The - Slot Technical Departmentslot-tech.com/members/magazine/lores/march09.pdf · Recently, I had a lot of fun fixing a big stack of IGT power supplies. The failure rate for these

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March 2009Slot Tech MagazinePage 4

Randy Fromm's

Slot Tech Magazine

EditorRandy Fromm

Technical WritersTed Befus, Kevin Noble, Pat

Porath, Vic Fortenbach,James Borg

International ContributorMartin Dempsey

Slot Tech Magazine is publishedmonthly bySlot Tech Magazine1944 Falmouth Dr.El Cajon, CA 92020-2827tel.619.593.6131 fax.619.593.6132e-mail [email protected] the website at slot-techs.com

SUBSCRIPTIONSDomestic (North America) 1 year - $60.002 years - $120.00International1 year - $120.002 years - $240.00

Copyright 2009 under the UniversalCopyright Convention. All rights re-served.

Slot Tech Maga-zine

March 2009

Inside Slot Tech Magazine

Page 4 - EditorialPage 6 - Win-Tact WP203F11 Power SupplyPage 13 - The Life and Times of a BulbPage 20 - Quick and Simple Repairs #48Page 26 - Subscriptions and Order Form

Slot Tech Magazine is anofficial publication of

Randy Fromm

Randy Fromm - Publisher

Dear Friends,

Every now and then, I get to spend some time on thebench at a casino, knocking out some repair items.Recently, I had a lot of fun fixing a big stack of IGTpower supplies. The failure rate for these powersupplies is extremely high. Even if your slot machinemachine has yet to exhibit any symptom of the powersupply failure, as soon as it is switched off, it likely willnot come back on. This month, we’ll take a look at thissuper-common failure and how to repair it. There isalso a 16 minute video of the repair you can watchonline. The article begins on page six.

The life expectancy of a bulb doesn’t seem so long whenso many just seem to die off on a daily basis. Statisticsand performance along with datasheets are fine onprint, but reality is a different ball game altogether.Our Maltese correspondent James Borg is back thismonth with another fun look at an interesting repair.This month, James tackles (drum roll, please) a lightbulb replacement! No. I’m not kidding. But there’s moreto this repair than meets the eye and you’ll just haveto read the article to see what I mean. James’ brilliantrepair begins on page 13.

Wow. This month makes it four years that Pat Porathhas been sharing his Quick and Simple Repairs withus. Number 48 takes us into the attic of the IslandResort and Casino and beyond. Thanks, Pat.

That’s all for this month. Don’t forget that TechFest 19will be held May 12-14 2009 at Mystic Lake. See youthere?

Slot Tech MagazineMarch 2009 Page 5


Slot Tech Feature Article

No matter how you lookat it, the failure rate forthese power supplies

is extremely high. Even if themachine has yet to exhibitany symptom of the powersupply failure, as soon as itis switched off, it likely willnot come back on if it hasthis all-too-common powersupply failure.

The cost to casinos worldwidefor replacement and/orrepair is enormous. As aservice technician, highfailure rates mean jobsecurity so in this regard, Iam happy to see these powersupplies fail in hugenumbers. On the otherhand, it’s never a good thingfor a casino to have to spendthousands of dollars onrepairs due to bad powersupplies when the onlyproblem is bad electrolyticcapacitors.

Following the publication ofa technical article regardingthis power supply in theJanuary issue of Slot TechMagazine, I received a coupleof letters from readersinforming me that the articledidn’t go far enough indescribing all of the failuresin this unit. Specifically, thearticle failed completely to

accurately describe thecause of the “netplex displaylink down” error which iscaused by failure of acompletely different set ofelectrolytic capacitors thanthe obviously bad outputfilter capacitors pictured anddescribed in the article. Ifyou tried to repair a badWin-Tact power supply thatcaused a “netplex displaylink down” error by replacingthe bad capacitorsmentioned in the article,you would not have beensuccessful.

Hopefully, you set the powersupply(s) aside and didn’tthrow them out or send themaway for repair because thismonth, we’re going to look athow to repair this problem

once andfor all. Hereare the two letters:Mr. Fromm-

I just read your article onrepairing the power suppliesfrom S2000 games. You wereright about the caps beingbad but if you put the powersupply on an O-scope, youwill most likely find that itwill not have a correct waveform [at pin 7]. It will look sortof like a shark's fin. One ofmy techs built a power supplytester here in our shop andwe use it to check thesewaveforms. What we havefound is that you shouldchange out all seven caps onthe CTR2 board. While thiswill bring the power supplyup to working condition, this

Win-Tact WP203F11 Power Supply

View Repair Video at http://tinyurl.com/igt-psrepair

The CTR2 PCB


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may not cure all of theproblems. When we have apower supply go down(which here is frequent) we goahead and replace all of theAluminum Electrolyticcapacitors, especially if theyare over two years old. Wedo this because we have seenthe power supplies comeback for other problems thatseem to point to individualcaps.

I just wanted to add a littleinfo that others may use andsave their casino somemoney. I enjoy your magazineeach month and I make surethat my techs also read it.

Thank you,

Dan Poole - Tech Supervisor- Bally’s Casino Tunica

Hi Randy,

My name is Fred Thompson,I am Senior Slot Tech atSENECA ALLEGANY CASINOin Salamanca , NY. I foundyour “Logic Failure” article inthe January 2009 issue ofSlot Tech magazine quiteinteresting. I’ve only been aslot tech about 2½ years (mybackground is in consumerelectronics repair) and havefound myself scratching myhead many timestroubleshooting variousproblems, saying to myself,“this just doesn’t make anysense.” I can take your articleto the next level of addressingthe “netplex display linkdown” error, if you areinterested.

These power supplies(manufactured by Win-TactElectronics Corp.) seem to failwhen the game is powered

down, for maintenance, to bemoved, or as a result of apower outage. Another techdiscovered that the “netplexdisplay link down” errorcould be fixed by replacingthe power supply. Soon Ifound my shop stacked upwith power supplies havingthis problem. I remember thefirst supply I opened up andsaw all the bulging caps (theones listed in your article) andthought this repair would bea piece of cake. WRONG!After replacing all the caps,the error still persisted. SinceI didn’t have documentationon the supply, I tried doingcomparative troubleshootingwith a known “good” supply.It was readily apparent thatthis was not a voltage levelor a filtering problem with the13v or the 25v supplies.

What I did find was adiscrepancy on pin 7 of the

5v/div 5v/div

This is the pin 7 output from the power supply. On the left is one possible bad output. Stretching thehorizontal timebase would reveal a sort of “shark fin” waveform. In many cases, there is simply nooutput at all from pin 7. The image on the right shows a good output. It’s a 60Hz square wave with anamplitude of around 12-13 volts. The 50% duty cycle gives us a DC average of 6.6 volts so if you don’thave an oscilloscope, you can still test pin 7 for DC using a digital multimeter. If you are reading around6 volts, the output is likely OK.



supply. From my limitedresearch this signal is a lowvoltage, chopped AC signalused by comm/securitycircuits in the MPU. The“good” supply had a cleansquare wave of 13.3 V P-Pand +6.6 VDC on this pin.The “bad” supply had asquare wave but there werenoise pulses present in thesignal. It was only 8.8 V P-Pand +.61 VDC. I traced thiscircuit back on the powersupply board and found thatit originated on the daughterboard next to VR2. All thecaps (seven) on the boardlooked normal. Since thedaughter board can bedifficult to remove, I electedto replace all of theelectrolytics on the board.After reassembly the supplyworked fine, no more“netplex display link down.”I’ve since repaired the stackof 15 supplies in my shop.It seems that some electronicequipment manufacturedtoday is on its way to thelandfill after just a fewyears. It is up to us techs toslow that flow, squeeze afew more useful years ofservice from the equipment,and save our employers afew bucks in the process.

I hope you found thisinteresting. Thanks,Fred

Dear Dan and Fred,

I certainly DID find thisinteresting. Your letterscouldn’t have been timelieras I was looking at a stack of

some 30 of these powersupplies on the “BAD STUFF”shelf at a casino where I wasworking at that exactmoment. Talk aboutserendipity!

The problem in EVERY unitwas almost exactly as youboth mentioned (bad outputfrom pin 7) although in mostof the units, the signal wasactually non-existent ratherthan just weak or noisy asyou described. The output issupposed to be a 60Hzsquare wave. In most of theseunits, the outputelectrolytics were also bad.There were very few wherethe seven small caps on thelittle daughter PCB were badbut the output electrolyticswere good.

Sitting down with a stack ofbad power supplies, a bigbag o’ replacement capacitorsand a power de-solderingstation, I managed to whipthrough 14 power suppliesin around ten hours. I couldhave gone a bit faster but Itook the time to do someinvestigative troubleshootingon some of the units. I alsomade a little video of theprocess, which our readers

can view online at http://tinyurl.com/igt-psrepair

Needless to say, we canexpect a 100% failure ratefrom this power supply so it’sa good idea to stock up onthese small capacitors inaddition to the electrolyticcapacitors mentioned inJanuary’s article. Toreiterate, here is a completelist:

IGT Power Supply -Common Failures40009003 / WP203F11

Main PCBC37 6800uF 16vC38 6800uF 16vC39 6800uF 16vC44 2200uF 35vC45 2200uF 35vC46 2200uF 35vC47 2200uF 35vSmall cap between VR2 andVR3 330uF 25v

On the CTR2 PCBC4 10mf 50vC8 1mf 50vC9 1mf 50vC11 1mf 50vC18 10mf 50vC24 33mf 25vC27 4.7mf 50v

CTR2 PCB


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I contacted Win-Tact in orderto obtain a schematicdiagram for the unit. It hadbeen my intention to write acomplete circuit analysis forthis article as I did for theSetec MK5PFC power supplylast year. Here is the thread:

Dear David,

My name is Randy Fromm. Iam the publisher of Slot TechMagazine, a monthly tradejournal for the casino indus-try (see http://slot-techs.com).Each month, we publish tech-nical articles on slot machineoperation and repair.

As you know, you manufac-ture a power supply used byslot machine manufacturerIGT. WP203F11

Currently, I am writing a fea-ture article about this powersupply and how to repair it.Naturally, when I write suchan article, it is about how thepower supply FAILS. To bebalanced, I would like to in-clude information in the ar-ticle about how the powersupply WORKS. That is tosay, I would like to describethe theory of operation.

To this end, I am requestinga schematic diagram for theunit. The schematic diagram,which I will reproduce in themagazine as part of the ar-ticle, will allow me to makea full description of how thepower supply operates,rather than just an emphasison how the unit fails. I haveattached a copy of a similararticle that I have publishedfor a power supply used in

Aristocrat slot machines.Please note that nowhere inthe article do I criticize themanufacturer for the failuresfound in the unit. This is be-cause I had the schematicdiagram and was able tospend a great deal of timediscussing the operation ofthe unit.

Can you please provide aschematic diagram for theunit and give written permis-sion in an e-mail for me toreproduce the schematic dia-gram in Slot Tech Magazine?The article is slated to appear

in the March issue of themagazine so I'd like to obtainthe schematic diagram assoon as possible.

Thank you.

Best regards,Randy Fromm - PublisherSlot Tech Magazine

Dear Randy,

Thanks a lot for your mail,but we regret can not offeryou the schematic diagramcause of :


1. The WP203F11 powersupply is a proprietary de-sign for IGT. Win-Tact is notallowed to release the sche-matics to any third partywithout the permission of IGT.You must contact IGT and ob-tain their permission first.

2. Repair works done by athird party could potentiallyinvalidate the approval sta-tus on the power supply byUL and other safety agencies,which could in turn jeopar-dize the approval status onthe slot machine by variousjurisdictions. We suggest cus-tomers who experience fail-ures contact IGT if the unitsare still under warranty orWin-Tact if they are out ofwarranty for repair service.

Kindly please make allow-ance for our standpoint,thank you.

Warm regards,David ChouWin-Tact Electronics Corp.Tel:+886-2-8227 8698 Ext:2200Fax:+886-2-8227 8650Your Ultimate Source For Ad-vance Power Supplieswww.win-tact.com.tw

This sort of failure isunfortunate. Win-Tact hascorrected the problem andhas offered to repair all butthe oldest units. I must admitmy own failure to make youaware of the problem earlierbut in my defense, I don’twork in a casino on a dailybasis and I was simplyunaware of the problem andthe solution offered by Win-Tact.

Naturally, dear readers, Ihave been unable to obtainthe schematic diagram fromIGT. I call upon IGT to bemore forthcoming with aschematic diagram so thatwe might repair these unitsmore efficiently. It seems verystrange to me that IGTpublishes the completeschematic diagrams for themotherboard and other PCBsbut does not publish theschematic diagram for thepower supply.

I also respectfully disagreewith Mr. Chou’s assertionthat a slot department’s

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repair of a power supplymight somehow invalidate aslot machine’s “approval”either in terms of safety orjurisdictional requirements.It has been my pleasure tovisit slot departments allacross the globe. The slotdepartments of the world’scasinos are, in general, asprofessional and competentas any repair facilities in theworld. We have the parts. Wehave the tools. We have thetalent. All we lack is theschematic diagram.

- Randy [email protected]



The life expectancy of abulb doesn’t seem solong when so many

just seem to die off on adaily basis. Statistics andperformance along withdatasheets are fine onprint, but reality is a differ-ent ball game altogether. Iguess the fact that theyaren’t treated with muchtender loving care by someslot machine players doesplay a major role in it. Wevery diplomatically ask ourclients to treat the buttons

gently as hitting the crapout of them won’t get themachine to work any betteror to suddenly becomemega generous and rewardthem with a nice juicyjackpot. It just doesn’twork like that. Really, itdoesn’t. I usually get asurprised look back with acomment like “Oh, I’msorry, I won’t do that again,promise” while they look atme again smiling the nicestpossible smile ever to showme that they are sorry.Actually I think that theyreally are at that momentin time as they don’t meanany harm but get a little bit

too involved and sort offorget themselves some-what. The gentlenesswould work for a few mo-ments and then the bash-ing treatment would com-mence again.

The thought that thesepeople could have shares inthe bulb industry doescome to mind occasionallybut the idea will soon bediscarded as a load of rub-bish and utter nonsense.There are no shares in-volved at all. These peoplejust do that to annoy me.I’ve got better things to dothan to change button

The Life and Times of a BulbBy James Borg


lights for the rest of my life.However, I found a greatway of avoiding that . . . bytelling my trusty side-kickMarco, the maintenanceguru, to change them forme. He does a wonderfuljob. I think I would be lostwithout him as he reallydoes a great deal in there.

As luck would have it, dur-ing a somewhat busy shift,my attention was chan-neled to one particularAtronic upright game. Themachine had a touchscreen installed but appar-ently this one wasn’t behav-ing itself. It’s awfully frus-trating for a client whenpoking a particular area onthe screen during a featureof the game and the re-sponse expected isn’t thedesired one. It would beeven more frustrating if thearea the client wanted topoke indicated a nice sumto be won and as destinywould have it, the screenwould activate a differentarea with a much lowerwin. I wonder if “MachineFailure Voids All Plays andWins” would apply in thissituation. Very doubtful Iwould imagine. Manycolourful verbal phrases ofthe extremely abusive na-ture would be heard in thebackground when thishappens and we can’t toler-ate that sort of thing…suchshocking behaviour…so theproblem had to be seen toand rectified immediately, ifnot sooner. One slightsnag though (wonder ofwonders). There wasn’t aspare screen to replace it

with (more wonder of won-ders)… so it was a case ofadministering first aid onthe spot. A quick calibra-tion on the screen workedwonderfully and all signsshowed green. All systemsare GO. The source wherethe extremely abusive andcolourful phrases wereoriginating from seemedhappy now that his screenhas been calibrated andcould carry on playing withsome peace of mind. Insuch situations, a client’speace of mind is also mypeace of mind. You justhave to keep these peoplehappy and things will workout nicely. It was just aquestion of waiting for thefree features to pop up andthe area on the screenpoked and activated wouldbe the desired one, leavingthe client happy with thewinnings showed.

It was slowly becoming oneof those days for nastycomments as the clientcomplained that the samething had happened. Heinsisted that the machine’seither fixed orwe’re pulling afast one to robhim of hisproper win-nings. Hedemanded tosee a managerand would takethis to higherauthorities asit’s not fair onpeople like himwho come toplay therethinking the

place was regulated andend up being cheated. Itwent on for quite a whileand my attempts to calmhim down were futile. I felta headache coming up.Who invented touchscreens anyway? Who wasthat wise-guy that thoughthe was doing me a favour?Why do they not work asthey should? If I’m pokinga particular area, why onEarth is the response show-ing miles away? If I want togo up, why should I godown? If I want to go left,why should I go right? Notgood. Not good at all. Iended up explaining to theclient that the screen mustbe damaged (hardly sur-prising with all the punish-ment these get, Must bethe same people that hitthe buttons and blow thebulbs…and annoy me inthe process) but all is notlost. Further explanationsfollowed that the client canuse the buttons instead ofpoking the screen to makehis choice when need beand totally forget thescreen. A life saver? A

Atronic Button Assembly


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good alternative? A prob-lem solver? Rather prom-ising. At least he can’t gowrong there (or so Ithought).

It was supposed to be prettysimple. Four choices onthe screen to chose fromand four buttons light up,each corresponding to eachchoice accordingly. Whatcan be simpler that that?Just to make sure that thescreen isn’t used again, Ipulled out the dc connectorfrom the touch screeninterface which disabled ittotally. One of the slotsteam (namely Jair, alsoknown as “The man withthe deadly hands”) put asticker on the machinesaying “KINDLY USE BUT-TONS DURING BONUSFEATURE”.

Pretty neat actually andthat should save me quite abit of agro ‘till the screen’sup and running as itshould. With that happynote, the client was leftagain to his own devices. Iwas feeling better nowknowing that the screenhas been temporarily elimi-nated since this was thecause of the problems,which generated vastamounts of words not pos-sible to utter in church.

It wasn’t too long into myshift and I still hadn’t hadmy hot chocolate which wasbeginning to generatewithdrawal symptoms.However, thoughts of sucha nice warm drink with

chocolate powder on topwent up in smoke when theclient with the previousproblem stormed in theoffice stating that the samething had happened. Ianswered back politelytelling him that it’s impos-sible as the touch screenon the game has beentotally disabled. He cameback with “I didn’t use thetouch screen; I used thebuttons as you told me to!”

Oh help! What could havehappened? How did it gowrong? Did the clienttouch the wrong buttonwhich obviously didn’t gethis desired response? Didan invisible hand fromnowhere touch the wrongbutton for him just to irri-tate him? Was he pullingmy leg? Come to think ofit, I don’t think the legpulling business was plau-

When the touchscreen fails, the players can use the buttons. Or canthey? It’s tough when the buttons fail to light properly.

Editor’s note: At the risk of offending Mr. Borg, I must comment thatthis button panel looks disgusting. The plastic caps are cracked andthe panel is filthy. If I was a player, I wouldn’t touch this game.


sible as he had veins andarteries of different coloursprotruding from all over hisface and neck indicatingthat he was slightly upset,so it wasn’t a good time forme to laugh, or evensnigger.

A quick dash to the ma-chine in question showedthat one of the buttons,PLAY 1 LINE, the first tothe left actually, was agoner. Not a speck of lightwas being emitted from it.This was supposed to corre-spond to the first left choiceon the screen, which wasthe biggest amount theclient could choose fromthe four options. It wasn’tcoming on to show theclient that it’s an option ofthe game and can be de-pressed as desired. Thisled to the client pressingthe one next to it whichwas lit, namely PLAY 5LINES which was the wrongbutton leading to the wrongchoice which madewaves…more like tsunamisized waves. Ididn’t know whatto say as I waspretty sure thatthe button wascoming on justthe day before.Having said that,a lot can happenin 24 hours andlosing a bulb oversuch a periodwasn’t exactlysurprising.Things weren’tlooking so bril-liant. The clientwasn’t amused. I

wasn’t amused. The peoplearound him weren’tamused. The peoplearound me weren’t amused.Nobody was amused andthey stared at me as if toblame me for the bulb notworking. I suddenly startedfeeling very guilty. I didn’thire a hit-man to take thatparticular bulb out. Whyshould everybody blame mefor it? To add insult toinjury and to further rub itin, a voice from the back-ground said “Hey! That alsohappened to me earlier on.Do I get any compensa-tion?”

It felt awful. It felt like areally bad day all of a sud-den and it wasn’t going toget any better. I could feelit in the air. Composingmyself and dwelling aboutthe angry mob that hadalready gone to find a ropeto lynch me, it suddenly hitme. It’s just a bulb that’sgone! No big deal. Only atwo- minute operation. Acinch…a walk in the

This is the schematic diagram of the lamp driver circuit. Note thatthe +12 vdc power supply is connected to one side of each of thelamps and it is the GROUND (the return path) that is switched on andoff through the ULN2003 Darlington array.

This is what’s inside theULN2003. It’s not an inte-grated circuit in the truesense of the term. Rather, it issimply seven individualDarlington transistor arrays ina 16 pin DIP.


park…don’t know why allthis panic in the first place.With that, I dashed off tomy workshop to get a newbulb. The client in ques-tion was on my mind andhow I can compensate himsomehow for his losses. Imean after all, none of whathad happened was his faultin the first place. Havingsaid that, none of what hadhappened was my faulteither. I don’t think I’dmake a great picture hang-ing from a tree but I kepthaving constant flashes ofthat haunting me.

The workshop wasn’t far offfrom the machine in ques-tion, so I was back on thescene of the disaster withina few seconds. Up comesthe Perspex button cover toexpose the bulb and thereit was looking at me fromdown this hole, all lone-some and somewhat dusty.I felt sorry for it as it hadafter all passed away but

that can’t be helped. Lifegoes on. Out with theold and in with the new.I was expecting theFUBAR bulb to lookblack. It didn’t. It lookedfine actually which reallywasn’t a good sign. Still,it’s best to change it justthe same as even thoughit might look fine, it stillwon’t be. Taking twosteps back and waitingfor the bulb to blind mewith its brightness . . .Shock! Horror! It didn’tcome on. Oh. Why not?Could I have been thatunlucky to have pickedout the only dead newbulb out of a packet of athousand? The trip tothe workshop and backto the machine was per-formed one more time,but this time with adifferent new bulb.More shock and horror!Oh damn! I’ve changedquite a few of theselamps in the past and so

Replace the ULN2003 at U7 and you’re good to go!


far all of them worked firsttime. I was quite sur-prised, to say the least, thatthis one didn’t respond asexpected, twice over. I toldthe client that I needed tosee what the problem wasand repair it before it canbe played any more. With amoan and a very nasty look,he vacated it leaving me towork on it in peace. Atleast he didn’t bring up thesubject of compensationagain thank goodness as Ihadn’t come up with anysuitable ideas on that issueyet.

I pulled the whole thing outfrom the back for a betterlook. Nothing seemed outof place somehow so I gotmy multimeter out to do acouple of checks.

Entering into diagnosticmode and removing thebulb to check if the supplywas actually arriving to theinside of the holder was agood move. There wassupply on one of the pins tothe bulb while none on theother. Fair enough.There’s a potential differ-ence, which will then allowcurrent to flow through thebulb and make it work. Itlooked like the holder itselfwas damaged somehow. Noproblem as I had loads ofthose. A third trip to theworkshop was made and anew holder was in place ofthe original one in a jiffy.Bulb in place and I feltmyself trembling with greatExpectations but nothing.Nada. Pause… Blank look…Confused look… Cheesed

off look? I suddenly hadthis urge for a hot chocolateso I retired to the office totake five and re-group mythoughts as I seemed to beon the wrong track on thisjob somehow. It just wasn’tmaking much sense. Whensomething as simple aschanging a bulb becomes afull-scale operation, it’stime to plan the campaignproperly.

Rooting out the schematicand having a look at thepossible cause of this di-lemma, the bulb itself wasconnected to the buttonboard through connectorJ7 pin 14 and then to U7(ULN2003) pin 14. Thischip is a high voltage andhigh current Darlingtontransistor array and it’sbeen designed to take somepunishment. It’s usedwidely on stepper motors,relay driver applicationsand of course to drive bulbson these machines.

Several continuity testsfrom the bulb holder to thechip itself were fine. DCchecks on the chip weregiving unexpected resultsso at this stage the bestthing to do was to pull itout, solder an IC socket andput in a new chip. Luckily Ifound one running around(even more wonder of won-ders). I don’t always findwhat I need so it looked likemy luck was beginning toturn at last.

Removing it from the boardwasn’t a big problem as Ihad a good solder pump

handy and the throughplating holes were nice andwide. I was quite happywith the soldering opera-tion and after cleaning theexcess flux from under-neath, I usually admire thejoints as most of the timeone can’t make out whichwere the ones I did to theoriginal ones from thefactory.

DC checks on the relatedpins on U7 when comparedto other pins were all simi-lar now which seemed verypromising indeed. Now theonly thing left to do was totake it to its machine, plugit in and wait for it to comeon. It just had to come onnow. Nothing else could bewrong surely. With thatpositive thought still freshin my mind, I had a lastsmoke and went to do thedeed. The client with thecolourful language wasn’tto be seen. I suppose it’snot so bad at this stage as ifhe saw me going to ‘his’machine and switching iton, he might think that it’sfixed and would want toplay on it. It was a bit diceyas I didn’t know if it wasgoing to work or not myselfbut I was very hopeful. I’ma forever hopeful type ofguy actually.

Fitting in the board and allits related plugs in theircorresponding sockets wasquickly seen to. It was justa matter of turning themachine on whilst holdingmy breath and keeping myfingers crossed. I supposeit was now or never and


with that, the machine’sjuice switch was flicked ONand it came to life. Withinseconds the screen cameup and so far so good. Willthere be light at the end ofthis tunnel at least?

Entering diagnostic modeto check the state of thebulbs brought a silent‘Yipppeeeeeee!’ I couldn’treally shout it out loud orstart jumping up and downfor joy as there were peoplearound and I didn’t wantthem to think that I wascompletely mental. Just tomake sure, I went‘Yipppeeeeeeee’ again,always silently of course. Ibreathed a sigh of relief.

The PLAY 1 LINE bulb hadactually come on. What anice fault to tackle this was.Pretty logical – usually isonce the fault has beenlocated. Have to admit thatit had me thinking for awhile but after saying that,life’s never boring in herein more ways than one, andthe beauty about it is thatthere are thousands ofsimilar bulbs out there justwaiting to stop glowing andbe changed. What joy butsurely it’s just a two minuteoperation (or is it)?

- James [email protected]

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When Good Voltage GoesBad

This was a pretty wildordeal and, as RandyFromm would say, I “let

the smoke out” of some stuff.All I did was to replace themain game power supply andwow! Something got reallyhot. It happened to be on anAristocrat game where theprinter is located in the toppart of the machine (Aristo-crat Mark VI with a GEN 1ticket printer). I was toldthat the game was blowingfuses and wouldn’t power up.The main power fuse waschecked and it looked ok, sowhat was the problem? Whenthe power switch was turnedon, the game did nothing. Nosign of life with the excep-tion of the tracking system.The Oasis Sentinel, cardreader and display wereworking fine. I checked theconnections at the maingame power supply andeverything looked good. Theconnections were checked atthe backplane board too.Nothing looked loose or out ofplace.

No power, possible bad powersupply right? I replaced itwith a spare and flipped themain power switch back on.Again, nothing! What the . ..? Oops! I had forgotten toplug the AC power cable backinto it. Corrected that littleitem and hit the powerswitch again. This time I hadsome action and the gamestarted booting up.

I thought to myself, “Awe-some! The game is back upand running again.”

I finished putting it backtogether and walked away. Iwas half way across thegaming floor when a co-worker approached me.

“Pat, it smells like that gameyou just worked on is burn-ing up!”

Darn! What happened? Ireturned to the game rightaway and sure enough, youcould smell something burn-ing. It smelled electrical andit smelled bad. Right away, Iturned the machine off andput my hand on the powersupply. It was cold. Hmmmm.Interesting. I examineddifferent areas of the game(such as power connectionson the backplane board) but Ididn’t see anything that hadstarted to melt. Next, Ilooked at the upper part ofthe game. At the same time,I was feeling for anythingthat was warm. Wow, there

it was. The “power board”(aka COM board) locateddirectly behind the ticketprinter-the ribbon cableplugs into it-was extremelyhot to the touch.

I started to remove the com-plete printer assembly butthe cable that connects thepower board to the game (onthe printer side) had startedto melt and it wouldn’t comedisconnected! I had to take itoff from the backplane boardside. You could see that theboard had actually started tomelt! It was pretty bad.

Now the tricky part. What inthe world CAUSED it to gointo a meltdown? I thoughtabout trying to repair thewire harness. Luckily, wehad just ordered a replace-ment. When it arrived thefollowing week, I installedthe cable along with a re-placement printer and, ofcourse, a replacement powerboard. I admit I was a bitnervous to turn on the powerswitch this time. Well, heregoes. “Fire in the hole!” Thepower was turned back on.

I didn’t smell anything burn-ing (a good sign) and I feltthe power board to makesure that it wasn’t heatingup, and it wasn’t. I waited afew minutes and closed thedoor of the game. Now I hada “printer disconnected”error that didn’t want toclear. What else happened?

Quick and Simple Repairs #48By Pat Porath


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Did something on the gameI/O board get fried too?Maybe something on themain processor board? Ichecked a few things andremembered that I wasn’tsure of one of the connec-tors, was it plugged in ornot? The game next door wasopened for comparison. Itwas suppose to be plugged in.I installed the connector,turned the game back on andclosed the main door onceagain. This time no errors atall, the bill acceptor was litup and, most importantly,there was no smoke! I wentinto test mode and printedsix test tickets. All of themwere OK. Finally the gamewas back online. But whatcaused the printer’s powerboard/ COM board to burnup? One theory I came upwith is that a small nut orbolt somehow got behind theboard and directly shorted itout because there were afew nuts and bolts rollingaround the topbox area. Myother theory is the caps onthe board simply went badand caused it to burn up.There were two small capson it that were totallyburned off. Either way, thegame is back online and bestof all, no smoke.

Funny thing, the incendiaryincident was the talk of theday and even into the nextmorning. First thing in themorning, before I evenstarted my shift, a co-workerasked me “Pat, what are yougoing to burn up today?” Welaughed.

“Other Duties”

Don’t get me wrong, I usuallyenjoy my job. You know,working on slot machines,our casino signage once in a


while, ticket printers and soon. When “other duties”come along, they can be kindof fun too. On this particularday, our slot tournamentlights needed to be moved toa different area of the gam-ing floor because the tourna-ment machines had beenmoved. I had helped set upthe variety of lights so I alsohelped in taking them down.The lights are pretty neat.They include a variety of DJlight assemblies such as amulti-colored “disco ball”that rotates and others thatflash on and off with themusic. My project of the daywas to crawl up into the atticabove the old slot tourna-ment area and disconnectthe lights, power cables, andpower controller. All of thelights plugged into the powercontroller. Each one had itsown channel on the lightcontroller which has pre-programmed settings or canbe set to “go with the beat” ofthe music. Not only thelights needed to be discon-nected but all of the exten-sion cords and such neededto be taken out too. My con-cern was falling through theceiling! There were onlysome planks for a walkway.One wrong step would not begood. The power plugsneeded to be taken off of thelights too. We couldn’t drill a2'’ hole into the ceiling torun power so we cut off theend and drilled a 1/2'’ holeinstead. The cable was runthrough the ceiling and thepower plug was put on upthere. While I was working, Ithought I would take acouple of pictures. Is it veryoften you get to see picturesof the attic of a casino? Itdidn’t take a very long andthe task was complete. All of

the power cords, cables, andextension cords were re-moved, another project com-plete.

Atronic e-motion Presenta-tion Error

When I first was told that anAtronic game was out ofservice because of a “presen-tation error” I admit I didn’thave a clue what it meant.Later on I was told that itmeant “paper jam.” After thegame’s power supply wasreplaced (it had gone badduring a reboot) and afterthe Oasis Sentinel wasreplaced (somehow it wentbad too) the error remained.The game was RAM clearedbut the “presentation error”still remained. Then it wasnoticed that the printer hada ticket jammed in it. Ofcourse once the ticket jamwas cleared and the ma-chine reset was done withthe key, the game was fine.It was kind of weird though,we were unaware what a“presentation error” was atfirst. Now we know what the

error means and where tolook for the problem.

Bluebird Machine Move-Topper Problem

“Topper” (not to be confusedwith “topbox”) is the very toppart of a machine which hasa type of theme in it (such as“Hot Hot Penny) and thecandle (AKA service light ortower) sits on top of it. Theunit almost always hasflashing and or rotatingsmall lights on it too. Theycome in a variety of shapessuch as oval, shield andround. A “topbox” on a WMSusually consists of the bonuspart of a game. These gamesare also tall in form factor.Two different examples ofgames that have topboxesare Top Gun and The Wizardof Oz.

Anyway, some regular gameswere moved to a differentlocation on the floor andtoppers needed to be put onthem. So, the move wascompleted and toppers wereinstalled. Here is where it


starts to get a bit interest-ing. This game had beenmoved and now it would notboot up. I checked the 110Vac main lines in the gameand they were all connectedand in place. I was told thatthe power supply had beenreplaced so more than likelythat wasn’t the problem. Iturned the game off and on afew times and checked the“voltage indicator lights”located on the motherboard.I noticed something. Whenthe game was turned on, ALLof the lights flash on, andthen the majority went out.This looked like power supplyproblem to me but since ithad already been replaced,there may be a short some-where in the game. Asstated earlier, I checked the110v lines and they alllooked ok. At the time I onlythought the game was onlymoved to a different location.Then I was trying to think(sometimes scary) what elsehas been done to the game?Was it converted, were dropsjust done on it, or did it havea problem before it wasmoved? Then I remembered.Toppers were just installed!The game was working justfine before, now it isn’t. Withthe power turned off, I re-moved the topglass anddisconnected EVERYTHINGthat had to do with the top-per. Now it was time to turnon the power switch, onceagain, to see what happensthis time. Awesome! All ofthe “voltage indicator lights”stayed lit and the gamestarted booting up! This toldme that there was a goodchance that there was awire that was shorting out toground. I took the topper offand right away there weretwo spots in a wire that werebare. I cut the wire, stripped

the ends and put a longpiece of heat shrinkabletubing over the place thatwas cut and the other barespot. I had to borrow alighter-my Zippo happened tobe out of fluid-and heated upthe heat shrink clamping ittightly to the wire. Every-thing was put back together(topper put back on, connec-tors plugged back in, and thetop glass of the game putback in) and the power wasturned back on again. Thewire repair was good, thevoltage was OK and held,and the game started bootingup. Awesome! Another gamerepaired and back online.

Aristocrat Viridian Wouldn’tBoot

I was called to a Viridian(Aristocrats newest game onthe market) because it

wouldn’t boot up all the way.The machine would start toboot, then it would stop at“checking smart card” andfreeze up. I reseated thesmart card and the mainprocessor, but no luck.Thinking that the smart cardmay be the problem, Iswapped it with the gamenext to it. They were both“Mr. Woo” programs so itshouldn’t be a problem. Theknown good card was putinto the game that had theproblem and it was turned


back on and started bootingup perfectly. When it wentpast the part of “checkingsmart card” it looked like thecard was indeed bad. Sureenough it booted up all theway and was fine. Just tomake sure that the card wasbad, I put it in the othergame and it froze up. Thecard was definitely bad. Iwas hoping we had a sparebut unfortunately we didn’tso one had to be ordered.You have to love“swaptronics”. The suspectedpart was swapped and theproblem found.

Older IGT S2000 Reel 3 Tilts

I had a complaint that thisparticular game was having alot of reel 3 tilts. I dropped acoin in to give it a spin (yes,we still have a few coingames) and the third reelbasket had a bit of a bouncewhen it stopped. From pastexperience, this indicated tome that the stepper motorwas getting tired. Figure thethird reel spins about threetimes longer than the firstreel, or so, it makes sensethat the motor would wearfirst. In the shop a spareassembly was found. Theonly thing needed to be donewas to put the “basket withreel strip” on the replace-ment. I brought the completereel assembly to the gamefor the test. Even though itwas on the “good parts shelf”I wanted to make sure it didin fact work and I wanted todo a quick paytable test.

The reel was put into thegame and a quick partialpaytable test was done andall looked fine. Sevens werein line and triple bars werein line. I also did a reel stop(three reel game) of 03-03

and 04, to make sure thesymbols were in the correctposition, and they were. Twosymbols were lined up withone off by a “step.” The gamepassed that test too, evenwithout tilts so far. Next Idropped in some coins andspun the game four times.All appeared to be fine andthe game was put back inplay. Granted, I could haveswapped reels with anothergame, done reel tests at thegame, and played the gamemyself just to make SUREthat the reel motor was badbut I figured just to replaceit. So far so good, the reelassembly is still working asfar as I know. I haven’t heardof any complaints yet.

GEN 1 Printer Cable Problem

When I arrived at the printerproblem, an IGT slant topS2000, the display showed“paper out.” The game wasopened up and obviously itwas not out of paper so thatwasn’t the problem. Next, Iturned the game off andremoved the printer from thegame. Could the ribbon cable

that is torn up and has a fewbare wires showing be theproblem? The answer is yes,without a doubt. Since theprinter is out of the gamewhy not check to see if itneeds to be brought to theshop for a good cleaning? Itwas checked out and wasn’tbad. A little bit of dust hereand there but I didn’t see theneed to put it on the benchso I only went to the shop fora new cable. Back at thegame, the new cable was puton and the printer was in-stalled back in the game.Soon after the power switchwas turned back on, paperwas fed into the printerhead. It took the paper and itdidn’t have an error! Thiswas a very good sign. I closedthe door on the machine andthere weren’t any errors.Will it print some test tick-ets? There is only one way tofind out. Three ticketsprinted perfectly. It looks likethe only thing bad was thecable. Once again, anothergame back online.

- Pat [email protected]


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The - Slot Technical Departmentslot-tech.com/members/magazine/lores/march09.pdf · Recently, I had a lot of fun fixing a big stack of IGT power supplies. The failure rate for these