Crane Game claw adjustment?

dieselburner

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I just bought a "Ye Olde Gift Shoppe" Crane game and it came with a bunch of toys. The guy I bought it from showed me how to adjust the claw so that it closes further. He had it in his pizza place and had the claw set up loose. I adjusted it and it does close further. I am trying to find out if there is an adjustment to make the grip of the claw stronger. The mechanism has the marking "Altec Mech" "Reno, Nevada". I looked for any manuals or a company with this name and could not find one. Anyone have any experience with adjustments on the machines? Thanks in advance.
Steve
 
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Not that particular machine, but usually there are two different ways these work:

1) Skill Win (If you are good enough, you win.) - These usually have adjustments on the boards somewhere to allow you to increase or decrease the claw strength.

2) Timing Win (Claw is set to only have full strength every X number of plays.) - These are usually set up in a menu or dip switch setting, and make it so that operators can make even more money than they spend on product. This is why you can sometimes make a perfect grab, and the claw just slides off...
 
OK, So I have been checkin this thing out more and found a pot on the board that controls the volume of the music. I also found 4 dip switches. Currently, the first switch is on and the other 3 are off. I tried switching them around but did not seem to make a difference in the play of the game. Is there any convention as to how these switches are set for play or are they all different? I still can't find any info on this company. The game was manufactured in October of 1989 so it's not THAT old...
 
Usually, 2-6 of the input pins on the board are meant to connect to adjustment pots that change the voltage going to the claw in different situations. All ours have 4 pins, 3 pots, but they happen to all use the same (very new) board which has a whopping 32 dipswitches on it.

A picture of the board would help a lot. Someone should be able to identify it.
 
Some cranes were equipped with what was called a California Setup (or Cali chip) where the claw coil strength was factory set and not field adjustable. Sometimes you can identify the pot position on the board by the silk screening mark and follow the traces to find a jumper wire and or a resistor where there should be a pot.

Other cranes utilized an off the board pot for the claw coil voltage such as the Smart 5th gen cranes. The pot connected to the PCB via a cable.

As roothorick suggested, post a couple picks of the crane and PCB and see if anyone can recognize the model. Many cranes have headers that do not represent who manufactured the game as they are often customized by operators.
 
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