Rehabbing an old Merit Poker machine

[smalltownguy]

Yes, I might be crazy.

Here's the story: I have a local friend who has hooked me up with some crazy deals in the past. The most recent deal was a Space Demon cabaret cabinet that I am busy working on restoring.

A few months back, he calls me and asks me if I'm interested in a Dodge City cabinet. "Never heard of it," I said.

Did some googling, and apparently Dodge City was a video Poker machine made by Merit in the mid 80's.

Ick. Last thing I need is an upright gambling machine taking up space in my garage.

"The cabinet is in really great shape," he says. "It's a survivor....you need to have it."

What can I say? This guy has brought me some hidden gems in the past, so I thought what the heck, it's a low risk adventure.

On a random rainy saturday morning in May, he brings over this hunk of junk.

This is the only picture I had to go on before he brought it:



Needless to say, I was less than impressed.

I had hoped to save some of the parts from it, maybe the monitor or power supply.

Yeah, the power supply was toast, game board fried, and the monitor had a cracked neckboard and necked tube. Bummer. Pretty much all junk.

I stripped out all the parts and started building the guts inside fresh from scratch.

I found that Dodge City played pretty well in MAME, so I decided to set this cabinet up with a PC booting directly to Mala which boots directly to Dodge City. I had some spare PC parts laying around including a 15" LCD, so I was able to use up the parts rather than scrap them.

Pressing a secret combination of buttons pulls the player back out to the front end where I have 2 or 3 other Triva Whiz games compatible with the same button layout.

Power was achieved by following the cheap smart strip hack info from this forum - I used a double gang electrical box and the switching relay mentioned in the thread.

Pretty slick. Power on the PC, and the relay powers on the other 3 outlets in the box, which turns on the monitor, speakers, and marquee fixture.

Here's a few pics.

[Generic Eric]

Pretty slick. Power on the PC, and the relay powers on the other 3 outlets in the box, which turns on the monitor, speakers, and marquee fixture.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.  Do you have a block diagram or schematic?

[yotsuya]

Awesome! I'd like to do something similar for my parents.

[smalltownguy]

Pretty slick. Power on the PC, and the relay powers on the other 3 outlets in the box, which turns on the monitor, speakers, and marquee fixture.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.  Do you have a block diagram or schematic?

Simple.

Line cord comes into the cabinet, and is wired to one receptacle on a duplex outlet. That receptacle is always hot. This is the one the PC gets plugged into.

Next, you break the tab on the hot side of the outlet. Instead, bring the hot wire out to the relay AC side. The output of the relay returns to the other 3 receptacles, which are all wired together.