You then took that clicker to your local arcade, and clicked one of the corners of the CRT, that would send a shock through the system and add credits to your game. I believe this was because the CRT was grounded on the same ground lines that the mechanism for physically checking a coin had gone through the system.
Suffice to say, they caught onto this over time, and added some form of an alarm into it. But up until then... Those were truly the best times.
To my understanding some of those early arcade games also had jumpers to control some of the behavior. It could be that a tech set the "free credit on reboot" jumper and forgot to reset it when they were done.
I think they still use these in bars
Those systems are occasionally used in bars in the US, though they've dropped the whole plate and it's usually just arms where the holes are.
To my understanding, at least in the US, they aren't used for deep-cleaning anything. That happens with soap and water in the back still. The upside-down-showers are used to clean out the dregs of someone's glass when they get a refill (you give them a glass, they give it a quick rinse, refill it and hand it back), and as a quick rinse for new glasses to clean up water stains/detergent residue and anything that might have fallen in since they were cleaned (hair, dust, etc).
The "Jungle Jive" version of this would dispense tokens out the opposite side of the machine if the electric ignition of a cigarette lighter was used to lightly shock the metal intake slot. If you clicked it too much too quickly it would go into an alert mode. While this could be accomplished solo, the ideal MVP setup was a team of three: one scout to watch for employees, one to click, and one to collect.
We did it for a couple of years until they figured it out and started to conver the arcade cabinets with transparent plastic.
At the same time they also drilled holes at the back of the machine for ventilation as the rest of the case now was sealed in plastic.
We found out that using a bamboo stick you could press the lever that register when a coin has been paid into the slot.
That made them relocate the holes for the ventilation to the top of the case instead of the back so we couldn't get the lever anymore. Or so they thought. haha
We discovered that by pressing a coin up the return slot — the one where you get your coin back if it isn’t accepted — you could also trigger the lever for coin registration and the free gaming continued.
Eventually they put in sharp screws into that coin return box so you would cut your finges.
After that we got a SEGA. Was great fun :)
War Games used a pull tab from an aluminum can to a similar effect?
(It’s been a while.)
Actually here is a link explaining it: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/article/620/three-compartme...
In fact, that could be why some of the machines weren't better protected against that stuff in the first place, right?
Mileage obviously varies, but the "beer nerd/snob" bars I've been to simply don't re-use glasses without a full wash. They'd rather just charge a little more to hire more dishwashers and be able to absolutely guarantee that there's no leftover beer/water in your glass when they refill it, and that the glass is refrigerated if that's something they want.
I've always heard the head/foam had more to do with how you pour the beer (more impact/movement = more foam), but it makes sense that temperature affects it as well. There's some kind of official course on how to pour Guinness to get the correct head on it. I don't remember the whole thing, but it was something about holding the glass the correct distance from the tap and tilting it so that the beer "slides" down the side of the glass rather than a direct perpendicular impact with the beer already in the glass (which makes more foam).
Yes, the glass's sides are still full of the disgusting soapwater from the bucket that's now basically 95% other people's drink dregs.
And the technicians "improving" the machines -- maybe they had a good time too, I'm wondering. @TowerTall and friends made their job more interesting / fun?
https://www.amazon.com/CYBERPUNK-Outlaws-Hackers-Computer-Fr...
So people were using cancelled or empty prepaid visa/mastercards.
Initially they’d just push out blacklists.
Once they really caught on, they did a firmware upgrade to do online verification and it took fooooreeeeveeeeerrrrr to do a credit card purchase.
The universe's RNG just happened to roll favourably in Sydney in the 90s and the rest is history.
From a health perspective, I'd be more worried about the leftover sanitizer in the water in the glass. Bleach is pretty common, and it's honestly a tossup whether I'd rather drink someone else's dregs or bleach. It's probably the dregs, I'll take a stomach flu over melting my stomach lining with chronic low-grade bleach exposure.