Popeye front buttons mod

[dritz]

On the front of my Popeye machine there are the 2 buttons that apparently were used in the parlors but are not used for home use.
Well I got bored and wanted to see if I could put them to use. So I jumpered the 2 buttons.
One button opens the wings on the start gate. The other button now drops about 150 balls from the top hopper to the play area.
This is a mod that I assume would be different for every machine. You would have to figure which wires to do this with. But I thought I would show how it works.

The quality and narration is nowhere near TJ's quality stuff.

Here you can download the Avi file. It is about 10 megs

[slotter]

Cool mod! Thank you!

[arbycoffee]

very nice

[MrGneiss]

Sweet!

[daverob]

Nice mod. The ball drop mod is exactly what I've been planning to do on my machines. I figured that with this mod, a ball lifter, and a decent ball reservoir at the top that you'd be able to play for hours without having to manually shift balls around.

I've got as far as tracing the button connections all the way through to the D-25 Card Reader plug, but I'd be interested to know how you went about finding a connection to dump 100+ balls. The only place I could think of connecting the buttons to was the pocket sensors, which would only give 7 or so balls out for each press.

[drcrippen324]

Nice mod. The ball drop mod is exactly what I've been planning to do on my machines. I figured that with this mod, a ball lifter, and a decent ball reservoir at the top that you'd be able to play for hours without having to manually shift balls around.

I've got as far as tracing the button connections all the way through to the D-25 Card Reader plug, but I'd be interested to know how you went about finding a connection to dump 100+ balls. The only place I could think of connecting the buttons to was the pocket sensors, which would only give 7 or so balls out for each press.

would a toggle swich cause a continuas feed of balls till it was swiched of
P.S i cant see the vid it comes up error

[dritz]

I've got as far as tracing the button connections all the way through to the D-25 Card Reader plug, but I'd be interested to know how you went about finding a connection to dump 100+ balls. The only place I could think of connecting the buttons to was the pocket sensors, which would only give 7 or so balls out for each press.

Actually I jumpered the wire you are talking about with one of the wires of the pocket sensor. I expected it to dump about 15 balls(thats how many the pocket sensor drops) when I hit it but it dumps about 150 or so and is different every time by up to 50 balls or so. Why it does not exactly sure yet. Still trying to figure it out.

[daverob]

My first thought would have been switch bounce that is causing the extra ball drops, but I wouldn't have expected the contacts to bounce enough for that many extra balls to be paid out.

After having a longer think about it I have come up with a more probable theory. The pocket sensors are a coil of wire so it must be some kind of proximity/eddy sensor setup, and the small IC on the attached PCB is likely to be the driver chip for this sensor.

Now there are only two wires going to the sensor, so the power supply for this chip must go down the same wire as the signal, and when you jumper the switch wire to this, you are going to interrupt the power to the sensor every time you press the switch.

It's quite likely that the output of the ball sensor may be a bit unstable for a few moments after power up, and this is causing the CPU to think that the sensor has been triggered multiple times, hence multiple payouts.

I might give this mod a try at the weekend (once I have traced the pocket sensor wires back to the CPU board), and take a look at the signalling on a 'scope to see what's going on.

[Tony Junior]

The quality and narration is nowhere near TJ's quality stuff.

Here you can download the Avi file. It is about 10 megs

Thank you for the compliment, dritz, but I think you did an excellent job with your video and narration!

Now what you should do is step by step pictorial that might work with other machines.