ROMS and lamp position explained
2532 EPROMS have a different pinout to 2732 so the ROM card has to be configured
to make it take the 2732 eproms. Fortunately, Paul Gee provided the much needed information
at the time as he had an alternate ROM card.
I was doing it by trial and error I seem
to recall and there are a lot of possibilities.
By definition (quote from Magik), the differences in the looms will mean although
the looms physically fit, the select and drive pin numbers to operate each lamp will
be different when you compare RD to RE. For example, the ‘exchange light’ on RE might
actually be the '2 nudges' light on RD and so on. There’s no standard format for
lamp allocations on any fruit machine, it just depends what the designers did in
the factory at the time, so a conversion isn't as simple as just bunging in the loom
from another machine.
It will take lots of time to do, but what you actually need
to do is get a scrap lamp loom, strip it down and then wire your own lamp loom using
the wiring diagram from resources. You could do it by sending the blue plug up to
a distribution board and then wiring your own loom into that. Use an MPU4 distribution
board and that’ll mean the only tricky part will be wiring the blue plug to a 0.156
molex, the rest will be straight forward.
Remember also, that on some machines, the
white triac plug is serving some of the lamps, the unused payslide drives becoming
extra lamp drives.
You’ll get it, but it wont be an overnight project.
Again that's an interesting solution, the top lamp loom from RE is socketed from the main loom presumably to allow the glass to be removed with the masks and lamps still attached without stripping out the entire machine loom or removing the top lamps. This wasn't the case for Golden Award, but Steve's RD does have the same arrangement so this must have come later on.
I do have the molex crimpers and I could use MPU4 connectors and an MPU4 distribution board, so I could do this option.
Before I do though, I need to see whether the existing loom can be modified as it
is. The distances between lamp holders in the top glass are not that great. Unless
I am really unlucky and 2 nudges is far left and 4 nudges is far right, I'm sure
a lot can be made to fit. Having said that, I won't know until I get started?
It’s
certainly given me something to thing about though.
I've been pressing on with the
project. I wanted to make a start of the reel bands and after taking pictures of
the Steve's machine, I've been working on the fruit/symbol images today.
I had problems
with some of the images being out of focus, cherry 2, plum 5, grape and grape 4.
It's very hard to photograph a reel drum, in focus, without the flash burning out
the image. Fortunately, I was able to clone the numbers and cut them out in photoshop,
so I can drop the numbers on to the base fruit. Now I've got the numbers, I can get
a grape image from Exchanges Galore and drop a number 4 onto it. (I couldn't match
the font closely enough which was a shame)
I haven't finished them all, but I've blacken
them up, squared them up, removed the marks and scratches and cropped most of them.
Once all the fruit and symbols are finished, I can create a layer for the gold background
and drop the fruit on to it.
Next stage then is to size up the layout and check the
spacing, after that, I don't mind who prints them out, either through the Mecca or
I'll talk nicely to my boss and maybe print them in work, but we’ll see?