Nixie tubes in slot machines

daveslot · Post by **daveslot** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 2:45 pm

Hi John, this is the one I would like to test. Any advice or should I just plug it in and stand well back

I have seen one of these bulbs fitted to a machine in the past.

whoop-john · Post by **whoop-john** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 3:36 pm

Wow! That is fantastic. What a lovely looking device. Let me get some advice from some better experts before you plug that in. I suppose it must be neon! Does it have a high voltage transformer or anything. Or is it just mains?

I thought we were talking about the Osglims, this is absolutely gorgeous.

Was your other display like this? What happened to it?

whoop-john · Post by **whoop-john** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 6:40 am

Your Siemens tubes are neon but I doubt the plasma trick will work on such a large item. They will probably use in the order of 50-100 mA each with that much surface area.

The tubes appear to be wired in parallel. Thus they can be tested individually. The old cloth covered wiring should be replaced as it can go lethal. Sometimes there is a rubber inner sleeve which perishes leading to shorts.

I'd work with one tube at a time in isolation.

I assume they were meant to work off 240v. 120v is not enough to light neon which needs 170-180v to ionise the gas.

Put a 1K range to start with in series with your supply to the tube at one end. I think there is just one connection per end.

240v -----/\/\/\/-----[ | =SIEMENS= | ]----- 240v

It will have to be at least a 5-watt resistor to keep it from melting. If the glow is not reasonably bright, then reduce resistance by half. You can join two resistors in parallel to halve the resistance as long as they are both of the same value resistor.

Maplin do a range of 7-watt or 10-watt wirewound resistors for 19p each. Anything 5-watt or over is good.

These will at least let you test the tubes cautiously.

If the unit has all original wiring and matching vintage mains plug with no resistors hidden anywhere in/around the cabinet and sockets, it is likely that each tube has its own built-in resistance inside one of the end caps. In this case, it should be safe to remove the extra resistor entirely.

The glow may not cover the entire surface of the words, even when the resistance you added is reduced or removed. It could be a case of "sleeping sickness" (cathode poisoning from long-term storage), which may clear itself up if the lamp is left on for a few days.

Or worse it could be a poor connection to the series resistance inside one of the end caps. Those connections are often just 2 solid copper wires twisted together, prone to failure from oxidation over time.

I have asked a friend at Siemens if he can dig anything out about these tubes for you.

pennymachines · Post by **pennymachines** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:56 pm

More nixie tube stuff.

whoop-john · Post by **whoop-john** » Thu Jul 14, 2005 4:21 pm

Ah, well Hans Summers is well known to me and lives not far away either in the south west London, we keep meaning to meet up for a beer.

Any pics of the complete Crompton football machine yet?

Best wishes, John.

emslots · Post by **emslots** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 7:37 pm

daveslot wrote:I thought it was a great machine but nobody else thought so! I think it had a spare nixie tube with it

I can remember this machine, or one very much like it, in an amusement arcade in Hemsby, Norfolk, in the 1960's.

At the time I thought that the NIXIE tubes were very unusual, as most fruit machines had mechanical reels at the time.

I can also recall some huge floor standing fruit machines, with tiny projector screens instead of fruit reels, but that's another story.....

whoop-john · Post by **whoop-john** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 9:00 pm

Please tell me what you remember about these projector displays, as a Swedish friend of mine Marta has recently bought some on eBay. They are the same as featured near the bottom of this page:

http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/count.html

...and are made by IEE and use #44 lamps as used in pinball machines. Like Mike Harrison of electricstuff, we thought they had been used in Spanish machines to get around the gaming laws there. But Marta's devices are definitely English made, NOS.

emslots · Post by **emslots** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:30 pm

From what I remember, the projector displays were hard to see in certain levels of ambient light, that's why they were usually located beneath a small viewing hood. I only ever saw one machine which used them, it was a floor-standing fruit machine, with a push-left-or-push-right handle to start the symbols spinning.

They occasionally appear on eBay, so it's always worth checking the Coin Operated section of that site.

cheeky · Post by **cheeky** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 10:14 pm

Take a look at this on Ebay. Is this what you are looking for?

Item number: 6253178140

dickywink · Post by **dickywink** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:51 pm

I also remember in the late 60s early 70s a quiz machine in an arcade in Yarmouth that had them. The questions were rear projected from slides onto a screen and the you had to push A B or C and the score was displayed on 3 nixie tubes. Impressive stuff then.

All the best... Dickywink.

operator bell · Post by **operator bell** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:20 am

New member here .. Apologies for reviving an old thread, but here's a machine with nixies you've never seen before. I haven't yet been able to gain possession of this, but I'm hopeful. You set a number - today's stock price, or whatever - on the nixies using the five key switches visible on the right, then the payoff depends on how many of the five numbers you match. Motor driven reels, relay logic. The nixies are gigantic, 3 inches in diameter.

operator bell · Post by **operator bell** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:27 am

Projector displays were first used in the USA, by Keeney. One of their engineers, Pete Sagan, saw the IEE numeric displays and asked IEE to do one with images. They first appeared in the Keeney Red Arrow machine in 1960. The reason was to get round the Federal Johnson Act, which prohibited the distribution of slots but rather carelessly defined a slot machine as "having reels or drums". I've got four projector machines. They're not sought after in the US and frequently don't get a single bid on Ebay. This one has a history, though. It's a custom made Keeney Wild Arrow. Fifty of these were made in 1961 specially for Jack Lavigna, the man who invented the hopper (ACME Novelty Co). The Wild Arrow was an amusement only machine, and normally had a replay button but no coin tray. This cabinet has a large coin tray and no replay button, and it has a hopper inside. It was sold on in about 1963 to Barney Shapiro (United Coin) who added the progressive jackpot. Both of these may be "firsts", as I haven't seen any earlier examples.

operator bell · Post by **operator bell** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:36 am

Here are two more machines of incredible rarity, but not much cash value. I picked up both of these for 2/3 the price of an average Hi-Top. The one on the left is a 1968 Dale Pokermatic, the first ever electronic draw poker machine. The one on the right is a Bally Computer Poker, made by Si Redd's Bally Distribution Co in about 1975 after he poached the designers away from Dale Electronics. This was the machine that really launched IGT, as Redd had a monopoly on pokers for ten years and these were selling for over $12,000 when an average machine went for under $2000.

Neither of these machines has a microprocessor in it. They're both made entirely with small scale logic chips. There are two rows of five projection displays, one for values and one for suits. The Dale has an additional extra large projection display, center, that shows playing instructions.

treefrog · Post by **treefrog** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 5:33 pm

daveslot wrote:I thought it was a great machine but nobody else thought so! I think it had a spare nixie tube with it.

Even though this is an old thread, I had read it recently and was facinated by this machine as in my first job in 1981 I operated old Xerox copiers with these displays. Never seen one of these bandits, guessing they are rare, but by chance I acquired over 300 original 60's machine flyers at the weekend, which included the company that made these. They appear to have had two other machines, one was a wall machine. Company was called Semco. Will try and scan at some point. Facinated by these flyers a real find, keeping me amused as is easily done.

slotalot · Post by **slotalot** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:10 pm

Just by coincidence I am looking for a type of "Nixie" machine, I know of at least 2 different models, maybe they made more??? any one got any information on them? or any leads as to any for sale, I would be interested in buying.

treefrog · Post by **treefrog** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 6:51 pm

Well slotalot, by coincidence I have a flyer for the said machines, well actually for one called "Beat the Blinkers" and the same as the one you have posted above called "Beat the Bandit"....They appear to be made by Whittaker Bros. from Shaw in Lancs. In the flyer they suggest there are many variants and the perspex screens are interchangeable.....sorry no machines

slotalot · Post by **slotalot** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:03 pm

Thanks for that Treefrog

I wondered who made them, and Whittaker Bros factory is/was only a few miles from where I live here "up north" I have driven past it quite a few times. Any chance of a copy of the flyer??

Anyone else got any more info tucked away??

treefrog · Post by **treefrog** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 9:39 pm

Will definitely get some scans, when I get the scanner set-up. I did not realise Whittaker still existed, but looking at their website, they're probably in their same factory looking at Google Maps.....http://whittakers.co.uk/

On the Semco topic, the other machines they seem to have done were two bandits called "Beachcomber" and "Fantasia". Also they did a wall machine called "Dial for Money" where you dialed your win on an old telephone type dial and a single Nixie would display if you were a winner. Semco stood for Sturgeon Electronic Manufacturing from Bognor Regis.

arrgee · Post by **arrgee** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:40 am

treefrog wrote:I did not realise Whittaker still existed, but looking at their website, they probably in their same factory

Sounds like an ideal opportunity for an intrepid slottie journalist to make contact with them to see if they still have records or any history available of their early machines. Could be an interesting project for someone who has keen slottie enthusiasm

What do think Mr S? Would make a good MMM read

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