New Life Games Tech Forums

I have what I believe to be a Fortune I and the seller claimed it worked fine when he sold it.  After receiving it, I get no video and the hopper spins continually.  No LED's on the board light up at all.

I saw a couple dangling connectors but the seller swears he didn't unplug anything, plugging them in doesn't change anything.

I've swapped in known-good hoppers and monitors to no avail.

It seems to take two other (hopefully optional) boards which are not there at all.  I saw other Fortune 1's that are also missing these boards.  So mine just has the motherboard/backplane in the upper cavity and a small board with the binary LED's below.

Any troubleshooting pointers here?  Many TIA...

Mr. Sausage King-

Are you able to post a picture or two of the machine (especially the inside) to help confirm what machine you have, and then hopefully we can get you on the right track from there...

 :211-

Knagl, I was wondering if you knew this guy personally or what? 
You were referring to Abe as a star member of a porn movie  ...:208-

I had to Google it and see what the heck is going on here.
Apparently somebody is selling T-shirts of this character...>>>

"Abe Frohman" was the "Sausage King of Chicago" from the 1986 movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  :71-

I was wondering the same thing when you referred to THE SAUSAGE KING in your post  BUT i knew BUNKER would look it up and CHIME in  :89- :89-

Here is the best picture I have on my phone at the moment, no closeup of the board but you get the idea as to the two sets of mounting posts that have no PCB's...

No missing boards - you have a bell instead of a soundboard

Great pictures!  :3- :267-
I've never seen the inside of a Fortune 1 machine! Cool!  :133-
What's the 2 red buttons for on the brass colored box next to the bulb?
Are those some sort of hopper test buttons? Maybe forward & reverse?

bunker- those are circuit breakers for the game.   the board pictured is the I/O board, it runs all the switch matrix and hopper etc.

the board you are missing (up under the monitor shelf ) is the sound board. the main logic board is above the monitor.

the black transformer next to the hopper plug is the isolation transformer for the monitor.  when you turn the unit on and off you should see a bright flash on the screen, tells you the High voltage is good, or fell static as you run your hand across the front of the tube.
the main logic board provides all the power for the games, the caps go bad quite frequently and usually the reason the game does not work.
the Leds on the I/O board correspond to a diode matrix that will tell you when a certain button is pushed etc.
Jim

WOW, can you imagine the burn that you could get from that "service lamp!!!" :279- :279- :279- :58- :58- :58- :72- :72- :72-

CH :95-

The circled connectors goto the sound board, I have a spare sound board if interested when you get the rest working.

Very thanks for the help.  I am probably going to go to "the pile" to find my other semi-working Fortune-I (a video poker, not a "21") so I can start swapping parts back-and-forth to isolate root issues.  Again, the seller seemed very honest and genuine about it working prior to being shipped, even though he says there were a few months of inactivity inbetween.  I get no LED's on the I/O board, a forever-spinning/paying hopper and a staticly-charged-but-blank monitor.

For completeness, I'll also take pictures of the plugs left hanging, I assume they were for options I don't have (sound board, others?)  Plugging them in yields same result anyway.  I'll also get some wide-angle shots for Bunker and other people's general interest.  I can't seem to find any reference to or photos of this game anywhere on the InterTubes.

I just managed to drill out the lock in the main board's security shield - drilling the core out was easy, but sticking something in there to raise the security bars and pull the pins out of the sides was a little more challenging (no coat hangar around!)  Board was probably never touched as the seller didn't have (or at least didn't send) the key.  It was one of those strange, older semi-circular keys.

I have been burnt by many unscrupulous sellers lying about the condition of their machines, but this guy was very helpful and spent a lot of time working with me when he really didn't have to.  I really expected this one to coin-up straight out d'gate, so I suspect some minor hangup of some sort.  Bummer.

Ah...don't fret over the little stuff Abe.
What WILL happen is that you WILL learn a lot about HOW your machine works
as you tinker with it to get it up and running the way you want!  :89-

You just can't beat that part of getting a new toy to play with!  :91-

Well, it looks like I got a bad board in my great deal.  The very honest and helpful-sounding seller swore up and down that he and his kids played the machine all the time, but after a few months of inactivity he decided to sell it.  Not the first time I've heard that one before, but this guy was very helpful with shipping, even offered to drive it halfway, etc.  Also threw in three extra monitors and an extra hopper, included the slot stand, I mean...  How could I say no?

Well, it looks like the mainboard is DOA.  I went to remove the proms and there were missing legs.  So I decided to swap in some poker game and graphics chips and still nothing.  I put the still-ok Twenty-One game proms on my poker board and they came up and played, then proceeded to do the full matrix of swapping proms, mainboards and I/O boards until i settled that I had bad "21" graphics chips and a dead "21" mainboard - I suppose I have to replace the caps or find someone who can do a swap-out repair.  The graphics proms surprisingly had original "copyright 1980 SIRCOMA" labels underneath them, and the gold pins are just disintegrating when you touch them.  And all of this was behind a security cage I had to drill out, so the seller probably either didn't have this machine running, or he did and the game started failing progressively so he dumped it.  And of course, the slot base had been badly abused, and the "extra" monitors are in horrible shape...  But at least I have a few test monitors for the bench now or maybe I can have them repaired.  Oh well, like I said, not the first time.

A nice by-product was that by getting this second Fortune-I machine I had something to compare my original "Draw Poker" against, and finally traced why the hell the panel buttons weren't working.  This other machine was in absolutely spectacular condition like it hadn't ever been used or opened before, so when the front panel didn't work I suspected the I/O board since it would only register the jackpot/reset key and coin in.  I read that I was supposed to trace the orange wire from the panel which I though I had done but there were a few and the culprit double-backed on me inside a wire wrap tube so I never found it.  But by comparing doors against the "21" machine I found the hanging orange lead and "ZING" now I have a beautiful, pristene Draw Poker that seems to be one of the very first made by IGT!  The serials on the chassis have been stripped but I found a mainboard serial of 0498.  It's one of the units where the Jacks or Better payoff was added after-the-fact by placing a laminated sign above the buttons to announce the additional payoff beyond what the slot glass indicated.

So a success nonetheless, this old Fortune-I Draw Poker I've had laying around may be a bit more collectible than I had originally thought.  I'll probably start a different thread for show n' tell.

Sorry to hear about the new machine, but on the other hand that's great news that you got your original F-I up and running perfectly.  They're classic machines, that's for sure.

Thanks, I agree.

If anyone knows of someone that does Fortune-I board repairs please send me a PM!

Abe do you still have any of those extra monitors around? I am looking for a good working monitor for one of my F1 Twenty One's, thx...

SteveE