February 2016

Slot Tech Magazine Editorial
Page 3-Editorial
Page 4-Kortek KT-LS221DSC-23 Monitor Repair
Page 5-Invitation to Attend TechFest 32
Page 10-Slot Tech Training in St. Kitts
Page 12-Tips and Tricks of the Trade
Dear Friends of Slot Tech Magazine,
Without a doubt, casino electronics can present repair issues that are interesting and, at times, challenging. The truth is that the bulk of our repairs are
fairly routine. Heck, anything can be easy once someone shows you what to do!
This month we welcome a contribution from Nathan
Galloway with an easy fix for Kortek LCD monitors as
well as some Tricks and Tips from Vic Fotrenbach.
Thanks for your contributions, guys.
See you at the casino.
Randy Fromm
Randy Fromm's
Slot Tech Magazine
Editor
Randy Fromm
Technical Writers
Vic Fortenbach, Nathan
Galloway, Chuck Lentine,
Pat Porath
Publisher-Slot Tech Magazine
Slot Tech Magazine is published
monthly by
Slot Tech Magazine
401 W. Lexington #777
El Cajon, CA 92022
tel.619.838.7111 fax.619.315.0410
e-mail editor@slot-techs.com
Visit the website at slot-techs.com
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Copyright 2016 under the Universal
Copyright Convention. All rights reserved.
Registration now open
for TechFest 32
May 24-26, 2016
Mystic Lake Casino
See website at slottechs.com for details
and registration form.
Slot Tech Feature Article
Kortek KT-LS221DSC-23 Monitor Repair
By Nathan Galloway
Ceronix monitor, and
wouldn’t you believe it, this
replacement has no touch
screen installed. With help
from a fellow technician, we
swap out the Kortek monitor with the top monitor
from an adjacent Konami
I
t’s December 30th, one
day before New Year’s
Eve and my supervisor
wants games up for play.
This directive came straight
from management; they
want all the games up for
New Year’s Eve.
One of my tasks that day
was to fix the main monitor
on a Konami Podium. No
problem, I have a spare
Kortek monitor in the shop.
Just one problem, well it
wasn’t a problem until I
replaced the main monitor
in my down Konami game
and tried to calibrate the
touch screen. Now I have a
bad touch screen on a
working monitor, but I need
a working touch screen.
With the holiday approaching, there is not enough
time to order another touch
screen.
Since Konami Podiums
have dual monitors, both
with touch screens, I will
just swap the main monitor
with the top monitor. Now I
have a new problem. The
top monitor has already
been replaced with a
Page 4
Kortek AD board with surface mount capacitors.
Kortek AD board with surface mount capacitors C802, C810, C812,
and C813 removed.
Slot Tech Magazine
February 2016
Invitation to Attend TechFest 32
Plan now to attend.
Attention Slot Techs and Slot Managers!
TechFest returns to Mystic Lake Casino Hotel
May 24-26, 2016
Visit the website at slottechs.com for “Early Bird”
discount of $100/person.
Schedule of Events
Events subject to change
For complete details & enrollment form, visit the website at slot-techs.com
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Thursday, May 26, 2016
9:00 am - 12:00pm
Electronic Components and
Component Testing
Presented by Randy Fromm
9:00 am - 12:00pm
LCD Monitor Repair
Presented by Randy Fromm
9:00 am - 12:00pm
Ceronix LCD Monitor Repair
Presented by Ceronix
Electronics repair is actually pretty
easy, once you know how to test the
components. It often doesn't matter if
you know anything at all about how
something actually works in order to
fix it. You just look for bad parts and
replace them. This seminar covers all
of the discrete components commonly
found in electronic gaming machines.
We'll look at how they work, how they
fail, and how to test them as accurately, inexpensively and safely as
possible. Each attendee receives a
digital multimeter and sample components, theirs to keep following TechFest.
1:15pm - 3:15pm
JCM Bill Validators
JCM is a huge player in the gaming
industry. This session covers UBA
troubleshooting and configuration as
well as iVIZION. This presentation will
be given by JCM's Dan Petersen.
3:30pm - 5:30pm
FutureLogic Troubleshooting
FutureLogic printers have been a
mainstay of the industry since TITO
was born. They are easy to configure
and to troubleshoot. This seminar will
be presented by Dan Petersen.
February 2016
LCD monitor repair is easy. This is
the first of two presentations on LCD
monitor repair at TechFest. During
this seminar, we will cover the theory
of operation of LCD monitors and
you'll see just how simple they really
are. We will also cover circuit
analysis of the electronics with an
emphasis on what fails and how it
can be repaired in any casino's tech
shop.
1:15pm - 3:15pm
Touchscreens
Presented by 3M Touch Systems
Touchscreens rule the casino world.
This presentation will introduce you
to touch technologies and how they
work. Troubleshooting and repair
techniques will be presented.
Everyone will receive diagnostic
programs as well.
3:30pm - 8:00pm
Component Removal and Replacement
Presented by HAKKO
Soldering skills are the most
important skills a technician can
posess. It doesn't do any good to be
able to diagnose a failed component
if you can't remove it and replace it
properly and it's no good trying to
work on modern, surface-mount
components without the proper
equipment. This exciting new
seminar will present the latest in
soldering techniques and rework
equipment. A special "Hands-On
After Hours" session will allow
extended time for everyone to try out
the gear themselves.
Slot Tech Magazine
Although it can be argued that all LCD
monitors are more-or-less the same, it's
nice to get the inside track on specific
monitors from the manufacturers themselves.
This is a "hands-on" session where
everyone will have the opportunity to teardown and rebuild an LCD panel as well as
troubleshooting actual failures on LCD
monitors in a "power-on" lab where you
will actually make repairs. This is the
most fun thing we do at TechFest.
1:15pm - 3:15pm
Transact Technologies Ticket Printers
Transact Technologies presents servicing
and troubleshooting Transact brand,
thermal ticket printers. These units are
simple to understand and troubleshoot,
once you know how they're put together.
We have covered these printers extensively in Slot Tech Magazine. This is your
chance to ask questions of the expert.
tel.619.838.7111 .
TechFest@slot-techs.com
Page 5
Podium. I wish I could say
problem solved but the
main monitor on the adjacent Konami failed to work
after that machine was
rebooted. With this new
disappointment, I returned
to the tech shop with a
Kortek monitor to repair.
The situation may appear
bleak but I know how to
repair the Kortek KTLS221DSC-23 monitor.
Who do you think repaired
the original spare Kortek
monitor from the shop? At
that time, I was not aware
of a bad touch screen. The
original issue was a bad AD
board, which was rectified
by replacing four surface
mount capacitors. I did not
have any surface mount
organic polymer capacitors
in stock, so I used regular
aluminum electrolytic capacitors.
To remove the surface
mount capacitors, I used
Chip Quik and no clean
paste flux. After removing
the four capacitors, I
cleaned up the surface
mount pads before installing the new capacitors in a
horizontal position. I repaired three bad Kortek
monitors from Konami
Podiums that week. All
three had bad AD boards
with those four bad capacitors. It’s now more than
month later and all of the
repaired Kortek monitors
are still up and working on
the casino floor.
Page 6
Kortek AD board with new aluminum electrolytic capacitors installed.
The capacitors I replaced
were:
C802
C810
C812
C813
470uF
220uF
220uF
220uF
16v
16v
16v
16v
Editor’s Note: This is
where we have lots of failures, regardless of manufacturer or model. This is
the DC-to-DC conversion
section and it is the hard-
Slot Tech Magazine
est-working section on the
PCB. DC-to-DC conversion
is another way to look at
power supply regulation.
We take a DC input and
run it through some sort of
“buck regulator.” Each little
DC-to-DC converter is running at 150 kHz or so. It
takes the DC input, chops
it up PWM style and spits it
out. The longer the duty
cycle, the higher the output
voltage. Then we hang an
February 2016
February 2016
Slot Tech Magazine
Page 7
electrolytic filter capacitor
on the output and presto!
We have a new DC output
voltage that is proportional
to the duty cycle.
42%
58%
If, for example, we want a 5
vdc output, we simply take
the+12 vdc input from the
power supply and, with a
duty cycle of approximately
42% we get a 5 vdc output.
Sweet. As you can imagine,
the 150kHz switching
speed gobbles up these
output electrolytic filter
capacitors. When these
capacitors fail, the 150kHz
ripple wrecks havoc on the
system with unpredictable
symptoms ranging from
disappearing or distorted
columns or rows to total
blackout or even whiteout!STM
Nathan.Galloway @slottechs.com
Visit the Technical Department at slot-tech.com
Schematic Diagrams
Service Manuals
Educational stuff
And much more
Page 8
Slot Tech Magazine
February 2016
February 2016
Slot Tech Magazine
Page 9
Slot Tech Event
Slot Tech Training in St. Kitts
I
had another “dream
gig” in January. I held a
small class for the slot
techs at the Royal Beach
Casino in St. Kitts. It’s a
beautiful casino and it was
a real pleasure to have the
opportunity to train with
their extraordinary crew.STM
Left to right:Delvin Richardson,
Charles Buchanan , Emaric Maynard,
Kevis Richards and Mark Kelly
Page 10
Above: Master Carpenter and Slot
Tech Charles Buchanan poses with
the portable whiteboard he whipped up
just for the class. He also built all of
the slot bases in the casino. Beautiful
work with embedded LED lighting! I
can see where it is very valuable to
have an in-house carpenter.
Slot Tech Magazine
February 2016
Slot Tech Mini-Profile
Meet Vaughn Browne-Slot Manager
Royal Beach Casino-St. Kitts
technical supervisor. He
continued working in this
capacity over the next
three years when he was
tapped to become the slot
manager.
Kevis Richards during one of our
“hands-on” sessions. This is the
semiconductor lab.
Below: Delvin Richardson and
Randy Fromm in the casino.
February 2016
S
lot Manager Vaughn
Browne started
working at the Royal
Beach Casino in 2002 as
a casino technician. By
year six, he had become
the senior technician. In
2009 he was promoted to
Slot Tech Magazine
“I believe in empowering
staff and help making
dreams come true,”
commented Mr. Browne.
“Working in this industry
has opened my eyes to so
many new and fascinating
things.”
Visit the website at
slot-techs.com
Page 11
Slot Tech Feature Article
Tips and Tricks of the Trade
By Vic Fortenbach
H
aving been a slot technician for the past 15 years,
you learn a lot of tips and
tricks, some from older, seasoned
technicians and others from just
watching vendor technicians.
Using these tips and tricks can
make your job easier and sometimes a bit more fun. One tip I
love and I use frequently is being
able to RAM clear a MK6 Aristocrat slot machine in less than
five minutes. Not only can the
RAM clear be completed very
quickly but most of the options
never change. All of these tips
and tricks are part of the slot
machine and have been designed
into the logic board and assemblies. Sort of a secret way to do
something that no one wanted to
tell you. All of these tips and
tricks are just procedures and
short cuts that work.
To start the five minute ram
clear, power off the machine and
open the logic box.
Connect the piggy back board
with the RAM clear chips installed to the logic board connector. Power up the machine and
wait for the program to load.
The on screen instructions will
indicate, to clear the SRAM
(SRAM is static RAM, it’s the
battery backed up memory that
holds the options) you will need to
push and hold the take win/cash
out button and the fifth, top row
line button at the same time
(there are six buttons on the top
row). Both of these buttons are
usually flashing to assist you.
Pushing these buttons simultaneously will clear the SRAM
memory and advance you to a
screen asking you to specify
which version of clear chips are
being used. At this point, do not
change any of the version numbers. Power off the machine and
remove the piggy back board. Re-
power the machine and wait for
it to load. With the logic door
open, advance to the SPC configuration option (it’s under the
miscellaneous menu). Reset the
SPC configuration options and
save them. Close the logic board
box and you’re good to go. All of
the other machine options
remain unchanged. It’s a good
practice to review the options
“just in case” but I have never
had any options change with this
procedure. All done! RAM clear in
less than five minutes!
Aristocrat MK7 Quick RAM
Clear
The above trick also works for
the Aristocrat Viridian MK7 slot
machines but there are three
differences: There is no piggy
back board. You replace the game
theme flash card with the RAM
clear flash card instead. The
RAM clear flash card MUST be
the most current version for that
machine theme. The screen
Aristocrat MK6 Location of EEPROM Chip
Five Minute Aristocrat MK6
RAM Clear
This trick is not for re-optioning
the game. It is intended to clear
an anomaly within the slot
machine and leave most of the
options untouched. If you need to
re-option the game to reset the
PAR or denom, the standard RAM
clear is required.
RAM clearing an Aristocrat MK6
machine requires the use of a
piggy-back board that is plugged
in to the connector on the logic
board. This piggy back board
contains the two RAM clear chips
that are needed to RAM clear the
game.
Page 12
Slot Tech Magazine
February 2016
now has a control panel version
option. This option is usually
defaulted to the correct control
panel version for that theme; you
do not need to change it. Everything else remains the same as
the MK6 RAM clear.
Aristocrat MK7 EEPROM Chip
While we are on the subject of
Aristocrat, there is one more for
trick that can save you tons of
time when you have to replace a
bad logic board. The standard
steps for changing out the bad
logic board include replacing it
with a good one and having to
RAM clear and re-option the
replacement board. This takes a
lot of time.
This procedure can be shortened
significantly with this trick.
However, it only will work if the
bad board does not display an
error message like “EEPROM
Error.” In that case, you will
have to replace the logic board
and perform a standard RAM
clear.
On the Viridian logic board,
behind the white “logic door”
cherry switch and its bracket are
two, eight-pin chips in sockets.
These chips are EEPROMs. While
these chips are both the same
physically, they contain different
information such as the game’s
options and meters. Even when
the power is off and the chip has
been removed from the socket,
the information remains in the
chip. To make logic board replacement easier, just swap
these chips from one board to the
other. On the old (bad) logic board,
just remove these two chips,
making sure you do not mix
them up. Then remove the two
chips from the new logic board,
install the chips from the old
logic board into the new logic
board. Be careful not to bend any
of the pins due to the cherry
switch bracket being in the way.
Popping out the cherry switch
from its bracket makes it a bit
easier. Power up the machine
and reset the SPC configuration
options. Don’t forget to save the
SPC options. All done. Aristocrat
February 2016
MK7 logic board replacement
complete.
This trick also will work for the
older MK6 Aristocrat machines;
but there is only one EEPROMS
are located on the main logic
board at location U77 just swap
this chip with the replacement
logic board chip. There are two
EEPROM sockets on the MK6
logic board; the second socket is
at location U82, I have only seen
one chip used. Remember to
reset the SPC configurations
options and save them.
IGT Advantage (Acres) VFD
RAM Clear
About three or four times a
month, an IGT Advantage player
tracking VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) comes in to the
shop for repair with a tag that
states ‘Stuck in Comm” or “garbage on display, not resetting.”
Most of the time, these two
symptoms can be corrected by
using the same trick.
With this trick, the VFD does not
need to be able to display any
messages. Just like super cap-
Location of RAM chips on IGT I game Logic Board
Slot Tech Magazine
Page 13
ping the BEII board, you can also
super cap the VFD display to
clear its memory. The VFD ram
does not hold vital information
like the asset or location numbers like the BEII but it does hold
the downloaded messages, the
last few player card names and
other operating information used
to display on the VFD. It’s this
operating information that gets
corrupted and will cause the VFD
to display the (Stuck in) COMM
message and cause other display
problems. There is a telltale sign
that the VFD ram is corrupted
and needs to be cleared: The
bezel around the card reader will
illuminate a very bright red. This
red is brighter than the normal
bezel red color that is seen when
the slot machine is idle.
This trick works on all three
types of VFD displays for the IGT
Advantage System: The small 5”
bar top, the standard 7” and the
larger 7” large mount VFD displays. To super cap the VFD,
locate the super cap. It’s at the
same location C39 on all of the
VFD displays, near the ribbon
cable connector. The super cap is
a large round capacitor usually
black, or green in color. With the
power off to the VFD, just use a 7
inch long jumper wire. Touch the
negative end of the super capacitor and the other end of the
jumper wire to ground. The
negative end of the super cap will
be the top metal of the super
capacitor itself. If the super
capacitor is mounted on its side,
touch the side of the super
capacitor farthest from the ribbon
cable connector. The best place I
have found for ground is pin 14
on the program EPROM. It’s the
end corner pin on the EPROM,
opposite the end of the EPROM
with the notch. You will not
damage the EPROM if you accidentally touch the jumper wire to
another pin. There are other
points you can touch the jumper
wire to ground but this is the
easiest. Hold the jumper on the
super cap and ground for at least
five seconds. This will give ample
time for the super capacitor to
drain and the VFD ram to clear.
Once you have super capped the
VFD to clear the memory, connect the VFD to a slot machine.
The VFD will take longer to load,
since all of the displayed messages as well as the other information has been cleared. Once
all the messages have been
loaded and the BEII has initialized, the card reader bezel will be
the normal red and the VFD
should be displaying its text
messages. If not, the VFD has
other problems that cannot be
repaired by super capping the
VFD.
IGT Igame Video Soft RAM
Clear
IGT manufactured the Igame
series of slot machines over 10
years ago, using the older 80960
processor. The logic board used
in these machines is sometimes
called a “960” board. Some of the
more frequent error messages
that are displayed on the screen
include printer, coin-in and
meter tilts. Most of the time,
replacing or cleaning the assembly noted in the displayed error
message will clear the error but
sometimes it does not. That is
where this trick comes in handy.
A regular RAM clear will clear
most any tilt displayed as well as
all of the game’s options. Besides
being time consuming, this is a
pain. Never fear! The soft RAM
clear to the rescue. The soft RAM
clear will clear most displayed
errors without changing any of
the options. This trick is easy
and can be completed quickly. On
the “960” logic board are a series
of chips, some EPROMS and two
others are RAM chips. The RAM
chips are located at locations
U15, it’s labeled RAM 1 and U38,
it’s labeled RAM 2. It’s the RAM
chips that hold the error messages. To clear the error, just
remove both of these chips from
the logic board. Both of these
chips are the same and unlike
the Aristocrat EEPROMS mention
elsewhere, they will lose their
memory when removed from the
logic board. It’s the fact that
these chips lose their memory
that clears the error message.
Once you have removed both
chips, just put them back into
the sockets the same way they
were removed. One of the rumors
regarding the memory of these
RAM chips is you have to leave
them out of the sockets for at
least five seconds. This is not
true. Once the RAM chips have
been removed, the memory is
erased. A second rumor is that
you should put back the RAM
chips in their opposite locations
but since the RAM chips are
identical, it really doesn’t matter
in which locations you replace
the RAM chips. Be careful that
you do not bend any of the chips
pins when you replace the chips.
Re-install the logic board and
power up the machine. The error
message will still be displayed on
the screen until you push the
cherry switches or close the
main door. If the error message
is still displayed then there are
other problems that need to be
repaired.
The Igames are very similar to
the Game King series of machines that used the same “960”
processor and logic board. These
themes included multi games
within the same cabinet which
are mostly poker and keno type
games. This soft RAM clear trick
does not work reliably on these
machines. The memory configuration is different. Performing a
soft ram clear on a Game King
machine will work to clear an
error but you will have to key
chip the game to reset some of
the options.
I hope you can use these tricks
and tips to get a slot machine
that is down, back online faster
and with less effort than ever
before.
- Vic Fortenbach
v.fortenbach@slot-techs.com
“I can help you bring down the
cost of casino electronics repairs”
Randy Fromm
“OK. You asked and I listened. My new tech class eliminates obsolete CRT
monitor repair and the associated monitor repair lab. In just four or five days,
your slot techs can learn to repair Power Supplies, LCD Monitors, Ticket
Printers, Bill Validators and more. It’s easy and it’s fun.“- Randy Fromm
tel.619.838.7111
fax.619.315.0410