Techno Stuff
How They Work - Spin Cycle
Let's look at the somewhat tedious part of playing an electromechanical bingo when there isn't real money at stake - the cycling of the game to try and improve the scores and features before shooting the first ball.
Bally referred to this period as the spin cycle. Presumably it's a reference to the fact that the spotting wipers are spinning around...or maybe all the flashing lights could be said to be spinning around the backglass. Anyway, that's the terminology, and it really makes no difference at all, so you may as well forget we ever mentioned it.
After the game has been reset, initiating a spin cycle via coin or credit results in the following sequence of events happening in the machine:
- the start relay closes as outlined in the
reset/start cycle
section. Note that a start cycle is kindof generically
used to refer to closing the start relay and something
happening, where the something is reset and/or spin.
- the timer cams, mixers and spotting wiper are all released
- timer cam rotation is periodically stopped by the drag arms,
but eventually the timer cams rotate enough to allow
the spotting wipers and mixers to lock in. While the
spotting wipers are rotating, lights are flashing on the
backglass.
- the position where the spotting wipers stop often determines what
circuits will get 50V passed through to them on this spin cycle.
Depending on a bunch of other factors - like the mixers and
current positions of various steppers - the 50V works its
way through and powers step-up coils or trip relay coils to
award features or increase odds.
- the reflex unit is nudged another little bit toward it's
reset position, thus increasing the chance of the 50V mentioned
above making it through all the units to the coils,
and miscellaneous things like meters are pulsed.
As usual, we'll look at each of the above in detail. Some of it is going to be really easy, and other things are going to be so dense that you'll be wishing you had a martini on hand. Suggest you whip up a pitcher of marti's and keep it on standby.
overview
cam/wiper release
drag arms and cam timing
score unit step-up
feature unit step-up
trip relay activation
