Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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moonriver
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by moonriver »

I have some animated chimpanzees made by Pell, large at 4' tall, one plays the drums and another a saxophone, part of an old automata animal band. They operate with compressed air and control valves too. Not so bad if they just turn on, run, and then off again on a timer.
But with the Gun Slinger they still have to run in synch with interaction from the player, along with old 8 track tape with foil breakers to cue the correct voice responses at the right time, and old pcb's controlling the air valves and the optical sensors, and the timer, and the cheat, shooting arm raise and then lower, and doors open, and doors close, all in the correct sequence.
OK for man cave I guess.
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by tim575 »

The older 60's top gun games used the 8-track tape with foil indicators. The Electrotechnics Gun Slinger is also tape based, but it uses a 4-track endless loop cassette tape. Audio on 2 tracks and control tones on the other tracks (true audio-animatronics). The Veri-tech 'top gun' of similar 80's vintage of Electrotechnics did not use a tape player and was all electronic for program storage. I am not sure which came first and who copied who between Electrotechnics and Veri-tech but both look extremely similar and both have the outlaw as 'Johnny Rio' shown as a wanted poster on Veri-tech and Electrotechnics outlaw announces verbally he is Johnny Rio. I saw dates cited for Veri-tech both before and after Electrotechnics.
I now have the Electrotechnics Gun Slinger operating except for the mouth. I verified the mouth cylinder and control valve are ok. But there is a non-visible/obvious fault somewhere, either a open wire/connector, or problem in the electronics that detects that control tone and drives the coil. I am still looking for any manual, schematic, or other information anyone already has on the electronics for this game. Otherwise I will need to start trying to trace that circuit out the hard way. I don't know if the mouth was controlled by a tone on the tape control channel, or maybe was done by threshold on the voice audio channel, looking at u-tube of the mouth operation I am thinking it was done by threshold on voice channel.
jingle
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by jingle »

Tim send me a pm m
I’ll dig it out
And send you pics
Bob
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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I have traced the fault on the mouth operation back to the main digital control board. I identified every IC on that board and grouped some in the attached Pic by function. To further trace back the mouth function I will next need to remove the board to trace connections on both sides and make a schematic for the mouth operation. It uses a single PPM decoder that in the 1980's was commonly used for decoding TV remote control signals. I don't know yet what function VR1 has or the Six position option switch SW1. As there are two coin mech, I suspect some of the switch options could relate to how many credits to provide from each of them.
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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I now have the mouth action working after tracing out that circuit on the main board. The input control on the driver chip for the mouth was directly connected to the ML926 remote control decoder "D" output, which is the MSB of a 4 bit output. That would allow when programming the tape setting up the pulses to have the mouth operate in parallel with any one of the other 7 functions (3bits going to binary to decimal decoder) which is logical given mouth almost continuous operation but other functions one at a time. Problem was that D output pin was bent and making poor contact to the IC socket, so likely just opened up during shipping at some point. Hopefully when the manual pics are available it will answer the question on the 6-position option switch functions. Hope this info is helpful for anyone else trying to bring up one of these.
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gameswat
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by gameswat »

Tim, thanks for the interesting updates. A query I have is regarding the mouth action, or lack thereof ! In the videos online with the rubber face mask removed the jaw action was quite animated, but with the face mask in place I could barely see anything happening at all, a big letdown I have to say. So is the issue that the rubber has aged poorly to the point of barely moving anymore, or was the machine just never particularly well animated to begin with? Does anybody here remember playing these when new?
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moonriver
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by moonriver »

I don't know if the gun slinger rubber is the same, but the Pell chimpanzee's rubber faces have definitely hardened since new. The rubber on the older figures does seem to have be better quality (or maybe because thicker) than the newer rubber faced figures that perish and rip.
Once it hardens it's hardly flexible at all, much the same as the old moving leather mouth pieces on vent dummy figures that harden and then need full replacement restoration.
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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I doubt the mouth movement was great even with new. With mask off the jaw movement is 1", but the molded in mouth on the mask is much smaller, about 1/4" is all. So the jaw plate under the mask still moves 1" but basically just squeezes the mouth shut. So you only see about 1/4" movement with mask on. You do also see the jaw area of the mask around the mouth move some as well, which probably showed better when new and very flexible. Although it doesn't have tears or major cracks, I had to be extremely careful removing the mask to work on the Pneumatic tube replacement in the head, it was pretty stiff in some places and could easily tear, seems to be made of a plastic material, not latex. Since the mask condition is OK I will leave it as-is to keep it original, for machines with bad masks there are replacement latex ones that would fit made as part of professional old timer costumes for adults (plays, parties etc). Also, I ordered a spare remote decoder IC ML926 while still available as NOS as it is the one very unique IC and obsolete, had to order it international from UK (I am in the US) as it was only produced in the 80's by the now defunct British Plessy company. I do remember seeing Plessy IC's in the 1980's, pretty common back then.
tallstory
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by tallstory »

tim575 wrote: Wed Dec 15, 2021 5:19 pm Also, I ordered a spare remote decoder IC ML926 while still available as NOS as it is the one very unique IC and obsolete, had to order it international from UK (I am in the US) as it was only produced in the 80's by the now defunct British Plessy company. I do remember seeing Plessy IC's in the 1980's, pretty common back then.
Ah, such nostalgia. It was spelt Plessey and I passed several years in their employ in the 60s and 70s. As a matter of fact, all the companies I worked for are now defunct. Must be a coincidence I'm sure.
jingle
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by jingle »

Here’s my one. Am still looking for the manual by the way.
I have a load of enamel signs leaning against a cupboard
I have t move them to see if the thing bud in the cupboard which I think it is will get at it soon
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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Only one issue left to debug. Gun shot sound only works for gun slinger and not player. Both AMP cards are OK. Need to troubleshoot if one half of the dual gun shot sound card has a problem, or logic controlling it. However, in the meantime, it works well enough to put on display in the gameroom and make a demo video of it.

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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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Thanks to Bob who dug out and photographed the manual I now have answers to open questions. The dip switch controls credit options, with sw 1-4 (4 is Msb) setting 1 to 8 credits for the right coin mech, and sw 5-6 selecting function of the left coin mech to start the game on one coin or need 2 coins to start. The second pot. adjustment on main board controls the draw meter speed (other pot on it sets center freq. for tone decoder) both are noted as factory adjustment. I updated and attached the description for the main board I created to note this. I have not been able to locate a set of schematics for this game. My next update will be to trace out circuits for the gun shot sound effects as the one for the player is still not working and pending further debug.
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EGS-Mainboard.pdf
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jingle
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by jingle »

I don’t think there was a schematics with it. It would of been in the
File mate
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moonriver
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by moonriver »

The acoustics in your games room makes it sound good.
If all else fails you could have a separate sound card with only the players gunshot sound on it that activates just at the right time.
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

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No need for the if all else fails... I pulled the sound card out and tested it on the bench, which confirmed one channel OK and other channel dead. I attached a pdf of the circuit I traced from the card in case it is useful to anyone else. It is a pretty simple circuit, Q1-C1-R3 to create the envelope timing, Q3 and D1 zener form a classic white noise generator, and Q2 buffers the output to send to the amp card. Both channels are identical, problem appears to be in the final Q2 buffer on one channel. I am waiting on spare parts due in the mail today to fix that. I was lucky it was a simple problem, otherwise I would be back to tracing the trigger inputs to their sources.
GunShotSoundSch.pdf
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brigham
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by brigham »

moonriver wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 12:24 pm The acoustics in your games room makes it sound good.
If all else fails you could have a separate sound card with only the players gunshot sound on it that activates just at the right time.
Or you could have an 8-track cartridge....
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tim575
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by tim575 »

I already have 7 other gun games with tape drives for sound effects, 4, 6, and 8-track. However the Gun Slinger gun shot sound for player is working now that I replaced one transistor on the sound board yesterday.
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moonriver
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Re: Electrotechnics Gun Slinger info wanted

Post by moonriver »

tim575 wrote: Wed Apr 13, 2022 4:32 pm I already have 7 other gun games with tape drives for sound effects, 4, 6, and 8-track. However the Gun Slinger gun shot sound for player is working now that I replaced one transistor on the sound board yesterday.
Result!
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