Collaborate Disseminate
Coin-operated machines have a longer history than you might think. Ancient temples used them to dispense, for example, holy water to the faithful in return for their coins. Old payphones …read more Continue reading Coin Acceptors are Higher-Tech Than You Think
We’re used to games consoles in which the same hardware plays a variety of different games, but if we were to peer inside arcade cabinets of an older vintage we’d find custom boards unique to every game. Some boards from the same manufacturers shared common hardware traits even if they …read more
Continue reading Brain Transplant Makes One Arcade Machine Play Games From Another
Have you ever wished that slot machines dispensed money as easily as an ATM? Well so did [Scotty Allen] from Strange Parts, so in collaboration with his friend [Matt] decided to combine the two. After a four-month journey fraught with magic smoke and frustration, they managed to build a fully …read more
Continue reading Jackpot!: The Trials And Tribulations Of Turning A Slot Machine Into An ATM
Ask any security professional and they’ll tell you, when an attacker has hardware access it’s game over. You would think this easily applies to arcade games too — the very nature of placing the hardware in the wild means you’ve let all your secrets out. Capcom is the exception to this scenario. They developed their arcade boards to die with their secrets through a “suicide” system. All these decades later we’re beginning to get a clear look at the custom silicon that went into Capcom’s coin-op security.
Alas, this is a “part 1” article and like petulant children, we want …read more
