Techno Stuff
How They Work - Sequence and winner units

Now that we have the game sitting there with the search index coil holding the search wipers on a row with enough balls to maybe be a winner, we need the sequence and winner units to take over to count how many balls are in the section. This gives the characteristic thunking heard after pushing the R-button when the screen is moved far enough for a section payout to be possible.

golden gate
counting the number of holes

The green circuits are used to do the counting. A pulse is provided by the ever popular 16 pulse cams onto wire #93. This pulse does double duty. It steps up both the sequence and winner units. At sequence unit reset, nothing is being looked at. At step 1, wire #93 is connected to #13-1, which happens to be for the supersections and we'll get to that later.

At step 2, wire #93 connects to #57-9, which is on search relay #1. If this search relay is closed, then the pulse is fed down to the winner unit step up coil and the winner unit ratchets up a notch.

As the sequence unit steps up, the remaining search relays are checked. Got three search relays closed? You got the winner unit stepped up three times (or four in the supersections), and payout is going to happen (if a previous payout hasn't already stepped up the payout counter too high for the color of the section being looked at).

Oh yeah, the blue section can have a winner with just two out of the three numbers lit, so it's possible to have payout on games with the blue section when the winner unit has only stepped up twice and only two search relays are closed.

If you don't have the winner unit stepped up enough, then when the sequence unit reaches the top step (9th), the purple circuit is disconnected in the left branch and the search index coil drops out so the search wipers can move on to search another section. The oddball thing in the left branch is the "seq unit reset plunger sw". This is literally a switch on the reset coil plunger on the sequence unit which opens when the reset coil is powered (yeah, the switch is drawn NO, but that's a schematic error. It's really NC). It's job is to prevent the search index coil from repowering while the sequence unit wipers are resetting. Both the seq. unit disc wipers and the seq unit open at 9th step switches redundantly connect wires #40-9 and #41-9 unless the sequence unit is at the top step.

quick test

When the search wipers are in their home position, switch 15A and 15B are normally flopped over to route the power to the section scoring circuits. If you manually close search relay #3 (or #1, #2, #4), the search index coil should power. If the mixer motor is turning, the sequence unit should step up and the winner unit should step up at least once when the circuit corresponding to the search relay you are holding shut is checked.