First Race: Solid State One Ball Horse Racing Pinball repairs continued

First Race Solid State One ball horse racing flipperless payout pinball

This is my third detailed post about First Race, a solid state one ball horse racing gambling machine. As I write this post, there are no other known examples of this game. The manufacturer is unknown and the machine was last operated in South Africa. The machine was extensively played judging by the playfied wear.

First Race might be a prototype, a one off or the last of its kind. Who knows! There isn't any information about it.

I found the machine at a pinball re-seller in Montreal. It was sitting there for years before I acquired it. I'm not usually into electronic amusement machines but I couldn't let this one pass.

Here are my previous posts about First Race:

First Race: Solid State One Ball Horse Racing Pinball Unknown Manufacturer

First Race One Ball Horse Racing Payout Pinball: Overview and repairs

Here are a few detail pictures:

Backglass: It's made of plexiglass. Notice the lack of manufacturer's name or logo. Also notice the odds are displayed reverse of my 1949 Bally Champion. Left to right the odds are displayed decreasing instead of increasing like on the Bally Champion.

Playfield is nicely screened but artwork is sparse and the paint is thin. The rebound and flag springs are made of plastic. Very 90's.

Bottom left and right trap holes are ball returns. Center bottom trap hole pays out purse odds.

Here's a view of the inside of the front of the cabinet. Notice the coin meter. It adds up the number of credits knocked off via the hidden credit reset button.

The coindoor. Red button is for "extra bonus" feature. Yellow button is to play credits if the coin tube is empty. Coin tube can hold about 90 Nickels. Seems a bit contrary to bingo machine symbology where the red button is to play credits and yellow button is to play for extra balls. I will probably end up swapping the button lenses around.

Inside of coin door. Door is simple thick gauge steel. Very basic. The coin rejector is adjustable. Video poker machine buttons.

Where I left off last post. I suspected the shutter motor had a problem. I took apart the motor and the armature brake mechanism is definitely broken. There's supposed to be 2 tabs, opposed 180 degrees on what I can describe as an armature brake disc made of black plastic. Both tabs are broken.

The result is that when de-energised, the armature keeps spinning freely for too long. The shutter cam triggers the carryover switch and the motor powers up. It gets stuck into a perpetual cycle.

Looking on ebay. I found similar Crouzet motors that I could probably use to swap out the brake mechanism but they are all listed for 100's of dollars. That's a bit too much for me. Until I can find a (affordable) suitable replacement, I will disable the motor and push the shutter by hand.

Motor armature with the broken brake disc.

After getting a 120 to 240 Volt converter and replacing a broken relay, the machine could coin up but the shutter switches would cause the machine to freak out. Only the 6's would pay out correctly. I took out the main board and re-seated all the integrated circuits and changed out the chips with tarnished pins that went black / brown. This however did not solve the switch issue...

I took the time to trace out the wiring to a DB9 and DB25 connector on the main board. This allowed me to better understand the architecture of the game. There might be future revisions of the pinout chart...

The coin switch and yellow button go through a flimsy looking assembly with a 4093 ic with two transistors. I had my doubts about the assembly so I took it out for closer inspection.

Once the assembly was out, I could see that there was a broken wire and a broken pin on the ic socket.

I re-made the assembly with an actual pcb. Makes it less flimsy and with the new unit reinstalled. The switch payout problems were gone.

At this point I'm happy with the state of the machine. The game coins up. The switch logic is good and the machine pays out correctly. The wiring could use a bit of tidying up... all in good time. The situation with the motor is unfortunate but I might be able to repair it in the future OR shoehorn in a different motor to do the job. I would prefer the former.

If you stumble upon this post and you are into weird and rare gambling machines, please consider sharing this post. I don't have any information about First Race. I'm looking for any information about it. Where it came from, who made it, production details, documentation, manual, schematic, score and information cards.