•
cOlnman
of the month
Selling
Solid
State
An interview with
Allied Leisure's
Arnold Fisher
HI think we're going more into "2001" type games.
People want to feel the game when they play, to
become part of the game . ..
September's Coinman of the Month Arnold
Fisher, International Marketing Director for Allied
Leisure, has been in the coin industry for a
relatively short time. A 1958 graduate of the
University of Colorado with a degree in Marketing,
Fisher was in marketing in one form or another for
some sixteen years.
He owned a chain of appliance stores throughout
Colorado, New Mexico and California, a total of 22
stores. "We also manufactured speakers and many
of our components, "Fisher said. He sold the stores
in the chain in 1966.
And he opened up a marketing consulting
service. "So, for the next eight years or so, I was a
consultant in marketing for major corporations
throughout the country. "
Only two years ago did he enter the coin
industry, doing so because it looked like it would be
a "very interesting business. And I got into it in
kind of a different way," he said, "became an
operator and then one thing led to another." To
another: six months ago Fisher joined Allied
Leisure.
He and wife Rebecca have seven children, five
girls and two boys. The Fishers live ,'n the Miami
area.
Play Meter Managing Editor Rick Dietrich flew
to Miami to interview Fisher, but he ended up with
a little more than an interview. Here is his report.
~
I spent the morning touring one of Allied's two
plants under the guidance of Service Manager Bob
... Gilman and talking about the new solid-state pins
~ with him and Chief Engineer Ian Richter. The
=
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simplicity of these new games, as they explained
them to me, was almost frightening.
Service problems with the new machine, Gilman
emphasized, are almost always electro-mechanical.
It is not the new components that break down. But
mechanics don't seem to realize that; the newness
of the machine does frighten them. Still everyone
is going this direction, toward solid-state and
mechanics are going to have to learn to work on the
soUd-state machine.
The main advantage of the new machine is, in
fact, "ease of serviceability, " according to Richter.
Eighty to ninety per cent of down time on a
conventional machine is due to switches out of
alignment. In Allied's new micro-processor ma-
chine, "the micro-processor system actually does
the troubleshooting for you. It's a computer in the
hands of the operator, " telling him which switch or
lamp or coil is malfunctioning "without his even
taking the glass off. "
Essentially what the new engineering does is
replace coils, relays, stepping counters and motors
with a micro-processor approach, logic function
performers that are more reliable. "The other big
advantage of the electronics is their reliability,"
Richter told me. "There are no moving parts,
nothing to corrode . ..
"Again, in a conventional machine, ninety per
cent of the failures are in the switches. A switch
will go out of adjustment every six weeks or so. We
have eliminated ninety per cent of those switches
and replaced them with higher reliability circuits.
It's the same technology as in a calculator.