Bingo Overhaul
Step 17: Inside the cabinet
magic ring |
| inside the cabinet |
|---|
Here is the front part of the cabinet. Unless you have a very early bingo which has all the stuff in the cabinet, or a Mystic Line machine with a special game, there is nothing in the back part of the cabinet. If you do have the extra pieces in there, usually it's a wooden board with a bunch of units on it that can be pulled out of the machine. So let's see what we have in this guy.
a: tilt and meters
The tilt pendulum is below the (a), and is adjustable by loosening a thumb screw and sliding the conical bob up or down. When the bob hits the ring around it, the game tilts. The meters are not of too much interest for a home machine. This game has the standard Total Plays and Total Replays, and also a Key Game (number of credits put on the machine using the Kumbackey on the left side of the cabinet (c), and a Coin Out meter. The coin out meter records the number of credits that were reset off the machine when it was powered on. The assumption is the bartender paid the customer for these credits - well, at least, had the machine actually been used as a gambling device, that's what the meter would have been for. Maybe the operator was just curious. I'd guess that no more than 95% of the bingos were operated as gambling devices.b: ball trough
The ball board is removed, but there is normally a hunk of wood between the playfield and the bottom of the cabinet. When the balls drop from the playfield, they roll down this board and wind up in the trough, where they roll down to the right into the ball lift mechanism (e). We'll look at the trough in more detail in a minute (depending on how fast you read).c: Kumbackey
Only later model bingo's have this, and it's handy for home use if you don't want to put the machine on free play. Using a key, you can put as many credits in the replay register as you want. In theory, Bally added this to let people save their credits and put them back on the machine at a later date. It seems that it was rarely used.d & e: Ball lift motor and lift mechanism
read on...
