With all digital based machines, having a back up is a must! The Video Eclipse is a very strange monster though! I have managed to clone many hard drive over the years but I couldn't get this to stick. I tried all my go too software but everytime, which ever software I used I would get a windows error. I got to the bottom of it. The Video Eclipse hard drive needs to be cloned from hard drive to hard drive, and not a hard drive to and image! Note, the Video Eclipse hard drive is IDE and not SATA so you will need an IDE cable to do this. Only a short post as there is ZERO infomation on this fruit machine on the internet! So my mission is to change this so if you do happen to get one, you will not be met with the lack of info I had.

So, there were update discs made for the Video Eclipse, official discs from Bell Fruit that you could put in your dvd drive inside the machines pc and it would auto update to the new games. This is great for a home use machine. You can also use old update discs to update your current hard drive to the older content, so a downgrade... upgrade! So. Very simple. Open the bottom door and also the cash box door. Now get your discs and see which one you want to use. The older the date, the more likely older content. April 2017i is the latest and last disc made. At this time, I have no clue on what was the first. Now just press the open button on the dvd drive and put the update disk in and close it. If it does not go to plan it will just auto eject the disc and you can try again. If it does go to plan, and it really should you will see this.... Followed by this...... Once it finished it will just auto eject the disk and from here you can take the disk out, close the dvd drive, just push it closed. Now turn the refill key and see what new or old games you now have! Remember, you can only have upto 10 on your menu at once, the top 10 games in you game list will be the ones that will show on the menu. You can change the order about to however you want, just select a game you don't want and press move to bottom. There is good chances some of the games will not be enabled, just select that game and press enable. Once you have your 10 games, turn the refill key back off, close and lock both the cashbox and bottom door and.... These Bell Fruit Video Eclipse machines are pretty hard to come by, so if you have one of these, get in touch! I do have a few update discs, 2015-2017 so anything older I would be very interested in!

Changing a game and a game setting is a very easy process. You need to open the cash door and also open the cashbox door and now turn the refil key. You should get this screen. From here you want to press Game Stakes and Setting. This will now load this screen.. Here you will see all the games you can play and where to change the % payouts. The first 10 games in this list will be the games that show on my in game menu. So you can move games about so you can have your best games available. So from here I am going to move my game number 1 to the bottom by touching that game and pressing move to bottom. Now I am going to find a different game and by touching that and pressing move to top, will swap the two games and give me a different game to play once I close the all the doors. So now I am going to press Return to Main Menu, turn off the refill key and lock the coin box door, close and lock the cash door to see the changes. And there you go! A different game is now in place of the game I swapped out! Other games can be added to your cab with update discs. I have a few of these, so if you are reading this and have this machine and have some update discs, please get in touch with me.

Having just picked one of these up I thought i'd do a bit of a write up on it. Having searched for information on it, there really is none! So hopefully I am about to change that!

So what is a Bell Fruit Video Eclipse? Well, it's a dual screen digital pub fruit machine. It seems to run plenty of content, updatable content via update discs. It really is an amazing machine. The menu can show 10 different games at a time. You can select which ones you want by changing the order in the machines settings.

It runs on a 'Vortex' pc. The hard drive as standard is an IDE hard drive, so pretty old, but does the job. The mother board has sata connections and this can be converted to run on a sata hard drive instead.

It comes with 1gb of ram and has a spare slot, so can be doubled to 2gb, hasn't made a huge difference, but with the extra 1gb and the sata ssd hard drive now it, it has become noticable.

 

So, here is is!

As you can see, running Deal Or No Deal Power Play! This game is just one of many different games it will play.

Standard menu is like this, I don't think this can be changed, you can change the amount of games that show, from 1 to 10.

More to follow.

In the same era as the Starwars and clones there was 2 machines. One was called It's Amazing, the other Pacman.

In true Barcrest fashion back then, they both had a trick!

If you could do your skills then these were great!

The trick was simple. If the machine is boarding you would play £40 through, usually on £1. This would unlock the feature Cash Climber 'RED'. This was a skill shot which got progressively faster. Once £40 through, I would get on 50p and get that feature red. Every time you got a trail held, it would upgrade cash and features red. As soon as Cash Climber was red you'd take your board and it would land that feature!

Now, you have skilled up to £70, happy days! Back to £1 and see if the machine is still putting you on the feature board. What's that? It is?! Well that'll be £40 back again and then repeat the process.

And again...... and again....... and........ what's this? The machine is not boarding now? That's right. You could get these machine wanting upwards of £70 just to put you on the feature, which in turn would offer not alot to say the least!

Really good fun playing these back then. Was quite a few about too!

Anyway, here's,


Pacman.



It's quite funny. The video was uploaded 2 years ago. This machine is still about! I know where it is now!


It's Amazing.




Amazing was slightly better. The skill appeared to be just a little bit slower on Amazings. Pacmans seemed faster for sure.

Back when Barcrest were churning out £70 jackpot pub machines they were making them with tricks rolled in. Obviously programmed in.

This trick was one of the best! It was really good as the machine had been 'cloned' several time over. They were Rob Da Bank, Starwars A New Hope and Rainbow Riches. There was a further clone Pacman Power Up but that came out after the trick had been 'chipped' out.

It was very simple. The machine had to be on reset reels (Just turned on or not been played since it had been switched on). You could gamble and go with it if it was early in the day but that was waaaay to risky!

This was called the 'Superhold'.

The machine could be played on either 25p, 50p or £! a go. When they were on £35 jackpot it was just 25p and 50p. The £1 was added on when they got upgreaded to £70 jackpots.

So, you walk upto the machine, see the reset reels. You put 25p in and changed stake to 25p. The you would put in 50p and change upto 50p. Press start and change back down to 25p. You would do this over and over and eventually the reels would shuffle into the reset reels again, just like what was showing when the machine was just switched on. You would put in 50p, change stake to 50p and wham! It would offer a superhold! What's better is....... jackpot was there with that superhold!

If you had units to yourself, this could happen very cheap. I have had it do it first and second 50p spins, so £1.25 and £1.75 in for £70 each time. But when they were getting done by other it would cost around £45 but still, a very easy £25 profit! Only draw back was, if it got done over and over it would critical alarm! This is what killed the trick in the end.

So now in 2013, this trick will not work so don't try it. Well, you can try it but it won't work. No doubt there are a few left in the world that work but it has been a very time time since I have seen one. If one ever turned up and 'worked', it usually got critical alarmed.

If you had no 50ps, you could do it with £1s by doing £1 spins and then changing down to 25p. 50ps were alot better, you made twice as much!

Rainbow Riches. (17)




Starwars. (5)




Rob Da Bank. (4)




As you can see, so plainly obviously coded in. Someone made a lot of money from this!

So I have always wanted a single player coin pusher. Most pushers you see these days are big 3/4/6/8 player machines, and they take up alot of space!

Over the past few years there has been some really good single player coin pushers hit the arcades. Machines like Pacman Ball and Magic 7s. One of these would be perfect for me but the price tag of around £1000 just puts me off just a little bit.

After looking over youtube at various homemade coin pushers I have decided to make my own. I am going to build it inside an old fruit machine cabinet. I already have one of these so my first job is simple..... I am going to completely strip the machine down so all I have is an empty fruit machine cabinet. The machine I have decided to kill is Mdms Safe Cracker Club. It's something that I picked up many years ago. It was never 100% working. I never liked clubbers that much so it's going to be my choice!


 

 The above clip is the machine, all working bar the sound the the alpha display. Since the video was taken the machine has pretty much stopped working. Over the next few weeks or so I am going to try various motors, showing how you can get them running. The first thing I thought of was using a big fan. That has a nice big motor but will it have enough power for what I need?




UPDATE 26/03/2013

 Right. I have a couple of ideas on what to use for the motor. First thing I though was an big fan I had that broke! Now this thing just isn't man enough for the job. It's a shame as it was a good size, fitted in the cab very well and even had a piece of metal that came off it that would go into a frilled hole to secure it! Never mind. Next up is a window wiper motor. I bought a rear subaru wiper motor. I was unsure if this would be ok but it was only 99p+£4 p&p off ebay I thought i'd give it a shot...

Well, it came the other day. I got my power supply that powered an old external hard drive (out put DC 12V 1.2AMP), I cut the 'plug' at the end off it to leave me 2 exposed wires. Now, I don't have a clue about anything like this. I didn't really know what would happen when plugged into the wall socket and then turned on! I got he wiper motor and cut the plug/socket off that too. That gave me 4 exposed wires. I powered to 12v power supply (and didn't blow up or electrocute myself) and went around the wires, just see see what happened. Eventually I found the right wires. Great speed and perfect for the job..... but it's a rear wiper motor! This is no good. It just turns one way then back again. It does not spin round and round. Turned everything off and put it aside, got back on ebay and have ordered a front window wiper motor, also so LED strips.

Once these arrive, I will do a short video showing it working (provided it's not naff)! If the rear wiper motor is anything to go by then the front motor will be perfect, and surprisingly easy to get up and running. The fan motor might one day get a use. Have you seen the type of pusher that flicks the coins from the bottom instead of being dropped in from the top? Well, I am pretty sure that fan motor would beable to do this with ease!


UPDATE 01/04/2013

Ok, the motor arrived and it works! To start with I had a 12v 1.2amp power supply. This does power the pusher but just not enough. If I am fair it's no good at all! So back to the loft I go, in search of another power supply. I find an old sega megadrive supply. This out puts 10v 0.85amp. The spped on this is great, very good. Only problem is it's over heating so it's a no no.

So back to ebay and a 12v 5amp is bought for £5.99. This has also arrived now. Plugged in and this is now spinning too fast!

I have had a search for devices that will slow the motor down. I will report back once I have found something suitable, or a power supply that has less power and at the same time does not overheat!


UPDATE 16/04/2013

So I have got the coin pusher pretty much up and running with the old 12v 1.2amp power supply. Decided to stick with this as the speed is just about right.



I have the LEDs all in as you can see. Just need to fix those in place. They are just hanging there at the moment!

Also, I have fixed a couple of old draw runners to the pusher which keeps everything in line and gives the motor less to do. I have also installed a metal lip at the front so the coins build up.

Things I need to do is,

- Pusher, now draw runners are fixed to the under side, I need to fix something to the front as there's a gap.
- Design the area where the coins are going to fall down. This will be either pins so the coins bounce about on the way down or 'alleys' so the coins go down to the same place each time.
- Make something where the coins go in
- Decide to get some perspex to seal the unit. Not overly sure if I will do this or not. I suspect those will cost a few quid and this is strictly as cheap as possible project. Plus, it will be only be myself and my children who will be playing it anyway.

UPDATE 16/04/2013

I have taken a few videos along the way. I found a few on youtube but the information you need is not always to hand.

Below are various clips I took as the project went along.


Here is my empty cab. Just a short clip to show how a fruit machine is perfect for a coin pusher!



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Some more of the cab. Showing cash boxes and so on.



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The rear wiper motor which turned out to be no good at all! You live and learn.



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Making use of the cash boxes and using some scrap metal to divert the coins into those cash boxes.



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Now those traps are in, time to test them!



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More trap testing.



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Connecting the LED strips up to old power supplies/phone chargers.



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Powering up the FRONT wiper motor with a sega megadrive power supply.



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And finally hooking the motor upto the 'pusher' past of the coin pusher.