slotsmagic

Similar thing with the Lord of the Rings (Two Towers?) Club machine, I seem to recall it was impossible to gamble out the cash ladder, you had to gamble to a couple of values below jackpot, exchange in and aim to get cash knockouts. Off to work now but I know what I'll be watching when I get back later

It's a tricky one. While £25 was definitely an update, I was never a fan of rechips, and would rather play the machines on their original stake and prize. When the JP gets increased, but the stake changes the same, something has to give - and that's normally gameplay, at least on machines which don't streak much. On those which do it's probably less of an issue as they just change the streak, so rather than being say 5 x £15 jackpots in quick succession, it might just be 3 x £25.

Back in the old days there were some that were a cheeky nod to a franchise, these days it's just taking the piss. I know I've mentioned them before in other threads before but Big Bank Theory (Big Bang Theory) and Cash Bandicoot (Crash Bandicoot) are some recent Bell Fruit examples.

Used to do the same in the day also with discs from SVP. Seem to remember I had to buy discs with Taiyo Yuden or some special Azo dye, think they were normally RiDisc or Ritek. Used to use Lovefilm too, built up a great DVD-R collection... Having to decrypt the films and then remaster them without extras. Quite enjoyed it, despite being more effort than just plugging a portable HDD into the TV. Used to use businesses like MicroDirect for PC bits, they died years back.

That's my bedtime viewing sorted

Did the same with my Pi4 arcade cab, cut it down to just a few hundred games. It was just too overwhelming. I used to fall into the same trap with modded consoles, once you could access everything you stopped focusing on the games you loved and had actually invested in and they became more of a 'tinkering' device rather than someone to actually play games through to completion on. As for the original device mentioned in this thread, it's interesting but I've tended to stick to Pi simply due to the amount of people supporting it. Does sound like a decent enough device though, and the price looks reasonable for the hardware.

Sure I used to play the slots in the original Leisure Suit Larry in the old CGA DOS days OK very simplistic but useful if needing to raise cash

I've been playing without plugging, the reel blasts tend to hit the lower values first from my experience, so while taking blasts with JP in view is risky, I've not had it force it on me (yet).

From my experience of 'random' slots, I'm still not totally sure about them. I've got several random games on my own T7, and without wanting to be too technical, I can repeat the same behaviour on the machine, from the same 'state', whereby it'll block the jackpot for around £800, then drop in a couple of £500s in quick succession. Even if they are 'random', there appears to be some form of compensation / blocking behaviour taking place on the gambles at least, even if not the base game itself. Mind you not as bad as the Astra compensated slot I was playing yesterday, took £1100 before it offered a feature despite playing on the 'enhanced feature entry chance' £2 autoplay setting. Biggest win up to that point was £35, all gambles would lose before that point. Anyway after £1100 in it offered a feature, paid £335, gamble to £400 lost. Another couple of spins later, another feature, this time for £360 - and the gamble to £400 lost. After a few more features within the next £40 or so it caved and gambled out, then gave another feature for £335 or so which lost the gamble, then another feature for £365 or so which I took. Was utterly gobsmacked by it - I appreciate it's compensated but to take that sort of cash while blocking and then paying back-to-back jackpots (effectively, the second £365 I reckon would have gambled out shortly after just like the first) was incredible. All the more reason for owning machines and staying out of the arcades and bookies I reckon.

I do have Pure Madness £100 on my Magic Party (Novomatic / Astra cab, same cab as iPub), will have to have a session on it. Also has the original Bar X game on £100 jackpot, had £100 hold yesterday for £200. Prefer the range of lo-techs on this to my T777, although that does have original Clockwork Oranges (£70 JP I think) whereas the Magic Party cab has Clockwork Oranges 'Five Alive'?. Also has Cops N Robbers themed copy of Casino Crazy Fruits, and some interesting other games, along with the usual 'community' lo-techs with dings for wild reels. [edit] Just had a quick go on it. It's got the 'Name Fill' thing on it, a bit like the Bar X Extreme and similar. Didn't have a long session but was interesting nonetheless. Have attached a quick photo of it anyway! Also, despite me saying £100, it's an odd one. It seems to be £25 jackpot on any stake, but does upgrade the values of the symbols somehow - when on the feature my £25 bells upgraded to £50?? Weird. Never a big fan of long sessions on lo-techs in arcades except for things like Bullion Bars, must have been stung a few times on some of the volatile lo-techs in the old days and it put me off them!

I'm sure the first ones that made me laugh were the risque ones on Global machines, things like Jiggin in the Riggin Don't have internet at home for the foreseeable (thanks Plusnet for cocking a switchover up!!) so doubt I'll be able to download it and play it again.

OK it's not much of an update, but I'm making a bit of space in the garage, and decided that since this cabinet will be my 'in home' cabinet, I'd put it on the nicer of the two plinths to get one of them out of the way. The plinth from 'Skill Balls of Steel' was significantly better nick than the original plinth from this machine (Super Skill Tower), so went with that one. Pretty easy to reattach, just 4 rather chunky M8 or so bolts and it's done. I say that, but putting the Skill Balls of Steel onto the plinth that this machine on hasn't been quite as easy, so that'll need a little drilling (I can either get the 2x frontmost, or rearmost bolts in, but not all 4 at the same time!). That's not urgent though. These really do need to be properly mounted to a plinth / base / stand of some sort if left in 'front opening' mode, otherwise these cabinets topple over forwards. A bit like a Barcrest T777 on castors falling over, but significantly less expensive. Would be interested to know an actual weight of the complete cab, the base was easy enough to push / slide upstairs, and I carried the top of the cabinet upstairs to the 'den' a while back and that was also pretty easy. I'd be worried about a normal 120KG machine up there, but I doubt the total weight of this is over 80KG? Crap blurry photo with the decor of the den (it's very much in need of decoration!) blanked out. So at least it's looking more 'machine-like'.

Trading in my 18 plate Cooper S for a 69 plate Vitara 1.4 Boosterjet SZT. Something a little chunkier. They value mine at £13500 and theirs is £13999 which seems fair enough, will be good to get another car with a couple of years warranty on it! I'll miss the look and character of the Mini, but the 1.4 turbo Suzukis are surprisingly quick, and it'll be nice to have something a bit chunkier for the crap roads out here (I think I know the positions of all the potholes in town but I swear the damn things are breeding!!) (Edit) Decided to cut out an MDF button panel after posting, so at least that is some progress! Just ordered a load of Gamesman buttons with the red surrounds, using them for the bottom button panel. Should be here the end of the week or thereabouts. Before they arrive though I'll get this panel fully cut out, primed and painted

Appreciate it, without it being tested though it would probably just get added to my pile of other junk Been a complete arse this week, was meant to be working on my MFME cab on this week off. Might get something done with it today or tomorrow, back at work Monday and possibly part-exing my car in on Tuesday for something a bit chunkier

I think in the arcade beat-em-up she used a hoover, which is also an odd weapon? Been ages since I played it

I spent last night playing Impulse games on my new laptop / tablet combo (Laplet? Tabtop?!) and it was such a good experience. It got me thinking about my next cabinet after this one. Pretty sure that for the next one I'll stick with just buttons at the bottom for the 'base game', and get a touch panel rather than a normal monitor. Only issue with that would be trying to get a 16:10 touchpanel as almost all consumer-grade ones are 16:9. I feel like buttons at the bottom definitely add to the 'experience' of playing a real machine, but the buttons on the top glass of most machine are only infrequently pressed, probably only once or twice a feature board unless it's a Hi-Lo type game, so it would make more sense to be able to just stick with a touchscreen. Will get a bit more wiring sorted today before work for this cabinet anyway, quite enjoying crimping the wires even though using 22AWG with these size connectors was a bit of a mistake, should really have gone thicker (so 20 or 18 I reckon).

Thought I'd better do a little more work on the cabinet today, starting with the wiring. Like a muppet I ordered the Pacdrive from eBay without checking it would come with the correct connectors on the bundled wiring (I needed the 6mm-ish ones) whereas if I'd ordered direct I could have specified which connectors I needed. So, old connectors cut off, crimping tool and crappy cheapo wire stripper at the ready! (I was originally planning on just soldering it all but realised that would make switch replacement a bigger ballache than it needs to be!!).

Painted the MDF a couple of days back, and put it back into the metalwork, and have just re-attached the metalwork to the cabinet. Not really a one-man job (as I found out), but got away with just a gashed knuckled, although did mark some of the MDF I'd painted, as well as the cabinet, so will do a bit of touch-up cosmetic work nearer completion Anyway, good news is it all fits! Still need to do the bottom button panel, and all the wiring and stuff, but at least having a cabinet that looks almost cabinet-like is a start!!

Many thanks for looking for a 478 anyway, I think I'm going to be SOL in terms of getting a replacement board on the same platform, but do like the idea of toying with the original mainboard first. I mean it's knackered, so it's not like I can make it any worse I've cloned the drive already to my PC, along with my T7 and Storm cab images, and will be putting them all on external drives in the very near future (at the moment they are on both my NVME and SATA SSDs, but both internal). If you wanted to send over a 775 board I'd still take it, but would need to sort out compatible CPU and RAM which again adds into the expense of it, if it turns out not to work In other news, I got bored earlier so busted out a holesaw and made some button holes for my first sheet of MDF. If it's not already obvious then I actually dropped out of (well, never sat) DT at GCSE level. One of those times I wish I'd actually paid attention at school, assuming I had the attention span back then (I certainly don't now!!). It's just a sheet of MR MDF, I made a VESA mount (well, a square of holes 10cm x 10cm) in an off-cut and have mounted that to my sheet of MDF using some 4mm machine screws and a ton of spacers. In a future build I'd almost certainly mount the monitor to the cabinet so it puts less pressure on the MDF. Let's not forget, this was the tattiest of my two ex-skill-game cabinets to begin with and it's my 'learning' cabinet, I'm sure any future cabinets will be tidier! Good thing it's only £3.50 a sheet for this stuff, even if it did catch fire (well, smoke a bit and get rather hot) while drilling The reason for the large gap at the right hand side is that is where the metalwork is for coin-handling on this cabinet, so I can't really put anything in that space without removing the internal metalwork. As I may potentially still implement coin handling (although it's not that likely) on this first cabinet, I've left the metalwork in place and that means that anything fitted there - buttons e.t.c. - would be touching the metalwork and the door wouldn't close.

Vamp It Up was 2003, so the others would be very close to that

Hi Pete, Really do appreciate that! Only issue is that the board in the machine at the moment is Socket 478, so that board would be great, but wouldn't allow me to test the existing 2.4GHz Celeron or the RAM. Also not sure how well the disc image would play with a jump in spec like that should I just swap the hardware straight over? Mind you it'll be more likely to work than the current board Funny you mention the cooler, the one on this board, I managed to snap both retaining clips when I tried to remove them - they had rusted! Also when I removed the heatsink it pulled the CPU out of the socket as the thermal paste was less 'paste' and more 'concrete'

Hi Pete, Soldering skills are fine (not great, but acceptable!), I've replaced transistors on FM boards and things before. Will have a look at that video, repairing the existing board would be ideal as it would mean it's definitely compatible (if not I need to find P4 boards with onboard graphics and serial port headers on the motherboard, which seem pretty rare!). I was thinking a second board would be good as I could at least check the CPU. RAM, e.t.c. and confirm they are definitely working. I'd appreciate any help in getting this going, and could happily repay you in other random tech stuff I've got that really don't need and is taking up space (Edit) In other news the iPac and Pacdrives turned up, along with the LEDs. Feeling a bit cheated by Extreme Hardware on the LEDs, since I know they said they were substituting, but these look like utter garbage compared to what I ordered considering the price paid? The one on my hand is obviously what I received. Looks like a normal LED someone has wrapped around a piece of plastic. That and the fact they are always late in delivering. ... I guess it'll still work but looks and feels cheap! Also, being a complete berk, I didn't check the terminals in the buttons and switches, and they are 6.3mm - the harness I have got with the buttons is 4.something. So I've now ordered a new crimping tool, loads of male and female spade connectors (including 6.3mm) and 60m of 22awg braided core wire. I was thinking about repurposing the wiring loom of the SWP I stripped, but am probably safer using new wire. Hopefully will be some more progress on the MFME cab once all the bits have arrived and I've made some new wiring

I'm going to try a replacement mainboard as I'm thinking that's more likely than the CPU to be at fault, but can't see any direct swaps so am having a gamble, probably with little chance of success (... having flashbacks of a certain campaign there), on a mainboard with the same socket and chipsets. I think that'll be it though, then it'll be getting changed out for something else. If I just have it as an SWP terminal I'd be quite happy. Would definitely prefer real money play but it'll be nice to make something out of a free cabinet. At least the PSU I sourced can be used for something else, and the motherboard will allow me to test the CPU and RAM. Should be able to get a capable tower PC cheaply enough, since the games aren't that demanding. As for my dedicated MFME bar-top cabinet... still no sign of the LEDs or boards!