New Life Games Tech Forums

I have been having this problem with the JCM DBV on my Gamemaker -
It will accept maybe 2-3 bills then the green arrows will not come on, play a few hand/spins then the green arrows will light up again.
Then it might take only 1-2 bills, arrows will not light for awhile and then they will come back on.
There is no rhyme or reason to when they will come back on, they will be off and I will walk away for a few minutes and come back and they will be on.
I have the credit limit set to - $99,999.99
I have only had this machine for a few weeks, it did not do this until the last few days.
Anyone have any ideas?

Have you tried to insert a bill when the light is off? It might just be a loose connection to the bulbs.
If it's not taking bills during that time, I would check the harness connections to the DBV.

I'm thinking that the movement or vibration caused by inserting the bills is making and breaking a poor or intermittent connection.

Yes, it does not take a bill when the light is off.
I thought of that too, everything seemed to be ok but I will re-check the connections again after work today.

The Gamemaker should also have a dbv test in the setup menus. To access it, open the door and turn the jackpot reset key to get into them full menu. The validator test should be the third button from the bottom in the diagnostic column (second from the left) and is labeled "coin/bill acceptor".

I did try that at a time when the green arrows were not on, they came on for the test and went off and stayed off when test was complete.
Test was fine, no errors.
The lights ended up coming back on 5-10 minutes later.

I don't know if this will help because I don't know what kind of bulbs you have in there.
If they have small wire contacts, then they may be squashed fully tight against the bulb casing.
You need to get under those wires and bend them up a touch so when you plug them back in -
they will get a better contact to power.
I've had this happen with my LED bulbs.
 
If your bulbs are the push and twist board type, then the tiny little spring contacts might be bent too flat.
Again, get under them with something flat and sharp like the tip of an exacto knife
and gently bend the contacts back up a little so you'll get better contact against the board.

I know nothing about Gamemaker machines but I will try to help. My first thought was that on my IGT machines there is a maximum bill credit limit which is about 3000. If I  have more than 3000 credits on the machine the bill acceptor will not take any more bills. Once I  play the machine down under the limit I can put in more bills.  Does your machine have such a limit?

Cruisepl

Yes, I have it set for $99,999.99
This has happened when I had $1500 in the machine and it has happened when there were no credits in it

Hi, I had a similar problem with my 7200 Gamemaker before, and it was the
alignment between the cash can and the bill validater. You might want to
take a look at the switch that is being activated by the cash can, and see
if it looks all right. Otherwise the cash can it self could be tweeked. Hope this helps.

Regards, Jeff

since you have no opto, open the door and tape the switch closed and do the old WIGGLE  :71- test and see if you can get it to act up

The $99,999 limit you set is different from what cruisepl described. The Gamemaker does have a $3000 limit as well, and I had thought of that as a possible cause of your problem, but dismissed it because you said that you had only entered two or three bills, which could not be more than $300. The reason for the $3k limit was to prevent money laundering.

The way that it works on the Gamemaker is that you can never have more than $3000 in unwashed money in the machine at any time. Once the money has been wagered, more can be added. It doesn't matter whether you win or lose the bets, as long as you've wagered the money at least once.

<ADD> Example: You have $0 in the machine and put $3000 in the dbv. It stops taking money. You then bet $100 a play on video poker, play eight hands, and end up with $2800. You can now put another $800 in the dbv, because you have bet $800 dollars of your initial $3000.

Example 2: You have added another $800 and now have $3800. You play for many hours and have wagered much more than $3000. At some point you hit a jackpot and now have $50,000. You can still add another $3,000 to the dbv because you have no unwashed money in the machine.

The Gamemaker should have a cherry switch. Just pull the switch out and it will lock in place without tape. The machine will see the door as closed.

I found the problem  :103-
You guys are probably gonna laugh at this one but I had no idea that it would be affected like this.
About a week after I got the machine, I changed the denomination of the machine to 1 cent. When I put a $20 in it, the drop counter was clicking away counting 2000 coins in and I thought that is kind of annoying, so I disconnected the counters.
Well I guess there is a limit of how many bills you can put in while it is counting that many coins, so that is why I could only put 1-2 $20s in at a time.
Then when it stopped counting internally or close to it the bill acceptor would come back on.
I found out by changing the machine back to 25 cent, all is good now.
Thanks for input, but it was my stupidity that caused it.  :30-