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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.

Frank If you don't mind lets go back to this post. We now know Ron Watts was one of the main forces in design and steppa motors where the idea of Charles Weekes but since seeing this photo i was just curious on what different skill sets the others brought to the table(so to speak)? It's nice to know the faces and names of who had a hand in designing some of my machines(even though this looks like more the electro mechanical team from the mid 70's and my collection is more early to mid 80's). How did the R&D team in the picture change over the years as machines became MPU based and even full computers like the Quiz machines from the mid 80's?

Hi sulzerned, I never try to work with what I don't enjoy so work is not a task but a set of targets. At least that's what I try to achieve. The contemporaries that have retired I look at and see the age 'taking' them and it holds no attraction. I am sooo lucky to have genes that allow me to lead an active, non medicated, life and I will continue as long as I remain 'relevant'. Always ready for questions on JPM if I can help. Cheers.

This is now working reliably day in day out, for anyone else having this issue the culprit was the 3 metal can type smd capacitors, 2 x 10uf and one 220uf, I used standard elecro caps not smd, the 220uf has through hole pins so easy enough and the other 2 just soldered to the pads Thanks Ronnie

Thanks for sharing your entire career in such depth.it’s been a riveting read and very educational on top. Now you have finished your story I hope you are still going to call in here from time to time as I’m sure a few of us wouldn’t mind firing a few questions at you(especially the JPM days as most if not all classic JPM machines where made during the time you worked for them). We now know what happened to you,jack jones,Ron watts and Alan Parker post JPM but what did the likes of Howard Parker,Ernie Beaver and others after they sold JPM?

I have always wanted to own a Line Up as part of my collection of the machines that I played in my youth. At the moment prices are way more than I want to pay. I decided to go about building a conversion for myself. For the past few months I have been buying some MPU3 spares, I have a main board, program cards and some reel sensors. I managed to secure a donor machine that I bought from @riche100. Its a PCP Top Line, I found out when chatting with Riche it was a PCP conversion from a Line Up. The loom was already there so it would be a case of fitting glass, lamp masks, reel bands / artwork and Line Up eproms. The machine runs fine and is a perfect starting point for my project. Thanks to Riche100

Promise... will fill you in.

After all this you must be ready for retirement Frank?thanks again for a great read

Thank you frank

A fascinating tour of your work life. I only ever worked for one company, man and boy, so this is quite an eye opener for me.

New glass and artwork As original or reproduction Line Up or Super Line Up glass is not available, I decided to go about sourcing a replacement. The biggest challenge is to recreate the artwork in a vectorised high resolution format to allow quality replacements to be printed on to glass. I plan to get the new glass printed by Olly at the Arcade Art Shop. The artwork needs to be created in Adobe Illustrator, I have a basic knowledge of the software but I am by no means an expert. In the past I have used an online marketplace called Fiverr.com where you post project, IT professionals bid for the work and take on paid assignments. Generally the graphics professionals are from India, in my experience the speed and quality of the work is good and can get a project to about 95% with revisions. Then I make any final changes needed. Cost is around £50 per drawing plus a few hours of my time to finalise. First step is to provide as much detail as possible, in this case I used a copy of the Line Up glass scans from this site as a guide and also provided high resolution photographs of key areas of detail to get as close a reproduction as possible. The pictures and measurements were provided by a couple of collector friends. Thanks to @Slotto - Duane Mark McLoughlin

Program card and Eproms After some research on this site I have learned that the Super Line Up and Line Up roms are protected with the CHR chip, so I would need a modified chipset as the CHR chips are not readily available. One of the memory cards that I bought was from a 2p On Line, it still had the CHR chip fitted but after checking that would have been from an Adders & Ladders and apparently they are specific the the machine so no use with the Line Up. I studied one of the posts from @Road Runner where he removed the checksum and CHR check routine from a couple of Barcrest rom sets. I dusted off my old eprom programmer and burned a set of patched Super Line Up roms from that post. Changed the links on the program card and they worked perfectly, couldn't resist a quick play. Need to get some Line Up roms working next.