Thinking about DIY Battle Counters...
After seeing a few threads about battle counters on the forums here, it sounds like a nifty idea, though with the frequency they seem to appear and the potential for compatibility issues I'm not sure if I'd ever find one.
From what I've been reading and a very basic knowledge of electronics, I've started thinking that it might be a reasonably challenging project to take on. So I'm starting to do a bit of research into what I need to know about the target machine (Newgin Trio)
The machine itself has a 5 pin jack that I've been able to conclusively identify as the output pins, in part due to Google Translate, but also thanks to daverob's FAQ stickied in this thread. The pins are labeled "情報出力", which indicates "Information Output" (I spent a few hours counting strokes and using wikipedia to match up the characters. Gives you an appreciation for the amount of memorization the Japanese do for their 2000+ ideograms!)
DSC_0156.jpg
My machine has a handy reference sticker in Japanese, which is great, but I don't know JapaneseI've been able to figure out the common pin, but the translations provided by Google Translate leave me a bit confused as to what the signal from the pin corresponds to.
DSC_0155.jpg
The sticker has the following information:
情報端子 （トリオ） (Information Terminal (Trio))
１ 情報 コ モソ (Information Common)
２ 普通図柄作動ゲート (Normal Operating Gate Design – Start gate?)
３ 特殊情報 (Specific information - ?)
４ 普通図柄変動回数 (Average number of times the symbol fluctuation - Normal chance of jackpot?)
５ 大入賞口入賞個数 (Large number of prize winning mouth - Fever mode?)
If there's anyone out there who's a bit more familiar with the Japanese language who could clarify these for me, it'd be much appreciated
Per daverob's thread, I noticed that there are a few different implementations for output pins, and unfortunately I have not been able to find any sign of kanji indicating what type of outputs are present. My guess is that they're opto-isolators, but I can't be certain at this point. I did attach a multi-meter to the pins and don't see any voltage off common + any other pin (but of course, I can't actually trigger any events without breaking out the pins to a board where I don't have to worry about possible shorts.) It does lend itself towards being a switch-based solution, either optoisolator or relay.
Also, I believe that the standard in Japan is that the positive rail is common? I know over here, common is often used interchangeably with ground.
I'm only getting started on this, and probably won't be making any significant progress any time soon, but if anyone has any experiences with translations or even doing their own DIY counters, I'd love to hear it.
--InfiniteBlue
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