Setting up Card Swipe systems with Benchmark's games

If you're setting up Card Swipe systems to work with existing games, Benchmark Games is here to help you achieve this with confidence. With Benchmark Games' machines, there are mainly two ways in which card-swipe boxes are configured:

1) Swipe for credits: The electronic credit pulses line from the swipe box goes to the appropriate input on the main controller board on the game, just as it would from a regular coin-mech or bill-acceptor device. It is recommended that the swipe system generates just one pulse per-swipe (1 credit) and that the coins-per-credit option on the game matches this at 1 coin-per-credit. The actual charge per credit will be controlled by the per-swipe deduction on the player's card.

2) E-tickets: In this configuration, there are no physical ticket dispensers or tickets present. Here, not only do players get credits with each swipe of the card, but the card-swipe system also credits their arcade account with any ticket amount won, as opposed to the game dispensing actual tickets.

In order to accomplish this, the card swipe box for each player needs to be fed the standard 'Run' signal that would otherwise be taken by a ticket dispenser device. This allows the swipe box to 'count' the virtual tickets being awarded, based on time.

Most card-swipe systems respond to this by putting out the standard 'Notch' signal as they count each ticket being accounted for. This way, the game's Main Control Board can confirm the count.

It's important to note that in some of our newer games, like Wheel-Deal X-treme and Monster Drop, our ticket dispensers are controlled via the 485 serial network interface (two-wire pair), instead of the usual 'Run' and 'Notch' lines.

In this scenario, it is necessary to use our advanced Ticket-Emulator Board, in order to interface the 485-serial logic domain of the Main Controller Board to the 'Run'+'Notch' domain of the Swipe Box.

-- The Benchmark Games Engineering Team