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I was wondering if you need to do an e prom clear if you change A SP 731 to a SP1271. I hear that the 1271 chip is a better chip.

I believe that just by changing the chip itself will clear everything...including the bill acceptor.
You'll need a SET chip to get the bill acceptor going again.
I may be wrong because I've never owned an SP731.
Maybe others will chime in and help you out.

A set chip will be required to set the denomination and re-enable the bill validator.  Also, if you use any kind of progressive a set chip will be required.  SP731 enabled the progresive via dip switches.  A clear or clear chip will not be needed.

Dan #2

Just to add that the machine will only carry forward the values in the bookkeeping meters that are cross-compatible: total coin in & out, and a few others. Since the books in the SP1271 are greatly expanded and use sub-menus which are not used in the SP731, the rest of the values will be zeroed out. If you care about the values in the meters, be sure and write them down before changing the game chip.

"Better" is a relative term.

The SP1271 counts up credits much faster and has expanded books. It does not allow song changes in type 5 games (4^th of July and Coral Reef, for example). The SP731 has seven different song choices for those types of games, but slower credit accrual and simpler books. The books in the SP1271 require many more turns of the jackpot key to get through their main menus and cannot be navigated with the panel buttons. This can be a PITA, especially if you only want to review the most recent spin history and then get back to game play mode. This is easy with the SP731 because one can press a panel button to move quickly through the choices and exit the menus.

The SP1271 has separate settings for the hopper limit, jackpot lockup amount, credit limit, and partial pay amounts. The SP731 only has a hopper limit and partial pay amount. This option is important to a lot of home owners who want to run their machines with very few coins in the hopper. The SP1271 will allow you to accrue lots of credits and then zero them out by pressing cash out and turning the JP reset key. The SP731 can't be set up that way because the hopper limit and credit limit and jackpot lockup levels are all one setting.

The SP731 is a little easier to set up because one can use the panel buttons to move backwards and forwards through the test/setup menus. The method of seeing the virtual stops and spinning to the payouts is simpler to use and a bit "cooler". However, it is more time consuming if one wants to go through all of the virtual stops; the SP1271 has an edge in that case. The SP1271 makes things more difficult by requiring the test button be pressed to advance through the menus. The front buttons cannot be used for this and there is no going backwards if one passes the desired option.

As already stated, the SP731 doesn't require a chip to set up a progressive but the SP1271 does. However, the SP1271 has more options for different progressive setups.

Finally, while a clear chip is not required, I believe that all home S+ owners should have at least one set chip (set 015 or 026) and an IVC103 clear chip. You can usually buy the clear and set together on fleapay or from one of our vendors. You may never need the clear chip, but it's nice to have handy. The most common set chip for an SP1271 progressive setup is set090 but there are others.

Going from a 731 to a 1271 is generally not too much of a problem. Occasionally you will get a 65-3, a turn of the reset key and it gotos a 65-2 followed by the self-test button gets you to the familar 65-1 that we normally get after a game change. This is a lot more common if you are going backwards say from a 1271 to a 731. Mostly this will happen if you have a option set in the 731 that is no longer supported by the 1271, such as an alternate song.

The reason for the error is that a lot of the information that is kept in CMOS is in a different format between the two chips.