The Fruity Arcade - UK AWP Machines, Jamma, Emulators, Fruities and more...

We get a lot of power dips, and power surges in our house, the supply is terrible - light bulbs blow (sometimes literally) on a regular basis, the average lifespan is in weeks, not months. The most recent event saw the power go off for about a second, but my pie factory did not come back on. I tried switching it off, then back on, but it still would not come back on. I opened up the "no user serviceable parts" power supply, and there IS a fuse (I cant stand it when companies like barcrest LIE about things like that, ok the average user should not poke around inside a switched mode psu unless they want to die, but saying there are no user servicable parts means nothing is fixable, or replaceable like a fuse is... Obviously there is a user serviceable part, if the user knows what they are doing. Why didnt they make the fuse accessible from the outside? Cheapskates thats why... Nothing is built like it used to be these days, its a throw-away society.)

Sadly the fuse was fine, so I put the psu back together, and plugged it back in, and the machine worked now. So it looks like they have a electronic fuse, like computer switch modes have, if you short one of them out, it shuts down, and refuses to come back on for a while.

Im trying to get a little cash in my paypal account, so I can pay for a item I just won, so I

I am selling of a great little manual, its a field service manual for MPU 4 based machines, and covers all sorts of technical details.

You can find it on ebay here

I would have had more saved up, but some con-artist picked up a item I sold on ebay, saying he would pay on paypal, foolishly I let him have it (thinking its only 3.50 and he is local....)
Bad move that was, the fella now wont pay, had to call the police and he still wont pay! Fresh promise that he would, but nothing yet, so I left the con-artist a neg to
warn others. It confuses me how someone can go to such much trouble to steal 3.50, they must be not all there in the head.

If you own a HP laser printer (4, or 4+, 5 or similar) then check out the other items I sell, as I have a sale on the memory upgrades. They really are great value, and make a big difference - just check what people said in my feedback about them!

Ok, thats my little sales pitch over, keep an eye out for more posts back on topic soon!

Modern fruit machines use electronically controlled reels, they are not like in the
dim and distant past when they used reels with carefully machined metalwork, and
springs, weights etc.

They use "stepper" motors, which are motors which are capable of being turned very precisely in small defined increments.

In the case of machines like the pie factory, the reels are controlled by a reel controll board (which translates signals from the main mpu board, into the electrical signals to turn the motors to a certain position). The mpu talks to the reel board via a serial link, which keeps wires in the machine to a minimum.

Reels have a plastic tab on them, which breaks a sensor once per revolution, this is used as feedback so the fruit machine knows the reel actually has turned a full revolution, and so it can find out the position of the reels when turned on.

The graphics on the reels are illuminated by fixed lamps, just under the plastic reel bands (strips of plastic which go around the reel, and show the reel graphics).

Here are some photos of reels, from various angles, so you can see what I am waffling on about.

You can often see people peering into the machine, trying to see what symbols are next in line when the machine offers nudges, usually you can make out the next symbol, which can be helpful sometimes.

Its hard to find a pub in the country these days that doesn't have at least one fruit machine, often they have more than one.

Its almost a unwritten law, you can find a fruit machine in a pub, but why is that?

Personally I think its because they have cottoned on to the fact that fruit machines make a profit, and they make a nice easy profit when the people using them are drunk or tipsy! A sober player can spot the hints and play a lot better than someone after several pints of lager. Plus after a good intake of alcohol, those hypnotic flashing lights on the machine seem all the more attractive, and the lure of the instant win increases. And so does the players confidence that they will win (just like all those drunk drivers who leave the pub, stagger to their cars and say to themselves, hey Im a GOOD DRIVER I WONT CRASH!)

A modern fruity can make a staggering amount of profit for its owners if sited in the right place, in the right pub.

Still lots of people selling these devices that are claimed to empty machines, offer free wins etc, if you are daft enough to think they will work, and REALLY want to find out for yourself, dont give your cash to the con-artists.

Just buy the device from maplins

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=33400&TabID=1&source=17&WorldID=&doy=26m2

These are the two most common ones I have seen on ebay, heck one of the is even for the "Shark" range of alarms, and is sold on ebay as a "2005 Shark RF emptier"

Better yet do yourself a favour, dont fall for the con at all.

Most peoples favourite thing a fruit machine can do, is pay out the winnings, so this post is all about how the coins get from inside the machine, and into your hands!

I will cover the modern "hopper" system in this post, the older machines use a tube system which I may cover in the future.

When you put your money into a fruit machine, it can go into one of two places, either into the cash box(es) at the bottom of the machine, or into the "hopper" which holds coins that it will pay out as winnings.

The hopper is a big box, with a rotating wheel at the bottom which coins fall into and as the wheel rotates, the coins get pushed out by a spring loaded mechanism.

You can see a picture of the wheel in the pictures below,

and another pic showing the wheel and a bit more of the hopper assembly below,

What you see above is contained in a container that funnels the coins in, and allows a large amount of coins to be stored. A typical pub 25 pounds jackpot machine expects to hold 125 pounds in the hopper. Club machines with higher jackpots can hold even more!

The hopper is pretty simple in operation, it consists mainly of a motor, which drives the disc through gears, which also act as a brake to stop the wheel turning when power is disconnected. When power is applied the wheel turns, and coins fall into the holes.
When a hole passes over a certain point, the mechanics in the hopper pull back a spring loaded firing pin, which then strikes the coin in one of the holes and literally shoots the coin out of the hopper.

The coin then passes through a infra-red sensor, and breaks the infra red light beam, which lets the fruit machine know a coin has sucessfully been paid out.

As infra red light beams need to be broken, this has led to people selling stuff on auction sites and websites that claim to confuse the hopper so it never thinks the beam is broken, and keeps on paying out coins.

Fine in theory, but look at the picture below......



The pic above shows the hopper encased in a SOLID METAL BOX, which serves a few purposes, one it protects coins from prying hands, two it allows the hopper to hold more coins and route them correctly, and three IT SHIELDS THE INTERNAL HOPPER FROM ANY LIGHT SOURCE.

The payout chute is also cleverly designed with plenty of sharp angles/bends so there is NO way you can shine a light up it to confuse the hopper, and even if you got something up there, the sensor is tiny, and the gap the coin passes through is very small.

Hoppers seem to be reliable, the main problem is if the machine ever accepts a damaged coin, it could jam and possibly damage the disk. Occasionally motors could fail, but the hoppers are cheap enough to replace.

The hopper itself does not know how much is in it, the fruit machine itself keeps track of that, all the hopper does, is spin and spit out coins, sending a signal each time a coin is spat out.

Most hoppers just require a voltage to operate the disk, and then they spin, some are more sophisticated, and have secure communication protocols for payout, but I cant comment on those, as I have not used any of those yet.

Im leaving the post about how the machines pay out money for now, until I take some photo's to go with it. For now the subject will be refill keys.

For those who dont know about refill keys, I will give a quick explanation of their use now.

Refill keys are used to operate a electrical switch inside the fruit machine which triggers the machine into "refill mode".

The main use for this is to allow the operators of the machine to top it up with cash when it is running low, to make sure it has enough money in it to cover any wins that may arise. It allows them to simply fill the machine by putting the coins direct into the coin slot - they do not need the rest of the keys to open the machine up.

Sometimes the machine will also display the last win, or the total won since short term counters were reset, and occasionally how much money is available for payout.
The volume of the machine can also be set on some machines, these features are accessible usually through pressing the hold buttons etc on the machine before or after turning the machine (each make of machine differs usually)

You would think that fruit machine refill keys would be secure, at the very least to stop idiots turning the sound level up or down. But in reality, one standard key fits pretty much EVERY machine in the UK. Thats why you will see these keys for sale on ebay, and various fruit machine sites.

In my opinion they are only useful if you own the machine, and need to refill it, or check / set various options. To the "player" they dont offer any advantage whatsoever.

Look at it logically, even if it tells you the amount won in the past, it wont tell you how much cash hsa been put into the machine since then, and it wont tell you HOW LONG AGO the win was........

The figure that comes up, is of no use... Yeah you can probably use them to impress teenagers in bars, but thats about it really.

Think about it, why are the keys ALL the same? Could it be because the manufacturers actually want to create hype and a false sense of security to encourage more gambling?

If the keys were of any use, they would all be keyed differently, but they are not.

So if you own a machine, by all means get a key if you want, but if you just want to play the machines, save the money and get something else more usefull.