Saturday, March 7, 2020

Taito Presenter 2000 - part 3


Now we already knows the Taito Presenter 2000's internals, had the ROMs dumped, and also know a little about its inner workings.

Time to see the unit itself, its exterior is very simple: is a beige box with one side sloped.

Taito Presenter 2000 front view. I guess its made of alumnium.

The front is divided in two halves, the left one have the
name of the equipment and it is a flap door. To open it
you need to press at the center top.

The right half have two buttons. One labeled as "START" and the other as "STOP".

The upper view.

It's uncommon to have something in the upper side of those boxy
machines, which usually have a monitor put over them, but in Taito
Presenter 2000 we have a silver seal with its name.

Side view, right and left looks the same. The sloped side is the front.

Bottom view. The screws to open this unit are inside its feet.
The other screws holds the main board in place.

In the bottom side there is the seal with machine's information.

Plastic of Taito Presenter 2000's cabinet is very thick. The pictures don't show that, but the vent openings are protected with foam in the inside, to filter dust. And, as you can guess, this old foam crumbles every time it's touched.

The back side have a dozen of connectors and switches. For our luck, all of them are labelled, so it can help us to find what this machine built to do.


The back side

There are three sets of audio stereo RCA connectors.
From left to right: Karaoke sound input, External
sound input and finally the sound output. Next is the ground pin.
Then the RGB connector and another video output.
At bottom, a P2 jack, labeled in Japanese as "START / STOP"


From top-left to bottom-right:  video input, a RF channel selector
switch and the RF output. The next is the power supply connector.
The P2 jack at bottom left is labeled as "Credit" and, very interesting,
the A/B mode switch. The screwed door covers the expansion connector.

So, the video that we saw in another post shows the machine doing "something" and a girl dancing after that. Maybe it made sense if I could understand the Japanese talk. Or if I had any documentation about this appliance. But at least I have those silks in the unit itself!

The A/B switch at back is a mode selector. And the modes are labeled in Japanese:

  • A: Karaoke (カラオケ) Link Mode;
  • B: Lucky Draw (福引き抽選) Mode

Google translates "福引き抽選" to "Lottery Lottery", not so much useful. Putting the words in separated lines I got "Blessing Lottery" as translation, I guess the most common used expression for this is "Lucky Draw".

This is what is happening in the video! The cuisine chef there starts some kind of "slot machine" game (using the START button at front), and then the girl hits the STOP switch and win the lucky draw! Well, in general lines I believe that this is a good interpretation merging the video and the information given by the Taito Presenter 2000 unit.

The START/STOP P2 jack at back is easy to fit in this description too. The Presenter 2000 comes with a wired remote push button who can be plugged in this connector (it's somewhere in my home office, but couldn't find it now). When connected, the remote button have the same use of START/STOP buttons at the front of the unit. With that, the Presenter 2000 main unit can be concealed in a cabinet and people still can play the lucky draw game.

The Karaoke Linked mode puzzles me a bit more. The Presenter 2000 doesn't have a microphone input and, by itself, doesn't have any way to control an external Karaoke machine. Maybe it needs something plugged in expansion port? Maybe we got more clues in other printed texts in the cabinet?

The left half of Taito Presenter 2000's front opens.

And reveals the power switch, a volume knob, two unidentified
switches, a counter and a card slot (with a card inserted).

In the door, a sticker, with the description of all the elements behind it.

The two former unidentified switches are identified in the sticker in the door. The one at top is a mode switch labeled "Lottery" (抽選) or "Configure" (設定), so the administrator can configure the lottery parameters or play it. The other switch is labeled "Lottery" OFF/ON, didn't know yet the relationship the other switches.

Ok, the information helps with the "Lucky Draw Mode". But I still don't know what is the "Karaoke Linked Mode", another mystery for later.


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