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i have a 1995 bally 3 coin machine and wondering how they have been programed?  any rhyme or reason?  wife say only pay between 5 and 8 at night, i say no clock in mpu,  some days can play 800 credits and just keep losing, some days play a cup of coins and win all night, some days only cherries and some days 3 sevens a couple times, keep adding coins seems to keep hitting, play on credits seems to melt away,  just wondering what the logic is to the programs. thanx!

LOL....The famous question  :72-

Try typing RNG in the search box....
Sit back and read on.

Tim

The real key to computerized reel slots is the virtual stop table. That is what determines the payout percentage over millions of spins.

Your slot reels have eleven symbols and eleven blanks per reel. So there are 22 stop locations per reel. But the virtual stop table may have 64 or 128 or maybe 256 locations per reel.
Imagine your at a local carnival and throwing darts at balloons. You are able to hit a balloon with every throw. Behind each balloon is a reel location. Now imagine there are three sets of 256 balloons to throw at, one for each reel. Behind only one balloon per set is the jackpot symbol location, but behind six balloons are the blanks above the jackpot symbol and six more balloons have the blank below the jackpot symbol location. The other 249 balloons have various locations among the other reel symbols and blanks.
Now when you throw three darts at the three sets of balloons chances are it won't hit the jackpot symbol since there is only one in the 256 chances per set. The chance of hitting the blanks above and below the jackpot symbol is much better.
Chances of hitting the three jackpot symbols on the three sets of balloons in three throws is 16,777,216 to 1. (256x256x256)
In my opinion the RNG gets too much attention, it is the virtual stop table that counts. The RNG is the thrower and the virtual stop table the balloons with symbols behind them in my analogy above.
 Now, in the above scenario with one jackpot symbol per 256 virtual stops the chances are bad for hitting the jackpot. Most games will have more jackpot symbol chances in the virtual stop table, mine is just a simple example.

So, in a nutshell, what happens is the RNG picks an address in the virtual stop table and what is at that address determines where the reel stops.

@uniman, a bit off topic, but I have a question for you. If you were to block off the stop spokes on the "blank" positions of the reels, so that the machine would try to stop there, but miss it by a notch, and land on a symbol instead....this would obviously increase the odds of winning, but would the CPU see it as an error? Or, would it just accept the seemingly "sluggish" stop mechanism, and pay out when it lands there?

Well that's two questions.

Thanks for any insight,
John

On an electronic slot it would see the error and tilt the machine. Only way around it would be to write your own software with less virtual reel stops involved, but then it would probably pay WAY to much. Tournament and promotional chips are written that way

That makes sense. But what about the early CPU machines, like the early-to-mid 80's Bally's (E1000, E2000)? I realize the current technology has much better control of the reels, but I believe the Bally in this thread is less dependent on the lookup tables and more on the RNG technology. I could be mistaken, I'm new at this stuff.

Short of re-writing code, I wonder if there's a mechanical way to do it.

Even the early cpu models did not rely on reel position. Even if you could "fool" the machine into landing on an incorrect position without it going into an error it would just pay what it should have stopped on. It is not decided but the reel position, rather the reel position is just displaying what it already decided.

I do not know the answer to that one. On modern computertized slots it all about timing on the stepper reels. Not sure how the electro-mech work?

I have just acquired some Bally E2000's and they have the binary reel stops. I am going to try and block off some of the "blank" stops, which should increase the odds quite a bit - as long as they don't set a code. Little bit of experimentation here.

Hopefully no code will be set, and if it works, it'll make the machines win a lot more, add some fun to playing these quiet machines. Another thing I want to do is graft a sound card from a 6000 series machine and make it play sounds when the reels are in motion.