Sircoma IGT A brief History

[Thor777]

victory
Guest

   Sircoma IGT A brief History
« on: August 26, 2005, 07:22:35 AM »   

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Thought I would start this one off with a brief history on Sircoma video poker machines. Founded in the late 70's by William "Si" Redd who started the SI Redd Coin op cOMpAmy. See the caps? thus SIRCOMA. Si tried to get his machine to fly with Bally, however Bally just didn't see a future in Video poker and scraped the project ( some of the first Sircomas actually have Bally boards in them (late 70' to early 80's). Si went on to form his own company and called it IGT...WoW! If Bally only knew then what it knows now...the story of my life. Si passed away just a few years ago (2003). I have high hopes that this forum will help some  collectors like myself to restore these awsome pieces of history. Happy Trails to you....Victory 
 
 

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Ron
Guest

   Re: Sircoma IGT A brief History
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2005, 01:37:09 PM »   

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Any idea where I can get manuals/schematics on
a Sarcoma SG-202 video poker machine?

Ron
morris@jps.net

[Thor777]

belbenchtech
NLG Member

Belbenchtechs Repair Logs.

   Re: Sircoma IGT A brief History
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2005, 03:23:29 PM »   

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Ron,
Have you looked at belbenchtech repair logs...under IGT Fortune I Boards...a Sircoma is the predecessor of the Fortune I...I believe the MPU boards are twins, correct me if I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time...) 
Admittedly, the Fortune I schematics aren't the best quality, I guess you can't expect too much from a copy of a copy of a copy...

Hope it's of some help.

Mike><>

[Thor777]

BuddmanTx
Guest

   Re: Sircoma IGT A brief History
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2006, 12:17:54 AM »   

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Hey there,
    I am not sure about the sg pokers however the sg kenos had as many as 4 full sized boards in them which are diffenatly different form fortune 1. Where  the main board located is the key....over the monitor it will be the same as fortune 1 with maybe a few exceptions. if there are 2 to 4 boards in a cage along side the hopper they are not the same as fortune 1..I do have a complete unmolested manuel for fortune 1 games, and i believe it has main processor board as well as io board sechmatics in it. let me know if i can be of assistence. About 80% of failures I have seen over the years with SG games was power supply related.
BuddmanTx



Quote from: belbenchtech on November 21, 2005, 03:23:29 PM
Ron,
Have you looked at belbenchtech repair logs...under IGT Fortune I Boards...a Sircoma is the predecessor of the Fortune I...I believe the MPU boards are twins, correct me if I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time...)
Admittedly, the Fortune I schematics aren't the best quality, I guess you can't expect too much from a copy of a copy of a copy...

Hope it's of some help.

Mike><>
 

[Op-Bell]

Thought I would start this one off with a brief history on Sircoma video poker machines. Founded in the late 70's by William "Si" Redd who started the SI Redd Coin op cOMpAmy. See the caps? thus SIRCOMA. Si tried to get his machine to fly with Bally, however Bally just didn't see a future in Video poker and scraped the project ( some of the first Sircomas actually have Bally boards in them (late 70' to early 80's). Si went on to form his own company and called it IGT...WoW! If Bally only knew then what it knows now...the story of my life. Si passed away just a few years ago (2003). I have high hopes that this forum will help some  collectors like myself to restore these awsome pieces of history.

Actually the history is a bit more complicated than that. I think this was the first modern poker machine, in that it was the first to deal and draw from a single 52 card deck and pay off automatically (1967 Dale Pokermatic). The microprocessor hadn't been invented in 1967, nor had the first video game (Pong), so it would have been too complicated to use a video monitor even if it had crossed Dale's mind, which it probably didn't. Si Redd at the time was running Bally Distribution Co, the main sales outlet for Bally in Nevada, and making a freakin' fortune at it. He used the money to start buying up small gaming companies, like Raven Electronics in 1971. Dale wouldn't sell, though, so he did the next best thing and bought Dale's design engineers, who produced the Bally Computer Poker in the early 1970s. Note the external resemblance, though internally the Bally Distribution design is way different from the Dale.

[Op-Bell]

Meantime, Stan Fulton (later CEO of Anchor Games) started playing with these new-fangled microprocessors and came up with the first video slot machine using a color TV monitor in 1975. His company was called Fortune Coin. The following year, Bally (the home team in Chicago) produced a microprocessor-based video poker game with a black and white monitor. Fortune copied it with a color monitor in 1977. At around this time Bally (the home team) had noticed how much money Redd was making with Bally Distribution Co and decided to buy him out and take over distribution themselves. Si Redd agreed, but had it written in the contract that he retained the rights to all the electronic games, including Poker, in return for not competing with Bally on the reel games. I think the agreement was for 5 years. In any event, Si Redd now had a great deal of money, which he used to purchase Fortune Coin (and all the other video slot makers of the era). The conglomerate was variously named A-1 Supply, Fortune and Casino Services until it adopted the name SIRCOMA in 1979. In 1981 it went public as IGT.

While Redd had a monopoly on pokers he was selling them for incredible sums, $12000 or more at a time when ordinary machines were in the $2000 range. Bally noticed this and brought out their own color Poker in 1981. Si Redd sued, got an injunction to stop them selling it, and $2.5 million damages. They eventually got to sell Pokers in 1982 when the agreement ran out. They also got an unpleasant surprise when they discovered Redd may not have been actually competing with reel slots, but he'd sure been busy developing them while he waited. The new IGT S slots totally ate Bally's market. And that's where we are today.

Si Redd invested in a lot of small gaming-related companies. I worked for one of them, as I discovered when I bumped into Si himself wandering in the corridor. He greeted me like an old friend, even though we'd never met before. What a nice old man.

[uniman]

Meantime, Stan Fulton (later CEO of Anchor Games) started playing with these new-fangled microprocessors and came up with the first video slot machine using a color TV monitor in 1975. His company was called Fortune Coin. The following year, Bally (the home team in Chicago) produced a microprocessor-based video poker game with a black and white monitor. Fortune copied it with a color monitor in 1977. At around this time Bally (the home team) had noticed how much money Redd was making with Bally Distribution Co and decided to buy him out and take over distribution themselves. Si Redd agreed, but had it written in the contract that he retained the rights to all the electronic games, including Poker, in return for not competing with Bally on the reel games. I think the agreement was for 5 years. In any event, Si Redd now had a great deal of money, which he used to purchase Fortune Coin (and all the other video slot makers of the era). The conglomerate was variously named A-1 Supply, Fortune and Casino Services until it adopted the name SIRCOMA in 1979. In 1981 it went public as IGT.

While Redd had a monopoly on pokers he was selling them for incredible sums, $12000 or more at a time when ordinary machines were in the $2000 range. Bally noticed this and brought out their own color Poker in 1981. Si Redd sued, got an injunction to stop them selling it, and $2.5 million damages. They eventually got to sell Pokers in 1982 when the agreement ran out. They also got an unpleasant surprise when they discovered Redd may not have been actually competing with reel slots, but he'd sure been busy developing them while he waited. The new IGT S slots totally ate Bally's market. And that's where we are today.

Si Redd invested in a lot of small gaming-related companies. I worked for one of them, as I discovered when I bumped into Si himself wandering in the corridor. He greeted me like an old friend, even though we'd never met before. What a nice old man.

Sure like the history lesson!! K+ again!

What about the brief aristocrat/IGT connection and the M-slot?
My best guess would be IGT connected with Aristocrat when the 5-years was up, then dumped Aristocrat when the M-slot came out in 1983? The S machine with RNG in 84-85, and then S+ in ?
Am I close? And when did the S+ first appear?

[Op-Bell]

My best guess would be IGT connected with Aristocrat when the 5-years was up, then dumped Aristocrat when the M-slot came out in 1983?

I believe you are right. IGT distributed Aristocrat for a number of years, then when they had their own product they not only dumped them, but poisoned the water with Nevada Gaming so that Aristocrat couldn't get licensed here until they cut all ties with the founder, Len Ainsworth, and made him sell all his stock. They were shut out of Nevada until about 2001, and although they had a big office on Double-R Drive in Reno close enough to throw stones through IGT's window, they couldn't bring a machine into the state even to put in their own showroom. Aristocrat returned the favor with their own local lawmakers by shutting IGT out of the Australian market for many years, and to this day IGT Australia is a very small outfit, whereas Aristocrat is number 2 now in the USA. If the opportunity ever arises for them to cut IGT's throat, it should be a good spectacle. Len Ainsworth by all accounts is still hell-bent on revenge, though at his advanced age he may not live long enough to get satisfaction.

Regarding the stepper slots, the story circles back on itself, because the holder of the US patent for a machine with stepper reels was the founder of Dale Electronics, Dale Rodesch - US Patent 4,099,772, filed 1975, assigned to Centronics Data Corp (Gamex). Gamex folded, IGT copied, Rodesch sued. IGT held him off for many years with arguments about the claims and sheer harassment, like the time they sent 40 lawyers to put him in deposition for 3 straight days, but in the end they settled, around 2000 I believe, for a fairly trivial sum like $3 mil. I don't know the exact details.

[monitorman]

I remember when Sarcoma, thay had the old DRAW-80 game. Fixing edge connectors and replacing 1 and 5 amp fuses. That was back in the day...