Edit: he beat me by a few seconds!
————————————————————
Why don’t you just set it on free play? A credit button doesn’t seem to make any sense unless it’s a sys80 Gottlieb.

Credit buttons devalue a game and basically look cheap and hack-y considering you can set it to free play, however I understand your sentiment that you want to “earn” free games. All my machines take tokens. Invest in getting the coinmechs for the door. I assume you must be missing the switches and things? They’re easy to come by if you put an ad on Pinside. Someone can help you.

Also if you absolutely want to add a credit button because you either can’t get the coin switch parts at the moment or the game is a project and you haven’t fixed that’s going on with the coin stuff, at least just wire it in separately so it doesn’t hack up the wiring harness and it’s 100% reversible.

Remember, almost all of us pinheads are trying to preserve history, and no matter what, eventually this game is gonna belong to someone else. As the years go by the numbers of surviving machines grow smaller and smaller so hacks are heavily discouraged to preserve a machine.
Get some alligator clips or jumpers and hookup the pins you need and at a momentary button and leave it hanging inside the door or something.
I honestly don’t know if possibly the P2k machines had different coindoor setups than everything else so I won’t advise on that portion.

So you don’t want to use the coin mech or set it to free play? We’re just trying to understand what you really want to accomplish because credit buttons not only DON’T make sense, they are redundant and pointless considering the existing options the game was originally designed with.

This still doesn’t make sense, as others were suggesting, just wire the pins into the start button. Why do you NEED to add a credit button? This machine supports freeplay and the credit switch can be operated without adding anything.

Basically what your doing still doesn’t make sense. That’s like hotwiring your car when you have the keys. It is quite genuinely pointless, adding nonsensical switches for a purpose that is already taken care of, adding credits.

No need to get snarky, your comments about credit audits ARE pointless. You are adding a credit button which is considered freeplay. When you switch the game to freeplay it still will give you an audit telling how many games have been played. This whole concept of “Features listed in operations manual and on operations menus need credit system to use.” flatly is not true and does not exist. There are no features that are not enabled. Games played/coins dropped are one in the same unless you plan to add a button for both chutes while not actually taking coins?

Tournaments don’t use limited credits, either you pay coin drop, or you pay to enter and the games are freeplay as ForceFlow mentioned. Go to any sanctioned IFPA tournament. If you want to run real tournaments then a credit button doesn’t accomplish anything.

I suppose if you wish to ignore the helpful comments and want to hack up your game, that is your choice. It won’t make sense and will hurt value when you eventually sell it. Best of luck hacking up a perfectly good game when you can simply buy the mech that you think is pointless when you literally said you want to keep track of coins dropped. I guess you just don’t know what you want?

Just like old Sterns, it adds a credit and starts a game at the same time.