The donor loom explained
The process of looming the Razzle Dazzle consists of a loom from a donor machine
Royal Exchange. Although RE is close in terms of the layout of the glass and therefore
the position of the lamps, there are some inconsistencies in some of the lamp positions.
For
now, all I can do is match it as best I can from the roulette wheel. RD lamps ran
left to right on the trail whereas RE lamps went right to left when looking at the
glass.
I have absolutely no idea at this point whether any of the lamps are in the
correct position, but you have to start somewhere.
RD has 11 lamps on the bottoms
glass excluding switch lamps. RE only had 7. This means it may be necessary to extend
some of the lamps higher up in the loom to add these extra bulbs.
There will be some
fiddling about here no doubt, but it can't be any worse than sorting the lamps in
Golden Crowns, so I am confident I can get it sorted.
It looks a mess at the moment,
but there is some logic to my approach, it will work out in the end.
There are 5 lamps hanging unused from the top lamp loom. RD needs 11 lamps on the bottom glass, I have 7 from RE so the 5 from the top loom should cover those which leaves 1 spare.
Steve's RD machine has a missing bulb in the top left lamp matrix (there is a hole
in the mask but no lamp, I'm sure this is correct), so that could potentially free
up another bulb as I have 3 bulbs missing from the right hand side of the my RD top
mask. (these are the 20p, 50p, £1 price of play lamps)
They may be 1 bulb difference
in the looms.
I know exactly what's going to happen when I power it, the lamps will
be all over the place. I will need a video of the RD attract mode sequence to locate
each bulb and put it in the correct place. I am sure some won't reach where they
should be, also the roulette wheel could be wired upside down on RD so the numbers
could be top to bottom?
Until I have the ROMs I won't know. For extensions, I'll make
up some spaded wires at the required length.
I don't want to damage the RE loom. It
occurred to me that if a set of RD glasses exists with the masks, then maybe some
one will have an RD loom and a program card for it? You just never know what's out
there until it appears on ebay. (I could be dreaming though?)
I also damaged the 10p
payout slide when I pulled the spades off it, so that will need replacing.
I'm really
waiting on ROMS and Reel bands now.
I'm actually pondering whether I could make up
a set of rough reel bands just to get me into the testing phase.
There is a fair amount of flexibility in the RE loom. Most of the lamps are on the top glass. By detaching the loom ties it should be possible to re-route certain bulbs. I'll know when I start doing it, some will definitely need extenders. I'm confident I can do it.
I just need to chill with a beer and work it until it's finished. I also have the remains of an MPU4 loom with the spade connectors which can be used if needed.