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Hello again (anyone) Well the last year has been a blast and work on the project is progressing so back to the history. JPM, the End (for me) circa 1989? So, apart from a few recollections that may crop up in the future, that is it for the history of JPM in its heyday, well as far as I was concerned anyway. We spent quite a while looking for successors to the GUAB, we had ‘3 in a row’ another game based on cards which I cannot really remember and the far more memorable “PAC Quiz”. The latter machine was an amalgamation of PAC man and a quiz game. You can guess the game structure I bet. Your Pac man’s progress was based on your selection of direction with a successful question giving you progress across the dots towards the next question tile while the ‘Ghost’ Icon made progress across the dots towards you as you were answering, the longer you took the more advance he made towards you. The most memorable thing about this product as far as I was concerned was Ray Parker Jr's response to the request to use the ‘Ghost Buster’ theme tune. It went something like “I ain't gonna have my music played on no goddamn cock a mamey gambling machine”. Oh well, you can't say I didn't try! And so in answer to several of you that have asked, especially Sulzerned and Roadrunner, I have no definitive answer as to why JPM’s product’s appeal dipped so much in those days. I have an opinion however, but then don't I always! JPM just took on too much at that time, the talent was spread too thinly and new people just “didn't get it”, whatever “it” is. I remember the new Salesman standing at one of the product release meetings, in fact his first, and as he was playing the machine the feature started and he took a step back, held his chin and was heard to say “its saying something to me” several of us joined in chorus an said “yeah try pressing the fecking button.” The Whitbread thing, the expectation of software for them, the increasing export markets and of course the new SWP were all demanding a distillation of the intellectual input of the 'dev team'. Perhaps the new ‘professionalism’ and ‘specification sheets’ of the Dev process took away from the spur of the moment decision taking that was often the most successful Again as a personal reflection I remember a new salesman looking at rev 27 or so of a programme that was playing in a machine and saying. “If we change ‘this’ and modify ‘that’ and perhaps have the feature doing this, we could release it, how long will that take to implement?” The software engineer said “Well if you wait about 3 minutes I will change the Eprom back to Revision 4 and reboot the machine.” Silence was golden! Combined with these observations and at about this time, the dev team became spread across Cardiff, the lunchtime banter, backgammon and bacon sandwich meetings became a thing of the past. It has to be said that increasingly we were seeing new people as well. Who knows, I could be wrong in my views! I have to be careful here. The next few paragraphs are carefully covered by the following statement: “…without prejudice and in my own opinion the statements following here are alleged but are based on fact and come from individuals that should in all honesty have known the truth…” JPM the end.. As is well known, the original guys had decided that after the many years of success and the effort they had put in, they wanted to realise the money they had tied up in the company and so agreed to the sale of JPM to Whitbread which went ahead for circa £27 million. Jack, Alan, Howard, John and Ernie all pocketed a tidy (welsh see) sum which they were absolutely entitled to after making the lives of so many people so happy by being so successful for so long. However the new management under the watchful and cold steely robotic eye of the new MD were not so benefactorial or inclusive and the company continued to founder for reasons that did not at first seem apparent. The new JPM was now running under the Whitbread banner and it must be recognised , with the benefit of the deep Whitbread coffers, but there were fewer and fewer people there on a day to day basis that understood the heart of the industry or the product or for that matter the customers. The fact is that as the downturn continued to take its toll, around 70 people, me included, were selected for redundancy and around 30 more asked for voluntary redundancy, that was around something like 30 percent of the workforce. Another interesting ‘fact’ is that when we were all sat in the Black Lion at lunch time after collecting our ‘letters’ and drinking our sorrows away, I remember looking around and realising that if I had the money or the drive to start a gaming company, here was the very nub of the old company, the very core of the thing that had driven JPM to where it was. A large number of individuals that were left at the company were capable of doing their jobs and keeping the ‘company’ running, but the driving force behind many of the ideas, the enterprising individuals and the resourceful ones, the creative ones, were all sitting here crying in their beer. Again, from the outside it appeared that over the next couple of years JPM layed down extremely expensive tooling for cabinet designs to house games that were, well, not performing that well at all. The undeniable fact is that after many years of meandering around in the doldrums, JPM was bought from Whitbread by a consortium for £X million, a sum that I doubt anyone had in their back pocket and a sum that in all fairness a bank would have wanted some sort of business plan for. I wonder what sort of business plan could have been put together for a company that had spent years with little profit, had no viable product and undeniably had invested so much to no avail. The fact is that within a short period of time JPM machines, now resplendent in their new and very expensive cabinets ( very expensive to emulate as well ) were making huge inroads into the sales of gaming machines again. Again, the fact is that after a few years JPM was sold to Sega for circa £40 million. For me at that time however being made redundant was yet just another rejection and one that I could not begin to ponder over. I had just become maritally separated in my private life as well so all was not well in the Bird’s nest! So as one of the old crew, and never really seeing eye to eye with the new MD, it was no surprise when I was asked to go and see Martyn Stork who was by then the development manager, and as he asked me to “sit down Frank”. I replied “Cut the crap Martyn and just tell me if I get the car”. Amongst several shakily proffered and previously practised platitudes, love him, he asked me to hand over my access key, the key to the very security system that I had been instrumental in specifying and installing, oh and then leave the building. I told him exactly what he could do as there were over 2 hundred people that I had worked with over the years and I was going to say goodbye to each and every one of them and the only way he was going to get the key off me before I did that, was to ‘try’ and take it off me. I said goodbye to everyone before I left for the Black Lion and Brains beer. It took a while to get over. No, it took a long time. Redundancy is no fun. ( Sorry if this has become too personal ) Just in case it was missed, "the previous paragraphs should be covered by the following statement: “…without prejudice and in my own opinion the statements which have been read are alleged, but are based on fact and come from individuals that should in all honesty have known the truth…” So. Astra to follow, or rather, Where did that steel cabinet idea come from? Once again apologies if it is too personal but it is from my perspective.....

Many thanks roadrunner for all your help. It's now all working.when I stripped the separator to clean the diverters were stiff and when I reassembled I must have got the connector from diverter to coin mech wrong way as it fits either way.so swapped it round and it works,and even diverts coins into right place.thanks again Road Runner.

Another note to Frank is that even though you were just discarded by the new management(it happens)you were part of and contributed to JPM throughout its best and most successful period. That era(mid 70s to late 80s)most of us would have given our right arms to have worked for JPM back then.

Fantastic(albeit sad) insight into your exit from JPM especially after all the hard work and innovation you put into the company over the last 15 or so years. What happened to the likes of Ron Watts who seem to be at the very forefront of JPM in its heyday. The Quiz machine based on cards is called 'Suit Pursuit' If you want to see a fully running and restored Suit Pursuit machine just keep an eye on the projects thread over the next couple of weeks.

Ok that was a red herring! I fitted the good cpu from the working board to the faulty one and the A0 and A1 addresses were still stuck lo so I put the good board back with the cpu from the faulty board and it worked fine so the cpu is good, not sure if its buffer issues or what? I did check the start signal from the button to the chip responsible and it was giving the correct from hi going lo when start is pressed, also putting a 50p will add a credit and give change as it should

100% nick All those re-releases of the SRU and System 80 machines on the MPS tech just showed they where running out of ideas. its a bit like when a pop group starts rehashing their old songs.

Another fascinating read Frank and thank you so much for taking the time to entertain us all here on the mecca with these incredible stories .brilliant and quite sad to read this last chapter .as myself and Alan (roadrunner)have mentioned we both thought jpm lost its way during the mps years 87 onwards. I guess not many of us like change but it's inevitable and happens .thanks again.

The characteriser security chip, not available but hacked ROMS are the get-out if ever the CHR fails/is lost…. some very clever folk about keeping the dreams alive! 😊