New Life Games Tech Forums

I recently picked up a WMS 40S Dotmation machine, has a few issues I've been working thru on it. It has a Canadian bill validator, was wondering if instead of replacing it with one that accepts US currency could I simply obtain and use a Canadian bill or two to load credits into the machine? It is for home use, wife doesn't care how the credits get on there, just gets tired of loading the coins/tokens in one at a time. 

Does anyone do this to avoid the cost and hassle of changing out the BV? To me it would essentially like putting a slot ticket back into the machine, don't care what form it is in. If I do this what's the easy way to obtain some Canadian paper bill money, like a $10 or $20? I'm a little too far away to drive to the border.

Thanks!

   

Several members here live in Canada eh!  You could post a WTB Canadian currency, you could also go to your local bank and buy some.

Good idea!   Not familiar with Canadian money or what this bill validator recognizes,  do I need to be careful to get older style bills to better increase my chances of it working? I'd bet they've updated their currency like the US has. Or is there a way of knowing what bills it accepts by using the software version of the BV rom? I was thinking it might be similar to a US BV that doesn't work with newer US bills. The front of this BV has a sticker with picture of the Queen, but some Canadian bills I've seen don't have her picture on them.

Depending on which BV you have it might be a simple and inexpensive deal to have it flashed or change a chip to use American currency

How could I find out more about this? The tag on top says it is a JCM model CBA-135SH,  v 2.21 7E8B which I take to be the software version and checksum.  I think I read somewhere that the Canadian bill is slightly more narrow than a US bill, so it would seem that it would pass thru the Canadian BV ok.

correction- meant to say that the Canadian bill is slightly wider than a US bill, so a US bill would pass thru the Canadian BV if it could read it correctly after a software update.

I'm personally not familiar with that model but if you contact one of the dealers from the home page they can probably provide the info you need or wait and see if one of them responds to this topic post

I'm going way back but I think a 135 was a model just like a 145 ( a piece of junk) even looked like a 145.  You can use a DBV 200 and a transport from a Bally 550. As I recall the wiring is the same as a Bally and so is the protocol ID03.  Bare in mind I can't remember what I ate yesterday.

Pretty sure the Canadian bill is wider than a dollar bill.

Thanks for that info Buzz, and you're right about the width of the bills, I got them reversed in my earlier post, will get it edited.

Food for thought, too, is you might want to consider putting your machine into demo mode.  Then you can spin to your heart's content without ever having to put coins or bills in it.  There are instructions for how to do that in the service manual.

I'll give that a try, thanks for the idea.

No problem.  I leave my Dotmation machine in the demo mode so it's essentially on "freeplay" for anyone who comes to the house.  I wish my other slots had that option.