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Gaming board set and gaming kernel for game cabinets

Gaming board set and gaming kernel for game cabinets description/claims

This application is a continuation of and claims the benefit of co-pending patent application Ser. No. 10/224,026 filed Aug. 19, 2002, which claims the benefit of and incorporates by reference, provisional application 60/313,743 which was filed on Aug. 20, 2001, entitled “Form Fitting Upgrade Board Set For Existing Game Cabinets”.

1. Field of the Invention

This invention pertains generally to gaming systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing high performance, incremental and large upgrades, and a consistent game development API for gaming cabinets, both existing and new.

2. Description of the Related Art

Gaming industry cabinets are fairly standardized as to general configuration. This is partly due to the needs of the casinos, who want to fit the maximum number of gaming devices into a given amount of floor space. It is also due to the physical needs of players, who need a certain minimum amount of cabinet area in front of them to play the game while not crowding their fellow players on the next gaming machine. It is also due to the requirements of the game components, encompassing both regulated and non-regulated aspects. Game components include a video monitor or reels, input and output devices (buttons, network interface, voucher or ticket printers, and magnetic strip card readers are typical) together with a main processor board. The main processor board has interfaces to the various input and output devices, and has at least a processor and memory which enables gaming software to be installed and run on the processor board. In most gaming machines the processor board, power supply and other related mechanical and electrical elements are typically co-located near the base of the gaming machine. Disposed thereabove at proximately chest level of the player is the gaming display, such as the rotatable reel displays in a slot machine or a video monitor for video-based games.

FIG. 1 illustrates a common prior art gaming machine. The gaming machine 100 has a top candle 108, a video screen or reel area 102, player input area 104 (generally having buttons, coin-in and/or bill-in, card reader, and in newer machines a printer), and pull handle 106. Gaming machine 100 has, in its interior, a processor board whose location is generally indicated as 110 (the actual processor board and mounting hardware are on the inside of the cabinet).

The processor board, in addition to have physical mounts such as guides, rails, standoff mounts, board slots, board slides, or board tray, will further have cabinet electronic interfaces, typically at the back of the board (towards the front of the cabinet, from a player's perspective). Processor boards will typically have a set of multi-pin plugs or bus connectors that slide into mating plugs or bus connectors when the processor board is correctly seated in its mounts.

FIG. 2 shows a picture of a prior art processor board 200, in this case a processor board from an 1GT® Game King® gaming machine. Shown is the top of the board, with the front of the board facing the bottom of the figure. As is typical, the sides of the board slide into the game cabinet using guide rails in the cabinet, with the cabinet bus or connector interfaces 202 mating to specially positioned and configured plugs in the cabinet.

If the board needs work, the entire processor board is replaced. In addition to a replacement board from the manufacturer (in this case IGT®), there are commercially available replacement boards having the same or nearly the same features, speed, memory capacity, etc., from after market manufacturers. No matter where the board originates from, they follow the same configuration, that is, they consist of a single board that replaces the processor board supplied with the game having similar functionality and the same form. In addition to their physical similarity, they employ a monolithic software architecture; that is, the gamecabinet-specific operating system and specific game software are not a modular, layered design using modem software engineering practices. An example of an aftermarket replacement processor board for the IGT® Game King® gaining cabinet is or was sold by Happ Controls™, 106 Garlisch Drive, Elk Grove, Ill. 60007. It has the same basic physical, electronic, and software architecture as the original.

Upgrade processor boards are also available for some games. The reason for considering upgrade boards is that it may be possible to run newer games in a cabinet already owned by a casino if improvements are made to processor speed, memory, graphic support chips, and other components. Game upgrades interface to some degree with the internal busses of the game cabinet, but require cabinet modifications. Currently available upgraded boards do not fit in the slot used by the original processor board; rather, they must be mounted elsewhere in the cabinet. In addition to requiring the accompanying mechanical fabrication and electrical work, the upgrade boards are a fixed upgrade. That is, if the configuration of the upgraded game itself needs to be upgraded a few years later, you have to purchase and install a completely new upgrade kit which requires going through the same installation problems that were encountered with the original upgrade. This is a significant deterrent to upgrading activity.

In addition, each proprietary processor board as well as upgraded game boards typically uses its own interface to the game software, requiring game rewrites each time a hardware upgrade occurs. This makes gradual or incremental game enhancement prohibitively expensive.

Thus, there is a long-felt need for a game processor usable in upgrades in existing cabinets, as well as usable for new game cabinets, that is more cost effective, is easier to install, provides for incremental upgrades itself, and provides more standard interfaces to the game development community.

The present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a combination two-board processor board set and a gaming kernel that provides a consistent, easy to use API to game application software. The two-board processor board set includes an industry standard form factor processor board (single board computer system able to support an operating system) coupled with an I/O adapter board. The I/O adapter board is unique for each game machine (game cabinet) application.

The I/O (input/output) adapter board interfaces the industry standard processor board to the game machine's devices. Further, the I/0 adapter is intended to provide functionality not found in the industry standard processor board, such as additional communication ports, stereo sound and additional power for heavier speakers, additional ethernet support, etc.

Further provided is a gaming kernel which uses a UNIX-compatible operating system. The gaming kernel is uniquely architected to both allow game applications to make use of all the hardware features of the game cabinet and the two-board processor board set, while masking all the hardware-specific, low-level differences between game machines (game cabinets) and their player interfacing devices. This is achieved by (i) providing a single API for the game applications, and (ii) building the intelligence for dealing with devices and hardware capabilities into user-level code modules, rather than device-specific drivers inside the operating system. The latter in particular is unique, as prior art systems build these capabilities into the lower-level drivers (this method is used by current game machine manufactures), or in some cases it has been proposed to push them out into smart I/O interfaces to enable the use of a common game engine (e.g., see US Application Publication 2001/0053712).

The present invention does not use a common gaming engine like that described in US Applications 2001/0053712 and 2002/0052230, nor does it use two CPUs with only one for gaming as described in US Application 2002/0082084, nor does it describe pushing I/O intelligence out to the peripherals or the I/O board controlling the peripherals, such as described in the PCT Application WO 00/06268. It is different from any of these: it uses an industry standard processor board, but with a game-machine-specific gaming kernel running on the processor board, coupled with a I/O adapter that is as dumb as possible. The intelligence required to run the gaming machine's devices is found in the gaining kernel software, running on the processor board. This discloses and teaches a fundamentally different approach than is currently used in gaming machines or is shown in the art.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

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