New Life Games Tech Forums

Hi, all.

I figured I'd document this in case someone is looking in the future.

I had a stand-alone Mikohn controller from a friend and fellow  :nlg- member sitting in a box for a while that needed to (hopefully) be re-programmed.  It had never been working since he got the machine (and in fact didn't work for the previous owner, either).  It turns out that the power supply had fried, and a new(er) power supply borrowed from a Mikohn Supreme fit the bill perfectly.

Once it was plugged in, the following appeared on the display:

(http://i53.tinypic.com/102qlgk.jpg)

(http://i55.tinypic.com/sonv9z.jpg)

(http://i55.tinypic.com/2nvzom.jpg)

(The "EMPTY" message is then all that would appear even after powering the sign off and back on.)

I had a devil of a time connecting to it, as I was using PSP and selecting "OLD" from the menu.  (I've only worked on ChamII+ controllers before and that's what you use to connect to them.)  I had pretty much given up and had packed the thing back in its box when I found a tiny little tidbit in this post (http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=13704.msg118820#msg118820).  In order to connect to these things, you need to select "CON1" as the connection type in PSP.

I suppose I should back up a step.  To connect to this controller, you need a computer with an available serial port (and an operating system that will let you get at it), a Mikohn-jumpered cable, and the PSP software.  All three of these things have been covered multiple times in multiple threads here in the Mikohn section of the site, so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel.  I'm lucky enough to have a hand-me-down Windows XP laptop that I've dedicated to Mikohn stuff, and a serial cable that I modified so it will connect to Mikohn controllers.

Once I connected via the CON1 setting, everything was a breeze, and I never had any issue with losing communication, even an hour later as I was tweaking stuff!  I was able to send jackpot information, fix the currency and decimal point placement, send messages, etc.  In the messages screen, number 5 (jpot.do) is the primary jackpot display.  I suppose at a minimum you'd need a New Paragraph symbol, a Jackpot Token, and the number 0 to make it display the jackpot.  You can add text effects (like Dance or Paint) to make the display come alive.  I chose Dance, as Paint was REALLY SLOW.

I used Jack1.do and Jack2.do for a couple of simple messages -- the first one scrolls and says, "SPIN THREE JACKPOT SYMBOLS TO WIN..." (and then shows the progressive dollar amount again when it scrolls off).  The second one says, "Good Luck!" and uses the throb feature to make the text animate a little.  Those messages cycle through every minute or so, and alternate with displaying the jackpot amount.

I did not choose to use message 6 (mess.do), but of note if you do, you HAVE to also enable it on page 2 from the main menu (Jackpot Summary screen) by pressing F3 on that screen to toggle the option from ---- to MESG.  Also, "If you select MESG, the MESS.DO message will cycle or display on a CHAMELEON after being an idle state for two minutes." -- that means, no coin-in or anything for two minutes.

Of course, I don't have the machine here to plug 'er in and make sure that the machine is incrementing the display, but the darn thing looks good and should be good to go.   :89-

Here's a picture of the board I was working on -- click on it for HUGE version of the picture with some nice detail.

Excellent post knagl!  :3-
I'd like to point out to anyone with one of these controllers to be very careful around the right hand side of it.
The 10 transistors near the flat ribbon cable get really hot!
I slightly burned my hands on those once! Yowzer!