New Life Games Tech Forums

Anyone know when Bally stopped making the E series reels with light bulbs and started using LED's for the readers? Was it a model change (E1000 vs E2000) or was it a particular year that they changed?

I don't know when they made the change other than to say you will not find IR Emitters in an E1000 you will find them in the E2000 only. The early
E2000's continued to use the incandescent bulbs and the E1000 MPU boards, until inventory was depleted. I think the transition was nearly completed when the E22xx series started, though I am not even positive about that.

I have 20 machines, all between E2090 thru E2278 and an E2389, and it's a mix; some IR and some incandescent. I've been going thru them, refurbing the reel assemblies, and have used one machine to test every reel. So I'm thinking, the power source for the emitters is in the reel, not the machine? Otherwise, it would not be a good idea to use the same machine for different reels?

No problem so far, but it's going to take some time to go thru these, so I want to be sure I'm on the right track and that it's OK to swap reels. In the process, I'm accumulating dozens of EPROM files with their checksums, so I'll be sending you the data once I complete the project.

Once I get thru these, I'm on to a couple dozen J400's.

The main difference in the reel readers is the
incandescent readers are 50 volts and the IR
readers are 5 volts and the harness are different .

Does the 50V or 5V source come from the reel PC board - or - from the machine power supply? I haven't studied the wiring yet, but if it's from the reel board, I'm OK, but not if it's from the machine board.

I'm pretty sure the machine power supply is the same on all of the machines. Pretty sure....

The 5v and 50v comes from the power supply
but every thing is different from the main reel
connectors to the readers.

You put a 5v IR reader on a machine that uses
50v incandescent readers, the 5v reader is toast!!

Thanks, Proten.

So.

Can the reels be safely interchanged from machine to machine without issues? Are the reel assemblies "backward-compatible"? I suspect I have already done this inadvertently, not realizing the readers were different (I thought all E2xxx reels were IR LED).

Yes, but you have to change the readers, the
reader control board and wire harness.
You can tell a 5v harness by one of the plugs
on the right side is red and the 50v are both white.

I noticed the incandescent reader has a large resistor sandwiched between the boards, where the IR does not. Also, when the "insert coin" light is on, the lamps are illuminated (first indication that I didn't have IR readers.

I'm just trying to determine if I can simply swap the entire reel assembly from an early machine into a later IR-equipped machine. Just for testing purposes.

Yes if it's the entire reel assembly you can.

The large resistor is a 470 ohm 2 watt and is in series with the incandescent bulbs. Think of this as a voltage divider because while the cards operate on 50 volts the bulbs are 5 volt. The pin outs on the reel reader cards is identical and the photo transistors (IR detector)  have common  emitter connections attached to pin 11. 
Power is applied to pin pairs 15 & 16 with ground on pins 13 & 14, the other pin pairs go to the collectors of the photo transistors 9/10 Q1, 7/8 Q2, 5/6 Q3, 3/4 Q4 and 1/2 Q5. (and IR detectors)

You can interchange the reel mechanism for testing purposes as long as you have the proper reel reader cards installed but you may find that the reel decoder will also need to be changed since there are differences and you will probably need to change the wiring harness. I have never looked at the wiring to see the differences but Proten seems to think that you do and I would take his word for it

Thanks for the info, guys. Back to the dungeon to play.

I have come across a E2000 that had 50 volt readers. Be careful !

Well, looks like reels are not really interchangeable. Most of these machines have the two Molex (red, white) connectors facing up, with pigtails that plug into them. Others, however, have the large BEAU bulkhead connector in the rear, which would engage into a receptacle, much like the hopper connection. This style has larger symbols than the others, but still 25 stops.

Odd.

Yet they are all within the E22xx family. Bally must've had some significant running changes going.

Heres how to tell which is which.

2 white plugs  =  50 volt
1 white 1 red  =   5 volt

My first E2000 had a reel problem and I got in touch
with a person who set me up with a upgrade to my system.
I had to change the wire harness,reel board and all three reel readers.

Great info, proten. The two white connectors, are they on the E1000 machines? I have only seen white and red on my supply. And, at least one with the BEAU connector. Hope to make heads or tails out of these machines.

No, these are both E2000 machines.

The BEAU connectors were giving me
problems putting the reels in so I removed
them as there were no wires attached.