slotsmagic

The hopper is now sold, it was a 12/24V Azkoyen Parallel and someone else asked me about it last night. The coin mechs I have ran fine off 12V. You could try running a 24V hopper off a 12V PSU - it might work fine, work slowly, or not work, depending on the hopper type. I have a spare plug for a coin mech with some length of wiring attached (probably about 1ft?) - if not long enough to use as-is you could always extend the wires using wago / chockblock or similar. The coin mechs I have are front-entry SR5 and top entry 9524 (I could have the wrong number!). The PC I was using in the Interplay is still here, but it would probably be too big? It's an intel i3 7100 with 8GB RAM. I did remove the plastics and whatnot so it's an open metal chassis with mATX motherboard, 250W Gold rated small form factor PSU.

No worries. So here for example is an iPAC, PACdrive (special) and 7 x 10mm LEDs (fit into almost all fruit machine button lamp holders), as well as a couple of spacer legs if needed, just to raise one or both boards away from any conductive surface if that's an issue. These would be ready to post out, I've got a mountain of USB cables and stuff so will include appropriate ones and extension cables if needed. I do have more LEDs here somewhere, 7 is because the machine I pulled these from had 7 buttons (pretty common amount!). I'll get them found tomorrow The issue you would really have would be the wiring of everything together. I'm not great at explaining things off the top of my head, all I did was spend hours researching the Cabinet Building subforum, seeing what others had done and documented and worked back from there! It isn't difficult To give you an idea for these bits I'd be looking at £30 including postage and the anti-static box. I'm pretty sure that's a fair price as I feel just an iPAC is around £30 these days. I can certainly have a rummage around (I've got plenty of free time before work tomorrow). I definitely have another box of MFME bits but not sure where off the top of my head, that other box is the one with hopper and stuff (and maybe some wiring loom?).

No worries. Everything was disassembled so there won't be any complete looms or owt but I'll see what I can do. I'm out trainspotting at the moment

Sorry chap, had forgotten about this as gave up on the garage when it turned chilly! I can nip out and grab photos and stuff at some point today, but to give you an idea I at least have the following, and possibly more : 2 X genuine iPAC 3 X genuine PACdrive (1x Special, 2x Normal) Azkoyen Parallel Hopper SR5e front entry coin mech (known working with MFME, tested by me in Interplay cabinet). Top entry 9524e coin mech (known working with MFME but I did butcher the reject door at the top) An assortment of wiring although not 100% sure which will be of use to you so I'd need to check! Square buttons with 10mm LEDs and some spare 10mm LEDs (probably about 20 LEDs total but I would need to go and confirm). Also various PC bits, motherboards, SFF PSUs, that sort of thing.

@aland888 5V LED if powering from PACdrive, 12V will blow it up! I have 5V 10mm LEDs too, that I can bundle, so you can have all the bits together.

Yes, all the bits I have will be for sale, I'm at work now until Sunday afternoon (I work 3 long days over the weekend but then have Mon - Thurs off), but should have everything you could need, apart from a complete wiring loom for it. To be honest the wiring isn't that bad! As said above by @davep180 the way I learned what to do was to trawl the Cabinet Building subforum and see how others had wired their bits together.

Coin mech should work (edit - I note it doesn't have a 'new £1 ready' sticker so hopefully you know it takes the bi-metal £1 coins already) - you'd need to set it in to parallel mode, and it should have another pin header somewhere else for parallel connector. I believe it's on the opposite side of the mech to what you have shown. Off the top of my head it'll be about 17 pins in a straight line. Your hopper is serial only I believe and I don't know if anyone has successfully got serial / CCTalk components to work - not saying it's impossible, but parallel coin mechs and hoppers are known workers and have simpler pinouts. With a parallel hopper for example you have pins for power, hopper motor, hopper opto, ground. With serial you'll see the pinouts (they should be on a sticker on the hopper) are for DATA and stuff, rather than the specific components of the hopper. I've no idea how you'd even connect that to a PACdrive / iPAC, if it's even possible. My honest opinion? I'd try and source a parallel hopper. If you require the same form factor as that hopper you'd be looking for another Compact Hopper but parallel. Otherwise something like my Azkoyen Parallel or one sourced elsewhere would work, albeit with different dimensions. As for the iPAC and PACdrive - them of them as input and output devices. iPAC handles inputs (button presses, coin inputs from the mech, hopper opto sensor inputs). It's basically a keyboard encoder, it turns microswitch and similar inputs into keyboard presses which MFME detects. PACdrive drives outputs (lamps for your buttons, hopper motor). So you connect (for example) a lamp - 5V LED if you want to power direct from the PACdrive as I do - and when that fruit machine lamp is 'on' within MFME, the PACdrive powers the corresponding LED within your physical button. Or in the case of a hopper, the PACdrive acts like a middleman between MFME and the hopper, and turns the hopper motor on as required to pay out coins, then the iPAC detects the coins being paid by the physical hopper as they pass through an opto sensor, sending a keypress to MFME so that the emulator is aware a coin has been paid out.

That iPAC looks suitable. I've got several iPACs here, and PACdrives (used for driving button LEDs, hopper motors, e.t.c.). I was planning on finishing off several cabinets but ultimately disposed of them and kept the driver boards, PCs, e.t.c. The coin mechs and hopper (Azkoyen Parallel) I have do work and have come out of previously running cabinets - but if you are only ever planning on single coin entry that cheapo one from Amazon would be fine I guess.

I got banned whilst on holiday this year, I had my launch model Switch running modded firmware via an RCM jig purely for Retroarch - never played a pirate game. I was playing my legit original Links Awakening cart when the ban kicked in as the game was about to launch once I connected to the holiday home's Wi-Fi. Funny thing is - I was going to buy the new Zelda game (Echoes of Wisdom?). But since I was banned, which meant my existing games wouldn't load (couldn't connect to get necessary updates), I decided I would never buy a legit game again and would stick with piracy. They forced my hand in that regard. I'm absolutely for banning people from online multiplayer who cheat, that sort of thing. But to effectively brick my console? They can bugger off. I just won't give them any more money for software. As for MIG Switch and similar, I believe they are legit and work, but since the Switch is approaching EOL, I'll wait until mods are cheaper before investing, and just stick to emulation and stuff for now. I did manage to get my old games working by deleting games, and reinstalling the OS, then not connecting to internet so they didn't know an update was required.

If you are looking for pinball cabinet designs you'd probably be better off checking out a dedicated pinball forum, there are a couple of members on here with virtual pinball setups but not many! If you are after fruit machine emulation cabinet ideas, your best bet would be to have a nosey in the Cabinet Building subforum. I'll come back and add a link in a second as I'm on my phone. Edit : here's link. https://www.desertislandfruits.com/forum/index.php?/forum/39-cabinet-building/ Not sure you'll find a complete design from start to finish but it'll give you ideas if nothing else! I see you mentioned tabletop - if not looking at coin handling it would be pretty simple. If you are you'd just need to consider how you are going to mount the required coin entry and payout components.

I'm not fussed about price, and I still don't think it would interest me. I have YT Premium, I mainly watch PC building, retro game, retro technology and other content - which I doubt there are TV series for anyway. Honestly - for me, it would be of no value, it could be free and I still wouldn't use it. I know people who do, mainly for sports. I have zero interest in sports. I can't be arsed with modern TV or films (my film collection ends with films up to about 2010), my TV series are all old and I've ripped my physical collection to MKV across multiple drives. You could give me 10000 channels for 1p a month and I still wouldn't be interested.

I used to be the king of piracy, but these days (age, actually having cash, getting bored of having access to everything) means I can't be bothered! I got a kick from gathering / cataloguing stuff more than I did enjoying the content - but as the collection grew, so did the stress of keeping up to date and correctly tagged - so I knocked that on the head. Bit like FME. I can download the odd layout, play it and enjoy. But if I got a disc with 10000 layouts on? I'd probably be overwhelmed by it. Same with the idea of 10000 channels. Eff that!!

Quite often they are available from a 3rd party, the issue is in finding the correct name for the connector! Hopefully someone will send you to the correct one. I couldn't find a few in the past so got a few different crimp tools and bits. Truth be told though I probably used them once each so might be a false economy unless you can justify the outlay.

It is very good, and your missus has great taste in games A Link Between Worlds is like Like to the Past, but without spoiling anything, rather than the linear dungeon progression of that game (where the item awarded in each dungeon effectively forces you to play a specific dungeon next in the same sequence every time), in Between Worlds you can play the dungeons in any order you like, aside from the first, another one, and then the last. Also it does have a light and dark world (same as Link to the Past), but the way you transition between them is different. I love the Link to the Past Randomizer - as much I love the original game and can race through it, it is nice playing a new game and having no idea in what direction it'll send me. Some times you'll start off stacked with health and ridiculous weaponry from early item checks, other times you might have to fight through harder dungeons with bugger all equipment and get your head kicked in repeatedly, resulting in a more grindy affair!

I can't see any Randomizers for either of those - that's not to say there won't be some mods / ROMhacks out there, but can't see any DIY options. The community seems aimed more at games which have fixed item placement, which whilst great for speedrunning, does make gameplay a bit repetitive. So mixing them up means each game is different. I've just completed my first run of Link Between Worlds with no tracker or spoilers, and it works surprisingly well. It's nowhere near as 'complete' as the Link to the Past Randomizer in terms of features, but it gave an enjoyable and not impossible game. Ended up with 2 dungeons not needing to be completed at all, since I had the required 7 portraits and required completion items without setting foot in either, and didn't need whatever might have been on Master Sword pedestal. Having said that I'll reload it later and complete those bits just for the sake of it. I've always loved Link Between Worlds as a sort of modern interpretation of Link to the Past - and this Randomizer forces more exploration as you never know where you might find required items. I had the 'bow of light', normally given by a certain character during the final battle of the game, and which can only be used during the final battle, quite early on - but took a little while to find a sword, so had to keep throwing bushes and pots at enemies for a while! In the original game you get a sword pretty much immediately.

Back to Randomizers... I've just got Zelda : A Link Between Worlds Randomizer going. As I'm running on original hardware it's a little bit more tricky than running via an emulator, but is doable. Means I now have 2 copies of Link Between Worlds on my 3DS XL home screen - my original EU version (I own the original cart since release date but play my own dump), but also now a US version for randomised runs. The way this randomiser works is quite interesting - it generates a patch folder, which you keep on your SD card in the 3DS with the same title number as the original game. It then seems to automatically load this patch once you run the game from the home screen. Only negative with this approach is that unlike single ROMhacks - you can't keep a bunch of them in the same folder and switch between them by picking which ROM to load. But it's bloody good. It's just a shame I'm not as good at this as expected. I know all the locations from Link to the Past without any real issue, from years and years of replaying the original. But with Link Between Worlds, I think after my first play through almost all subsequent runs were basic races to the end, ignoring optional locations. With a Randomiser you may well need to check all locations as you never know where an important progression item may be. Brilliant though, brings new life into old games, gets the grey matter going. And if you do need a helping hand (especially on your first play through), you can run a 'tracker' - basically a separate app on your phone or PC which acts as a map, shows you which locations and item check are accessible based on your current inventory, and it'll update as you tell the tracker any new items you obtain.

I actually have no interest in gambling online, but feel that just being in the routine of looking forward to, and then watching people gambling, is giving me a buzz of sorts, I noticed that quite often just watching someone play makes me think about an arcade trip. It's mad really. How can watching The Bandit play bloody Hacksaw content make my brain think 'yeah, sitting at a Concept machine for a few hours is a great idea!'. So better to just sack all that off and get back to proper video games Fired up another random Zelda Link to the Past ROM last night and it's a right bugger, then again I've gone with more difficult item placement. It tickles the correct parts of my brain - a bit of challenge, logic problem solving, and doesn't make me want to go out and sit at a machine for hours! My 3DS was playing silly buggers last night but the latest copy of Luma3DS and all is well again. It's funny. No idea what was up but all working now. Probably ought to turn off WiFi, as while Nintendo don't really do much with the 3DS now, I guess they could patch it. Plus the online services are all dead now anyway.

Did you ever have a go at it? I need a break from machines again so have cut out all slot videos on YouTube (yeah, trying to not gamble but watching slot streamers every night - not a great idea) and gone back to Link to the Past Randomizer. I really ought to try the Metroid ones, especially for the Gameboy Advance as I smash through them quite quickly these days so mixing things up would be fun

... Never mind, you can ignore all the below, I found a layout from 2016 with the correct ROMs way down in the release area at DADsFME

I've been feeling a bit low this week. I honestly think it's a combination of grey skies and bugger all sun, shorter days, and the fact I've had a few household things go wrong / repairs, as well as Christmas around the corner. Don't get me wrong I hate warm weather, but this week has been grey and boring. No rain, just constant dull-ness. Congrats on not caving in. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that you can quit for ages, and then all it takes is one session before you are soon sucked right back in!

Oh, it could be because the forum broke on me when posting and posted the same thread twice...if the other thread with no replies got binned that would be great

Someone with an axe to grind LOL I specifically didn't include any ROMs or owt as I know Nintendo can be incredibly protective/ litigious, but I assume that was just some berk trying to get a thread of mjne deleted lol.

It doesn't help that I mentioned front-ends in the front post. They are more interfaces that generate ROMhacks I love them now. They really freshen up and make old games (as nice as it was to know the locations of everything off the top of your head) more challenging. There's ones for massive RPGs too - I assume they make them a lot more long winded if they randomise required items for progression!

I guess nobody else is into Randomisers? I had no idea there was a Link's Awakening one for Gameboy too. Playing that now, thought I'd found an issue with an inaccessible item due to a logic bug so posted on the discord asking for advice. Got several (very polite) replies within a few seconds confirming I wasn't trying hard enough. Who knew that the flying rooster could not only fly over water, but also go up stairs at the same time Randomisers are daunting, and they can seem broken until you realise you missed one obvious location that held a key item, but I'd still recommend them to anyone wanting to revisit old games but make them feel fresh. The other good thing with them is they encourage 100% exploration, whereas many old games I just used to race between required points and just skip all the optional / unnecessary bits. You can't do that in a Randomiser unless you have speedrunning / race options enabled (so, for example, in Zelda : A Link To The Past you can make it so you only require the ability to kill Ganon to beat him, rather than needing to complete all Crystal dungeons, as the entrance to the final boss can be permanently open from the beginning).

I did write a multiple question poll on my phone, but I got an error when submitting so I'm starting a thread instead! Effectively I was wondering how people feel that MFME has impacted their own fruit machine playing in real life - do you feel that playing on MFME 'satisfies' your fruit machine desires, and so you no longer wish to play them in real life - or do you feel it has the opposite effect? That playing MFME keeps fruit machines in the back of your mind, and in doing so, keeps you thinking about playing machines in real life? Maybe it is somewhere in the middle? Note this is absolutely not a dig at MFME or anything, I'm just wondering if there is a place for MFME in my life - if others have used it as a tool to genuinely stop playing machines altogether, or if I'm kidding myself if I think that is possible! I'd appreciate any input, but also would be very interested to hear from those who run MFME in cabinets!! One reason I opted for polls originally is that obviously they could be totally anonymous - but we are all grown ups here and many of us have had some pretty horrific tales of past (and current) addiction so it probably doesn't require anonymity. But if someone has something they want to say but don't want to say publicly then feel free to PM me!