Coin doors with solenoids, why?

Altan

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I realized my Asteroids Deluxe has solenoids in the coin door. Why is this?

My coin door is hacked and I'm working to repair it. Someone cut some wires in the harness.

It looks like the game can control these solenoids via the CPU?
 
Coin lockout solenoids.
Keeps the game from accepting coins when not turned on.
I think there are laws on some states that used to require these.
Not sure, but my 2 cents anyway! ;)
 
I realized my Asteroids Deluxe has solenoids in the coin door. Why is this?

My coin door is hacked and I'm working to repair it. Someone cut some wires in the harness.

It looks like the game can control these solenoids via the CPU?

As far as I am aware (could not have the full picture) the solenoids are there to keep people from putting coins in when the machine is powered off. Coins get rejected while there is no power to the machine.

I have them disabled (zip tied) on my Centipede cab as its in free play mode and I use it as a coin bank and don't want to turn the machine on every time I empty my quarters out :)
 
May not seem like a big deal these days, but in the EM era and very early solid state era it actually was important. Old pins and EM arcade games, sometimes it was hard to tell if they were powered up or not. Not like these days when you have a constant attract mode running, plus sound and all that good stuff. Common on slot machines too.


-Hans
 
Makes sense now that I've read it. Thanks guys.
 
My Dig Dug had them as well. Pretty standard on Atari games. When dealing with them, I have had a tendency to bend the bracket slightly to get the coils out of the way, then you don't have to worry as much about stuck coins.
 
I removed the coils from my Centipede. Sent them to a KLOVer who wanted them for some reason. They were stock on Irish Centipedes, but not the US version. Not sure about other games.
 
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