Leaderboard

I’ve always had a theory all the missing back doors off these machines were donated to the kids for ramps.

Might be able to help with security chip but can’t be certain yet. Need more info.

Good luck with this one mart and well worth seeing this old girl looking smart again .have you got a bottom door for it ?I like the slightly different matrix sounds on this although like most of the other mpu3 clubbers barcrest could have made more of the game .look forward to seeing the progress

Nearly done with JPM now, not much left but the tears.. 1985-6 - Give us a Break and it’s successors JPM finally got the approval from the Gaming board of Great Britain to create a true SWP machine or to give it its full name, Skill with Prizes. The main criteria for this success was that at the onset of any game the maximum prize displayed must always be accessible given maximum skill being applied by the player! (Gaming Board) Questions answered correctly in turn therefore provided progress through an award structure towards the goal of the prize that was offered at the onset. On the earlier machines like Treasure Trail this maximum prize was altered randomly according to the machine’s current pay-out percentage. The higher the pay-out percentage the more often a lower prize would be offered and the time allowed to answer the question would also diminish. It became obvious that this was a distraction as the occurrence of lower prizes more frequently displayed indicated the machines “mean streak” so we turned to another route. In the case of Give us a Break we played with the idea of keeping a tally on the players performance within any given credit period, i.e. the same player or players. For the life of me I can’t remember if we instituted this (honestly 😉 ). What we did do was where the player was proving to be continuously successful at Sport, we would reduce the chance of a sport question being chosen later in the game. Similarly where the percentage was high we made sure that we used questions that had not been offered as frequently as others. We even tried grading questions for difficulty but this proved to be so totally subjective and ineffective that we gave up on the idea. The changing of question topic however worked really well and of course we could change question sets regularly, and simply thanks to the disc. We often tested the product locally and as product manager and part of Marketing, I was asked to go and observe the new breed of players as they approached the machine and see what difficulties that they encountered and perhaps interview them afterwards to see how they found the experience. To our huge satisfaction we found that without exception those people that played it were on the whole, not the usual gaming machine players and that they were loving the experience. The GUAB product was at prototype stage and we had to take the machine off to London to the BBC studios of Radio 1 to get their final approval, this was of course after all the discussion and the legal heads of agreement had been completed prior to the final preparation of this prototype. And so one afternoon I arrived somewhat excitedly outside the Radio 1 studios in Great Portland Street and parked the rather overheated, white Cavalier Estate on the pavement while I unloaded the machine. This was all under the watchful eye of an unusually forgiving Traffic Warden who was extremely lenient after he saw the machine and we had a quick chat. He kindly gave me enough time to drop the machine just inside the building before I had to move the car elsewhere. Alan Parker was there in reception and took charge of the machine so I just found a car park and rushed back in time to see Alan and Peter Cox (Project Marketing consultant) disappear into a lift, but not without me I thought as I rammed my already battered, black, leather pilot case into the closing doors. Emerging from the lift to the offices of the controller of Radio 1 at the time, one Dereck Chinnery as I remember, we walked slap bang into Steve Wright who looked at the machine with some distaste. At the time I only had an inkling of the ‘feeling’ between the other DJ’s and Dave Lee Travis but we were soon to learn more of it The idea behind the trip was to install the machine within the hallowed halls of the BBC canteen (yes that very infamous place) and set it on free play so we could get some idea of the response to it from the company that was going to be associated with it. Now it is important that you read and appreciate the words ‘company’ at this point as a turn of events that we thought might happen made it fortuitous that we had already exchanged proposed agreements on the deal with the BBC’s legal department. In any case we all waited within Dereck’s office for the arrival of Dave Lee Travis. The machine was powered up and working and after a suitable period of time (obviously DLT was fashionably late) he walked in trailing a cloud of evil smelling pipe tobacco fumes behind him and propelling his huge Ego quite a way ahead of him. I am never one to bow, chastened, at a celebrity or the rich and famous, so looking for an entertaining way to meet him I said:- “Hello, I know the face but I can’t put a name to it”. The silent noise that followed was Alan Parker’s hopes being dashed and Peter Cox’s wishes crashing to the floor. “You can call me Sir” he said “and I will call you pratt.” Not a good start, to the meeting I will admit. He went up to the machine and pressed the button and played it and such was the simplicity of the prepared questions, the game and the excellent GUI, even he managed to play quite a way through before he answered a question incorrectly. “Where’s the Quack Quack Oops?” he said. Now for those of you that have never heard the show there was a pre recorded duck ‘quacking’ that followed every wrong answer and that was allied to a deep “Ooops” and together they were an identifiable audible part of the show. “Sorry but we don’t have the capability to do that at this stage” I said although I never truly realised the significance of his question until later. After a few minutes of play and satisfied with the representation he asked about the release schedule and we explained that given the test results our belief was that we would be taking the machine to the ATE in London. DLT asked for our cards and left soon after, leaving us to arrange the move to the BBC Canteen and, yes, I have had a cup of tea in the BBC Canteen and it wasn't that bad! We set up the machine and left that afternoon. The test results proved really promising so the machine was subjected to the final production engineering process. We began developing the marketing materials and, due to the agreement with the BBC, the machine and the brochures carried the description “DLT’s Radio 1 quiz Give us a Break” Prior to the exhibition I was working quietly in the office with the usual day to day project management stuff when my phone rang and the receptionist said “Frank I have someone on the phone, says he is an agent associated with the BBC and he wishes to speak to you, a Mr (can’t remember) from London, will you take it?” From memory .. “Yes of course” I replied and with that a larger than life voice projected from the handset and this is what I recall was the gist of the conversation although perhaps not verbatim . “Fraaaank how are you my dear boy, I trust you are keeping well?” Did I know this guy I thought? “I have been to the BBC canteen this morning at Dave’s request (DLT?) and saw the machine, have to say at the outset, what a great job you made of it, you are the Project Manager? Top class” he went on to say. “DLT’s name is not significant enough and it is called Radio 1’s quiz? Flustered I thought that’s strange I know I had been back up to change the glass to the latest release and make sure the Beeb’s licensing department were happy with it. “I beg to differ” I said “I fitted that artwork myself after checking the design of the logo with the BBC as they were very specific on colour and size etc, you know what these corporates are like?” “Oh dear boy yes” he said “but never mind about the BBC at this point in time, in fact sod the BBC Ha ha. My client, Mr Dave Lee Travis’ name is not that well displayed……” “Oh but it is” I interrupted, “in the help screens, it is displayed quite clearly that ‘this machine is based on the BBC’s popular game show, introduced by DLT’ and of course we have licensed it, and we fully intend to pay our royalties………….. to the BBC.” In a much slower and lower tone he went on "Are you actually trying to be funny?” “Because dear boy, if you are not you are certainly looking for an altercation and believe me you don’t want to tangle with me.” I replied “I apologise but I don’t have time for this conversation which in fact is pointless, I suggest you speak to the licensing department of the BBC, do you need the number….” And of course I couldn’t resist the retort “Dear boy?” Click… And that was my first experience with a London agent although in later life I have met Simon Cowell, but that as they say is another story! A few weeks later and the receptionist introduced a call with “Frank I have one of your crazy friends on the phone reckons he’s DLT” “Hmm” I said, “it could be him!” “Your joking” she squealed. I heard “putting you through Mr Travis” and again, forgive me but this is the gist of the conversation that transpired. “Frank” the recognisable voice of the hairy cornflake (DLT’s nickname) “how are you?” “Fine thank you… (meaningful pause)….. Sir” “Please, it’s Dave" he had obviously forgotten. “I have been speaking to (Agent) and he tells me that the BBC really think they have the deal sewn up with you, but I will leave that to him. For now, I know you have an exhibition coming up in London and I want to ask you about it, do you think the press will be there?” “Well, Sir” I continued “the BBC are making a big thing about it and I am being interviewed for ‘The Arts show’ for some reason, they are interested in the crossover from Radio show to Entertainment in gaming!” “Exactly my point” he went on, excited by now at the prospect. “If we can arrange for me to be there it will be to both our benefits.” “Well” I said “you will obviously be welcome on our stand and I think I have a time and a date when the TV crew are turning up if you want?” Silence. “Ok, now I know you are trying to be a (insert an expletive) ” he said “my appearance fee will be £ x,000 (can’t remember but it was at least 3 zeros). “Sorry I haven’t been clearer” I said “but we don’t need you to be there, your radio show every Saturday is doing a great job advertising our product already?” I can’t remember now how the conversation actually ended, but I do remember it was he that put the phone down and he completely avoided me when he turned up for a camera shoot, well he had to didn’t he? And so back to the testing. To convey a humorous episode we came across during testing I need to describe the screen on which the player was presented the questions and answers. The question was printed and beneath it were four answers, a pair of answers in a column to the left and pair in a column to the right i.e... Question is printed here? [A] first answer second answer [C] third answer fourth answer [D] The [ ] denotes the position of the button to be pressed. The question is printed out and the answers are then displayed, and then the timer is started. One early evening during one of the product appreciation sessions in a local pub called the Malster’s arms in Llandaff village, a rowdy bunch of Rugby shirted Scotsmen, some of which kilted for gods sake, were playing the machine. Perhaps they were not best prepared for the mental agility, due to the amount of Alcohol they had consumed and I guess Wales had beaten them so no doubt they were drowning their sorrows as well, due to their countries performance at the rugby earlier that day. 😉 🤣 Nevertheless, loud, humorous and I have to say somewhat surprising progress was being made due as much to luck, as the number of combined brains that were being put to the task. With one person acting as the player or single handed button pusher (the other wrapped around a dripping pint of Brains Dark) the others became the loud but smiling Celtic font of all knowledge. The ear splitting consequence of every question conquered by those beer swilling Celts (careful) was a deafening cheer and a great raising of glasses. More and more people in the overcrowded bar were becoming interested in the game, as much as those larger than life players, much to my pleasure and great relief. The £10 goal was eventually in sight and was but a single button press away when, much to every one’s amazement, the following simple question was displayed to a hushed and expectant audience. Which of these is a vowel? [A] X M [C] F A [C] Obviously a great cheer of “A” went up and gleefully watching the seconds ticking away on the timer, the elected button presser, as directed, slowly and deliberately pressed button [A], which of course is the wrong answer as the correct answer was aligned with the button [C]. Without exception everyone broke into huge fits of laughter. From that singular moment I knew we had a winning product on our hands and recognised the huge difference between the player, the mode of play of this equipment and the traditional gaming machine.

Okay hello again. Getting near the end now.. Hope you enjoy these last few posts. SWP (eventually) but for now Criss Cross 1984 -5 As a response to a projected squeezing of the Gaming Market Place a survey was conducted by Whitbread and was made privy to the Marketing Team at JPM of which I was a member. This survey predicted that due to the recognised change in the appeal of ‘the pub’ and the drive towards FEC’ (Family entertainment centres) with their concentration on food as a more profitable product, the smoky, flat cap Pub was going to change massively over the oncoming 20 years. With hindsight, looking back today, how right they were, but I think even they would have been surprised at the scale of the change and the wholesale closing down of pubs across the country and of course the impact that on-line gambling and the lottery have had. The survey showed that the demographic of the pub was changing and the average Socio Economic Group frequenting FEC’s was actually going up market. Alongside those results a survey that we had conducted independently of “the player”, had tried to uncover what created the appeal of a particular machine or game play and what it was that players got out of playing machines in general. Although obfuscated in the language of Market research, a commonality of attitude in the responses came over loud and clear with phrases like “get to know it,” “find the winning streak” and “beat it” used by the typical player. Again thanks to the findings of the research this player was (typically) 18-30, working class, more likely to be a smoker, often a loner and a heavy drinker. Now don’t shoot me (if I’m still here) if you like playing machines, I did say typical and there were certainly those that were also 80 years old and never smoked but you get the picture! The Survey didn’t end there as I remember. I found out most of this first hand as I was one of those tasked with asking people in pubs and arcades but we specifically targeted as well, those that vowed they would never ever play a machine and quizzed them (sic), why they had made that particular decision. A few of the reasons given, amongst many others, were that playing a machine was boring, was not a challenge and was seen as antisocial. So the mold was set and we had to come up with a product that addressed those criteria. The SWP or skill with prizes machine eventually emerged from the joint efforts of several team brainstorming events and on one particular coincidence. At one of many lunch time meetings, all we were talking about was how to put intellectual competition into a machine, while we were playing Trivial Pursuit (DOH) how obvious it seems now. We seriously sat back, stopped playing and sat there discussing how it could be done and with the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end ran to get the Software department manager to come and join Alan and Ron and myself to discuss whether and how it could be done! Days later I was asked to become Product manager and Project leader for the new venture which I jumped at with my usual blissful ignorance and willing attitude. Suddenly I was subjected to GANNT charts, CPA and other Project management tools, this was certainly an eye opener and another career path which has stood me in good stead even until today. (2022) The new product obviously had no spinning reels, instead it sported a video screen which displayed a game that allowed players to answer, hopefully correctly, questions that were displayed with a suitable GUI. The product demanded a particular or peculiar consumable and that was questions, and lots of them, but more of that later. Of course we also needed the physical media to store them on and very early on someone had ventured the idea of a floppy disk as being ideal but the 1.4meg floppy was still in its relative infancy and getting a disk drive into a gaming machine for the first time was seen as fraught with danger. I fiercely defended the idea that the storage aspect of the product was developed in a two pronged attack, one utilising EPROM which was a mature, well known and easy path. The second was to be a floppy disk which meant writing a secure and unique Disk Operating System in order that the question sets could not just get ripped off by other manufacturers or canny punters. I recall we called it Wingcode as the creator was Ian Wingfield! So determined was I to make sure that we implemented this storage medium that I managed to get in touch with one of the buyers at a well known computer manufacturers and obtained both a sample, and the supplier of, the suspension mounts that Compaq had fitted in their Luggable PC’s at that time. We fitted them to a floppy drive and started bashing a machine around while the drive was spinning. We were astounded to find that it would really take quite an extreme amount of punishment without exhibiting any problems at all. We decided to go along with the overhead of duplicated effort and continue with the development of both branches of the project just in case a gremlin jumped out of the box. Coincidentally during the ongoing supplier acquisition stages we learnt that a competitor that you must have heard of, was quite near to us and was having difficulty obtaining an ‘unusual amount’ of Eprom for his production. JPM concluded several things, 1) that he had got wind of our development. (remember the new locks on the doors that I spoke of earlier?) More of that later. 2) that he was embarking on a product like ours. 3) that we would suffer even worse supply problems if we continued with the Eprom route. 4) that we should immediately put an order in for thousands of Eproms just to make the supply even worse for the competition, after all they could always be used in gaming machines. So JPM took the, what was momentous decision to dump the Eprom development and re allocate resource to the disk. We happily prepared for the launch in London at the London Hippodrome. For the moment I need to go back to answer the question of questions. For the production of every machine we figured that we would need 6,000 questions, each with 1 correct and 3 perhaps plausible but incorrect answers. We played around with selecting answers at random but too often we came across totally stupid answers that denied plausibility, or equally as unnerving and totally by chance, alternative but correct answers. We toyed around for a while with several ideas and we developed the final specification for questions and answers and where else would we go for help but to the accepted seat of intelligence MENSA. With the question ‘recipe’ in hand and a description and demonstration of the product, we anticipated that our prayers would be answered, but how wrong would that prove to be. After our meeting with them, and after a very thorough and complete presentation of the product and the philosophy behind it we felt confident that having accepted the brief they understood exactly our requirements. We received the first few thousand questions on disk in sets of 100 questions within a week and I was given the task of assessing them before they were passed on for compression and encryption. These had obviously been developed by a computer programme. It was immediately obvious that answer lines were being used as responses in far too many questions as they were the same and on further analysis I found that the 3 incorrect answers in questions 1, 10, 20, 30, 40 for example were the same but just presented in a different order. "Furthermore this grammar on many cases were wrong, indicating again a computerised production." Do you see what I mean? We also found that answers used in this haphazard way presented by coincidence, more than one answer which just could have been construed as correct! So we decided to set u our own Q+A department which I staffed and by purchasing the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was the font of knowledge in those days (no Google, no Internet), we were able to verify and prepare suitable alternative answers to some of those questions. It wasn’t long before a member of our team and my father in law at that time, Ken Friis, pointed out that with a little help he was sure they could we could prepare many of the factual questions for ourselves and add value to our department so this we started doing. To inject a mix of the more down to earth questions on Pop music, TV and Sport I enlisted teams of students from Cardiff University using one Tutor as a question ‘gleaner’. He would collect and send us the questions in groups of 100 for which we would pay £50 or 50p per question. So lucrative was this that he subsequently left university and set up a company, using me to get another copy of Encyclopedia Britannica which I managed to get at a reduced price. A fact is that after buying several sets for other people I was presented with a copy of the ‘First edition’ by the publishers which is leather bound and presented in a glass fronted, teak cabinet with my name initials engraved in a brass plaque on the lid. The system we employed with the universities worked so well that I extended it to other Countries when we eventually realised the product’s international appeal. We soon became aware of exactly how correct the choice of the floppy disk was when it became clear to the site owners and machine operators that certain individuals were playing the machine constantly and getting to know a lot of the answers, so much so that the machine was no longer making as much as it should. This was not simply because the overall payout percentage had rocketed but also due to a lack of overall plays which confirmed that the appeal of the machine was as a challenge. To combat this effectively we set up a 6 weekly, direct debit linked supply of a new disk with 6,000 fresh questions which proved to increase the revenue of the machine due to the incentive to those players who really wanted to be challenged. A news set of questions was accompanied by a new ZCA flash screen indicating, the revision number of questions, a recent event such as a football match or news headline, and the date of compilation( I think) We released the initial product in the London Hippodrome at a huge and well advertised event that most of the industry were invited to. The product was to be an answer to the demise of the industry and it was creating massive amounts of attention. The machine was centre stage with all the pazzaz reserved for a new car launch. Music was blasting from the PA system. Laser lights were dancing. Hundreds of people listened to the presenter from TV’s “Tomorrow’s World” introduce the product with an explanation of the need for the change and a huge screen displaying graphs of machine ‘take’ and the concept of the question replacement service which I was about to launch. With a final flourish timed to perfection … The house lights went out and, Unseen. A centre stage trapdoor descended. Sprach Zarathustra began to play, extremely loudly. A machine was pushed on to the lowered trapdoor by a colleague. A lead was plugged in to the socket actually on the trap door. The machine was switched on. The trapdoor ascended as the machine booted up. A single spotlight picked out the machine as it rose through a trap door in the floor playing it’s initial boot up melody exactly 1 minute and 40 (?) seconds after the lights went out. I think that was the longest 1 minute and 40 seconds of my life, we couldn’t plug the machine in before we moved it as the connection was sunk into the face of the trap door, so we had to suffer the possibility of a non start. The “Next Generation” product literally rose from the ground. JPM literally lived on the product and its successors for the next year! As addendum #1 to this tale. Many years later when I joined that very competitor that I spoke of earlier that got their product out before ours. I met the people in their R+D and it became obvious that the biggest problem they faced at that time was not only the purchasing of, but also the cleaning, erasing, programming and relabeling Eproms. These devices returned from the customer had been so badly damaged in many cases by ham fisted operators that they could not be used again and a charge for the damaged chips had to be made and of course they had to be replaced. They were losing money on their updates and so had to extend the frequency, whereas our update service was straight forward and with the 8 gang disk copying facilities we made we could copy 4 batches of 8 disks in 10 minutes and of course the old returned disks went straight in the bin. Addendum #2 and further to the new locks on the doors Jack Jones, now armed with the fact that apparently our security had been compromised, guessed that it was either someone inside selling ideas or an outsider getting info from us. He paid a discrete security agency to infiltrate us and obtain whatever information they could. No one questioned the window cleaner that came around with a bucket and cloth to clean the office dividers, or the rodent inspector with new traps in the factory or even the the new guy collecting waste bins from development! We should have, they were all from the same company and when we were all called to a meeting, there on Jack’s desk were old revision specification sheets, programme printouts, out of date Bills of materials the whole dam thing! Days later there were security locks everywhere and no paper ever went out without being shredded!

From Customer Services, back to Development 1982 (ish) The 'Machine’ Development Department was falling apart at the seams. It wasn’t producing prototype product on time, BOM’s were badly prepared and priced, wiring diagrams were erroneously designed and Prototypes were poorly prepared. This was thanks in no small part to the Toss pots that any of you that have read my previous posts will have recognised. I was asked to leave Customer Services and take it on. It took some thinking about because I had never been trained to be honest, it all came naturally, but leading a new crew in disciplines I wasn’t too sure of? I thought long and hard and decided to give it a go. Just to add here that I left the Customer Service Team in the capable hands of Martyn Stork who worked with me for many years and of course ably assisted by the other colleagues, Huw, Russel, Steve, David, Adrian and of course Julia. First day I brought everyone in and we had a long chat about what was going wrong and what they thought about the problems. Basically they were being treated like idiots by the morons that were now gone. They were not respected, they were being told exactly what to do without any chance of input and they felt like they had no respect in the company like for instance they pointed out, the Customer Service guys (sic). They were constantly told to sweep any problems they had under the carpet. So in a bid to try to raise moral I bought everyone (and me) white coats, we all had ID badges, installed push button access pads with "Authorised personnel only" above the doors. There was a secondary and far more important reason for the latter but I will come back to that later. I started two systems of appraisal, I appraised them and (and this is unusual) they were asked to appraise me, and they were commanded to attend exhibitions. It wasn’t a magic transformation, it took time, but heads were held high(er) and more pride was taken in the work. Things changed. One thing didn’t, my hatred of the huge IBM main frame machine, well not exactly the machine but all that it meant in terms of waiting for the Data guys to prepare reports and input data and Jaisus H christ. (apologies) We would prepare the BOM’s from an available (previous machine) parts list (IBM output, wait). We would then have to ask for that parts list to be copied and have new part numbers input and costed (wait) and of course some parts deleted in the new machine listing, then after they were put back in we would have to wait for a costed BOM to be created or printed (wait) so we could let Jack know how much the new machine was going to cost. So sod that, I persuaded my new boss, Alan Parker (yes the P in JPM) to buy an actual IBM PC, which were by now coming on stream and so we had this new machine delivered with a hard disk! My god 10MB hard disk, we were never going to fill that. Anyway. We bought the new Lotus 123 package and as I had some (limited) experience with spreadsheets we started to make our own BOMs from the system by copying the numbers from the screen on the System 38 terminal that we had into the system. Oh explanation, the IBM PC had the ability to interface with and display, not record, information data from the IBM main frame. This is when I realised that a guy that had been working with us, John Lockwood yes Julia’s brother no less, was taking to this new machine technology like a duck to water. Trouble is he was a little, lets say, wild. All he wanted to do as I remember was go off to Teneriffe and get drunk and shag anything that stood still long enough No one had any time for him but I gave him some brotherly words of advice and tried to point him in the right direction. We enlisted the aid of another guy who described to us some (illicit?) software from the states called SideKick, that allowed us to grab the screen ram contents while were in the IBM’s ‘terminal’ mode and dump them into the PC’s hard disk as a comma delimited file. Like I knew what any of that meant! We bought and installed it and by doing so we could load the data into a spreadsheet, select the parts we needed and prepare ‘live’ BOM’s that were costed at that days buying cost, something we would have to wait days for. It’s hard to comprehend these days, given the distance we have come, but back then the systems guys were hugely protective and, it must be said overly busy, or was it the other way around? The machines were comprehensively labour intensive and of course the GUI was yet to be introduced and many things were command line driven and of course no mouse! I remember the first mouse manual. Honest! Around 10 pages. Anyway, I got called into a meeting in Jack’s office to explain how I was once again bucking the system, and of course the hugely expensive IBM monolith. I seem to remember his wry smile and the shaking of the head as he stood and defended me in front of the Irate Data Team manager. The days of the IBM were numbered thanks in no small way to me, Johnny Lockwood and the other nerd who’s name I cannot for the life of me remember! John went on to become a leading Computer Specialist with a national multi branch company. Good man. One other humorous departure. I asked a colleague to bring me some striped wire as I was helping with a wiring task due to an urgent preparation, cant remember what for! I said bring me some brown-red cable and some brown-orange (colours may be wrong by the way) He brought me some Red yellow and Red-green. I obviously said "don’t be a dick" and with that he looked at me strangely and asked what was wrong? He had been taken on as a junior in the department and was colour blind! You couldn’t make it up! The reason I know it was 1982 is that it was my 30th birthday while I was in Development and I walked in to a clean desk (not my way at all), a bottle of Jameson's Whiskey and a glass. The day went down from there but that's a whole different type of story and doesn't belong here!

This one had got little to do with machines, sorry but it's part of the history! 😉 As well as running the Customer Service team I was eventually asked to run the Spares Sales department which was recovering after an unsuccessful attempt at trying to stock other manufacturers spares for the industry, a sort of “Radio Spares” for the industry. This meant I had to get to grips with stock holdings, more budgets, stock takes and bin cards but while I was there though I became more aware of the Ferranti computer which was a dirty great Main Frame computer that ran the rest of the company and which we in Customer Service knew very little about. We had to put our figures in via data entry clerks specialists. Looking back now it seems farcical, but let’s not forget that at the time Fax hadn’t made its way to the office yet, we were still using telex and TNT had only just started delivering parcels! Jack wanted to bring the place up to date and install a much smaller but much more powerful machine from IBM but was concerned that the change over would be a bit of a nightmare. The decision was taken by the board that the trial would be made by installing a system 36 as a test bed, more for the company than for IBM obviously, and he decided that the trial would be under my wing. Bird ha ha! Spares Sales was chosen as it was the smaller of the stores and so I was banged off on a course in Bracknell where I was exposed to the programming language and the various process’s involved. When the trial was over I could start helping others understand when the larger system was installed. I think it was system 38? The installation went ahead and within a week we had our stock levels in and were running the two systems in tandem, the same numbers being entered into both machines by ourselves and the data entry clerks, these were then tallied against the stock at the end of each month. Problem was the figures never tallied. Try as we might we could not get our stock figures to match up with those that were in the main frame and this was a complete mystery. We had a consignment of stock delivered from the main stores, we stocked it, sold it, dispatched it and logged every single transaction. The ensuing figures were often way out for too many items to be comfortable, so exhibiting less trust than perhaps I should have, I worked for a month with the team watching as many transactions as I could and cross checking data entries. After a long period of head scratching and considering all the variables we eventually came to the simple conclusion that the only figure over which we had no control was the item count of the incoming goods. So when the next delivery came from the main stores I took the film wrapped cases, opened them and counted them in rather than taking the quantity on face value. Many of them were wrong! The clouds cleared. Light Bulb moment! For my incoming stock to be wrong the main stores levels should in reality also be similarly incorrect? As some quantities were actually greater than they should have been that would mean that the corresponding items in the main stores should have been short? Yet their figures and stock levels were constantly correct so throwing bad light on our efforts and therefore reinforcing the effort to keep the Ferranti and the status quo. It was obvious to me that they were passing stock errors, shortages, and who knows what else, on to us and then casting aspersions our way, but who to tell? I decided that the only person to tell was Jack Jones as I didn’t know who to trust, that sounds a little conspiratorial but in truth there was a managerial clique, as there often is in business, and as the Customer’s representative I found I quite often didn’t fit, but then you knew that already? My goals were a little different to theirs although they should have been the same. I called Jack over and prayed that the items we were about to open would give credence to my claims. A pack of expensive TMS 9980 Micro Processors straight from the stores were first opened, we checked the quantity against the stock sheet we had been given, it was short. Eproms, worth a few quid each, 40 too many, transistors at pennies each, hundreds too many and so it went on. The only thing to do now was to wait for the next stock check in the main stores which came in and was apparently correct. Even with the irregularities in our transfers, really? After a few weeks the obvious and very visible shortages in the stores were several of the stores staff and a data entry clerk who also failed to make an appearance. Quite what was happening I never found out, but the Ferranti was changed and the System 38 was put in. On another point, having had experience of the IBM and the Ferranti and being exposed to personal computers, I began to consider the common ground between them. But this was not my ‘job’ it was just an interest, and currently my ‘job’ was Customer Service and Spares Sales. But not for much longer……..

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!