Techno Stuff
How They Work - Reflex unit
Almost all of the bingo machines have a reflex unit. Some of the mystic line games have two of them. The purpose of this unit is straightforward, it makes the game tighter after credits have been won.
If you are one of those happy/positive people, I guess we can say it makes the game more liberal if nobody has won anything for a while.
How it does this is very simple. As the game is racking up credits on the replay register, it is also stepping up the reflex unit. Wipers on the reflex unit rotate off contacts, thus breaking circuits.
As people play off credits or deposit coins, the reflex unit is stepped down, and eventually the wipers reconnect circuits.
Tighter, Liberal, Stepping ... Say What?
"Straightforward" ... uh-huh. Now what does the above really mean? The reflex unit is changing the odds of something good happening when a coin/credit is played.
Let's use a slot machine as an example.
To be legal in Nevada, the odds of getting a jackpot must be the same on every spin of the reels. If the odds of getting the jackpot is 1/1,000 and you just got the jackpot, the odds of getting a jackpot again on the next spin is still 1/1,000.
The reflex unit would be illegal in Nevada because it changes the odds of getting the jackpot. If you get one, the odds of getting another would be something like 1/5000 for the next 500 spins, then 1/2000 for the 500 spins after that.
On the bright side, if nobody got a jackpot in 2000 spins, the reflex would adjust the jackpot odds to being 1/500 instead of 1/1000.
On the bingo, winning still requires you to get balls in holes that will pay out. The reflex unit just changes the odds that when depositing a coin/credit something beneficial will happen.
If you are trying to make money on a bingo, the sensible thing to do is pay attention to how much previous players have won. Don't play the machine if someone just won a bunch of credits if you put in multiple coins to increase the scores and enable features before shooting the first ball.
Circuits
We're going to dissect a reflex unit from a bally big time - mainly because I had a parts head so I could rip the thing out and take it apart without worrying where I put all the pieces.If you've looked at some of the other sections in the "how they work" area, you are no doubt expecting to be bombarded with poorly explained circuit diagrams and incomprehensible tables of odds calculations. Since I'd hate to disappoint, here we go!
big time |
| reflex schematic |
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Mixer #1 is covered in another section of the site, but the executive summary is that the rotor on mixer #1 can stop in 1 of 24 positions. Depending on where it stops, it may connect the green wire to one of the blue wires, or directly to the purple wire.
The reflex unit can be connecting the purple wire to any/all of the
wires entering into it on the left side. The more wires the reflex unit
is connecting, the better your chances are that the green wire will connect to
the purple wire.
