157 replies to this topic

[Guitar]

frigamatic? no idea - "frig" is the almost universal industry term for forcing something to happen usually for testing purposes (e.g. "frig a feature").

 

That makes sense. Looking at the source code for Casino Crazy it has frig written all over, but in some of the comments it says things like "perform a frigamatic nudge".

 

I also saw reflex written in a few places, but I thought it was referring to a feature game called reflex, now I know it's part of the compensation mechanism it makes a lot more sense. I've emulated the MIDAS system, which as far as I can see is the standard BACTA codes for data capture.

[ritdav]

Is any consideration given to reel position when the machine is on the last credit or is entirely coincidental if reels look enticing

[edwardb]

Is any consideration given to reel position when the machine is on the last credit or is entirely coincidental if reels look enticing

The term used is "last credit incentive" - and since the days of the 2005 Gambling Act, no, absolutely not. Before that, it was done *sometimes* but always on a chance basis. Some manufacturers were very blatant about it and used to get letters from other manufacturers saying knock it off. Pacman Plus had a terrible one, every final credit it would spin in 2x feature symbols. Barcrest wrote us a letter of complaint, rightly so. Good old self policing industry.....sadly gone.

 

We updated the ROMs for that, I think. Still sold over 2500 units, Mazooma's best ever if I recall correctly...

[phattbloke]

The term used is "last credit incentive" - and since the days of the 2005 Gambling Act, no, absolutely not. Before that, it was done *sometimes* but always on a chance basis. Some manufacturers were very blatant about it and used to get letters from other manufacturers saying knock it off. Pacman Plus had a terrible one, every final credit it would spin in 2x feature symbols. Barcrest wrote us a letter of complaint, rightly so. Good old self policing industry.....sadly gone.

 

We updated the ROMs for that, I think. Still sold over 2500 units, Mazooma's best ever if I recall correctly...

And we both know who was responsible for that

[Jochem]

You can do something similar on BFG machines, and a lot more besides. H1, H3 and Start on power up with door open. Turn refill key and enter test....

 

I have a (german) Brix here, by Mazooma. Above instruction does not seem to do anything for this machine (unless I fail to understand your instructions). But.. any chance you can tell me how to enter some kind of (hidden) menu where I can alter the values/points you get for a token and/or certain coin? From the EPROM disassembly I can tell such a thing must be in there (strings suggesting these settings can be altered through either a menu or maybe the serial port).

[edwardb]

Hi Jochem!

 

Ah, BRIX - I was the programmer of that game....well, some parts of that game, anyway. I did Cashanova, Sinbad 2000, Monopoly and Broker Street for Germany when I was at Mazooma. Many fun times visiting Germany to the arcades...mostly to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg

 

Anyway, to answer your questions. you can use the "SETTINGS MENUE". Put DIP 16 (on the Scorpion main board) to the ON position, and switch on the machine with the top door open. The machine should start up as normal but then it will enter the settings menu.....

 

MfG

[edwardb]

And we both know who was responsible for that

 Yes indeed.....slapped wrist! It was far, far too blatant. You'd never get away with it now.

[Jochem]

Hi Jochem!

 

Ah, BRIX - I was the programmer of that game....well, some parts of that game, anyway. I did Cashanova, Sinbad 2000, Monopoly and Broker Street for Germany when I was at Mazooma. Many fun times visiting Germany to the arcades...mostly to the Reeperbahn in Hamburg

Nice! Although I'm not from Germany (I'm from the Netherlands) I can tell you that the Reeperbahn is definitely the place to be in Hamburg. Great to hear you are actually the guy that did the programming on my cabinet! I had a hard time fixing the Scorpion 4 MPU, almost half of the address and data bus traces were gone below from the battery down, so I had to re-wire all those. Apart from that I have replaced many diodes and some transistors which had suffered from the acid.

 

So a lot of work has gone in to it, and I would love to get to know the machine inside-out now, also from a software perspective. I'm already stepping through code in MFME (want to make a proper emulation if I ever get to that), but I get stuck on the VDAI-prompt, and the corresponding input (coin alarm on SC4) should be high to get past that. It does not seem to be mapped to a button in MFME so that's my first problem.

 

But back to my actual machine!

 

Anyway, to answer your questions. you can use the "SETTINGS MENUE". Put DIP 16 (on the Scorpion main board) to the ON position, and switch on the machine with the top door open.

 

Yes, I did already find that out. Also there is DIP 14 which seems to select DM (on) or Euro (off) and DIP10 which enables GSM (not present in my machine). The (UK) phonenumber that is hard-coded in EPROM is not in use anymore (no answer).

 

But in the EPROM I find strings that suggest I can set the number of points for different coins, enable multiple tokens, etcetera. All not available from the DIP16-menu. Even a simple NVR clear does not show up, although it can be found in the code. Is there a way to enter a manufacturers test? Unfortunately the BRIX manual wasn't in the cabinet and I cannot find it anywhere on the internet.

 

Ideally I would disable tokens altogether and have no limit for cash payout. The Germans seem to have had a law that forbid paying out more than you'd put in (in cash). In Holland we are used to actually be able to win cash, and I would really like that behaviour for this machine, since it's gonna be in my brother's home-bar for friends to enjoy.

 

The EPROM also contains strings referencing compensation data. Since many of these strings are in lower-case I imagine this data being accessed through the serial port or something, instead of showing up on alpha (always upper-case). I even saw strings containing options to login with a username and password. Any info on this?

[wayne123]

Will there be another update - re coding of a machine - very interesting article BTW

 

Thanks

Oh whilst im online - Ive got a BARCREST - Leps Gold £70 jpot machine, and one of the test options is - SPY LOG - and when you go into this it gives a few numbers that don't make sense - does anyone who what this is ??

 

Thanks in advance.

[edwardb]

So a lot of work has gone in to it, and I would love to get to know the machine inside-out now, also from a software perspective. I'm already stepping through code in MFME (want to make a proper emulation if I ever get to that), but I get stuck on the VDAI-prompt, and the corresponding input (coin alarm on SC4) should be high to get past that. It does not seem to be mapped to a button in MFME so that's my first problem.

 

 

Ah the VDAI stuff....yes this was fun. I will look again at this. I'm fairly sure there was a way to disable it. In the bottom of the cabinet there is a connector for a VDAI-drucker (printer) where the attendant can connect and print out data, cash in, cash out....etc.

 

I will see what I can find, but this might take a few days!

 

I think I have the manual for the game too, I will check. The GSM stuff was a way for us to download data from the machine. Every time the machine was switched on, if a GSM modem was fitted, it would call a PC in our office and download about 3kb of data. Obviously this was only used for testing a new machine only, because travelling to and from Germany each day is quite expensive
We had some problems with that system, and sometimes the modem would not disconnect....and we get a very big telecom bill..................

 

You can access other menus to view data by pressing the Halten 1 (left) Halten 3 and START when the machine is switched on. Press until you see "RELEASE BUTTONS" and then press the GREEN test button on the Scorp. 4, then turn the refill key (under the button panel). Then you can view the secret menu. This is also how you clear NVR, you need to press halten 1, 2 and 3 in sequence, I think. It is a long time ago!

 

The Ruckgabe was part of the German regulations, and there is no way to disable it. It stops at 50 Euros/DM. The games were designed to use tokens instead of cash, but you can re-program the coin acceptor "teach token mode" and use a Euro coin as a "token" - maybe 1 Euro (for 100 credits).

 

I will see what else I can find for you....but it is nearly 18 years ago

 

Best Regards

[Mavroz]

Great stuff again Ed, always an interesting read. Thanks.

[edwardb]

Jochem

 

There is a VDAI "busy", on the Scorpion 4, look at pin 6 of Plug E (possibly also Plug D, pin 4..not sure). In the software, this pin is checked and if something is connected, it sends the VDAI data. So I think you need to (somehow) invert the status of this pin. I don't know why, if you have a machine, this does not already work correctly.

I didn't find the handbook for Brix, but I found it for Monopoly (same cabinet) which should help you a lot. You can find it at the link below:

 

https://we.tl/OzGh8P09zl

 

Here also you can find a PC-cable diagram and software for a VDAI printer (to emulate the printer) but I have really no idea if this works now on a modern PC. It is so long ago!

 

https://we.tl/cbYwk3EUrQ

 

Hope this is useful!

 

[Memap]

Going back to the more recent emptiers, A New Hope and Rainbow Riches both had the same emptier where youd alternate the stake and play a 25 p game then a 50p game and eventually it would let you have a super hold with jackpots all in view.

[nails]

Going back to the more recent emptiers, A New Hope and Rainbow Riches both had the same emptier where youd alternate the stake and play a 25 p game then a 50p game and eventually it would let you have a super hold with jackpots all in view.

 

personally i'm not a believe of `sloppy programming` and fully believe all emptiers are/were there on purpose.

[Memap]

 

personally i'm not a believe of `sloppy programming` and fully believe all emptiers are/were there on purpose.

 

Having worked in IT for 20 years, I can fully believe in both.

[fuzion]

Most certainly has been a bit of both in the past but it really would be silly to put in a deliberate emptier nowadays with a hi level language. Very risky.

J

[Chopaholic]

I have a hard time believing that some emptiers were 'accidental' or 'coding oversights', whilst many definitely fit that scenario I agree, for my money an awful lot don't.

 

(So the old Wild West emptier, where they knobbed up the £15 upgrade and allowed 2 x £7.60 on the Super Cash Duel feature, which makes £15.20 (illegal win), rounds up to £16, knocks the pound off, £15 banked, free win - that makes sense as a coding error.)

 

But off the top of my head how do you explain something like Supercharged? That it's a 'debug' routine that just happens to trigger the top feature if you press a certain combination of buttons?

 

Or going back further how about the way JPMs 'numbered', so the fact they only showed 1/12 when they had a jackpot in them was accidental somehow?

 

What about Fairground where the Coconut Shy 'trick' appeared on the £8 ROMs? (Doesn't work on the £6 ROMs.) You hold down three specific buttons in order and then press START multiple times to get a guaranteed jackpot on what can be a £1/£2 no-skill feature, so the machine doesn't block it at all. That's an accident or an error?

 

Thinking about it many do make sense as accidents/errors, or indeed players finding a way around the compensators and suchlike. For example the 'knockback method' on machines like Psycho Cash Beast and Lotta Luck were clearly driving the compensators haywire, many JPM/ACE machines responded to genuine skill and understanding how to take the value out of them, and if you could hit Stop N Step on something like Cashbuster, happy days.

 

Then there are some that are in a kind of grey area. BWB's video poker game Red Hot Poker, where you play one credit at a time until you get a £3/£6 repeater win, once achieved, let it cycle round the attract mode three times, and when it's on the attract mode screen with the '2' card showing, put a credit in and you get the '2' to (no-lose) gamble your win on, irrespective of the card you had when you got the win. Repeat until empty.

 

Indeed BWB's MPU4 video games had all kinds of sketchy stuff on them, either those guys made LOTS of mistakes, or something dodgy was going on.

Edited by Chopaholic, 29 October 2017 - 07:24 AM.

[fuzion]

A lot of the classic BWB video fruit emptiers were down to token wins being free, it was almost impossible to obtain the token jackpot win on the reels unless the machine was streaking or the token percentage was low and it would spin in a jackpot. So someone worked out how to manipulate the game on nudges.

I've tested this in mfme, if you switch the machine to all cash, usually an IOM version, the jackpot win is no longer free and the win is accounted for as a seen cash win and the machine will go dead if you take jackpots from setups.

J

[fuzion]

Also the Ace Coin Spot the Ball/Find the Pea was a free win on the early £6 token revisions up to v03, I've tried taking 'Find the Pea' on an £4.80 token v02 version that can be emptied via band aid features and the 'Find the Pea' feature is accounted for in an earlier version. So that does seem a little dodgy, the band aid was fixed but a different emptier crept in, doesn't seem plausible to have been accidental.

Manual emptiers in the older machines are why I still enjoy mfme to be honest. Having lived and played in seaside arcades from an early age I was always fascinated with being able to win on the machines, living on the coast we often found out about some decent emptiers that lasted a good while back then as no internet etc.

J

[edwardb]

Well, I can tell you, having been on both ends of the emptier issue, that unless a developer has a wish to end his/her career,  you don't do them intentionally.

 

As I posted before, it happened before at Ace, and the guy got done for it. Software f*ck ups do happen, in AWPs as much as any other kind of software (Windows Update, anyone)?

I know there are "tricks" that were put in to make it obvious that a jackpot/streak was due, but they were always subject to the machine being able to afford it. Outright emptiers are a nightmare for everyone:

 

1. Pub owner has to refill machine frequently - and loses money. This only happens once before...

2. Phone calls to the service company, who look at the machines on their estate and realise they're losing money, and then...

3. The manufacturer gets a phone call demanding an investigation, a full refund of monies paid (£10s of thousands, possibly..) and if you're lucky you get away with a software update, if not you get a wagon arrive with all your machines back, and demand for a credit note.

 

Remember that (until very recently) buying an AWP was a one-off purchase - the manufacturer made no more money from it once the unit left the factory. Therefore there is no incentive to update software - updating Donkey Kong cost Maygay over £50k - a cost they had to absorb. Not only do you need to burn 1000s of sets of ROMs, you need to pay someone to get in a car and go from site to site updating them all. That's not cheap (fuel, hotels, etc).

 

I've posted elsewhere about the economics of making & testing machines. So an emptier sets you back maybe £50k at best on a successful machine (say for 1000 units sold), and at worst case £2.5m if you get all your machines back......

 

Have a really successful machine with maybe 2000 or 2500 sales and an emptier found - just double those numbers above.

 

That's the commercial reality of it.