21 replies to this topic

[LemmingMad]

Hi I recently purchased a Gamebox from Ebay (The games are Weakest Link, Battleships, Strike).
When it loads I get a game key not found error..

The dongle that was supplied fits in the parallel port and has spaces for two ibuttons, but only has one.

Any advice on the dongle would be great or if someone knows of a software hack

Thanks

[Darienne]

With certain machines you have to purchase a dongle which have credits on it to be able to play the games.

Or it may just be that the dongle or key has come loose - make sure the machine is switched off and remove the dongle/key, and replace them firmly back into place - then swich machine back on.


If you do require a credit downgle, I am not sure how much they will be for your machine...


Prices below are dongle prices for the Paragon/Games Warehouse machines:


Yellow Games Dongle £200.00
6,300 credits will be supplied on the dongle, every time a game is played one credit will be deducted.
# The dongle will not expire until the machine has received £3,150 cash in.
# You will receive update CDs for however long the dongle has credits.

Green Games Dongle £400.00
13,500 credits will be supplied on the dongle, every time a game is played one credit will be deducted.

* The dongle will not expire until the machine has received £6,750 cash in.
* You will receive update CDs for however long the dongle has credits.

Orange Games Dongle £549.00
Dongle will be valid for 365 days from activation.

* Machine will automatically update itself using built in GPRS dongle.
* Includes FREE wireless router providing FREE Wi-Fi.
* Unlimited plays & Wi-Fi.
* National tournaments with cash prizes included

Edited by Darienne, 13 September 2010 - 11:59 AM.

[LemmingMad]

With certain machines you have to purchase a dongle which have credits on it to be able to play the games.............

etc

Oh.....

Thanks for your reply... the ibutton dongle i have is black......

Where would i get these dongles from (in case I suddenly have nice lottery win!!)

Thanks again.

[Darienne]

Oh.....

Thanks for your reply... the ibutton dongle i have is black......

Where would i get these dongles from (in case I suddenly have nice lottery win!!)

Thanks again.

If your machine requires one of these dongles - you would be able to get them direct from the manufacture
But your machine may not need one, it may just be a lose dongle/key

As you got it off ebay, did you test the machine before collecting it... or did you have it delivered.
you could always claim as SNAD and not working.

[Starleisure]

Sounds like its got disk software loaded up into the hard drive but either the dongle has come loose or more like its the wrong dongle for that machine.

You wont need to buy a dongle that has credits on as thats just a gameswarehouse thing, your machine was made just before this came into play.

Did you see the game running before you picked up and what gamebox is it?

Gamebox 3,4,4+,6 or extra.

[LemmingMad]

I bought the machine knowing that it didn't boot... (Cant really moan at £47 though )

If I cant get it to work then i'll just convert it to MAME or a jukebox.

(Would REALLY love to get this working though)

The dongle is not loose ive removed it and put it back (even moved the ibutton from one space to another)

As it happens it says GamesWarehouse as it boots.... looks like I might have to save up £200!!

Thank You both for your help so far!!

P.S. How do I tell what gamebox it is 3,4,4+ etc.....

[Darienne]

There are some GamesWarehouse (cough cough) dll files around that get past the need for a dongle.

Also, Cliffs Repro has many SWP game files on the site - maybe you could convert the system to play these and make your own frontend to select the games - the frontend file is also on Cliffs

[cliffc]

I bought the machine knowing that it didn't boot... (Cant really moan at £47 though )

If I cant get it to work then i'll just convert it to MAME or a jukebox.

(Would REALLY love to get this working though)

The dongle is not loose ive removed it and put it back (even moved the ibutton from one space to another)

As it happens it says GamesWarehouse as it boots.... looks like I might have to save up £200!!

Thank You both for your help so far!!

P.S. How do I tell what gamebox it is 3,4,4+ etc.....

Hi Lemming

If you are going to do this then when you sign up at the repro use the same user name as on here then i will know its you downloading for your machine, and some one leeching them to make disks so when the anti leech script cuts in I can just restart your account so you can keep downloading them.

Regards

Cliff C

[Starleisure]

I bought the machine knowing that it didn't boot... (Cant really moan at £47 though )

If I cant get it to work then i'll just convert it to MAME or a jukebox.

(Would REALLY love to get this working though)

The dongle is not loose ive removed it and put it back (even moved the ibutton from one space to another)

As it happens it says GamesWarehouse as it boots.... looks like I might have to save up £200!!

Thank You both for your help so far!!

P.S. How do I tell what gamebox it is 3,4,4+ etc.....

Sounds like this machine was a gamepack black or another gwh conversion.

I think your struggle to get her working unless you get the correct disk and dongle kit.

I sold all my kits last year so i cant even help you out.

[LemmingMad]

Thank you all for your help!!

Cliff C that is fantastic thanks very much!! I won't go crazy just a few things to get me started (I've just signed up)

I have bought a Who Wants to be a millionaire kit from Ebay (I will not give in easily!!)

Once again thanks again for your help so far.

Regards

Darren

[Lagertop]

Thank you all for your help!!

Cliff C that is fantastic thanks very much!! I won't go crazy just a few things to get me started (I've just signed up)

I have bought a Who Wants to be a millionaire kit from Ebay (I will not give in easily!!)

Once again thanks again for your help so far.

Regards

Darren

LemmingMad I am not sure if your still around but I have had similar issues, I picked up a Gamebox on Ebay and after 3 fruitless days of trying to get the software/hardware to work I gave up and decide to go to an XP install and use existing games I already had rather than the ones supplied on the 2 HDD's/Discs and dongles.

Essentially I ripped all of the hardware out and put in a mid-range PC with XP on it and downloaded the touchscreen driver.



I then hid XP using Quicksheller and built up a front end using a mixture of Rainmeter and Simpletouch for the games.





I toyed with the idea of trying to interface with coin mech and hopper but decided it wasn't worth the effort as I would need to:-
Buy an interface card ie IPAC from Ultimarc or some such (I have a couple but they are in use)
Work out how to attach it to the coin payout hopper using a relay and PSU.
Get the coin mech working and talking to the PC.
Write some code to control all of this.

It was probably a bit beyond me but anyhow it works fine with most of the games I have and nobody can tell its simply XP behind there.

[LemmingMad]

Hi Lagertop,
I've been playing with the idea of a better pc and even purchased the seprate IO boards of ebay to see if i can still have full coin functions (The PC mine came with has the IO stuff built onto the board).
I haven't touch it in ages (work getting in the way and the missus getting ticked of ).

Your frontend looks really nice. I use HyperSpin on my homemade arcade machine and was gonna (try) adapt that to work for the SWP games.

But I think i'm sold on the one you've got!!!

Could I pick your brains on something.... When I load WordUP the monitor can't handle the resolution. Is there a way around this or is this game a no-go?

Thanks for your help

Edited by LemmingMad, 23 October 2010 - 01:39 PM.

[Lagertop]

Hi Lagertop,
I've been playing with the idea of a better pc and even purchased the seprate IO boards of ebay to see if i can still have full coin functions (The PC mine came with has the IO stuff built onto the board).
I haven't touch it in ages (work getting in the way and the missus getting ticked of ).

Your frontend looks really nice. I use HyperSpin on my homemade arcade machine and was gonna (try) adapt that to work for the SWP games.

But I think i'm sold on the one you've got!!!

Could I pick your brains on something.... When I load WordUP the monitor can't handle the resolution. Is there a way around this or is this game a no-go?

Thanks for your help

Word Up runs at 800x600 I believe (there's a sub folder in there called 800600) as do quite a lot of games, I decided therefore to put Windows at 800 x 600 so the monitor would not be constantly switching resolutions. Luckily Simpletouch is scalable down to that resolution.

BTW I needed a dual core for the front end due to the 9 .avi files playing at once, fortunately I had a spare as it maxed out my original P4 2.4Ghz. I could have went the .bmp route but the .avi's make it more like a pub machine

[LemmingMad]

Word Up runs at 800x600 I believe (there's a sub folder in there called 800600) as do quite a lot of games, I decided therefore to put Windows at 800 x 600 so the monitor would not be constantly switching resolutions. Luckily Simpletouch is scalable down to that resolution.

BTW I needed a dual core for the front end due to the 9 .avi files playing at once, fortunately I had a spare as it maxed out my original P4 2.4Ghz. I could have went the .bmp route but the .avi's make it more like a pub machine

Dual core!! The replacement PC i've got is a P2!! I'll be going the image route then rather then AVI's.

I'll have to play with the resolution, thanks for that!

[carnagecolimq]

Wow i cant tell you how glad i am that i came accross this site and even more this post!

i recently purchased an proteus gamebox millionaire with 9 games on for me and the older kids to have a laugh with after using the one at the local its great fun but im never fully happy unless i can pull it apart and mess about with things so when i saw this topic i was so thrilled i had to sign up and ask if anybody could provide a little bit of guidance on getting my machine running like the one pictured further up !

I think looking at the cabinet that my machine is the exact one i just want more games

thanks in advance for any help offered

this is the machine i have
 photo.JPG   292.44KB   15 downloads

Edited by carnagecolimq, 31 October 2010 - 01:22 PM.

[Lagertop]

Carnage, there's a trade off if you go the route I took, you gain the ability to customise the frontend and games etc but you lose the ability to use the coin mech and payout. Also the games you have in all likelihood would not work and you would have to find some more.
Considering most people use free play anyway and the coin slots are a novelty it seemed like a good trade for me.

I changed out the PC for a more powerful one and then the trick to it is the software:-
Windows XP install
Quicksheller - It hides Windows XP very well
Custom boot image for Quicksheller
Custom Wallpaper (Millionaire screenshot)
Custom Rainmeter skin to select which machine to play on the millionaire screen
SimpletouchFE is the menu selection system to pick which game to play.
Rocketdock (hidden mode) to access XP functions when needed.

As a project it took no more than 2 or 3 days once I decided to go that way, the best place for learning about that sort of stuff if your nto familiar with it is over at BYOAC.

BYOAC

[carnagecolimq]

Thanks for the advice i will look into that website, i do enjoy having the coin mech and payout but it would certainly work bertter to have more games.


just one other thing that has had me boggled if i place a new computer in this ones place how would i make it touchscreen compatible from having a basic look about my intended pc does not have any ports similier to gamebox mother board i assume you need to connect the white vga type adapter in to the mother board? how do i work around that or is that not a neccescity ?

if you understand what i mean

[Lagertop]

On mine the white interface is actually a serial port connection (9 pin), pretty much every PC I've ever seen has a serial port on the motherboard so it will interface fairly easily, in your case it could be that the motherboard does not have a serial port protuding out the back but requires something like this attaching to pins on the mobo itself.

Extension

Also without opening my case up I think it was a 3M Microtouch controller which has an XP driver and software over here somewhere:-
http://solutions.3m....eenControllers/

It installed no problem on XP and the calibration software works fine. The only annoyance is that it does not work with MAME touchscreen games very well (Megatouch collection) and that really bugs me as I also have a Megatouch which uses exactly the same touchscreen controller

A thing to note is that the controller on my machine also needed hooking up to the PSU on the PC with a 4 pin molex.

[LemmingMad]

On mine the white interface is actually a serial port connection (9 pin), pretty much every PC I've ever seen has a serial port on the motherboard so it will interface fairly easily, in your case it could be that the motherboard does not have a serial port protuding out the back but requires something like this attaching to pins on the mobo itself.

Extension

Also without opening my case up I think it was a 3M Microtouch controller which has an XP driver and software over here somewhere:-
http://solutions.3m....eenControllers/

It installed no problem on XP and the calibration software works fine. The only annoyance is that it does not work with MAME touchscreen games very well (Megatouch collection) and that really bugs me as I also have a Megatouch which uses exactly the same touchscreen controller

A thing to note is that the controller on my machine also needed hooking up to the PSU on the PC with a 4 pin molex.

[LemmingMad]

Wow i cant tell you how glad i am that i came accross this site and even more this post!

i recently purchased an proteus gamebox millionaire with 9 games on for me and the older kids to have a laugh with after using the one at the local its great fun but im never fully happy unless i can pull it apart and mess about with things so when i saw this topic i was so thrilled i had to sign up and ask if anybody could provide a little bit of guidance on getting my machine running like the one pictured further up !

I think looking at the cabinet that my machine is the exact one i just want more games

thanks in advance for any help offered

this is the machine i have
 photo.JPG   292.44KB   15 downloads

Hi carnage, good luck with your gamebox mate.. as you can see from the posts above this forum is has awesome people willing to give their advise, and if I can I'll chip in too.

If you do decide to replace the pc and go for a freeplay multigame would you be interested in selling the cd and dongle for your machine??