It's a game counter (or a coin counter) either way it is/was used by operators to know how many games had been played or how many coins had been put through the machine mainly for accounting purposes.

You can just zip tie it out of the way, or tuck back with one of the harness hooks.

Unplug the meter. Cable tie the other into something where it doesn't hurt anything.

Not necessarily. May have been in many games, that wiring isn't factory. And you usually don't start those on zero. So an employee can't reset it easily and add credits. It would take a long time to run up a high number.

LTG : )

Cut the cable ties and follow the wires. See where it goes, post a picture of that.

They did a better job on that than on the other side on the meter.

LTG : )

The harness side is likely legit, many games supported counters as it was a popular tool. I would get rid of everything after the harness connector for sure, but leave the connector tied off out of the way.

If it was a reimport, it may have had a counter. Though not the one in your picture.

LTG : )

Yeah the counter itself is definitely not from that game, I’m just thinking the connector is original based on the wire being wrapped in what appears like a factory location label…. But I didn’t think about re-import, yeah that could make it different.

Btw… what game is this? Never-mind I suck at reading: Roadshow

I'd really be thinking reimport than.

Leave the wiring. It's factory.

LTG : )

My vote too.

Actually… it may go to the knocker. It was apparently an option to use that circuit for a counter. I would connect a knocker back to it and adjust the settings to put it back in knocker mode:

A.3 21
Coin Meter Units
It is possible to connect a coin meter to the knocker coil driver which will log all coins through all slots. This adjustment activates the use of the knocker driver for this purpose, and determines the value of each unit on the meter. For example, to show the total amount of money collected as "total quarters", set this adjustment to "0.25". To show the amount of money collected as "total dollars", set this adjustment to "1.00".

I’m surprised you’ve been in the hobby for so long and haven’t come across a coin meter before!
Don’t get so obsessed with cutting and removing it all. Just tie it out of the way. MANY MANY operators used these to hard a “hard copy” of the audits. I’m finally being taught the secrets by an old school operator of 40+ years

Note: even brand new Stern’s STILL allow you to hook up coin counters to them off the bill validator line.

Operators have lots of clever uses for coin meters. I’m blown away by the stuff he can figure out from just a couple numbers. It’s amazing.

Out of curiosity, what's the point of installing a play meeter when the machine counts coin drops in the audits?
Was there an issue where operators had multiple people that had keys to the games and would delete play counts to steel quarters?

Audits can pretty easily be reset or wiped. Meters take a bit more ingenuity and a lot of time to beat!

In Finland, and probably some other European countries also, mechanical non-resettable coin counters are mandatory, although I have never heard of any inspections.

In some localities hard wired meters are required by law. In areas where they are not required, operators may choose to install meters on their own. Here are some reasons for doing so:

Ram chips on cpu board corrupted.

Batteries for ram chips died or run down too low.

CPU board had to be replaced for some reason.

Location doesn't have power turned on to outlets machines are plugged into yet when operator's routemen show up to collect. Sometimes outlets are on a timer.

Cheating operator's employee zeroing out audits on machine and skimming money.

A hard wired total play meter is like an odometer in a car. It gives a person an idea of how many true "miles" are on a particular pinball machine over it's entire life regardless if the batteries died or the audits got reset. Stern and other pinball machine manufacturers still provide optional coin meter hookups in the machine itself or provide a meter kit you can install yourself.

Yes, definitely original. You can either tie off or connect to a knocker which should mount somewhere nearby if it was removed…. If the knocker is still there, just plug it in and check the manual for what setting you need to use the circuit for the knocker…. Or if you don’t like knockers, there is probably an off setting, or just leave it unplugged. If you don’t have a knocker and want one, eBay, swap meet, buy new, etc.

This is what an hour meter looks like.

DC377059-454C-49D0-A088-804DFF73DBB2 (resized).jpeg

Post #12

And I thought this post was about the QR code allowing people to buy gameplay, "By the Hour".

No, THIS is an hour meter:

meter (resized).png

These are good for small home generators.
-Mike

On WPC games, they use dip switches to change that setting.