Quoted from gonzo73:It's all about Tim....
Its Las Vegas... probably the greatest concentration of Coin Operated MACHINES and various gambling Devices in the World.
There are officially 164 K gambling machines in nevada.
I've only visited a few casino's, I don't remember many.. if any turned off or broken Slots.
Who is this mysterious army of techs that maintain these machines?
If there is one place in the world where there is a surfeit of mechanical repair knowledge its Vegas ? Right ??
Not exactly.
I don't think there has been a coin operated slot machine in Vegas for 15 years. Machines now take bills or tickets, no coins.
Slot machines are mostly video slots. There are still mechanical reel slots but they probably make up 10% of slot machines give or take. Slot machines today are basically computers and have near 0 mechanical parts, the Bill/Ticket collector validator is the only mechanical part in most slot machines now.
You basically have 2 types of workers on slot machines, attendants and techs. Attendants pay out jackpots, help you get a stuck voucher or bill, reboot a slot machine that is acting up, basic minimal troubleshooting that doesn't require much training. There are tons of attendants, if there is an issue beyond this, they call a "tech", but still the work the tech does isn't very mechanical, it is technical/computer related, reseating computer connectors/cables etc... When all that fails, they do a full factory reset or flash the rom.
I do agree that there probably are more mechanical techs in Vegas then other locations in the US, somebody still has to fix the few existing reel slots, but I imagine many with that knowledge are towards the end of their careers and there are less and less as the skillset isn't needed.
It probably pays more and is easier to be a slot tech then a pinball tech, there may be people with the skills but they have to want to do pinball repair also.
