New Life Games Tech Forums

I came over to house from shop @ 5.
We had about 10 power surges last night. Games were off so I can't believe that caused problem.
Turned on 99 Bottles of Beer. 36 code. easy fix. Pulled printer out & put back in. All OK
Turned on Diamonds & Devils. 88 code with reset flashing. Did partial clear - all OK.
Turned on Double Diamond Haywire. Ran it & checked out. Would not pay tokens & printer was not available.
Did a clear & reprogrammed . Now it works.
Did not check other games yet.
Life sucks.  :208- :208-


The only other that was screwed up was Game Maker. All I had to do was reset.

Wow Ford that's interesting.  The machines were all powered off?  I figured if machines were powered off, and a surge (or several surges) come through, there wouldn't be any danger.  If the games were on, I wouldn't be surprised. 

Glad your babies are ok!  ;)

Jason

The surge musta come in through the neutral line or ground then. I believe the power switches only open the hot lead to the machine

On the S2000 the power switch controls both wires because the two switching supplies are 110-240VAC input.
Yes I did say are two supplies, one behind the reels and one that powers the comm board, and the small service light
the small supply is on the whole time the machine is plugged in.

Makes sense . with the power off if you open the door the light still comes on

The DD Haywire started acting up again. Reels would slow down.
Stuck another board in that I had for spare parts & so far it's working.

From now on I'll pull the plug

Would a Surge Protected Power Strip help?

I don't know if the surge caused it for sure. A car hit a pole & Electric keep going on & off.
I took for granted that that caused it. I have Wal Mart surge protected power strips on all games.
Seemed odd trouble with 4 games

How about the less important things that were plugged in like refrigerator, ac, etc?   :72-   All ok?

Electricity can do some strange things!

Everything else OK

Must of been just pure rotten luck then...
That's crazy for such a high percentage of your machines
go on the blink like that all at once...

You better go buy a lottery ticket... :96-

Or watch out for that satellite that is coming down.

With my luck I'll get hit with it.
I did not have any luck this week. Wednesday I took a quick stop @ local casino. $135.00 & didn't hit crap so I came home.
I was only there about 30 min.

I just realized that I don't have a life.
1900 posts :279-

Nah, when you catch up to Bunker, THEN you can say that.  :72-

Ford, when you're not home, the slot machines gather round in a huddle and discuss how they can challenge your patience by creating complex troubleshooting exercises for you.  They don't just multiply in the dark, they plot against the users.  ;)

Jason

With all my slots plugged into a power strip I leave all slot power switches on. Just shutoff the powerstrip to shutdown all machines. The slot power switches on my Uni Ultra's disconnect the hot and neutral like the S2000. With the power strip the neutral is still connected when switched off, only the hot gets disconnected. So my slots stay connected to the neutral even when they're off.
Sounds like I should be unplugging the power strip from the wall socket to avoid a similar situation as FORDSBS.

I think it was just a rare phenomenal event...
I've never heard of this happening before in this way?  :129-

We've had complete casino power outages with brown outs and everything but
the machines all came back to life as normal when the power was restored.
The back up power generators immediately turned on but only for security cameras, electronic surveillance and public safety items. The machines stayed off.

Most wiring done in the us has a hot (black) side and a Neutral (white) and ground (green). Problem is most older homes did not have a ground so when a new service panel was installed the neutral and ground were tied together, which means any device that was shorted or partially shorted can back feed into the rest of the service, a big problem?! Since the development of the GFCI and newer or updated electrical services this problem for the most part has been eliminated. GFCI circuits compair the neutral to ground to look for stray voltage and then deactivate the circuit to prevent any harm or danger to anything plugged into that circuit. if you do not use a UPS or good surge protector you are risking all the electronics inside you games, so spend a little money to protect your investment. :186-

As a FL state master electrician and owner of www.stopsurges.com I want to offer my 2 cents regarding power surges.

Surges can be caused naturally or even from power company load switching / shedding.  Remember the rolling blackouts??? Terrible for power fluctuations. A lot of people associate surges with lightning.  This isnt always the case.  Surges can even be created in the home from inductive loads (ac compressor, washing machine etc) switching on and off or lost neutrals.  Surges can come from stray currents from devices nearby.  Typically this doesnt effect our machines from the stray current because the grounded metal case will easily dissipate the stray.  So my first piece of advice is:
1.  Do not ever cut off the ground of your machine or plug it in to a extension cord that doesnt have a grounding conductor.

Continuing on, when surges do enter your house people always seem to really concern themselves about the surge coming in on the power wires but neglect the other wires coming in to our house.  A lightning strike anywhere in the vicinity of your house can carry destructive currents in any of the wires coming in.  People will protect the power with the fancy little power strips from best buy but never do anything to the cable that is plugged in to their 60 inch plasma tv and wonder why it quit working after a lightning storm.  My second piece of advice is:
2.  Survey what wires enter your house and look for a surge protection device that will cover the whole house in addition to the CATV and Telephone.

You want a multi tier approach to protection.  You want to protect yourself at the entrance to your house with a whole house protector, CATV protector, and TELE line protector.  Third:
3.  Put a device at the entrance, each panel and a power strip at the equipment.

You want a dedicated circuit for your machines, a lot of older homes do not have a ground (see #1 above).  For the little amount of money it is worth it. Advice #4.
4.  Dedicated circuit!!! Best way to go.  No harmonic currents.

One good thing with our machines is they are pretty stable with regulated power supplys but every power supply has a built in M.O.V. metal oxide varisitor.  These self sacrifice themselves over time.

Last piece of advice, there is NOTHING that will stop a direct hit.  Mother nature is too powerful but you can be vigilant in at least trying to protect yourself.

If there is anything I can answer regarding clamping voltage, Joules and ratings dont hesitate to ask.  This forum has been a wealth of knowledge for me and I want to return what I can.

In your opinion how good is the typical UPS in cleaning dirty power ?

Good advice! my opinion of the "Power Strip" style surge suppressors is they are *GARBAGE* and a fire hazard. All they are is a MOV inside a plastic strip. The truth is, nowadays, most all electronics have "Switcher" type power supplies. They simply rectify the AC power into a DC potential (1.414X 120V) into a DC high voltage.The spikes and noise on the AC line usually doesnt bother these devices anymore.MOV's if they try to suppress a LARGE overvoltage (like an open neutral) WILL CATCH FIRE!) The MOV is a device thats about the size of a nickel.Lets do some simple math.....
If the MOV catches a "Spike" of 150 volts at 1 amp for a duration of 1 second....it will try to dissapate (150X1) 150 watts for that 1 second. But here is the catch. The MOV is really a Voltage Dependant Resistor.As the voltage goes UP, the resistance goes DOWN. This is how it tries to "Arrest" the spike.If the spike last any time at all the MOV loses, usually throws a flame out the top of the device.If it's housed inside a METAL box, the chance of a fire is minimal.I have seen plastic plugstrips catch fire!
My advice? DO NOT buy these surge strips! Buy a decent UPS! During a lightning storm, either disconnect your collection of machines, or better yet I simply take the house off the grid!
Go open the mains! power down the place and wait out the storm.The freezer will be fine for hours.A few hours in the dark is WAY better than a pile of fried/damaged/destroyed electronics.If you MUST have a few things on, then mark those circuits (like the forced air heater or A/C) and dump the other circuits.
Like was said before..a DIRECT hit can not be stopped, make sure you have a complete list of everything (pictures too) for the insurance company.....


Kirk

Kirk is right...a direct hit cannot be stopped.
I've seen transformers on power lines poles explode.
Happened on the pole across the street from me as I was sitting in the breezeway watching the storm.
I was amazed nothing happened in the house.

In my opinion, a decent UPS such as a APC is good for a few things.  First, it will give you a log of your voltage fluctuations and second will somewhat clean the power.  Keep in mind that its purpose is not to clean power as a power conditioner is designed.  You still have issues with harmonics and stray currents.  Once the AC is rectified to DC in the power supply it is typically void of any fluctuations.

I agree with the power strips that you can purchase from walmart and the like are trash but when you take a commercial grade strip like a Hubbell and Leviton and combine it with a multi tier approach of protection it is at least justifiable to buy it for the warranty they offer which keep in mind is 99.9 percent of the time just a supplement to your homeowner policy.  A lot of people get stuck on the fact that they say something like $10,000 connected equipment warranty but that is a joke.  If you read the fine print it says you have to  make a insurance claim and they will pay the deductible.

Okay, so what's a good "whole house" surge protector to install at the circuit box?  Even on your site I see a number of different options (and a number of different price points).  I guess I want good protection, but I also don't want to pay an arm and a leg for something that may never need to be used.

...and are these something I can install myself, or would I need to call an electrician?

They have the ones that pop in just like a breaker. But even the other ones are pretty easy to install. Just be sure to turn off the main breaker first (and verify it is off) before doing any work.

Knagl, technically I should say any electrical device needs to be installed by a qualified electrician but the instructions that come with them are self explanatory.  As poppo said, the breaker type are the easiest but you need to make sure that you look for the type that fits your panel.  Keep in mind, like anything else you get what you pay for.  If you look at the specs of a BRSURGE for instance, you will see that it varies compared to a TPSA9040 for example.

At the minimum, you end up with a cheap insurance policy that will supplement your homeowners deductible in the event of a major surge.

Keep in mind there are several types of UPSs. The more common and cheaper ones basically just pass the AC through (with maybe a filter and surge suppression). When AC fails, the inverter takes over. But these units typically output a modified square wave which is not always the best thing to use, especially for things like switching power supplies. A step up is a UPS that outputs a pure sine wave when on backup power. Then the 'top of the line' units actually run off of the pure sine wave inverter all of the time, and the house AC just keeps the inverter running and the battery charged. This unit offers the most protection because it pretty much totally isolates the input from the output.

A few mistakes here....
It's output is a MODIFIED SINE WAVE, not a modified square wave. The sine wave is made up of staircased voltage steps....

Switcher type supplies DO NOT CARE what the waveform is, as it simply rectifies the AC and uses it to charge capacitors to supply a high voltage DC to a solid state "Chopper". This drives a Toroidal inductor at a high frequency, supplying one or more LOW voltage HIGH current windings. These feed diodes and filters along with passive regulators...
Switchers DONT CARE about waveform,line frequency,distortion, and are close to immune to "Spikes" and noise.Some switchers will work over a 90-240 volt input!

"Fulltime UPS" run a 400 volt Battery stack. The 120/240 volt SINGLE phase power charges the batteries to 400 volts. This DC potential is converted to true AC sinewave and outputs 120/240 volts single phase. These DO NOT "Switch" and are constant output.In the event the AC mains go down it runs from the battery stack UNTIL THE GEN SET STARTS! They are not designed for long term battery output.

AC Motors WILL OVERHEAT when powered by a modified sine wave inverter!!! E/I/H core transformers will also run hotter, depending on power factor..they to CAN overheat. The reason for this is simply, they are a 60 Cycle RESONANT load. A modified sine wave is NOT a true 60 cycle AC waveform. Inductors exibit a LOW resistance when out of resonance,drawing a large amount of current.....

Kirk

I'll have to disagree with this. I've had several switcher power supplies get pretty hot when running off of a modified sine wave (yes I made a typo) inverter. Some will even buzz with displeasure. You should hear my DLP TVs (switcher power supplies) when in standby when running off of a UPS. They are on a UPS so when power goes out, I can turn it off and let the fan cool the lamp down properly. After that I unplug it. IMO anything that buzzes like a beehive is probably not liking it.

If you hear an audible "Buzz" then it is NOT a "Switcher".
Switchers run at frequencies way above the hearing range.
If it buzzes and runs hot, it is a LINEAR supply.....

I know what a switcher is, and I know what buzzing and running hot is. But I'm not going to argue about it.  :88-

From Trace (inverter mfg) tech notes:

http://www.wholesalesolar.com/pdf.folder/Download%20folder/sine_modsine.pdf (http://www.wholesalesolar.com/pdf.folder/Download%20folder/sine_modsine.pdf)