Slot machine suffers blue screen of death

ITALIAN MOTHERBOARD MAKER Zest, a spin-off of Seco, was demonstrating its latest high-reliability computer designs at this week's International Casino Exhibition in Earl's Court, London.

However, it appears that this particular design is not quite ready for the prime time as, when we stopped by, the game had hung completely with a classic blue screen of death. Now that's going to seriously annoy you if you've just won the jackpot! We came back an hour later, and the game was still in the same condition.

Based on an 800MHz Celeron M “Shelton” (no L2 cache) and the 852/855 series chipset, the G640 motherboard is a neat looking device, that also has some of the complicated RAS functionality built in that slot machines require to get through the strict gaming approvals in the US, or to appease the mobsters in Russia.

However, with 22 large electrolytic capacitors on the power circuit, the design seems to be pretty old hat compared to modern server motherboards, with their high frequency multi-phase designs using only ceramic capacitors.

Most industrial spec motherboards manufactured in the last 10 years will automatically reset themselves in the event of a crash, using a hardware watchdog timer, and the gaming machines will even go as far as restoring the previous known state, so you don't lose your winnings in the unlikely event that you've beaten the odds. µ