quadibloc wrote:It is interesting, and surprising, that the version of the Mills Dice without the updates is the one more commonly seen today. I suspect this could be explained by California having very strict laws against slot machines for a period of time.
From the video on YouTube, I see that the two dice that are "thrown" have one die between them, and they are in a circle of thirty dice. So I have a question. Is the rotating wheel of dice a 30-stop mechanism, or does it have 15 stops, shifting between one set of 15 dice for the come-out roll, and the other set for the remaining ones? (Since one can play Pass/Come on any roll, it seems like it should be 30 stop, but I can't be sure.)
I found the GameRoomRepair web site, and from there I found the Part 2 video on YouTube - only Part 1 turned up in YouTube's own search - and from that one I see it's 30 stop.
My own collection of DICE images scrummed from various parts of the internet has the "square plugs" (the improved versions) outnumbering the "round plugs" (the first-run, "buggy" machines) by about three-to-one; however, I find very few examples of either variety featuring the ivory dice, which, according to Bueschel, were indicative of Gordon Mills' California refurb. Bueschel's rundown of the history is complicated, but it looks sort of like this:
DICE Demos/Prototypes... Chicago... Round Plug... Ivory Dice
DICE First Run Production... Chicago... Round Plug... Red Dice
Improved DICE Refurbs... Oakland... Square Plug... Ivory Dice
Improved DICE Production... Chicago... Square Plug... Red Dice
If the original Mills advertising art for the DICE is to be taken seriously at all, the first prototypes not only featured ivories, they also paid out on dice rolls of "3" as a Field bet... I doubt that would've left the operators much of a "take." In any event, I think you make a good point that the dearth of surviving DICE machines with ivories in them may indeed reflect the effectiveness of California interdiction efforts: Earl Warren, CA AG and Gov too (who of course went on to fry even bigger fish) should also be remembered as the Carrie Nation of slot machines. He even
looked like her!
Yes, the dice carousel functions as a single, big, heavy, horizontal, 30-stop reel, but you apparently already answered your own question on that. Because this big, heavy carousel could easily fall into a mechanical habit of repeatedly traveling the same arc of rotation with each pull and pitching the same sequence of dice pairs over and over, there is a built-in spring-tension randomizer on the kicker; temporarily disabling that randomizer proved to me that it was a good idea for mixing-up the pairs, but it unfortunately can also make some of the handle-pulls a little rough.
Glad to hear some shared interest in this history. The November 2018 issue of COCA Times contains an article on the "Mills Dicer[sic]" that is so FOS, I called Dave several days ago to discuss posting a corrective article somewhere on this forum as a sort of antidote. Since I'm no longer a member of COCA, I don't know whether their magazine has already published any retraction, correction or apology for that article... can anyone here tell me--?