New Life Games Tech Forums

I'm trying to troubleshoot a reel issue on an E1000 machine, and figured I'd be able to simply swap the reel into a later E2000. They *look* the same, but the two Molex connectors are gendered opposite. The 1000 reel has female terminals, where the 2000 has male terminals, so my machine won't connect.

Anyone know if the reels are pin-for-pin compatible, aside from the gender issue? If so, I'll fabricate a jumper to make it work - or not...

The readers on the 1000 are incandescent, and the 2000 machine I'm trying it on is also incandescent, so there should be no issue there.

On that same subject, can an incandescent reel be swapped into a machine that originally has IR LED reader lamps?

I'm not to sure of the wiring but considering that the E2000 came after the E1000 I would expect that they made them differently so as to avoid
swapping them. If they were the same there would not be any reason to change the gender.

I wouldn't swap the 50 volt readers for 5 volt readers unless you have a keen desire to see smoke. The reel reader control cards can be swapped
but there are differences in the wiring of the J1 connector on that card. The 50 volts is applied from the same source and through Q32 on the
IO board  which is connected to J1 pin 7 and the 5 volt card gets Vcc from J1 pin 8

My guess is that if you try using 50 volt cards in a machine that originally has 5 volt readers you won't see any light at all.


I also think we should be posting in the new version at http://newlifegames.com  As I understand it, this site is now just an archive.

Found the problem; those "grain-of-wheat" light bulbs got me. I had a 41-1 code, swapped readers, then got a 41-2. So I replaced a burned out bulb on the reader. Put it back in, got a 41-1 code, and found a bad bulb on the 2nd. reader. They're burning out like popcorn!

So, I went ahead and replaced all 15 bulbs. Oddly, I had the bulbs on my shelf - I think they're 14 volt bulbs, but were the same physical bulb as the original.

Anyway, all bulbs replaced, game works perfectly. Woo Hoo! 'Nuther one done.

And, thanks to dhellis for finding the bugaboos on the CPU board. All is well now.

The bulb is a #680 bulb if they are burning out quickly I would check the 470 ohm 2 watt resistor and would expect to see a rather low value.

Good to seen another machine up and running... :244-

The resistors check OK, but they seem to run pretty hot. Maybe I should take a closer look at the resistance....

Wonder what would be involved in converting the reader to LED? Seems a small regulator on each reader board might do the trick.

The voltage is AC and the bulbs are in series, each dropping 5 volts.  But now you have to figure out how to wire the LED's in series
rectify the voltage and reduce it . All things considered you may find it easier to modify the wiring and use the 5 volt reader
cards. I have to wonder about the bulbs on your shelf though, if they are all 14 volt bulbs then 50 volts would not light
them up correctly (probably dim). I would need to see the data sheets for those bulbs so that you can see how much voltage
is being dropped across the resistor.

Just as an FYI, the reel reader tester that I built uses 50 volts DC, the bulbs don't care about anything other than voltage.

I'm pretty sure I picked those bulbs up off of Ebay, so being as they're Chinese, data sheets never did exist  :60- I was using them on a car radio that had burned out the panel lighting due to a surge.

They seem to work fine, no codes, so there must be enough current to run them. But then, I could probably eliminate the resistor if the cumulative voltage requirement to run them is higher than the supply.

Eliminating the resistor would probably shorten the life of the bulbs though.

Still, drop enough current across a large resistor, wire five LED's in series, and add a diode and a filter cap, it might work. It'd be something to experiment with, all without swapping wiring to the reels.

Would be interesting to see 5 bright white LED's. Let me know how that works out.

Also, how hot is that 470 ohm resistor getting with these bulbs? Under normal conditions I think that the wattage required was 1.6 watts so
2 watts was marginal to start with and that thing got pretty hot.

Well, hot enough where you couldn't put your finger on it for more than half a second. The traces were a bit discolored, but given the age of the machine, I'd expect it. Just seems a bit too hot.
Still.
It works, that's the main thing. So I probably won't mess with it. Besides, it's not my machine, it belongs to a friend. However, I think I'll try this on one of my machines. Curiosity....

I have my tester so maybe I can play around and see what happens.  Have to get some white LED's

I think the only LED's that will fit would have to be SMT, maybe 0603's. Those are 0.6mm long, and would fit within the barrel of the light bulb bore. Maybe 0805's I'd have to measure the opening.

Then you'd have to graft a fine wire on each SMT pad. It would be a delicate operation but I think it'd work. The SMT LED's that are available are usually crazy-bright, but cutting the current down will dim them considerably and probably shift the color from white to yellow. Doesn't seem like it would take much light to work properly.

It would be an interesting project. Granted, the bulbs are pretty reliable, but we're dealing with 30+ year old hardware, that shouldn't have lasted this long anyway.

The hole for the bulb is about a 7/64 so one might be able to use a 3mm LED, that is a tad larger than the 2.77 mm hole but the metal portion
is slightly larger so all you really need to do is to trim off a bit of the pcb so that you can get beyond that.

I'd be worried about bending the leads sharply to secure it. Even those bulbs, you really need to bend the wires closely against the glass bulb, and with LED's the wires are pretty stiff.

Worth a shot though. And, I wonder if it really matters whether they are red, yellow, blue, green or white. Or infrared. The photodiodes are sensitive to a wide spectrum of light, I'm pretty sure.

I would use white, just because but the photo-transistor is the same in both the 5 and 50 volt versions so I doubt color has much of
a bearing. The biggest key for me would be the output voltage. The 50 volt card the photo transistor measures around 4.7 volts and
the IR setup the photo transistor measures about 3.1 volts. This leads me to believe that the brighter the light the higher the voltage.