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hi wondrering if any one could help
i am in england and am currently working on a skyraider this was a draw and hold machine which has been converted into a feature on top of the machine
where by when three targets appear on the win line (middle line only) it sets off the feature,
now the problem i have is 2 wires have come adrift inside the machine one does a lighting feature which im not to worried about
the other is the feed to the coil which starts the feature
the wire is only long enugh to have come from the right hand beau plug (looking in to the machine)
ive found the payout pin for three targets but when a pay is hit the feature just keeps going where as it should just go around once
and stop
every thing else works fine payouts are all ok
will post more info if anyone has any experience of these or wether these are just a peculiar english model

That sounds like a showman conversion, probably starting with a Sir Prize or Jolly Joker. There were thousands of them, all different, and no documentation.

The win circuit closes at the end of a game and stays closed, so if you just hook it up to the feature start coil it will keep restarting the feature for ever. To get it to run once and stop, the circuit has to be opened again somehow. Now if this was a Sir Prize or Jolly Joker, it had a time jackpot feature that had somewhere on the left side of the mech a pulse contact to step up the feature unit. It would be a make before break contact that looks like the photo below. If you connect the target win circuit to the start coil through this contact, it will get pulsed once only and should work as advertised. More likely than not, if you can find such a contact, you'll find it's wired the way I described and lead you to the pin you want.

op bell

thanks for your reply i will have a look at this
the model is 783a im sure its an old sir prize machine.this is near as damn working as i say everything else works on it .one of the relays 11 pin omron lucky enough has the little test button on it and if you push this the feature starts pays 2 coins if yiu then switch it to the 3rd position press it it pays the 8 coins so i know its only a controll problem
not been into ballys that long at the moment i have 4 1 works perfect 1 is for scrap the other is also a 783 hold and draw machine needs attention :208-

1 more question op bell are you the same op bell on penny machines?

any way will look at this and report back middle next week   ty once again

forgot to add these skyraiders are very good conversions have seen  a few of these for sale on e bay waiting for the next so i can send some questions off

Let me think a moment. Same icon, same city, similar name.... Nahhh, couldn't possibly be. Could it?

 :88-

the sarcasam the dry wit almost english the answer :89-

It's a fair cop, guv.

 :72- :72- :72- :30- :30-
I blew it in person and he got it right on the web. :96-

SF :31-

do i pick your brains on this forum or the other
either way im bound to bug you in the end being an electrician i need to know how everything works in them
some i can work out others i need a schematic but heres to learning :97-

On this forum. At least here we have a category for Bally EM. On the other forum, if it uses electricity they treat it with great suspicion. Having said that, Stuart and I did reverse engineer the Rotopool recently and created a circuit diagram, which was sorely needed, as there's a shipload of those Rotopool and Rotofruit machines that nobody could fix and people have been asking for it for years.

I have a converted Sir Prize myself that had been showman-converted into a Gold Award machine (max pay 2 coins, or 1 token). I turned it into a normal 200 coin jackpot machine with hold and draw, a very uncommon type over here. I would have liked to restore it as a Sir Prize, but the starwheels had been changed and anyway I have no way of producing authentic-looking UV fluorescent reel strips.

Ok, I can't stand it anymore. Must see pictures of a Sir Prize and Jolly Joker.  :89- :89-

 :211-

I don't have any. I have a picture of a sales brochure that I found on some Japanese guy's site, I'll post it later with a description.

Jolly Joker and Sir Prize were essentially the same machine with different graphics, made for the British market. Jolly Joker was 773 (1965), Sir Prize was 818 (1966), so these are really early Bally EMs. They had faces (Jokers or Knights) overlaying many of the normal symbols. This was in the pre-decimal days in Britain when the max cash payout was a shilling (5 pence now) and the max prize in trade tokens was 5 shillings (now 25 pence). To get round this they had what's called a time jackpot. If you hit a certain secret combination it started a feature where for the next (usually) ten games, any face on any reel on the payline paid maximum tokens. Since it was nearly impossible not to get a face somewhere, that meant you got a jackpot of 50 shillings, though you had to pay for 10 more games to get it. They were hold and draw machines, that is, if you didn't have a winner and you didn't hold last time, you could hold any 1 to 3 reels. The math is fairly simple - holds doubled the payout percentage, plus or minus a couple. If you knew the symbol frequency you could play a strategy and improve on that a bit. The Sir Prize had a double coin mech that took sixpences (half a shilling) for 2 games and tokens for one game, so it could pay out 20 tokens. Sixpenses went in the coin box, tokens went to the hopper. The reel strips were fluorescent and there was a UV black light over the reels, so you effectively had light-up reels that looked very cool in the dark.

The time jackpot was made illegal in 1970, so they were all withdrawn and converted or scrapped. It's really unusual to find one today in original condition.

op bell
reading that with intrest there have been a few on e-bay recently prices are normally around £150-£200 for original there was a nice one couple of months back
was still on original 6d play (sixpence) with a 150 and 200 coin jackpot that went for £251
coinage was so much more intresting pre decimal!!!!

read your exploits on the roto i do actually read the forum on penny machines everyday but there mostly into mechanicals theres nothing wrong with electrickery!!!

the reel cards on mine have 783a on them and i didnt realise the strips were flourescent
i have another converted machine which is a 4 reel pays right to left and left to right this is a modern 10p converted from the old shilling and has a jackpot of
200 coins this is called a bally slimline and has a change mech on top which says insert 10p for change

there was a bally on ebay last week the guy had made a perspex case to house it modern coinage and built in change on the side above the handle!!!
looked really nice and went for £651

I have a fairly extensive list of Bally models but 783 isn't in it - it jumps from 774 to 785. Are there any paper stickers inside the case that might give you a clue to what the model was called? Like, mine still has a label on one side that says "Sir Prize Unit" where the time jackpot device used to be.

there is a small sticker inside that desribes the wiring for the sir prize but i read on here you can tell the machine model by what is written on the reel cards
these have the number 783 this number is also engraved on the reel carriage on the front 783a
here is a link hope it works to  guy in belgium you can see a manual for sir prize followed by either 783 or 783a i have e-mailed him but as of yet no reply

also i will post some photos of the sky raiders feature

thanks again bell op

be helpfull if i actually typed the link!!!!!
http//users.telnet.be/joesgarage/slots_manuals.htm

Interesting modifications they made to circumvent the laws and make them more appealing to the British players.
Thanks, Op-Bell

Ah, the link seems to be dead. I can get to users.telnet.be but no further. If you already downloaded the manual, perhaps you would share it?

I'll add the 783 to my list as Sir Prize - perhaps the 818 is a mistake, or a different version. My machine also has 783a on the switches, but the starwheels have been replaced and don't correspond to the Sir Prize strips.

http://users.telenet.be/JoesGarage/slots_manuals.htm (http://users.telenet.be/JoesGarage/slots_manuals.htm)

Corrected link... looks like the manuals are for sale, no download links.

Thanks brichter - bookmarked. It looks like a useful resource.

I was checking out some of the glass, saw one for "Don the Beachcomber's" restaurant. It brought back some good memories.

There was one of those next door to the gas station I worked at in high school, we used to charge the patrons $5 to park their cars in the gas station, then use the money for beer!
 :154- :151- :136-


Good times...  :96-

hi guys as i say i have emailed him about his manuals but as  yet am awaiting a reply shame as im on a day trip to belgium soon
its a pity the manuals are available for download he seems to have quite a lot

hi all sky time again!!!
as promised a few photos please exscuse the poor photos im rubbish with a camera if you look closely
on the gass you can just make out the target

a few more or 2 as it happens the first is the loose wire nothing better than a choc block and dabbing it around everywhere

and thats the little plane in the feature when it passes through the target on the feature glass you hit the button and if your lucky pays 8 coins

just a big thank you  :131-  :139- to op bell for your help
i traced the circuit out and it went to a post that was unused joined the two wires together and it works :3-
now all i have to do is get the fire button working !!!!
im not sure im getting 50v to door button i think this is tied in with the 2 micro switches. as the cam starts to turn this makes the right micro switch
n/c the left hand one is n/o till the indent in the cam comes round, the micro switch then becomes n/c for an instant putting 50v to the door the button when pressed this comes back onto the coil of the pay relay thus providing a target hit and pays the remaining 8 coins
now to all i have to do is find out why its not working!!!
when i`ve done that it will be the lighting wire thats come adrift

That can't be right, otherwise all you'd have to do is hold the button down and win automatically when the cam comes round. Pressing the button has to do some irrevocable action, like latching a relay, so that if you press it too early you lose. My guess is the cam routes the switch between two different relays, so that if you press when the cam isn't in position it operates one relay and you lose, but when the cam is in position it operates the other one and you win.

well its up and running  being a bank holiday here i thought i would give it my full attention.
op bell was right it was in fact 2 circuits. what was missing was 50v to the door button which was a brown wire that had come off.i think what happened is
pulling out the reel mech these wires got snagged without me noticing as they were never properly tied down,
anyway found 50v for this wire. when 3 targets are hit the little plane goes round till the button is pressed ,if you miss it   stops
 if at the right point it pays the extra 8 coins so alls working fine
 a big thanks to op bell for pointing me in the right directions

now 1 slight problem it  would be nice to get the light feature working the wire white with black tracer has come adrift from somewhere tried it with all
the available wires but no luck any suggestions!!!!
not sure but might just wire it back to the 6v terminal