everything lines up which is the main objective. I will install it this afternoon and report back but so far all looks good. The rough bits on the bottom are where the supports have to go to enable the raised bit which takes the metal brackets. I cut those off with a small chisel. If there's any interest I'll post the STL file so you can print your own or if you want to improve it. All I ask is you post it back here so I can use it as well.

funny you should say that. oddly enough I got a Winsprint(none runner from Sheffield)off eBay last year for £50 buy it now(I said to the my other half that it felt like going back 15 - 20 years). cabinet was mint too and as it was an original Frog IT(with the 20p tube) it’s now been returned to its original state. I take your point though, this was definitely a lucky one off plus I had to check twice as I couldn’t believe the price along with I not being snapped up. getting that feeling when you are driving away from the collection site with a classic in the back of the van). I haven’t had that feeling in over a decade.

Wow, it's been nearly 5 years since I last posted in this thread!!! Just had a batch of MMM's in to sort. Most faults on these boards get cured by swapping out all the components in the battery area including the RAM. There can also be the odd broken via and corroded tracks but easily rectified with rivets and patch wires. One board which I'd had a few weeks previously had stopped working so I knew it was going to be a nightmare. On power up it would bleep about every second, flash a few lamps and motor drives and the 7 seg would go on and off too. Sometimes, very rarely, it would go into attract mode but not credit and then again sometimes it would credit but only on one denomination of coin???? After about 3 days of head scratching I was getting nowhere although I did discover some more faults that would have affected the lamp matrix overload (if it ever ocurred). So here I am on day 4 and I've got no idea what's going on, nothing is making any sense and the fault condition varies every now and then. Now I have two different game chips, one is 4 ROM chips (Cash Drop) and the other is Roulette which is 3 chips. I always use Cash Drop as it confirms all ROM sockets are Ok. So lo and behold with 3 chips in it runs a treat..... hmmm put the four chips back in and socket 4 if I move the chip with a little touch it boots fine or fails. Out with the socket and in with a new one. Not the easiest job in the world as the solder is grey and crumbly on the top side. A slight diversion here... A method I use to extract old sockets with crumbly solder is to apply heat with the iron tip (approx 370c) to the top side of the pin and when it melts the solder on the underside use a screwdriver blade to push the pin flat to the board (ie force it upward). Of course the socket will be ruined but it's knackered anyway. I find this breaks the seal and the socket can be removed a fair bit easier. Lots of flux is essential of course and the usual caveats apply don't attempt this unless you know what you are doing. Back at the ranch... With the new socket in the chip now is a snug fit whereas before you could extract it with just your fingers and of course it boots and runs fine. Phew!

David Mead came to join me in CS and together we repaired hundreds of SRU circuit boards and those damned Varelco(?) plugs that kept on breaking when you unplugged the board from the reel unit, what a design flaw that was. He had an absolute photographic memory and would remember details from older machines in seconds we had no need to have record kept, although he did as I remember and kept copious volumes of details. I met him in a pub a few months (years?) ago and he is still in the industry and is an engineer for one of the big companies, forgive me I know not which one. Tony Braggins went from development to HR, strange step but there you go. He spent years in that role before retiring and as far as I know became a trustee for a Nature Park. The R+D team changed massively over the years and as I have explained previously the 'cabinet populating' side of things all went a bit pear shaped prior to the introduction of the SWP's, so that will date it for 'you that know' a you may have read I was asked to take it over when on of the w@n7ers left, or should that be pushed. The software department obviously grew from the introduction of the SRU and although we started with two or three developers, eventually it went on to number at least a dozen or more as I recall. I wasn't too involved with the software team until I took over the PM role for the SWP's and then I had at least three working for/with me under the 'matrix management' project which was novel to say the least. I do remember a game we played in the software department which involved taking an eprom and placing it in the end of the Eprom packaging tube and flicking it upwards into the ceiling tiles where the legs would hopefully keep it there embedded in the fabric, of the tile. Cheers

Big thanks to Superbank and Clo. EPROMs have been burned and have arrived. I've tried them and they work! One step closer to reviving this Nudge Double Up 😀

Some nice old stuff in there https://youtu.be/hvkpFJ3_D7k?si=95EFY-tkn9fU33z0

Originally from 1942,mine is smaller.I made 5 of these in 2010 as in pic.i will update as proceed,you can see the parts I have got so far and wood collected today to start playfield and surround.hope you find this interesting.

Mostly together now,need to put drive chain on and make a few adjustments. This is what it looks like.

Good afternoon everyone. No-one seems to have posted in this section for nearly six months, so I thought I would. My brother moved house last year, and one of the boxes he found in his garage contained a lot of my paperwork, including, amongst other things, my 'O' level certificates from the dim and distant past. The box probably came from my parents' loft when we cleared it. Anyway, I discovered a folder full of Bell Fruit paperwork from when I worked there in the early '80s. There are various documents about fault finding MPUs (black box), adjusting coin mechs, cams and microswitches (electro) as well as schematics for Super Nudge Gambler, Nudge Gambler Mk3, Firecracker, 21 Up Mk2, Plus Ten Mk2 and Hot Dog. There's also a map showing how to find/access the factory in Leengate, a 'boozy guide' to Nottingham and information for the Hotel Talsta, which is where I stayed when attending my Grade 4 training/exam in 1981. I'm hoping the Nudge Gambler Mk3 schematic will suit my recently acquired Nudge Punter. I will try to scan the documents in the not too distant future - a job for a rainy afternoon. I'm not sure what I can do with the schematics, as they're a bit big for my scanner.

Picked this up. Needs quite a bit of work but should come out ok. Anyone got any stories of this machine? It’s made nearly 48k profit! Managed to find a board out of the old stock room 😎

I now have some reels and a display. Many thanks to Phil1974. He is your top man for sru bits...

Sorry nick I forgot to post this. just to finish off the thread that bargains are rare but they our out there(I was lucky this time and hopefully another member will stumble across one in the near future).

I've repaired a few Sp.Ace boards. They aren't too bad to work on with light battery damage. Although you do have to remove all the components. Including the box connectors. The ASIC chip seems to have really weak pins aswell,you don't get many chances removing then.

Thanks for the heads up @Player @KonixI wrote the software for Inquizitor and some of the other games as well as developing the various versions of viper/cobra/cyclone hardware. I have a Viper board which I think works. Also an Inquizitor disk but it seems to be unreadable. A don’t know if it can be cleaned up or if there’s anything which can be done ? All of the Viper/Cobra games which we have software for are emulated in MAME. I might have schematics and a manual for the Flare chipset somewhere. Feel free to ask whatever, I’ll help if I can.

Here is a quick vid.the missus can't get past first hole. 20241229_211930.mp4

I've now completed and ready to send to the printers the first 3 volumes of fruit machine flyers. These will be printed to the same high quality with gloss.paper and laminated cover as the video games and fruit machine flyes. I was particularly keen to do these because unlike video games and pinballs where there's loads of books available.there's absolutely nothing printed for fruit machines. I've collated the flyers into volumes by year and jackpot value as follows: Era Jackpot Pages 1978-1986 £1-£3 328 1987-1989 £4 384 1990-1995 £4.80, £5 384 Also, unlike the video game and pinball flyers although there are a large number of flyers included, the compilations are by no means comprehensive but do include a significant number of machines. I plan to do further volumes to cover machines up to mid 2010s when they all became digital but this won't be until sometime next year. I've attached some example pages from each of the volumes. Ignore the grey backgrounds as this is just where I took pictures on the computer. I'll be placing an order with the printers in a couple of weeks time, so please let me know if you would like any of these. It’s highly unlikely I will do another print run so it's now or never I'm afraid. Each volume will be £25 each and postage £6.50 which will cover all 3. Payment as usual by PayPal, robotgreg@yahoo.com, friends and family. I also have a small number left of the video game and pinball flyer books but do not have all volumes. I can combine postage subject to being less than 10 Kg, So do let me know if you are interested in any of these or if you have any questions on the Fruit Machine Flyer books..

Here it is done,now for the final touches.so I've got to strip it all now.

I have a new purchase arriving on Friday; The Penny Tumble. I've not seen one, but from the hazy photos it looks like a BFM console 3-ALIKE, with the later Action Line polished aluminium window frame superimposed. It's on sixpence play, but bizarrely, the front glass contains an unusual 'feature'. It forms an add-on 'dropcase' game, and inserting a penny at the top gives the player a chance to win a free play on the bandit! I can't wait to get on with this. It could be the 'missing link' between the Brewery-themed console machines, and the well-known New Penny arcade machine 'Action Line'. It MAY still have the Half-Crown acceptor, with tandem coin-switches for 1x play and 4x 6d. change!

Not written up an MPU4 for a while so .... This one came in doing all sorts of odd things before it died so I suggested sending the PSU as well just in case. The PSU was fine and all the caps had a good ESR so that rules that one out. Moving on to the board, most of the components around the battery area needed replacing and anything else with green legs. On switch on it did boot but with garbage on the alpha and then nothing. Luckily there was no track damage which was confirmed by tap'ing out the tracks to the alpha. In fact the only track damage was the negative battery pin which had become isolated. A rivet and some copper sorted that. So where do we go next? The first diag test is the triacs and all was good in that dept being as I'd alread swapped out all driver transistors, the 1nF caps and the zener diodes. This comes from IC8 which also has a drive to the alpha. The other drives to the alpha come from IC3 (68B21) so out she comes, in with a socket and a new one and bingo it now says MPU4 ALPHATEST OK. Are we done? Don't be silly, up comes the 7 seg display then it alarms with something like @@@@@ALARM 7xxxx (some other odd characters). Usually once the alpha is working it will tell you what the next error is but in this case it was garbage. The next thing the diags test is the RS232 and the meters (could be the other way round I can't remember) so I blindly changed the two IC's responsible as neither of them were producing the required outputs (IC7 + IC5 68B21). Next boot up and it's still the same.OK, I have seen a 6840 ALARM around this stage so a quick swap out and ....nope! Next thing switch on again and nothing??? The RESET circuit has failed. Should have swapped out these transistors originally, ho hum. So I'm running out of IC's to change so where next? After being on a few minutes with the alarm sound driving me mental I noticed IC6 was cold whereas all the other PIO's were warm. Hmmm, in with a new one and everything sprang to life. That was a relief.

And i managed to get another replacement top glass for another one

I assume this is the Data I/O 22? If so did you know a guy called Mike DiBattista has written a Windows program to talk to all the Data I/O programmers and very good it is too. I use it all the time with my 29B. It's a free download from the groups.io forum DataioEPROM but you'll need to sign up first. Hope that's useful.

Working !! The new board arrived and when I took the old board out I realised one of the new chips was only connected one side !!! Put them in correctly and all working and know sec fault too !

Nice one pete and yeah phil does help out with rare bits .

I bought off a fellow cowboy. I wish I could afford to buy off licensed sellers for peace of mind with full after market service 😉

Cowboys in sheds know a lot more than certain licenced sellers

My last visit was great. I did a tour video to update you all.

easy one

Found this. Wish I had a time machine...

Here is a photo, sorry it is not the best but i have not long moved house and currently building a new garage / workshop so everything that should be in there is crammed into the house ( even a petrol suffolk punch lawnmower under the stairs) 🤣

I thought I'd revive this one with a quick update. I patched the big cutout in the 10p tube with a 3D printed slotted plate, now she's fully back on old coins again.

Well I dunno I don’t think that’s a lot, they was everywhere 87/88/89 started to disappear around 1990 if you caught them after somebody had copped and you were after a jackpot you could do your nuts!! Or be strimming for hours..

I don’t see any negatives at all with redrose bowl, the owner is a collector and enthusiast that goes back decades,you won’t be seeing Hollywood bowl getting line ups etc etc to amuse yourself while the rest of your family kids /grandkids are bowling id happily go and lose £30 on a weekly basis if I lived up that way…

Looking like a machine now,but still lots to do.

Machined playfield today, now to make the ball release bar.

Wow, I can't believe I haven't updated this thread for nearly 4 years! Anyway, back in the workshop this board came in as dead and it was, totally. First check was the 5v rail and it wasn't there! No problem as quite often the LM723 fails except in this case it was a later mod with a 5v reg TO3 transistor. Checking it had 15v (ish) on the input which it did but nothing on the output. Unusual as these things are supposed to be short circuit protected. To cut a long story short there wasn't a short on the board but the acual reg tranny had gone short on it's output. OK no problem there, slip in a new 78H05 and off we go, happy days etc!! So on power on we get about 4.5v slowly rising towards 5v (that's not right) followed by a 'blimey that's getting hot' smell. Quickly turning it off I found two of the 6820's had turned themselves into hot plates. Whip them out and replace with 6821's (slightly less rare than 6820's). Switch on again, nice 5v and nothing! I'm now off the opinion before the reg went short it passed 15v out on the 5v rail! The other two 6820's were both faulty too but cold. Once new chips were fitted there was activity so the CPU looked like it was OK? Due to the PIO chips being damaged I decided to check out all the TTL chips too. Two of them were bad but I decided it would be prudent to swap them all out as a precaution. So now I have all the chips socketed and Bingo she runs (after a few silly bits of diagnosis that we won't go into here ) 6820 CPU's are become scarce now so I was pleased it was holding out and has done after several hours per day of soak tests. There's no thyristor over voltage protection on this mod but it was brought back for MPU3 no doubt for good reason.

Druid now dumped and uploaded on DIF. https://www.desertislandfruits.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18144-mpu3-rom-dumps-druid-5p-£150-big-game-291fl-lucky-strike-101/

They are holding up very well thanks being switched on 14 hours a day. There is now in full working order Line Up Frog Hop Adders and Ladders High Lights Exchange Unlimited Fire Cracker All working fine on new coins and getting reasonably used. Cash or Nudge not in the line yet but is fully working with a slight lamp fault Not about making money just good to see them for play and many people love them just for the memories they brought to them when they were younger

New document added - Bell Fruit Microprocessor - TECH DOCS - The MPU Mecca Bell Fruit Microprocessor (Black Box) System outline, fault finding, etc.

Here are the Eproms for you 🙂 Nudge Double Up Roms.zip

Yep, it does make it an MPU2. They obviously made these before the MPU2 was released to give the extra functionality, and then developed it into the MPU2. Managed to get it working today.

I've got a nifty nudge .not sure how many are left but there were three about quite some years ago now but two were broken up . They came In 5p and 10p formats.

There's still the odd bargain out there, you just gotta keep an eye out. And be prepared to travel if you see something that you like. Unfortunately the days of picking up Win Sprint for £100 in Loot are long gone!

Why don't you come and see the machines rather than slagging everything I have said on this topic if not keep it shut

A bit more done,soon be ready to fit electrics and wire it all up.

I've got all the books from back from the printers now so will be messaging everyone privately who ordered them for payment and then I can get them all sent out. Postage comes under 2kg for 1 so can send one for £3.50 or more for £6.65 total. I do have a few spares if anyone else wants them as a Christmas present for themselves or to get one of their wives/partners to buy for them? Here's a few pics from the finished books. Thanks Greg

Made the brackets to mount ball tracks and playfeild surround is on with inlaid lights to illuminate playfield. Getting wood for cabinet Tuesday and coloured discs for wheels.i can make front of cabinet and measure for glass front then I'm stuck till all my metal bits are done.jjust to add its 8mm pitch chain not 3/8. I've had that many measurements and bits in my head I got mixed up.

I was watching that Penny Tumble and pleased it's going to a good home Colin. Yes much like Action Line with similar inner workings and like you say has that 1d old penny drop. The best part is it's still original and not been converted like most of the models from that era so, It has it's 6d or sixpence (2.5p) play mech plus it should still have it's Half Crown (two shillings and sixpence) or 12.5p in todays money coin mech. Bell Fruit built a version of Penny Tumble for Ansells brewery. I'm still on the lookout for an original Action Line which was also on 6d play, not the later converted 1p version