Naughty Bally Venice Bingo. Issues and a operator hack...
In my previous post, I published a long play video of my Bally Venice bingo machine being played.
If you are part of the 11% of the viewers that watched the end of the video... You might have wondered why I didn't play for extra balls.
To summarize the last game played:
I get the Numbers lit in All 4 star zones score 450 feature lit.
I start chucking some balls: I hit the *16, then hit green 19, then *1, then red 2...
And the last ball lands in *17. That's 3 out of 4 star numbers lit. The camera is still rolling (figuratively speaking).
I figure I should try punting for extra balls and try to skill shot it, *6 is easy enough to hit.
All my quarters are played with zero credits left on the register but I remember I have a few Quarters in my pocket. I fish out my quarters. Press the yellow button before dropping the coin for extra balls and nothing happens! The yellow button is dead. Dead dead deadski.
Is it supposed to do that, like some kind of devious feature, or did the machine just pack up?
I press the R button in a lame attempt. Hoping that it would shake up the machines Goldbergian innards, but no dice.
I turn off the camera, edit out the last part of the video and I start investigating.
Now that I gave you the play by play. Here's the unadulterated ending of my bingo session.
Let's go straight to the point: The machine did pack up.
That's what I get for not going over the whole machine when I first got it and not playing the game for long periods of time. But it did give me the chance to study the manual and schematics and find some hacks along the way.
After making the video, playing a few games, the yellow button had multiple symptoms apart from the aforementioned dead yellow button:
Sometimes the yellow button would work, but switching between red button and yellow button mode with zero credits on the register... the switching would be difficult.
Sometimes, pressing the yellow button would start a new game instead of playing for extra balls.
Sometimes, once the game was in play for extra balls mode, pressing the red button would play for extra balls instead of starting a new game.
What a mess! I was dealing with multiple intermittent issues. Assuredly multipoint failure.
The suspects were the red button relay, the actual switches on the red button and those on the yellow button too, the before 5th selector lock trip and the extra ball #1 and #2 trips.
I started with the red button relay... I open the back door to find the relay just dangling.
This is embarrassing.
On the bright side I don't have to unscrew the relay from the board to service it.
I cleaned the switch points and checked the switch gaps. Then I used beefier screws to secure the relay to the board.
That resulted in no improvements whatsoever on my red / yellow button issues.
Next was cleaning and adjusting of the red and yellow button switches. These switches are finicky AF. The order in which the switches open or close is super critical.
Here's an excerpt from the manual.
Checking the red and yellow button switches had a marginal effect on the problems.
Next thing to look at was the before 5th selector lock trip.
I was inspecting the trip bank when I noticed a tucked away cut green and black wire near the top of the trip bank. Then I found that the green-black wire went to the 4 star numbers score 900 trip coil. Naughty operator hack.
Might as well fix it. Not my prettiest work but it's functional.
I always wondered why the 4 star pays 900 panel was all scratched up on the backglass. Now back to the yellow button mystery.
I took apart the switch stack that has the normally open switch with the red on one side and the blue white wire on the other. Cleaned the switches... and they were grubby. But that had little effect on my problem.
At this point, play testing the game it seemed like it had gotten worse. Consistently. At the end of a game, pressing the yellow button to play for extra balls would start a new game. That meant the extra ball #1 and #2 trip relays were not tripping when yellow button switch 1 was first closed. Directly actuating the switch in the stack confirmed this. I didn't hear the unmistakable click of the relay trip.
At first I suspected a open circuit between the door and the trip relays but that measured good with the multimeter.
So I went upstream in the circuit and I found it. Turns out it was the timer cam index 16c that was out of adjustment.
The 16C switch in situ.
Since then Venice has been playing great... until the next failure. It has 400 pounds of wiring and relays just waiting to fail.
I can't say I play this game a lot. But that could be said of all of my games. It's a shame, Venice being such a rare title.
I made a typical long play video of Venice. Typical... I end up not winning anything.
Venice is an electro-mechanical juggernaut of a bingo machine, with 4 transistors for the special game as the cherry on top.
This game is so heavy that it's land locked in my workshop area. It's been there since 2017. Like most 20 hole games, it's not very fun to play imho. But I like it anyway. I remember coveting this game so badly, the machine hiding in a dusty Ville Saint-Laurent warehouse "attic".
Thank your R.A.B. for making this game part of my collection. Wherever you may be.
