Dangle plug and Star Wars
an old Round Table discussion
azlew: In the current issue of Game Room magazine (June 2004) they have an article about the "Star Wars 24 Years Of Coin Op Games".
At the end of the article they mention that IGT is coming out with a new VIDEO Slot with the Star Wars theme to be ready for the May 2005 premier of Star Wars : Episode III. The Slot will be a "MegaJackpots progressive game with 3D - like video and theater style audio" ! It will be leased only along the same lines as Wheel Of Fortune is and will not be available for homes for at least "20 - 25 years" again just like Wheel Of Fortune.
Here is the big news tho : "...a STAR WARS PACHINKO MACHINE will be hitting Japanese pachinko parlors sometime later this year....the game is in development - NOW ! "
WOW ! Can you imagine a huge LCD STAR WARS Pachinko ?
Can a true (not a fake "custom" belly glass one) officially licensed Star Wars Pachislo be coming also ?
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Tulsa: The ET, the Betty Boop, Pac Man and Godzilla all seem to be pretty good sellers. I've been watching these auctions for months. Basically there's two sellers that constantly have auctions. SlotsUSA and TexasAuction. Slots runs actual auctions most of the time and TexasAuction puts up buy it now prices and auctions that start about .05 cents difference. They sell for $180 and come with 400 pachinko balls and $60 shipping. Slots comes with 500 balls and $60 shipping. Texasauction does a great job of describing the play of the machines.
Now pachislo.com has some and they usually run about $189 but with $45 shipping and 1000 balls and a volume control or they have some kind of feeding system where they give you 200 balls only but they fill right back into the slot they need to be to play again. That usually raises the prices to $220.
Since I've never played one, I've hesitated to buy one simply because I don't have a clue what makes a good one vs a bad one.
Now there was one that I was watching regularly called a Lupin that had a silver case. That machine was pure pretty and it would have looked great in the game room and I wouldn't have cared how well it played. While Slots had them they were constantly going for over $300. More than I care to pay for something I've never played.
One day, when I see that Lupin again, I'll buy one.
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azlew: Since I've never played one, I've hesitated to buy one simply because I don't have a clue what makes a good one vs a bad one.
Tulsa I would not get a pachinko unless it has the LCD slot machine as to me now anything else would be boring. I used to have one of the old classic pachinko's and these new ones really are something else !
I also seen a pretty cool looking E.T. Pachinko on ebay last night. I've never played pachinko though, and would want to play one before I bought one.
But the one that I have has one problem and that is trying to figure out how the heck to set the odds down so we can hit the Jackpot more often.
It looks as though it may take a special program connected through an RS232 connection.
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Tulsa: Have you tried hooking up to it with a dumb terminal like hyper term and seeing if you can get anything out of it?
I would try it with settings of 8-none-1 or 7-odd-0 just to see. Keep babelfish handy though as I doubt you'll get anything in English.
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azlew: I have the connection port on the pachinko with what is either a dongle attached or the actual cable removed from a rs232 connector. I am not sure what else to do... hmmm any ideas?
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Tulsa: Is it a standard 9 or 25 pin RS-232 connector?
If so, try removing the dongle and plugging in a serial cable into it. You might have to use a null modem cable. A null modem cable has a pinout configuration to trick the device into thinking a modem is plugged in.
Have the other end of the cable plugged into your computers serial port and load up hyper term(comes with windows). Hope you have a laptop or can move the pachinko machine by your desktop. Go into terminal mode of hyper term and start typing. If you get something in return you know your talking to it.
Since it would be software driven you'd have to be able to type something like "menu" or "reset" or something similar in Japanese. Not an easy trick for us to be sure.
Without seeing it, it's tough to say, but that's the basics.
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nethippy: It's a 25 pin. I might consider checking it out as well. I have a dedicated serial terminal that I can use for such purposes. Just looked at the plug on one of my machines, it's a female 25 pin. Was digging through my box of cables, and it looks like it is for a parallel cable. My terminal also has a parallel port so this still might be possible.
Just double checked. The terminal also has female 25 pin sockets for the serial and parallel ports, so now I'm not sure which of the two it would be. All of my 25 pin cables are 1 male, 1 female end.
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Tulsa: It's easy enough to make what you need. As I recall, on a 9 pin connector you attach pin two to two and three to three and five to seven. On a 25 pin connector, same configuration but you also jumper five to 20. Jumper being on the computer side.
For a null modem connection you cross pins two and three. If you're going to try and make one, I would verify this configuration but I'm pretty sure it's correct.
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azlew: Tulsa I am not quite understanding what I am going to get out of this. If I have the connection but don't have the software that they use in Japan to read the info...hmm it doesn't make sense to me but I have a hard enough time figuring how to turn this computer on and off let alone reading Japanese info from an rs232 port on a pachinko.
Is that software that reads this out there somewhere and can we get it?
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DipWa: If you are looking for the Lupin pachinko at a good price, this place has all 4 Lupin machines that they made for $189 each... but none of them have a silver case... custom job maybe???
http://www.slot-pachinko.com/2004PACHINKO.HTM
I was looking at the one called "Happy Date (R Rated) or possibly the black gladiator (which sounds like a discrimination super hero). The only thing I don't like about Gladiator is that it is not an LCD version, and from what everyone is saying, LCD is the way to go. I'm in the same boat as you though... never played one and hate to spend the money on something I've never played.
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Tulsa: Those are different. This is the Lupin I'm talking about. SlotsUSA has it on their web site for $595.00 No way I'm going there.
As long as your at texasauctions http://slot-pachinko.com/ site, and you like the idea of Happy Date, check out that Lupin #2. It's all about his girl friend. I like the looks of this one better than Happy Date.
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DipWa: Interesting... I emailed these guys 3 days ago and still haven't got a response. Also, if you go to their pachislo section, they are advertising christmas specials! I wonder if these guys are still in business???
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Tulsa: They must still be in business since they are currently running auctions on ebay. It's obvious they don't spend much time with their web site but they do update it now and again as the machines have changed.
azlew, the software maybe inherent in the machine itself in which case it would be firmware. Many other controllers I've worked with use this type of interface and you only need a dumb terminal to access. I have no idea if this is the case here but something to try. If it works and it's all in Japanese anyway, send your machine to Dritz's contact for translation.
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azlew: Tulsa I wonder if the terminal someway could feed its text into Systran or Babelfish to translate ?
This is an interesting sounding project. nethippy have you had any luck yet?
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Tulsa: If you have the japanese fonts loaded and can capture any text that comes across you might be able to make some sense out of it. Shouldn't be a big problem with a dumb terminal, just turn your capture on and you've got it.
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nethippy: Didn't have a chance to try that yet. I've been working on a few other projects that I had not worked on for a long time. I'll get back to you when I get it connected and report what happened.
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azlew: I just am not mechanically or electrically inclined. If you have the ability to do it then that will be fantastic !
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nethippy: Yesterday I connected the terminal to three different machines and tried numerous baud rates, parity settings, etc. Could not get anything from any of them. I guess my next step would be to check each pin with an oscilloscope and see what kind of signal lurks on each.
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azlew: It sounds like it may require a direct connect as you said before to a card reader or a networked japanese system. Thanks for trying - however !
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DipWa: What type of card reader? I have a smart card reader/writer, the ones used for DirecTV cards (don't ask... lol).
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nethippy: They use prepaid cards in the parlors in Japan. Insert card, get balls to shoot, and I think you earn points and stuff for playing, like in Vegas, but not sure. (At least that would explain why there's the digital LED display on the front of the machine.) Any pachinko model that starts with CR is a card reader machine.
I just bought a part from them from one of my machines. Got it the same week.
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azlew: DipWa I was going by what nethippy said The Drum crash has a removable connector, my other three don't. I'm assuming that there are parts in the connector that disable the card reader circuits, from what I heard, some models will not operate unless connected to the mainframe or card reader
DipWa it might be that you won't have this same removable connector that nethippy and I have on our pachinko. I hope yours does so we can get this solved !
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azlew: Anyone seen anything about the Star Wars LCD Pachinko yet ?
"This is My Personal Opinion and no others"
