1. Welcome to VegasMessageBoard
    It appears you are visiting our community as a guest.
    In order to view full-size images, participate in discussions, vote in polls, etc, you will need to Log in or Register.

Slots Rebooting a slot - You technogeeks are gonna love this!

Discussion in 'Slots' started by dmr, Apr 19, 2015.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. dmr

    dmr Registered Abuser

    Joined:
    Feb 18, 2011
    Messages:
    19,794
    Location:
    Somewhere in Middle America
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    70
    Last night I had an hour to kill in the vicinity of the three local casinos last night so I figured I would stop into Ameristar and win or lose a $20. :)

    Anyway, I sat down at a Planet Moola slot and started to go to it. I noticed that every so many seconds the machine right next to me would loudly beep and flash "Please remove voucher" on the screen. There was no ticket to be removed. The beeping got to be majorly annoying after a few minutes so I pushed the "Service" button.

    The first lady who came by, a slot floor person I assume, could not do anything but said she would call a tech to fix it. The tech, a lady, came in a few minutes and remarked that those machines will sometimes do that if you pull the ticket out too fast or something like that. Then she said "I may have to reboot it to get it to quit" or something similar.

    Anyway, she opened the machine, futzed around with the ticket thing, closed it up, and it still beeped.

    She called in "I'm rebooting number 1494" on the radio, or something like that. Then she typed in some code and pushed some kind of a magic button.

    I don't normally care about things like this, but it was different and interesting.

    What surprised me was when it started the screen display was EXACTLY like our two Linux LibCad systems we have at work! All of the pre-tests and start-up and disk checks and all of that!

    It took maybe 3-4 minutes from when she rebooted it until it was ready. Again, almost exactly how long it takes a LibCad system to start.

    I thought some of you would find this interesting. :)
     
  2. chitownjohn

    chitownjohn High-Roller

    Joined:
    Nov 28, 2010
    Messages:
    760
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    1
    I had a similar experience at Cosmo, the slot locked up, I couldn't even get my voucher out. I called for the slot attendant but I had a bad feeling I was going to get screwed so I started taking some pics to verify my credits. The attendant started the re-boot process and a bunch of messages popped up looking like an MS-DOS boot script which was not impressive, I guess I was expecting some sort of ultra high tech process. At the end of the re-boot process my credits showed up which brought a smile to my face and then my inner geek blurted out the the attendant, "my credits are still there, you must have used a warm boot". She gave me that "what you talkin bout Willis" look and said have a nice evening sire and walked away.
     
  3. BCMike

    BCMike VIP Whale

    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2003
    Messages:
    1,007
    Location:
    Austin, Texas
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    83
    Funny. At the palazzo last week, the machine printed my ticket and said $0 on the machine. Ticket never came out and machine said to call a technician.

    I waited patiently for probably 30 minutes before anyone showed up. He opened the machine and the ticket only printed maybe 20%.

    Not sure what he did but he gave me that ticket, wrote the dollar amount on it and some 8 digit code and told me to take it to the high limit cashier to get it paid. It was only $120 or so.
     
  4. gadgets19

    gadgets19 VIP Whale

    Joined:
    Apr 1, 2015
    Messages:
    1,460
    Location:
    Alberta
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    17
    In November at NYNY the bartender spilled my drink on my vp machine and it locked up. Tech came and like chitownjohn the boot sequence looked very similar to DOS. Tech was cool and we chatted about the process and the procedure to get permission etc.
     
  5. tringlomane

    tringlomane STP Addicted Beer Snob

    Joined:
    Jan 21, 2013
    Messages:
    31,305
    Location:
    Chicagoland
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    28
    They wrote the rest of the ticket code by hand. TITO codes are all tracked by the casino for bookkeeping I believe. This happened to me in Tunica once after a total machine failure. That also took about 30 min. to fully resolve. And my ticket was a lot less than $120. Ugh.



    Last time my VP game froze mid hand, I had trip kings going into the draw at Horseshoe Hammond. And the slot attendant just gave it a good kick to shut the door better. I missed the draw and I told him he mistimed his kick! He at least got a chuckle out of it.

    I put the odds of me having to deal with a slot attendant for something other than a tax form next week at even money. I have good luck like that.
     
  6. LV_Bound

    LV_Bound VIP Whale

    Joined:
    Nov 17, 2010
    Messages:
    9,415
    Location:
    Florida
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    32
    And no one thought to ask for any secret codes or secret key pressing sequence to access the menu to change the payback percentage to $110%??:evillaugh
     
  7. garrman

    garrman Low-Roller

    Joined:
    May 17, 2008
    Messages:
    295
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    16
    I had a weird experience playing at Fremont. All of a sudden all the power went out and all machines went black. I was really impressed with their disaster recovery as it took about 15 min for the power to come back and all the machines we're restored to their pre-outage state.
     
  8. tringlomane

    tringlomane STP Addicted Beer Snob

    Joined:
    Jan 21, 2013
    Messages:
    31,305
    Location:
    Chicagoland
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    28
    Seen that at River City in St. Louis. I wasn't actively playing at that moment, but it seemed to be a non issue. Definitely not compared to the small hail damage my car suffered that day! [emoji35]
     
  9. Film-Noir

    Film-Noir High-Roller

    Joined:
    Apr 26, 2011
    Messages:
    893
    Location:
    Texas
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    26
    DMR right!

    DMR is right

    Apparently I broke A Zeus 2 at P.H.

    Like I had the EMP Finger of Death!:wink2:

    Started on a bonus round & it flipped out & went to some kind of Network screenie.

    After 4 Min of Flashie, mesmerizing screenie, network yada yada.....
    Welcome back to bonus round.
    Cashed out, Hopped 3 machines away, next guy Crashed on him also.

    I'M so glad it Wasn't just me!!!!!

    (never would have guessed they packed so much detail/data on the /load e-prom.)
     
  10. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

    Joined:
    Sep 15, 2010
    Messages:
    10,096
    Location:
    At the tables
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    30
    Of course they run Linux.

    If they ran Windows they would constantly be locking up.
     
  11. Drambler

    Drambler High-Roller

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2011
    Messages:
    787
    Location:
    Columbus OH
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    21
    I watched a tech reboot a Walking Dead machine with a bad touch screen several times. It definitely is running linux. It was interesting until they determined the touch screen was indeed bad and I could not play the bonus round I had gotten. They gave me what I had in the machine at the time but I missed out on the bonus.

    The recovery on it is pretty good. It seemed to go back to the last second I was playing.
     
  12. makikiboy

    makikiboy VIP Whale

    Joined:
    Oct 5, 2007
    Messages:
    6,752
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    35
    I had a problem at Mirage last year. I think I was playing the silver strike machine and it locked up. They had to call the techies who opened up the machine and rebooted it to get it working. Luckily I didn't lose my money, they actually gave me an extra spin although I didn't win. I did well at the machine (both before and after the lockup), I won 3 silver strikes and put in $20 and got a couple of dollars back.

    You have to understand that anything electronic nowadays is probably run by a computer. I have seen the startup screens on things like video game machines, on my airline seat in front of me they had to reboot the system, even with cars, you see them hooking up their electronic stuff to read information coming from the computer in your car. It's kind of interesting watching the startup procedures go through everything, good to see what else is hooked up to the system, what kind of graphics card, any other peripherals connected, etc.
     
  13. rhinoman7

    rhinoman7 A Diamond in the Ruff

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2013
    Messages:
    1,330
    Location:
    Kenosha
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    32
    Slot machines, smart phones, tablets, Blu Ray Players, Smart TVs, Satellite Receivers, GPS Devices, iPods, etc. Nothing more than computers. Just like the old days...if all else fails....reboot. The only difference between all of those computers is the Input/output devices. Nothing really magic or mysterious about it.
     
  14. FullBoat

    FullBoat VIP Whale

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2013
    Messages:
    2,337
    Location:
    Austin, TX
    Trips to Las Vegas:
    16
    Or it'd have to be patched every week. :D

    They probably run a hardened kernel that they've customized.
     
Tags:
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.