Mills Future Play Castle Front Pictures and Owners

[Dave]

Ref; How does the future pay feature work on a jackpot?

In Slot Machines on Parade, the author describes how he restored a Castle Front.
He says the machine started out as an OK (future pay) machine with side vender; a gold award was added later.
The future pay indicator showed 65 tokens for a JP.
According to the author;
"The 65 coin payout is achieved by having 20 coins drop from payout tube and 45 coins from the reserve JP (the main jackpot was mechanically left open, and the reserve JP, which nominally holds 45 coins, is always one play behind the JP making it future play by design).

I assume those future pay indicators that show 20 coins for 3 bars were for use on machines with no JP mechanism.

He "restored" the machine with the gold award feature (and award card), coins (rather than tokens) in both main and reserve JPs and painted blue.
He does not say if it was originally a red front.

This seems very unlikely for the following reasons.

1. I don't think the reserve on a Mills holds 45 coins.
2. The JP would have to be modified to direct all coins that were headed towards the JP to the cash box.
3. Once a jackpot was hit the operator would have to pull the mechanism out and manually fill the reserve jackpot. This could be a challenge with the JP modified to not accept coins from the overflow and even if it wasn't it will still be a PIA to pull the mechanism out.
4. With the main jackpot door being forced open the main jackpot would always appear to be empty. Players would not play a machine with an empty jackpot

Dave

[markymarkuk]

Interesting to read about this Future Play system, and as I watched the YouTube video on the Mills Future Play Gold Vendor I totally understood the whole "Hold Back" the payout system.... However, having just read page 112 of the Lemons, Cherries and Bell Fruit Gum book, there is a copy of the original Future Play Flyer, and it states on there the following...

"In addition,this new model has the Future-Play indicator - so that the player, by looking in the window on the indicator on top of the machine, knows in advance, whether he is to receive the Gold Award, the Jackpot - And just how many checks are to be released on the next play"

To me this reads that somewhere it is holding back a gold award and/or the jackpot as well as the checks won on a previous pull. What do you think? And this is stated on the Mills own advertising flyer!
I'm confused now, and agree with Dave, it must be a complex mech that holds back all those various winnings!!!!