Quoted from Poopiehead:I’ve got a similar question. We run all of our games on free play, but we’d like to set up a charity tournament which requires quarters. Is it possible to have a game set for free play for normal play and quarters with the tourney button?
I did this on a POTC by REMOVING the wires going to the tournament start button, and placing those wires on a coin switch below a coin slot that accepted coins (or bills) on the machine door (after disconnecting the normal coin door switch wires.)
Basically when the machine is set to free play, either type of game can be started by closing the appropriate switch (regular start, or tournament start) WITHOUT inserting any coinage. By removing the wires that start a tournament game, and placing them on the coin switch, a coin then acts as a person pushing the tournament start button. Thus it now requires a coin to start the tournament (though it is ONLY one coin to do so). If you have a bill acceptor,then one bill (dollar) can be the trigger.
I worked through the single switch closure issue, by giving out 1.00" tokens (for the donation amount required), and putting a 1.00" token acceptor in the coin door slot, and labeling the coin slot with "INSERT TOURNAMENT TOKEN HERE". Thus one could "sell" the tokens for the tournament entry fee, a tournament game can be started by people with the tokens, and free play is still available for a regular non counting game when the machine is not being used by someone competing in the tournament.
I've used this setup for a number of years, and not had a problem with it working when I use it. Just make a couple of wires to go from the Tournament start button to two wires with male/female spade connectors that I can then place on the coin door switch lugs and the wires from the MPU to start a tournament that are removed from the tournament start button to quickly convert a machine to this setup.
The tournament BUTTON wires are Grn-Brn and Tan-Vio, remove these from the tournament switch, use an extension wire you make to connect each to a coin door coin switch (NO/C) that you remove the normal coin door wires from.
The lamp is on Yel-Red and Org-Brn which I leave connected.
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