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Not a lot of people know that A.C.E. bought Gilbern cars in Llantwit Fardre in 1968 the Collins family sold it in 1972 for £1. I did work at Gibern cars for a while, not for me, heavy work didn't suit me. There were a few new fruit machine companies setting up in the late sixties. One of these was Automatic Amusements. They were working from an old disused garage in Richmond Road very near the junction of City Rd/Mackintosh Rd/Crwys Rd. They did conversions of mainly the Monte Carlo I think if I remember rightly the machines were called San Marino. Yes I worked for them They didn't last long, One of the owners was Dave Shenton. He joined a company I mentioned earlier Lynguard Automatics. Lynguard was based in Sanatorium Road Canton. Again I worked there, I have just realised I followed Dave Shenton (no I wasn't his love child). After stints as a bus conductor, a milkman, a mobile hot dog salesman I went back to fruit machines. This time as an fruit machine/ juke box engineer with a London based company called Gainsmede. The Cardiff offices were in Leckwith place Canton. My love affair with fruit machines ended when I left Gainsmede. I became of all things an entertainer.

Hi and thanks for letting me be part of this community. Marco is my name, from the Netherlands and since 2 months in to the fruit machines. It all started with a Bally Wulff Rototron Krone (German fruit machine) that I bought just to see if I was able to do something with it. Got it almost for free and after a week or two i knew why 🤣 lots of defective components which I’m still repairing. Power supply is working and the machine is rolling the reels. Think now the challenge is to get it programmed again since I think it lost it. In the meanwhile I was just looking around for other fruitmachines and came across a Barcrest Starlight 20 which I played a lot back in the days. Guess I was 12 years or so. My dad had a bar where we had 2 off these. This one I bought and was my 2nd machine. Quickly I bought another one, the 400 mainly for spares. Both are MPU2. a couple of German machine came in, repaired and try to sell them and yesterday the Barcrest Ambassador did arrive…. im counting 8 at the moment. The Ambassador is an MPU3 with leaking battery that already has been removed the day I got it. There’s still some work to do since it doesn’t seems to get the MPU working. Need to search for the problem that’s why I came here. Hope to learn a lot here, already enjoy reading some topics. cheers

Cardiff the capital city of fruit machine manufacturing.

Lol I’ll take that. I’m pleased to now have the £50 and £100 versions 👍 The £50 blue looks so much more current, don’t you think?