I have two machines in the Sankyo V-trigger / Lumina family, a Macross Frontier, and a CR Eva 7. I built cabinets for the both of them based on the plans from Ken Hoke, but without the upper ball reservoir.

Basically, I have no interest in having the machine payout balls like normal. Instead, balls would be scooped up from the lower discharge ramp and placed in the shooter feed tray (forgive my off the cuff terminology) to be played. The problem comes with the frame disabling its light show when the upper ball hopper is empty. On the standard Lumina V-trigger frame, it's not that big a deal since I don't think the light show brings that much more to the table, though some may disagree with that. It's more of a problem on the Eva 7 since the frame on that game is title specific, and a lot of ambiance is lost when the lights aren't working. Stuff like the Eva's eye, the countdown timer, and the blue/red warning indicator.

There's an upper opto sensor between the hopper and the payout dispenser (the thing made by Copal) that tells the machine if there are balls stacked up. This is easy enough to take care of with a zip tie to hold the sensor closed/block the opto beam. The tricky part is the payout dispenser itself, since it also has one or more sensors that count the number of balls payed out, which makes sense. If the dispenser is left connected with the upper opto sensor tied closed, as soon as the dispenser runs and no balls come through, the machine faults and the frame lights turn off. If the dispenser is disconnected, the machine faults and the frame lights turn off.

My goal is, with the help of a hardware engineer friend of mine, to figure out a way to fool the machine into thinking it's paying out balls when it's empty. I would also like to do this as plug-n-play as possible, without cutting up any of the existing harnesses if I can. We plan to scope and analyze the signaling between the dispenser and payout controller board to see if we can build a hardware module to mimic the dispenser, which means we need to get at the wiring while the machine is in operation, and I was hoping to build a custom harness to do it.

Long story short (too late), I haven't been able to identify the make and model of the connector used on the Copal payout dispenser, and I'm hoping someone can help. They look very similar to Molex CLIK-Mate connectors, but there are subtle differences in the keying that tell me it's not a match. It's looks like a blade style connector on the wire side, with the board side connector having no visible pins so I know it's not a Molex MicroClasp like some of the other connectors.

Here's a quick picture I snapped this morning (apologies for the rotation)...
IMG_3121.jpg


I need to examine the connectors much more closely to see if I can find a makers mark, or some other identifier to turn me on to who makes them. Until I can get home to do so, I was thinking maybe somebody already has this information.

Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.