Roto-Pool, Roto-Fruit, Rotolite, Electrodart, Bingola, etc.

[special when lit]

This just popped up on one of the Facebook groups.
Wonder who copied who?

[treefrog]

Very interesting........given darts is more popular in U.K., I would assume clipped from Jamieson’s

[coppinpr]

Jamieson's were surprisingly big on selling abroad and exhibited at several trade shows in the USA including Atlanta (just down the road from South Carolina ) they also made regular sales trips to New Jersey so their machines were quite well known in the US, perhaps they simply sold the design under licence?

At first glance, the glass looks different from the Jamieson but in fact, it's exactly the same, just squeezed and stretched in places and with different text.

[pennymachines]

Unlike Jamieson's wall-mounted Electrodart, the Star Amusement Company of Columbia's Hi Lo is a trade stimulator. As such, it has no automatic payout and appears to be a counter-top game, similar to other products the company made.

[Potless]

I have a Roto-Pool in for repair (the 2D-4D-6D payout version), and have got it working again by re-soldering some bad joints, cleaning all the contacts and switches, replacing bulbs and cleaning the sockets, etc. It now works well, with one exception - the payouts are rather strange.

I get payouts for some weird display combinations, e.g, 1-2-1 pays 2p, 2-1-1 pays 2p, 1-1-2 pays 2p for example. I suspect that the display lamps are showing one or two lights ahead (or is it behind?) the correct sequence.

The thing that makes it strange is the fact that some payouts are perfectly fine, e.g. 1-2-X, X-1-2, or X-X-X at the top of the display.

Could this mean that the display uniselector needs adjusting, and if so, which adjustment is needed?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[slotalot]

These machines are fixed pay out, not random. When you put a coin into the machine the left hand uni steps forwards 1 place. At this point the machine knows if it is going to be a win or a lose game. When you press the start button, the right hand uni rotates; when you take your finger off the button the right hand uni runs on slightly looking for the next pre programmed stop contact, be it win or lose. This happens so fast you don't see the over run happening. I think the right hand uni is missing some of the stop contacts and running past the pre programmed stop point. I would be looking again at the condition of the right hand uni wipers and pads.

[Potless]

Ah - interesting point, I will check it out - thanks.

[Potless]

After much cleaning and some re-soldering of bad joints, I now have the Roto-Pool machine working well - BUT, one thing has stopped me crossing the finishing line - a blue wire has broken off the right-hand uniselector, and I have absolutely no idea where it should connect to (see photo). The wire is connected to the blue wires that are linked together on the 2nd set of contacts in (the first set of contacts you can see has not been used). The only problem it has caused is a failure of the display lamps to advance one position after payout.

There do not seem to be any obvious points on the solder tags where traces of stranded wire can be seen to have broken off.

My model pays 2d, 4d and 6d, but the standard diagram shows payouts of 3d, 6d and 12d, and the wiring of the RH uniselector seems to be totally different.

If anyone can throw some light onto the problem, I would be very grateful!

P.S. The wire is not long enough to reach the left-hand uniselector, so it must attach somewhere to its right.

[coppinpr]

this is only a visual observation made from looking at just that one photo, but it would seem the other blue wires act as links between the solder tags, with this in mind I can see no blue wire connected to the very first tag (bottom left) yet the tag looks half empty as if its lost something ( if the original solder joint was a bit dry it may well have separated much later in life taking all the solder with it,and the length of the blue wire looks about right, as I said I'm no electrician and this is just a visual observation.

[Potless]

Hi coppinpr,
Thanks for your suggestion - I did try connecting the wire to that tag, but it made no difference - that's why the solder looks so fresh. Also, the blue wire, when connected to that tag, is very much longer than the other linking blue wires, which makes me think it belongs somewhere in the other direction (to the right).

Well, at least we can eliminate that tag from our enquiries!

I have added another photo, showing a different angle. The loose wire can be seen attached to the other linking blue wire, third tag up, second row in.