Leaderboard

I have to agree with BF74 and point out that we often had to change pay-out structures during mid production run as it were. Glasses and perhaps bands were ordered and heads were banged on tables trying to figure out how was the easiest way to accommodate the new pay-out not only artwork etc but for the engineer on site. In this instance the little grey cells of BF74 were spot on and the 5 pulse cam was used to drop 2x10 coins, which was never truly optimal as if the switch dwell was slightly too small ( the dwell was what we called the width of the cut out in the cam ) if it were too small the slide would snap back, return too quickly and then clobber a token making it stick in the jaws. By the way Riche100 was kind enough to supply me with a WINNER schematic which I had been after for years and there on the bottom and due to a law change was a new pay-out relay and associated circuit on the schematic, with my handwriting! Now prized possession and framed on the wall !

1980-82? After Sales was a great place to work and was somewhere that I found I really had a penchant for, and really enjoyed. I mean people had problems. You fixed them cause you could. They were happy, your employer was happy, what was there not to like. Well for a start several of the 'old school’ team. Although they were in their positions they did not do the job properly, as I saw it, and I worked hard at doing the job right. As I have said I was eventually given the job of After Sales Manager so I guess I was right? I mean as a lowly engineer rep I was given 3 patches, North of Hadrian’s Wall, South of the M4 and anything to the right of Cambridge. This meant that all the large city centres with their easily available night life attractions were retained by my superiors! Let’s not go there! My main team consisted of Anne Marie O Sullivan, Julia Lockwood, Martyn Stork, Hugh Thomas, Russell Grimble, David Mead, then later Steve Bryant, Simon McCarthy and Adrian Davies. Although others joined us it was us that kicked off my new “Customer Service” department. I didn’t like the handle ‘After Sales’, it smacked more of the ‘companies toilet paper’ rather than an aide to the customer which is how I saw it As I figured it we were there to represent the customer during and After Sales, and in fact if we could get to them Pre sales we might persuade them to be a customer by explaining the finer points of the product!’ At that time we were still preparing service manuals the old fashioned way and when I use the term ‘cut and paste’, I literally mean it. Cutting sections from an old printed manual and pasting them onto a new sheet that had the new bits already typed in but with spaces for the old text. This was then set off to be reproduced by some witchcraft of which I knew very little but I think it involved photography of some description! Plus of course the Technical Service Bulletins or TSB’s had to be produced when we had an issue or wanted Customers to know about information like conversion kits and law changes or other important information. Addressing envelopes individually from address books was daunting and although we did look at memory golf ball typewriters, I got to hear of the new personal computers that were becoming available so I approached Jack and he agreed to at least listen to my suggestions and so off I went. I spoke to Dave Young who had his own Marketing company and spent a great deal of time with us and who I had a hell of a lot of time for and in fact became a friend and another mentor. Dave was the ‘T shirt’ guru by the way, it was he that suggested we should include them in the cash box for that period! He put me in touch with a fledgling company in Swansea where I went to see the machinery that I had only heard of, bearing in mind this was pre 1980. The machine was an 8080, CPM based, twin 8.5” 128k floppy disk system with a golf ball printer and monitor. The metal box itself, yes the huge blue powder coated steel box was about 600mm x 600mm by 350mm high or about as big as a small kitchen wall unit. It ran Wordstar and Supercalc (like we knew what the hell a spread sheet was!) but Anne Marie and Julia and I stuck to it and we were soon getting things done so much quicker. Anyway given today’s knowledge you will know that cut and paste is a completely different issue Ctrl C - Ctrl V, no mouse! Mail shots were now the push of a button (well several combinations of buttons actually). Friday afternoon’s were taken up creating backups from the master disk to back up discs. PIP A:=B:*.* (god where did that come from) Then on the screen TRWV. TRWV TRWV (Track Read Write Verify) And so on for ages….and ages. Customers address’s were stored and easily reproduced on adhesive backed labels to be stuck on envelopes which became superseded eventually by fan fold envelopes no less. These were shot out and were stuffed with ‘personalised’ mails by the team in periods of fraternal and frantic office origami, not just the secretarial staff. Engineers were expected to join in but then the girls helped with unpacking returns and occasional de-soldering and checking test routines prepared by the engineers. One big happy team multi functional team. So successful was the introduction of the machine that other departments became interested, especially as we had soon invested in an MPM or multi user system. This allowed the guys to have terminals and access manuals and low level, Technical tip ‘batch files’ that I created for them to look at. The JPM Sales administration team and the R+D specification team soon had their own MPM machines and I was seconded to Sales for a few months to learn relational Data base structures to create Invoices etc for the Sales department. This was no doubt as Anne Marie had left Customer Service for Sales and taken our forward thinking ethos with her, but thank God I still had Julia. To be continued......

That lead free solder can go straight in the bin.

An interesting point of which only the present or new owner will be able to accurately answer and possibly the reason the machine has been spared of being converted to all cash. As it was originally manufacture as a 50p token max payout machine, JPM will have fitted only a 5 pulse payout cam as it pays 10p tokens as well as 10p cash. For this later £1 token model it would need a 10 pulse cam OR the easy option was to fit a 2x10p token payslide which is my thoughts. If this is the setting then the same original 5 pulse cam could be left as is and for the £1 tokens 5 pulses of a 2x token slide is all that's needed. As the 10p slide is only a single 1x 10p slide, wiring the token payout slide over to the cash payout slide is not an option and the £1 would only payout 50p cash. Just dragged my Housey Housey schematic out to see which version it is and it's the modified £1 drawing so, I can confirm it is indeed fitted with a 2x 10p token payslide.

Just spotted this on eBay and only a two day auction, now I’m no electro collector but this looks like a BEAUTY if I was 👍 and with MR Birds great stories recently quite topical 😁 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Old-Fruit-Machine-/313734138187?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Haha... you will say it's shit anyway.

Here is mine , still on old £1 but working fine

Yeah, still got it. Now with DIY reel window illumination and replacement tower light!

More fantastic insights into that particular side of the operation frank. keep it up I have loads of original technical service bulletins(I got them off Richie100 a few years ago)and quite a few have your name on them IIRC. I think they are in the downloads on here.

The payouts are not all tokens, just the £1 is tokens and the rest up to 50p is cash. !0p for each line lit but A full bingo card gives 50p cash. This one still looks in original condition with it's 10p and token tube intact which is rare to see these days. The two hoover tubes to cash box are for the big 5p and 50p coins. Just to add this is a later version on £1 as the released version was 20p cash 50p tokens, but still an original JPM build not someone's conversion. Like many other manufacturers in that era, the payout's changed on the time of release of many models.

Not really in the industry as such, my dad and I built a lorry trailer arcade for the local touring fair, J Rowlands and sons! I was 17 at the time, and the addiction was real 😂 Probably spent more time playing the machines than helping my dad 👌