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Last one.... So Core systems were let go by the VLC company of Canada and I didn't fancy waiting for the final straw so I started spreading the word and found that Coinmaster gaming were looking for a new Customer Service manager, right up my street I thought. I was interviewed by Tony Lynch and got the job and so started working in the Casino supply Industry. My first realisation was that JPM and Astra were different entities from Coinmaster altogether and the thought process there was a lot different with regard to Customer Service, the parts waiting list for some companies was nearly a year old. Manuals were written in a strange, factual only way rather than the friendly, helpful way I had come to develop, so that was a bit of a culture shock. Initially let me explain the product. Not a simple single player, money in, press button, game plays. This was different. Each machine had 10 separate stations around the centre piece which was a fully functional Roulette wheel. An automatic, powerful solenoid sent a ball spinning at various speeds into an already spinning, and extremely accurate, roulette wheel all under an acrylic dome to stop tampering no doubt. See below.... Players sat around the perimeter of the machine using their station’s touch screen to bet on the outcome of the game, so effectively your station was a self contained machine, one of ten, and passed information to the central controller which kept a tally on the machine's setup as a whole. A sort of betting terminal??? The network was therefore very important and each station had its own connection which could be disconnected without unduly affecting the central controller. Installation was quite a task as apart from moving the ten stations and the central controller there was also the overhead advertising carousel to install and of course it had to be dead level. Because the machine was global in its design the unit had to be set up to cater for the stake, the coinage, the notes and the metering value. I was new to this and during my first installation I set the machine up and kept the single station in front of the control system pulled away as I let the first few players get a feel for the machine at some ungodly hour when all the local takeaways were closed and the staff were frequenting the casino before trudging home. Just as well I did as the look of joy on the first ‘eastern’ player as he placed his bet led me to think I had done something wrong, in fact his scream to his other fellow countrymen and their rush to the machine prompted me to pull the plug. I had inadvertently set the metering incorrectly so each £1 placed was effectively £10 in value of chips placed. It led to a bit of an argument and an exchange of cash and I was very careful setting up a single terminal to test before I allowed the whole thing to be played. Lesson learned!! Exhibitions were a nightmare as we would take as many as 5 machines to be installed prior to the show and in a place like Vegas where it is already pretty hot, once you had put the flooring down and moved all these machines in you were completely knackered. We had an argument with the union steward on my second exhibition as I had created a central distribution box into which we plugged the machines, so we only needed a single heavy duty connection to that box which had already been certified. This was obviously to save us money. Normally the electricians would have to make 10 or more connections so they were enraged We did have to pay a little grease money. This by the way was 10 days after 9/11 One incident worthy of mention was when we had to change the note acceptors of an installation with another manufacturer's offering, which meant the note safe beneath had to be changed as well. The swap therefore was fairly straightforward and the old units were left in a garage ready to be picked up. A few weeks later I was prompted to pick up the old units as we were about to be charged for them rather than returning them as they were not exactly suitable. We had to strip off the adaptors which were fitted to our product so the units were slung in a carrier's van and delivered to our stores so the storeman could strip and then return them. I got a call from Mike which was quite to the point “Come to my office quick, the doors locked you will have to knock.” There on the floor were the first two units laid bare and around £8-900 in notes between them. We eventually opened them all and there was around £5k as my memory serves me. What was obvious was that something was dead wrong. How could we have walked out with all this cash and why weren’t we being chased when the loss was found which should have been some weeks ago. We all decided that the only thing to do was to book an appointment with the head of the Casino chain and take the money in. This was done and the casino site became the centre of an investigation which proved, let's say some “irregularity” on the part of a few employees. Technically the machines had quite a few good ideas, the wheel was a wonderful piece of engineering made to exacting tolerances. The lettering or numbering was printed on a single circular piece of plastic much like a reel band and this was adhered to the disc in a special cut recess. The central wheel lifted up and away from the outer pockets like two dishes separating thus allowing the ball to fall into the collection mechanism and be lifted by an archimedes screw in a tube back to the firing solenoid. I was sent to a machine in Holland that was paying out too much to find, after some chi-square analysis, that a few numbers were coming up more often than they should. This led to further investigation to reveal that the end of the circular band had not been trimmed properly and so overlapped the other end. This fairly imperceptible lump caused the ball ‘more often’ to land in a neighbouring set of numbers which was enough for a particular player to notice and he was winning too regularly. Another interesting technology was installed due to the sales technique of allowing the machine’s new owner to pay by instalments. Lets not forget that this is the gaming industry and we were dealing with places like Brazil, Argentina, Czech republic, Russia, Albania and many other similar places, if you get my drift? In any case there was a ‘real time’ timer in the machine and after a predetermined and agreed period the machine would prompt the owner that a transfer should be made and a code could be generated that would be given to the office. Given the successful bank transfer or visit to the office with a suitcase of money (I kid you not) a new code would be generated based on the old one. If not and after an agreed period the machine would fail and a notice would appear on each terminal to that effect along with this 16 (or 20?) digit code. This is why I often got calls from irate customers explaining that the machine had died and they had made no money and what was I going to do about it or how much did I want to give them a code? A sleeping accountant! Again, exactly what went wrong with the organisation I do not know. As a small aside it was only a few weeks ago that Tony Lynch, the owner of Coinmaster passed away and it was sad that so many of us needed this to bring us together, Alan Parker was there, an ex member of Starpoint, David Cornelius (maker of looms part from everything else) Anyway I digress. Coinmaster was working with one of the major bookmakers as we had a FOB terminal working and we had a new Horse racing game the design of which was based on terminals around a 40” LCD or was that a Plasma. Whatever, the receivers were appointed and I again started looking around, at the ATE where else, only to bump into Alan Parker again who was setting up another new venture so in for a penny and here we go again! So my final job in the industry was with Alan again and this time Gamesoft. I did much of the initial CAD designs of the multi player cabinets, sited many prototypes, arranged production runs, installed MRP computer systems and all in our new factory in South Wales. It was at this time that I took a call from Jeremy Boswell again and I learned that he had teamed up with a company called ROK and that they were working on a gaming platform on mobile phones for heaven's sake. He offered me the opportunity to work with the new technology in a supervisory position which I took with both hands and that is how I ended up managing a mobile and internet based gaming infrastructure in Russia and a team of software engineers in Wales. From there we diversified into all sorts, a quasi facebook, ringtone sales, they even bought a brewery ABK and then sponsored the Williams F1 team. But all that is now history and is not for this platform. I’m back in the construction industry, whiling away my later years as a Project Manager for a 17 acre, ex WWII aircraft repair site in Wales. Once again I apologise for what has become perhaps a little too personal and thank you for bearing with me and only hope you enjoyed the outpouring. Best wishes and perhaps we will bump into each other through posts in the future.

i think your best bet is to see if you can solder some legs back on it an put it in a new ic holder

Think this would be the chip that can be programmed to run as the system 80 PAL

If you look in the system 80 ROM download section it's in there https://www.fruitemu.co.uk/ib/files/category/68-jpm-sys-80/ This is Alan's thread i remember reading. Not sure if I'd mentioned getting the 14k card running from a GAL with Alan's file

I will have a look and see if i have any blank PAL chips.

Sure I've used Alan's file and burnt a GAL as PAL with my dataman which run the System 80 cpu card. Think it was a gal chip that some impact cpu cards have

Always a good read. Thanks.