Vintage Bally slot machine payout counter 

I don’t think that is noise. The synchronized mechanical clicking and whirring of machines is music to my ears!

Love to see more of this machine.

Has anyone been on "Hand Tool Rescue" where he restores an IBM cheese cutter from the 1920s? Whilst it is not electronic in any way, it is the mathematics that went into it that makes it fascinating. It is essentially a calculator.

please, more on this machine, fascinating electro-mechanical operations throughout.

I love these kinds of machines. This is so interesting with the mechanical designing and the electrical combination. The people that designed these have minds that I admire. Excellent!

In the US, slot machines (even the new, all electronic machines) are built with components to produce noise. The payout coin pan is built out of a lighter weight metal and connected to the heavy frame of the machine in such a way as to enhance the sound of the coins being dispensed. Heightening the excitement for the player and drawing the attention of others to a "winning machine."

Brings back memories of childhood - raised by the seaside so the mechanical one arm bandits were a big part of my teenage years. No computer arcade games then.

Ahh, this takes me back to University where I had a full sized pinball machine in my dormitory room. Over the course of about a year I slowly rebuilt it and sold it. It was entirely electro-mechanical. All relays, stepper relays and solenoids, all of it driven by a huge linear power supply.

I blame Technology Connections and Fran Blanche for my love of electromechanics. So many creative and robust solutions to problems. God I need that Sunbeam toaster.

Another channel I watch is Joe's Classic Video Games and I love it when he is working on an older electro-mechanical pinball machine. All those relays and contacts to get dirty and malfunction! But the sound of one working is music to my ears. Looks like Bally used many of the same items in their slot machines.

Oh very nice these mechanucal machines in action! It reminded me of TechnologyConnections mechanical jukebox vids!!

Old arcade machines were such a more visceral experience. There was the physical shaking of of the machine, the sound of the relays and steppers clicking, the smell of oil and maybe a whiff of ozone, and the soft blinking of no. 47 pilot lamps. Modern video slots just don’t cut it; they don’t involve all the senses at once. Thanks for sharing the peek at some innards of the old Bally slot machine.

Hlaf the fun of the old games was the noise, sounded great when you enter a room and a few slot machines are click clacking away. 👍👍

As a kid in the 60’s amusement arcades we’re such a magical place the machines seemed more interesting then, wheel ‘em down,tootie fruity,roulette, horse race,even the spring the bearing in the cup type. Loved the mechanical noise of the workings and alway watched as the maintenance guy with a chain full of keys opened a machine up and I could see all the workings..fascinating stuff, nowadays it’s just the complex fruit and coin nudge machines…there’s progress

Woohoo. Thank you for your video and tutorial. My 1973 Bally machine quit paying out after a win. Your video allowed me to find the similar panel on my machine and see the arms were not on the tracks. I pushed a lever and bam it reset. Now the machine is back to paying on the winning lines.

More of this please! I could have watched/listened to a good 10 minutes of that clicking and clacking! 👍

Spent most of the 1970's servicing Pinballs, Jukeboxes, various other arcade machines, and the occasional slot. I loved the days of "click-and-bang" equipment! Modern stuff just doesn't put on the visual show inside.

I remember plaything these machines do at Brighton beach in the early 80's. A great day out.

Loved how clicky clacky that was. Very satisfying!

'When I were a lad', my best friend and myself discovered a company which was converting slot machines to use electronic circuitry. They had a skip out the back (actually next to a main road!) which we used to raid regularly - made a nice collection of light-flashing cam/motor/microswitch devices and other interesting bits! Still got some of the microswitches lying around, and sold the last cam mechanism online about 3 years ago!

oh god thank you Clive that took me back to some of the best times in life.

I instantly thought of Tim Hunkin in the beginning. His channel is excellent I might add.

I love seeing these electromechanical machines. It shows what was possible with a bit of ingenuity before the advent of semiconductors.

In my apprenticeship two years ago I had the pleasure of fitting a Bally Star Treck Pinball machine with a new flipper coil, switch and also repair some burnt traces on the mainboard. These are beautiful machines that are also worth their weight in copper cable.

I’d love to see the relay logic circuit and circuit diagram like you do with your tear downs. Was waiting to hear .....”one moment please!”

Decades ago in "Popular Electronics" magazine, was a project build of a answering machine. A motor turned as shaft and the timing was accomplished by cutting out wedges from poker chips. Micro switches with levers dropped into the wedge cutouts to do the electrical switching.

More electromechanical stuff please!!! I'm an old railway signalman and love the way we managed to do complex tasks with relatively simple tech and how over time we managed to integrate relay regulated multi aspect colour light signals with purely mechanical interlocking of the levers. Todays computer based interlockings have no soul. I'd go gaga if you could find and teardown an electric staff instrument but that's never gonna fit on the bench

My cousin worked for Bally for decades during the mechanical slot era in Reno, Nevada. I used to see parts like this all over the place in his old shop.

This is why i like these machines. especially EM pinball machines. They got all sorts of these weird contraptions to make it count etc.

Love these bits. I like working on electro-mechanical pinballs, lots of this kind of goodie inside. If you'd like to see a real fun widget, try to get hold of an old Radio Common Carrier (RCC) MTS or IMTS (Manual telephone system? improvedMTS?) mechanical phone number decoder. Every time an operator dialed a number, all the mobile (trunk mount in this case) units would index their decoders. as each digit was correct, the pawl would catch on a pin and wait for the next digit. Any wrong digits, it'd miss the pin and spring return to home. (And keep trying to decode from there. Was dumb.) If you hit the full number, then it would ring and allow a pick-up. Worked pretty well, even with all tube circuitry. (yeah, I'm old..:) Was fun to test and program. Thanks for the cool vids! Stu

1977 I saw on the bottom of that track circuit board, nice. 2 years older than me. I miss those noises to be honest, my father took up electronic repair here in the states about a year or two before I was born. I grew up around oscilloscopes, wave form generators and the such. Still have his old Sencore TV tester in the basement with all the adapter too, though it's long lost it's purpose for TV testing/repair. Sorry, rambling on. He used to fix all varieties of electronics, like that and old record players,etc, etc. My favorite were the old tube TV's, and taking trips down to the local electronics shop to use the tube tester. I miss those days a little, in that you used to be able to (relatively cheaply) build your own stuff out of discrete components too; before IC chips came along. But I digress, I'm writing a wall of text in memorandum to reminiscing, I'll end it here before I hit the word limit. Good video as always Clive.

I grew up in Paignton & Brixham so just those sounds took me straight back to Torbay Road in high summer on my lunch break from the Igloo Ice Cream Parlour in the mid seventies. I can still remember the wall mounted, wooden case, 2p ball bearing machines on the pier. Piers seem to be a bit time warpy in that the closer you get to the end, the slower things get replaced...

I happen to love clicking mechanical noises like that; very satisfying.

Made in the day when serviceability was thought of during the design stage. It is a thing full of beauty and a joy forever. 😎

When I have friends over, I always encourage them to play my Bally Bingo pinball so I can open up the back and watch everything work. My machine was a bit hacked up and not run for many years when I got it so I had to trace out and test each circuit making repairs and cleaning contacts as I went.

I work in the casino count room and I can say the days of coin slots will not be missed even though I adore these machines, electromechanical stuff is so cool. New machines are literally just windows or Linux PCs in a fancy case.

I have 7 vintage pinball machines that I rebuilt and play so also love these devices.

🥰 Electromechanical wizardry at its most basic and yet esoteric. A deep dive on that machine would be most welcome, exploring the guts of such beasts is like milk and cookies, never disappointing!

A great walk down memory lane wasting my holiday spends at Pontins and Butlins. This truly is a thing of beauty and brilliance. It might not be as complex as a modern micro circuit, but the thought that went into the original design has to be applauded. I presume you’ve watched Tim Hunkin's amazing channel? What a mind that man has got!

That "stand by for noise" made me think of the late great Paul Harvey (RIP). For those who don't know who he was, he was a US radio personality who told the lesser known news stories of the day. He'd start each day's segment with "Stand by for NEWS!", and would end with "... and now you know...... the rest of the story." Check out the Paul Harvey Archive channel to hear his dulcet tones.

Lovely machine, I could watch this for an hour or more.

They could probably have made it quieter but the clicks and clacks are part of the pleasure of a payout.

For anybody else in love with these beautiful pre-digital electromechnical Rube Golberg monsters: Technology Connections has a great detailed teardown and explainer video of a classical jukebox.

Thanks Clive ;) verry slick video production there. Luv these old machines. My father invented the first, coin slot and ball collect and release mech's, for billiards and pool tables, non electric. Also taught me to fix, repair, early, electro-mech, pin ball and slots, from a very young age. I remember some very shady characters coming by and muffled conversations coming from the office. Hang onto your machines, they're gold imo. I recently lost my workshop, labs, equipment, etc. to thieves and fire. Incuding 50yrs of collecting... cheerz mate.

my late father worked on these mechanical mechs for many moons. the older mechs like used in one arm bandits , pin-tables etc used fabric sheaved cables not plastic. all oil drenched.. this looks like a reworked unit as the coils show no sign of operational heat discoloration..and the tracks are not worn.... we have some real old stuff with multiple adder and counter units as found in the back of the pin tables.. from using solenoid actuator to synchronized motor turning multi lobe cams, all adjustable with hundreds of connections. very cool and awesome. the coin mechs used simple wire mirco switch, with weighted gates and a magnet rejector,, the real step was the marsmech coin mech..which pretty much stopped the use of home made coind and strimming.. we have a ton of this era stuff..

A dance of mechanical and electronic bits. Very nice! 👍

Love these old mechanical devices, my grandfather had an early teletype machine and a jukebox we'd play with sometimes. Learned at an early age what relays and servo motors did. This is the kind of hands-on learning kids don't get any more, everything for them is on a screen.

I love it! I am quite fond of Las Vegas. Not as a gambler, I love the lights, sound and energy! Thank you.

I could watch this payout mechanism all day....for some reason, I've always found the clicks, pops, and whirrs of things like this rather soothing. 😀

I love my collection of EM Pinball machines. Toying with them is better than playing them - so many ingenious mechanisms, but my favourite is probably the self-cleaning action of all the open relay and switch contacts - inside the cabinets can be absolutely filthy and covered in soot, but they still work. In fact if you start up a previously working machine that hasn't been used for a while, and it doesn't work straight off, a few plays (sometimes with some gentle encouragement) will often bring it back to life as the contacts clean themselves!

I miss electro-mechanical stuff. When it broke (granted that was quite often) you could go in with a multimeter and a can of tuner cleaner and have a good shot of fixing it. Hope to see more of this machine!

Very interesting, thank you.

That's not noise! It's electro-mechanical music and I love it! :)

Ahhh Brings back memories of 'Wally'. When i was a Kid, miles out at Sea on Ship, saw Slot Machine with Jammed Coins. I pulled the 'Hair Pin' trick and got many out, only to hear a coin Drop ..... So, I Pulled Handle. 8|} _there's more_ ... Hitting 'Wally' with Palm, either dropped another or it thought one did. Earned a good bit, enough for pizza with friends & Tip. And why Wally? He was one of ship's Crew we'd joke around with. *Thanks Clive!*

That sound brought back happy memories of my misspent youth in Portrush 🍒🍒🍒

Clive I have here what is a micro spot welding machine which dates from I reckon the late 1950s. It's table based with a foot pedal on a chain below. The machine can, if needed, push out up to 100 amps for any duration up to 15 seconds. The current is infinitely adjustable (not set in notches - it's smoothly adjustable) as is the time. The machine actually runs from a standard 13 amp household socket (it's a UK made machine) and works flawlessly. I had to check internals when I bought it a few years ago and it's incredibly interesting. All of the operations inside are done by old school technology. I'm not electronically minded so have no idea how it's done. There are masses of electronic components of old school designs inside and bundles of neatly tied wires running throughout the control boxes. They all eventually feed to a single large relay with open contacts which fires the transformer to make the spot weld happen. When I bought it, the silver contacts of the relay were tarnished and needed cleaning. I replaced the mains flex too. The machine works flawlessly. It can spot weld components of very small sizes (think filaments, valve internals etc) and all the way up to quite thick wire for frames such as bathroom soap racks. Interestingly, the company which made this spot welder appear to be still going (Hirst Electric Industries, Crawley) though were bought out by a larger company. They still make micro spot welders. Yes they cost a lot of money new! Your video reminded me lots about the micro spot welder here. The way the wires are tied neatly inside. A fascinating video!

Clive, that was some VERY excellent B-roll. I know it's not often appropriate for your format, but I would not at all complain if we saw more of that.

Jheeze! Who else had instant recognition of Pink Floyd's "Money" song when the machine noises started!? :)

I used to have a fully mechanical pinball machine. Had to sell it for a move. Really wish I still had it. I don't have that much interest in owning an electronic one.

Having been trained in the maintenance and repair of Strowger (electro mechanical) telephone exchanges I never cease to be surprised by how cobbled together this sort of stuff is. For example, the added inertia on that solenoid to make it slower to operate, telephone exchanges had magnetically damped relays to make them slow to operate and differently magnetically damped relays to make them slow to release. In fact those exchanges worked by the magic of tuned relays with equally tuned tuned contact sets. And mechanical digit regenerators (which the counter slightly reminded me of) were a joy to behold. Mind ewe, the GPO probably had a bigger R&D budget than most fruit machine companies 😁

It has to be said, Clive, that I absolutely love mechanical logic - It's simple, and I can follow it as it works! Aside from the Allmet grain dryer that I've mentioned before, the workshop heater in my brother's garage business was a work of art in machine logic. The control logic cabinet was about the size of a tumble dryer, crammed full of relays and geared drums with contact studs like an Enigma machine. Despite the mechanical complexity, these machines were still reliable, and for the most part readily repairable. - None of this "It's like this guv'ner, yer PC-2893 board's gone phutt. I'll have to order one from China. It'll be about five weeks" - Later to be told "Can't get 'em anymore! You need a whole new plant". A felt pad, a bottle of cleaning solution, some fine emery paper, a handful of small tools and an engineer who knew his job was all it needed! - Click clunk, bzzzz, hum, and the sound of motors starting up again!!

Thanks for another great video Clive 👍

Mechanical automation. Bloody love it

Ah, electromechanical sounds, you'd love a mechanical telephone exchange, so many fun electromechanical relays, steppers and motors, my favourite being the tone generator motor-dynamos, all the tones generated by the dynamo and switched in and out on an array of leaf switches, I'd love to own one... :D

Got to love electro-mechanical clunking 😃

Love it. I repair ElectroMechanical pinball machines here in the US. The ultimate EM game is the Bally Bingo Pinball like Lido or Silver Sails.

I seem to recall hearing that these machines were intentionally designed to make a lot of noise when paying out coins to try to exaggerate the amount of payouts going on in a crowded casino.

Brilliant I love old Electro Mechanical stuff.

That is Gorgeous. Love it!!!! Sooooo much better to listen too and watch than an I/C. Excellent Big Clive.

I have one of those, fun gadget. Mine takes multiple coins and uses a pinball score real to defer the movement of that disk you showed till the pinball score reel records a payout for each coin played. All that stuff is parked behind the award glass.

Amazing mechanical design and a lovely sound, I can smell the pennies!

I just love electro‐mechanical engineering, fantastic stuff. More gear like this please Clive, if you can find it.👍

Oh Clive !! - I'm in Heaven... Proper electro-mechanical bliss.

Quite a lot more interesting to look at in action than a microcontroller.

Oh I do so love this! THIS is a slot machine. What fun is it to play these modern disco balls that pay out a flimsy piece of paper? I won’t touch them.

A friend's dad had a very similar machine in his den and I remember that thing could be heard throughout the whole house!

I've always been amazed by the mechanics of one arm bandits. They are so clever.

That reminds me of the jukebox video from Technology connections, a lot of nice electromechanical tricks similar to this to make it work without any electronics. Thanks!

I remember playing those machines in the 50's early 60's, in a touring fair that came to town each year in September. We'd be given a handful of pennies to lose. But now I know where the story that if you pulled gently on the handle, let it return then pull you were more likely to win came from.

Oh, that was brilliant. Those sounds are reminiscent of the old Step x Step and Xbar sounds (though the Bally is significantly quieter) that chattered away allowing bygone days of communications to criss-cross through telephone exchanges. And old tech never forgets. Oh, sadness. Still. Internet is bloody brilliant now that that old stuff is gone!.....🤣

Wow, how cool is that?!?! I'm going to have to watch this again later on to savour all the good electromechanical fun 😊

That sounded just fine to me. Perhaps growing up near a freight traintrack, lumber yard, feed and farm supply shop, auto garage, & propane station I am more accustomed to loud noises than most idk. Thanks for sharing as I always enjoy old electrical and mechanical machines.

Very creative design, love it! The track system, very clever.

This is a thing of great beauty.

Clive, I don't know why, but this device reminds me of the uni-selectors of an old S.S telephone exchange. It must be the sound and the way it steps though its logic. I can stand all day in front of devices like these and be mesmerised by them. Now it all AXE or System 12, quiet, self-healing efficiency.

I have fond memories of those machines in lotsa places along the way to & from Vegas. Traveling with my father in the Semi. Even the Truck Stops & Diners had a few of those. What innocent fun times those were growin up riding shotgun with Pops at the wheel. 🚛

I wonder if it was made in Chicago, Illinois. There used to be LOTS of manufacturing in Chicago. I remember seeing a video from Shango066 where he was working on a TV from the 60s and quite a few components inside said Chicago on them. I used to live just a couple miles from the Automatic Electric plant in Northlake. Never knew it was there when I lived there, I was just a kid back then!

This is by far the most interesting series of mechanical breakdowns you can do. Keep it up @bigclive

Thought this was a joe's classic video games video before I saw you posted it!

Such a clever mechanical and electric mix . It’s definitely a bit steam punk like .

Sequential machine based on NO and NC contacts. Amazing!

these old fashioned electromechanical machines are like a rube goldberg machine by modern standards

It's amusing how this was solved by such a simple mechanism. I was born '83; when you showed this at the beginning I thought: "Ok, so the relays on the right hand side are a binary counter, and on the back there is comparator circuit for each possible payout, that fires a reset circuit which at the end spins the disk forward to a latching point".

I love the old EM machines

you would probably find the inside of an EM pinball machine interesting. same kind of mechanisms along with banks of relays .I love this old stuff.

It was fun seeing inside this thing. I noticed a lot of pitting in the sliding copper contacts, enough to make it malfunction probably. This reminded me of the Strowger Switch, a 1p10t stepper switch used in old dial telephone exchanges with a solenoid to step it, and another to reset it. My Dad had one in his electronics collection, I remember having fun playing with it as a curious boy, making it step and reset manually. Hope you'll do a show on the Strowger Switch some day.

What a neat machine! There'd be nothing built like that these days hey.

This reminds me of when i managed a launderette and my old boss had all these timer diagrams. They showed what timing positions you needed mechanically to get the desired electrical output for spins, washes etc. Each one had dozens of outputs and it made my head hurt deciphering them all.

Very Very cool to watch that in action..Thank you Big Clive :)

A thing of beauty ... and I don't mean you Clive,