Just picked up a Mag-7 and have some questions

[New to Slots]

I picked up a Universal Mag-7 at a yard sale last week and after some cleanup it looks pretty good and it is working fine. I have just a few
questions that perhaps someone can help me with.

1.  There is a black wire behind the door interlock switch on the cabinet that is dangling and appears to have been cut off.  There are no signs
    of where this wire may have connected to.  Any ideas?

2.  There is an unconnected 3-wire harness with a female connector located near the coin validation unit.  There is no matching male connector
    within reach.  Any ideas?

3.  The readout of the payout eprom is 90010.  Do you know the payout percentage, or perhaps you can steer me to Uniman's excel file?


Thanks for your help 

[uniman]

Black wires are grounds unless someone added it. Maybe for the cabinet light??

The three wire connector sounds like a comparitor harness, but there are several different variations out there so a picture would be needed.
Some machines will have extra connectors that are not used.

Your game eprom, 8552-0010 is a 92.56% payback chip.
They go up to 97.4%.

Congrats on your find.

[New to Slots]

Thanks for the info, Uniman.

Speaking of the cabinet light, what causes it to turn on?  Also there's a seller on Ebay selling a 320pg Universal Slot Machine Operation & Parts Manual dated 1989 currently going for $20+ (w/shipping).  I'd rather get it on a CD.  Is anybody in the forum selling this stuff?

As a point of interest, I also have a Continental III pachislo slot machine manufactured by Macy.  It turns out that Universal and Macy are subsideries of Aruze.  It accepts the same coins as the Mag-7 (quarters) but its coin validator is electronic.  So I thought that maybe the 3-wire connector I asked you about was for a machine sold in the Japanese market.  I checked the Continental and noted that it took the same style connector but was 5-wire.  While I had it open I did notice that it had a Universal brand coin hopper (it is red plastic, the Mag-7 is stainless) and one of the lamp boards was identical to the Mag-7.

What is also interesting is that it accepts extra coins as credits.  When the credit limit is reached (30) additional coins drop through to the coin tray without error.  Also, it has 6 different payout percentages that are user-selectable (special key required).  The machine was manufactured in 5/89, so it is the same technology as the Mag-7.  However, the machine is not nearly as beefy.  For example, the belly area is not steel-lined, lower gauge steel is used for the door lock, plastic vs steel hopper, etc.

Makes you wonder why the Mag-7 makes such a fuss over too many coins inserted and why you have to replace an eprom to change the payout percentage.

New to Slots

[kemo20002]

 hi we use atronic machine and bill acceptor ( jcm WBA universal ) I have problem the Bill acceptor accept all bills but the $100 bills not some peoble say the problem in the software but I do not have it could you please help me

[uniman]

Makes you wonder why the Mag-7 makes such a fuss over too many coins inserted and why you have to replace an eprom to change the payout percentage.

New to Slots

The reason is the regulations at U.S. casino's. There are some brands of U.S. slots that can change the percent payout by using a key chip. But not Universal.
Sounds like you have a mechanical coin acceptor in your Mag-7. They had a CC-16 electronic coin comparitor at the casino's. That's what that harness is for. If you ever decide to change to one you need to get the 24volt model. When wired to the machine it will not allow coins after three are inserted.

[New to Slots]

You are correct.  The machine has a mechanical coin acceptor.  I found several coin comparitors at Rudysdeals.com.  They have an IC-16 24v for $8 and a MC-16 24v for $15.  It looks like they give away the small 3-pin to 5-pin adaptor cable.  Do you think either will work?  It looks like the Mag-7 requires a resistor spliced in the cable.  Do you know what size?

Second subject:  the dangling black wire.  I decided to attach it to the lower lug of the door interlock switch and lo-and-behold, the cabinet interior now illuminates when the door is open.

Thanks again Uniman.

[uniman]

Not sure about the IC's and the MC's. I've always used the CC-16's. Universal used a 300ohm? resistor because they were supplying 32 volts and the comparitor is wired for 24 volts.
You just need two wires, not three as pictured in the manual, and I have no problems not using the resistor as it seems the CC-16 will function fine with the slightly higher voltage. Seen it both ways, with/without resistor.
The two wires being the black and purple. Black to bottom pin of comparitor and purple to third pin from bottom.


Sorry for the delayed response, having trouble accessing NLG.

Jim

[New to Slots]

Hi Uniman,

I couldn't find a CC-16 so I settled on the MC-16, which is supposed to have the same pinout as the CC-16.  There are CC-16 "d" s and "e" s out there but operate at the wrong voltage.

I decided to experiment with the resistor size, starting with 10K and working down.  I was getting 3V then 4 then 5 when I accidentally hit it with 33v and the unit came to life (led lit
up red).  It has a multicolored led and red indicates is some sort of error.  So I decided to work up from 27 ohms and increment by 27 ohms.  At about 108 I was at 28v and was
sure that I'd be in the operational range when I hit about 150.  It was at that time that the unit decided to quit.  No smoke, no sign of damage, no current draw.

As for the mechanicals, it turns out this model MC is designed for 14.2 g coin and my machine is set up for a quarter (5.65 g).  I found a spacer that limits coil travel that was easy to remove.  It now clamps down on a quarter, unfortunately, a quarter doesn't have enough weight to swing the counterweight.  If you swing the counterweight by hand the coin binds ever so slightly and can't make it through the mechanism, so cutting the counterweight down doesn't help a lot unless the nylon arm is shaved a little.  Remove the counterweight arm altogether and the coin passes, but probably too fast.

The diagram in the manual refers to a lockout coil.  On my machine I can't find any coil.  If the machine is powered off, coins drop straight to the cashbox.

I was planning on using the third wire to activate the inhibit function to divert extra coins. It seems that the blue wire is driven by an open-collector device.  With a 1k load on it it seems to go from float to ground after the third coin is registered.  Specs on the MC claim that inhibit can be enabled on a positive or negative transition.  My plan was it pull it up to the right voltage with a simple voltage divider tied between 33v and ground.

Above, you state that the 3rd wire isn't needed, so: question #1: how do extra coins get diverted at the right time (after the 3rd coin)?

question #2: does my machine have a lockout coil (see pic)?

question #3: with the proper sized resistor, any voltage up to 33v can be sent to the unit. So why can't the CC-16d or the CC-15e, or for that matter any unit that accepts dc under 33v
be used?

question #4: is there anyone out there that has an extra CC-16 for sale?  Blueridge never returned my call.

And in the unrelated category of questions...

question #5: in one of your past correspondences from 2008 regarding payout percentages you refer to a file you uploaded for this and possibly other machines.  I may be looking in the wrong place but the files I found were no more than a year old.  Is the file still out there somewhere?

I may give up on this and stay with the mechanical counter.  Everything else on the machine is now working fine.

[uniman]

Your machine does not have a lockout coil for the mechanical coin acceptor as it was not designed for one. My Uni video poker does because it was designed for one. It is located behind the coin acceptor. The CC16D has a coil on the unit. When energized it allows the proper coin to pass and when de-energized it deflects coins to the coin tray. The Uni mpu connects the CC16D to ground and disconnects it when coins should not be accepted.
The CC16D decides when to activate the coil and this is only when an acceptable coin passes. If the mpu has broken the ground the CC16D rejects everything.
If by chance a forth coin passes in a three coin game before the ground is interrupted, then the software in the mpu counts the extra coin to the next game. A fifth coin passing through will cause a tilt.
So to answer your questions; #2 No, there is no coil in your machine for a mech. coin acceptor.
#3 Yes, I guess a lower voltage unit may be used with proper voltage.
#4 There's got to be someone out there with a CC16D-24volt-non-inhinbited comparitor for sale
#5 sent you an email

[New to Slots]

I've managed to get the MC-16 coin comparitor to work on my Mag-7 machine.  The model I purchased had the following features: large coin (14.2mm), inhibit high (INHHI) and 24VDC.  It required 1) some mechanical changes (my machine is configured for quarters) and 2) figuring out the electrical interface utilizing the machine's coin-lockout control cable.

Mechanical changes:

1)  removal of a half-moon spacer that prevented the spring-loaded coin holder assembly from clamping down on something as small as a quarter.
2)  shaving a small amount of stock from the damper to allow a quarter to pass.
3)  replacing the damper counterweight with a series of washers that allowed me to easily tweak the damper action.

Electrical interface:

The coin lockout cable has 3 conductors: black (ground), purple (32vdc) and blue (coin lockout coil) cable.  The blue wire is at ground until after the 3rd coin is inserted, at which time it goes to float.  It is driven by a power transistor on the MMU board.  Input to the MC-16 is a 6-pin connector that, according to vendor documentation has the same pinout as the CC-16.

1)  The black wire is passed through to the MC-16 on pin #6
2)  The violet wire is connected to a 150 ohm 1w resistor that dropped the 32v to 21.3v (it seems that anything over 8v is OK.)  Per the Universal Operation Manual the wire color is changed to yellow and connected to the MC-16 on pin #4.
3)  The blue wire is passed through to the MC-16 on pin #2 (inhibit control).

When the machine is turned on the LED indicator on the MC-16 lights green, i.e., ready (pic1).  After three coins, when the blue wire goes to float, the MC-16 activates inhibit (releases the lockout gate) and the LED turns red (pic2).  Subsequent coins drop down to the tray.  After the play has ended the LED lights green again and the cycle repeats.

An alternative implementation would be to connect the blue wire to pin #6 on the MC-16 in place of ground.  Then the MC-16 would turn off after the third coin and turn back on after the play has completed.  If the model is configured for INHHI, it would be necessary to also ground pin #2.  I don't know which method is actually faster at releasing the gate, however the first method would appear to be a cleaner implementation.

I experimented with different coins: for example Canadian coins are rejected, and even though silver quarters are considerably heavier than clad quarters it accepts them.  I also found that about 1/4 of the time if two coins are dropped back-to-back as one, the second coin makes it through validation.  So if the bet was at 2 coins, the last coin is sometimes accepted as a "grace" coin and credited in the next round.

This was my last known problem.  Hopefully the machine is now good to go.

[uniman]

Nice job making the MC-16 work for your machine. 
And thanks for sharing your mod. k+