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PaulEscher
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Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine
#241626 - 12/20/10 06:06 AM


Just got a Draw Poker machine and it is working but the mainboard's connector looks a little abused so I would like to clean it up and replace the 50-pin connector (2x25).

Can anyone tell me where I can get such a connector? I've ruled out SCSI and others, but no luck looking online.

There is an interesting back-story on this particular machine. It was 1 in a batch of 10 prototypes by GAT. The mainboard still has several custom mods to it, see picture for examples. Any additional information would be great.

Thanks,
Paul












italieAdministrator
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241677 - 12/21/10 01:50 AM


> Just got a Draw Poker machine and it is working but the mainboard's connector looks a
> little abused so I would like to clean it up and replace the 50-pin connector (2x25).
>
> Can anyone tell me where I can get such a connector? I've ruled out SCSI and others,
> but no luck looking online.
>
> There is an interesting back-story on this particular machine. It was 1 in a batch of
> 10 prototypes by GAT. The mainboard still has several custom mods to it, see picture
> for examples. Any additional information would be great.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
>
>

1. Make sure it's dumped!

2. mouser , digikey, jameco, tyco?....all places you could be likely to find a replacement.

3. It looks as though someone "refreshed" the fingerboard connectors. Try to make sure they are as flat as possible without damaging the connections further. If you aren't good with an iron, leaving them be ~might~ be the best of two evils....



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: italie]
#241691 - 12/21/10 05:38 AM


I've never dumped a ROM before and I think that this is one that is on the wanted list. What to do?

I'll try those companies out, I believe that it is a standard 50-pin Z80 IO edge connector from the early 80s.

Thanks



italieAdministrator
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241697 - 12/21/10 08:28 AM


> I've never dumped a ROM before and I think that this is one that is on the wanted
> list. What to do?
>
> I'll try those companies out, I believe that it is a standard 50-pin Z80 IO edge
> connector from the early 80s.
>
> Thanks

Post your location if you want to fish for someone local who can do it, or the board can be mailed to someone to take care of it.

If you'd rather buy an eeprom reader it would cost around $100, but I'd be nervous about my first dump being something rare....



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: italie]
#241698 - 12/21/10 08:34 AM


I'm in San Antonio Texas, easy driving distance from Austin. I've got plenty of PCs that we can use to dump with, but no EEPROM reader. I'd love to give back to the MAME community, and I believe this to be very rare.



gregf
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241707 - 12/21/10 01:52 PM


>There is an interesting back-story on this particular machine. It was 1 in a batch of 10
> prototypes by GAT. The mainboard still has several custom mods to it, see picture for
> examples. Any additional information would be great.

There are some other Game-A-Tron payout variety supported.


I thought this might same as yours, but it isn't when looking at photo of the pcb and yours has different names written on the labels.

----
http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/romset/poker41

roms name

poker.u00
poker-4-1.u08
black.u33
poker-g.u32
poker-r.u31

0.125u4: Improvements to Game-A-Tron [Roberto Fresca]: Changed description to 'Poker 4-1' as shown in the ROMs stickers.

---------




Closeup photos of the rom chips with labels and the corresponding white text printed on the pcb to identify locations on the pcb will also help out. This way when roms are dumped and files are named for each rom, the name on the label and location on pcb helps document where each rom resides on the pcb.




>I'm in San Antonio Texas, easy driving distance from Austin. I've got plenty of PCs that
> we can use to dump with, but no EEPROM reader. I'd love to give back to the MAME
> community, and I believe this to be very rare.

There is someone over in San Antonio area, but I am not sure if he would have a reader that is compatible with the ics on your pcb.



If and when the roms can be backed up, someone else might know who to contact about that part, then talk to Robbie because it might be that your machine might fit within the current existing GAT gambling driver file.


Here is Robbie's wip page.

http://robbie.mameworld.info/


If some more photos can be taken of the control panel buttons, and also the marquee and posted here, that will be of help because the control panels can be handled with an artwork layout imagery similar to what has been done with Golden Poker hardware games and some of the Cal Omega games too (see Robbie's page and all those images too where button layouts are handled via artwork setup).






PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: gregf]
#241739 - 12/22/10 05:59 AM


Here are the marquee and artwork images:

Top







Bottom







Middle - I removed the monitor for safe-keeping


Motherboard pictures in next post.

Paul



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241741 - 12/22/10 06:03 AM


Here are the chips and mainboard images:

The entire board







Left Bank







Right Bank







Second circuit hack







Bottom of mainboard


Cheers,
Paul



gregf
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine - good photos new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241747 - 12/22/10 07:12 AM




Those will help out getting the gambling/payout cab documented for starters. Having the rom labels and location of roms seated on pcb being documented first is a good start. Robbie will have useful photo references to work with.

As for dumping the roms, I am not sure who else is in San Antonio area, but with the closeup photos of what the roms are someone might know who to get in touch with in case they have the equipment that can handle that type of rom series.



italieAdministrator
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241749 - 12/22/10 07:17 AM


Hand drawn etch resist. WOW. That is taking prototype to it's truest level.



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine - good photos new [Re: gregf]
#241750 - 12/22/10 07:45 AM


Those images are actually scaled down some, if you need closer detail or better clarity please let me know, I can do better with my other camera.

As for San Antonio, I hope we find someone, as I am not sure that I want to ship it off right now. I'd at least want to get it working first.

The 50-pin connector needs work, obviously, and according to the previous owner he had the work done 10 years ago to fix the exact same problem. When dealing it would reset the entire machine after the fifth card. I can restart it and try another deal and that would happen again. He said that this is what happened before and the soldering job fixed the issue, so I am hoping that it will again.

Thanks for all of the attention. I never thought that I might be able to contribute back to the MAME community, though I have had my MAME arcade machine up and running about 5 years, and have had an interest over the last 12 years.

Cheers,
Paul



gregf
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine - good photos new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241751 - 12/22/10 08:48 AM




>Those images are actually scaled down some, if you need closer detail or better clarity
> please let me know, I can do better with my other camera.

Those are pretty good as I can tell. If you contact Robbie, he can tell if any of the photos need to be redone to be even closer.

I don't know if Robbie is busy at this time. He would be ideal person to talk to first. Jim is the other, but he may be away for now.

---
http://robbie.mameworld.info/
http://stolistic.blogspot.com/ (Stolistic / Jim Stolis)
---


> As for San Antonio, I hope we find someone, as I am not sure that I want to ship it off
> right now. I'd at least want to get it working first.

The person in San Antonio area does have equipment to handle early Midway hardware. I am not sure if the reader adapter will work with the roms on the GAT board.

There's another person that used to repair gambling cabs in casinos in Nevada and he could say something here, but he might be busy as well.

Hopefully someone will be able to know who to contact and help out.


> Thanks for all of the attention.

Sure thing. My favorite is Ramtek's Hit Me for nostalgia reasons.

It was ideal when Aaron took over because that made the decision to also allow gambling videogame hardware to be supported as well be a non-issue.


-----
0.99u2


Prior versions of MAME have excluded some drivers (primarily gambling-
related) for philosophical reasons. Since these games are legitimately at
risk of being lost to the ages, and many of them have strong similarities
to the other sorts of games MAME emulates, it has been decided to allow their
inclusion going forward. The criteria for inclusion in MAME is now simply
"any primarily video based arcade machine, driven by one of more CPUs," and
should relieve any confusion surrounding this issue going forward.
-------



> I never thought that I might be able to contribute
> back to the MAME community, though I have had my MAME arcade machine up and running
> about 5 years,

It was bound to happen. ;-) There's a couple non-cpu games with proms dumped (couple of pcbs I bought earlier) waiting to be supported whenever non-cpu support becomes a reality.


>and have had an interest over the last 12 years.

That's two years earlier before I discovered emulation. I bet waiting for the Atari Sys1 and Sys 2 hardware to be emulated back then was agonizing....especially for Marble Madness fans having to wait in late 1990s. JoseQ's Emuviews was the site I visited then in mid 2000.



Gyrovision
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241752 - 12/22/10 09:44 AM


Nice find. What a hack job?! If you are very careful you could just use a cheap jamma connector or harness from eBay and let a little of the connector hang off as long as you pay attention to the alignment of the connector with the board. There's a lot of excessive unnecessary solder globbed up on the card edge, you should soak up as much of that as you can before fitting the new connector. You should also cover the exposed window on the ROM chip at U31. (!)



Roberto Fresca
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine - good photos new [Re: gregf]
#241862 - 12/24/10 10:47 AM


Acked!

Thanks guys. I'll contact Paul privatelly.

Robbie.



> I don't know if Robbie is busy at this time. He would be ideal person to talk to
> first. Jim is the other, but he may be away for now.
>
> ---
> http://robbie.mameworld.info/
> http://stolistic.blogspot.com/ (Stolistic / Jim Stolis)
> ---



-- Risen from my grave --



keshbach1
Reged: 08/26/05
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#241931 - 12/26/10 03:17 AM


This connector from EDAC appears to be what you would need.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/EDAC...7mizzu7RLbgg%3D



Kevin Eshbach



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: keshbach1]
#241980 - 12/27/10 04:32 AM


That is very close. The pitch matches at 3.96 mm.
3.9" * 25.4 mm/inch / 25 connectors = 3.96 mm

But Jameco doesn't appear to carry the 25x2. The link was to a 12x2, which could work, but I did find another web site that has the Cinch 50-50A-30 connectors.



keshbach1
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: PaulEscher]
#242030 - 12/28/10 03:49 AM


> That is very close. The pitch matches at 3.96 mm.
> 3.9" * 25.4 mm/inch / 25 connectors = 3.96 mm
>
> But Jameco doesn't appear to carry the 25x2. The link was to a 12x2, which could
> work, but I did find another web site that has the Cinch 50-50A-30 connectors.

The web site I linked to was not Jameco, but Mouser. I could not find anything on Jameco's web site. The part was an edge connector that is 2 rows of 25 pins (for a grand total of 50 pins) manufactured by EDAC and has the EDAC part number designation of 307-050-500-202. (You can get the technical info at EDAC's website of www.edac.net.) The edge connector is .156" (3.96mm) contact spacing x .200" (5.08mm) row spacing (The same as Jamma.) and has solder eyelets. If your board uses pins similiarily spaced and sized to those on a Jamma board then this connector will work. If the contact spacing is different then this connector will probably not work.

I know absolutely nothing about the Cinch 50-50A-30 connector. I only use EDAC's edge connectors anymore.



Kevin Eshbach



PaulEscher
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Re: Game-A-Tron Draw Poker Machine new [Re: keshbach1]
#242147 - 12/29/10 06:47 AM


Kevin,
You are correct, I got confused between all of the tabs that I had open while searching for this part.

The EDAC part will work and I will probably order it after we get the board documented properly and dumped.

Thanks for the help,
Paul


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