Coin door recommendation.....

[DataWest]

What kinds of coin doors do you all use? I'd like it to actually take quarters and trigger a switch that Mame could recognize.

[MacGyver]

I have an old "Coin Controls" model I bought off ebay, that I refurbished.  It has two quarter mechs (coin comparators) in it, I simply hooked the coin switches on the door to my IPAC-2 and when a quarter falls through the coin mech it hits the switches, and the IPAC sends a "5" or a "6" keypress to my OS and Mame.  Just remember when buying a used one that you might have to buy locks and keys, light bulbs and/or sockets, replacement buttons, springs, coin bucket, and coin comparators as well as painting supplies to refurbish it.  A lot of used ones have dents, pry marks and scratches from would-be thieves trying to get at all those quarters over the years, and nasty bolt holes from the operators trying to keep them out.

The picture is of a Midway coin door, but you can get an idea of the "switches", notice the pry mark on the left side of the door.

[DataWest]

Thanks! Awesome info

[Donkbaca]

I got an old Asahai Seiko coin door.  Its from an old punchout machine, it was in pretty rough shape, but it came with the coin mechs, and I got it for 20 bucks shipped off of e-bay.

Refurbishing a coin door is easy, as long as there aren't any big dents in it.  The sockets can just be replaced with leds, the comparators just need to be cleaned. The doors are easy to refinish, just fill any holes with bondo and get some rustoleoum hammered finish tectured paint. 

I like the old doors better, I like the chrome on them.

[boardjunkie]

Comparators are electronic parts (ICs). I'm sure you mean coin mechs right?

[opt2not]

I'd love to get my hands on an Owl-eye Coin door:

I think they look awesome, and so different from the norm!

There are a lot of styles of coin doors you can go for. They all use the same type of mechs...my suggestion would be to find one that suits your taste in terms of looks and refurbish/restore it.

[CheffoJeffo]

Owl eye doors rock ... wait a minute ... that looks like my countertop, but it can't be ... 

There are a couple of articles about refurbing old coin doors in the Restoration page of the BYOACWiki.

[opt2not]

Owl eye doors rock ... wait a minute ... that looks like my countertop, but it can't be ... 

There are a couple of articles about refurbing old coin doors in the Restoration page of the BYOACWiki.

Hehe yeah, I just did a search on klov and found a thread...
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=116428
Got an alias?

[ids]

I took the impatient route and got a new 4 player door, and put in four Canadian quarter mechs.

One thing I learned doing this, is that the mechs are easy to swap in and out.  And the switch that fires when a coin is accepted is independent of the mechs (it comes as part of the door itself).  It's much like the switches in most buttons, and under most joysticks, in that it has a common, NO, and NC.  This makes it really easy to wire these to your keyboard encoder and trigger Mame.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd consider token mechs.  While I do have a bucket of quarters ready to be used, I can imagine a day when a group of younger ones want to play, and decide that the quarters have more appeal than the games.  Tokens would be far less likely to walk away en masse - I'm guessing.  And those BYOAC tokens look cool - if you can get them.

[opt2not]

I took the impatient route and got a new 4 player door, and put in four Canadian quarter mechs.

One thing I learned doing this, is that the mechs are easy to swap in and out.  And the switch that fires when a coin is accepted is independent of the mechs (it comes as part of the door itself).  It's much like the switches in most buttons, and under most joysticks, in that it has a common, NO, and NC.  This makes it really easy to wire these to your keyboard encoder and trigger Mame.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd consider token mechs.  While I do have a bucket of quarters ready to be used, I can imagine a day when a group of younger ones want to play, and decide that the quarters have more appeal than the games.  Tokens would be far less likely to walk away en masse - I'm guessing.  And those BYOAC tokens look cool - if you can get them.

Why not just adjust the mechs to take tokens? There's no need to buy multiple mechs, unless you want to have a bunch of pre-configured ones that you can pop in and out...

[ids]

Why not just adjust the mechs to take tokens?

Opt - thanks - I actually think about this a lot, but then laziness and inertia settle in 

It's actually #134 on my list of to-do's though   I have to finish putting the recoil in my aimtracks, mount my q-bert knocker, install/config MameHooker, design a mount for the SW Yoke, re-do my CP, design/apply CP art.....and somewhere in there is building that air-hockey table, maybe re-build my dart-board cabinet, finish the basement, more cab builds (vertical, cocktail, showcase, etc), skeeball, shuffleboard.... so much to do, it's hard to prioritize 

[VanillaGorilla]

Im partial to the coin controls coin door that was used on most 80's Ataris, Taitos, etc. 2 slot model. Plentiful and cheap.

I also dig the single/duals that were on the 80's Sega cabs like Zaxxon and Congo Bongo.



The owl eye is AWESOME. But, too hard to find and expensive if you do. One of these days...

[quarterstringer]

I'd love to get my hands on an Owl-eye Coin door:

I spent months searching Ebay to find one. I got one because Asteroids was the game that got me hooked on arcade games. I played hundreds of games of Asteroids because that was the coin door that we learned the quarter stringing trick to get extra credits. I still haven't tried it on my coin door though.

[Donkbaca]

Man, I have never seen an owl door.  Glad I didn't see this until after I am almost done with my cab, because I would have obsessed over getting one