W h a t WW h a t Wi l l Yi l l Yo u D o A f t e r O n eo u D o A f t e r O n ei s D e s i g n e d ?i s D e s i g n e d ?

By Gene Harlan, Arachnid Chief EngineerWas electronics my 1stchoice of occupations?

Not really. Although when I was ateenager (I really was once!) Idevoured books about electronics,tracing circuits, mostly tube circuits, tounderstand what they did.

I will never forget when I called mydad and told him that I accepted aposition as Chief Engineer atArachnid. He said, “Where?” When Itold him they make electronic dartmachines, he asked, “What will you doafter one is designed?”

The start of 24 yearsI had a great job with W. A.

Whitney as Field Service Managerwith around14 people on the road working for me.One of my co-workers at W. A.Whitney was Sam Zammuto. Samwas part ofthe sales team there, and we always shared an ofce. Beingsingle at thetime, he would be known to visit a fewbars, and having been in the Air Forcein England, had thrown a few darts(actually pretty good). With that com-bination, it was pretty easy to see howhe came to know the owners ofArachnid at the time, Paul Beall andMike Tillery. I do believe that theysawa combination in Sam that they feltthey could use.

Maybe a year after he was hired, I received a phone call (How did youknow that would happen?). Sam want-ed to know if I would be interested inmaking a few dollars on the side tomake a test stand for the 4000 seriesdart machines so distributors and oper-ators could troubleshoot the boardseasily. We did that in early 1984,and conversations followed along withmystarting at Arachnid in May of 1984.

On my frst day, Bob Lenz was pur-

to him, after which I made a commentthat I was only one person, not an engi-neering group. He told me that whenhe became involved in the company,that he was President and the only oneworking full time, so I could be ChiefEngineer if he could be President.

A little history. . .In 1984, at age 40, I started working

for Arachnid and the 5000 seriesEnglish Mark Darts was the machine ofchoice. While it was not perfect, it wasfar ahead of the previous models fromthe 1000 to the 4000. The 5000 was thefrst to actually have a microprocessorto control the machine. Earliermachines had discrete ICs (lots of littlechips that did not have programmablememory, and the 4000 had a calculatorchip with a special program forArachnid). Part of my job was tomake the 5000 better and to work as acus-tomer service person.

In talking with customers, you veryquickly discover what needs improve-ment. One of my main goals was tocome up with troubleshooting thattheoperator could do and be able to eval-uate problems on their own.

It was not too long after I started atArachnid when they said we need anew machine. It was decided to makeone with fewer games to choose fromand sell it for less. Now when I washired, it was to oversee engineering,not necessarily to do the developmentmyself. But this sounded like a funproject. So, I asked if it would be OKto take a stab at it, and they said itwould.

At that time Arachnid had nodevel- opment equipment, so I usedwhat Ihad used while I was in school,and cobbled up boards that were lyingaround. W hat I did not tell them isthat I had never done a commercial

munications (although I did not knowhow communications knowledgewould be of value at that point – waitfor the Galaxy).

So, the project started and since I hadno development equipment, I devel-oped on the cheap like I did at home. Iwould program a few lines of code,program an EPROM, stick it in the PCboard to see if it worked. I could neverprogram too many lines of code, other-wise I might not be able to fgure outwhere my problems were. But the jobgot done.

Then there were the many nights outin the bar, just to watch dart playersplay on the prototype. And all I had to dowas drink rum and cokes! Well, andwatch to make sure there were not anyproblems.

At the same time that the 4500 proj-ect was going on, we developed a carni-val game. It had one dart head andlarge 3” displays to play count up only.Three darts to get a high score to win ateddy bear.

About 1986, Arachnid again decidedthey needed a new product. This onesounded exciting, but would it be tooexpensive? The idea was to have avideo monitor for the display. Wow, noone was doing that. Would it work?

This project was going to take morework than the 4500 project, so I need- edoutside help. We found a guy thathad worked for an engineering devel-opment place we had used (that was nomore) and he was willing to put in a lotof time every evening for us. Almostevery day I would get fles from himthat we had to test and make sure thatthere were no problems. Oh, by theway, for this project in 1986 we didinvest in good development equipmentfor this project, for him and for me.

The Super 6 was born, but not beforeI spent many more evenings in the barswatching the players play all the newgames, and of course the rum andCokes. One of the main reasons forhaving the monitor is so the players

could play Cricket (Regular, CutThroat, and Team), which with steeltip darts was scored on a chalk board.We wanted to have a similar look to thechalk board so players would feel com-fortable and make the game intuitive.Other games that we developed wereT i c Tac Darts (still popular), Baseball,Cut Throat, and Horse.

I enjoyed the reception from distrib-utors and operators and they acknowl-

edged my involvement with the con-cepts and engineering when I wouldsee them at shows or when theyvisitedus at Arachnid. Many operators anddistributors have come to Arachnidover the years to attend schools abouthow to run dart leagues and how totroubleshoot problems. For a numberof years we had schools almost on aweekly basis, as running leagues wasnot something many operators haddone before.

In March of 1987, the concept of“Spider Writer” came about whereoperators could put messages on the

screens during the attract mode.This

all came about due to someonerequesting that we make a specialEPROM with the message “LORDY, LORDY, SAM IS40” to put at certainbars around town due to a specialbirthday for Sam Zammuto.

Around 1988 we took the 4500machine to another level with AudioDarts for the sight impaired. It wouldannounce what segment was hit andwhat the score was. It also had a rollout carpet with a strip of wood for thethrow line. I remember many a tour-nament where a sighted player wasblindfolded and played against a sightimpaired person and many times it wasthe sight impaired person that won. Itmade me feel good that we did some-thing for the sight impaired individu-als. What was a real challenge washelping them fx their own machinesover the phone.

Over the next few years there were atotal of four models to the Super 6series, each getting an updatedEPROM with new games andfeatures.Players loved Cricket, therefore opera-tors bought many of these machines,and distributors loved us. Leagues

called Dartman. It was a pretty simpleprogram back then, although we didnot think so at the time.

In about 1988 we introduced the7000 series which was much like theSuper 6, but with games to play thatwere more along the likes of Roulette,Poker, Ship Captain Crew (my daugh-ter, Wendy, who was in college at thetime, did the graphics for this gamescreen), as well as the commongames

During the time of the Super 6, wealso started making home games tohang in your recreation room. Westarted with the model 200 which hadjust LED displays like the 4500 machine. Then we made a machinesimilar to the Super 6 in that it con-nected to your TV at home. The homegame market grew tremendously andwithin Arachnid to deal with the difer-ent marketing and engineering con-cepts required. About 1999, the homegame division was sold to DMI Sports.

And then it was time for another newmachine. What if all the dart leagueinformation could be accumulated inthe dart machine and downloadedautomatically overnight? Could this bedone? W ell, it could be timepatent (I had a total of fve with myname included with others from theteam).

A lot of development went into theGalaxy dart machine, learning aboutmodems and serial communications.After a lot of testing and re-doing soft-ware and hardware, the Galaxy wasreleased in 1991. In the beginning, afew operators gave it a try, but manywere reluctant as they had not workedwith phone lines before. Arachnid hadsales people all over the US to provideoperators with the help they needed tooperate dart leagues the new way.

did not take too long for operatorstalking with each other to fnd out thatthe system really did work and time wassaved running leagues.

In 1998 we introduced the Black

Widow, a dart machine with twodart heads. One monitor in the middleserved both sides of the machine, split-ting down the middle when played as itwas two machines or as a full screenwhen playing interactive (Head toHead) games using both dart heads atonce. Some of the Head to Headgames were Tic-Tac-Darts, Cricket,Quick Draw, and Quicket.

In 2002 the Galaxy II wasintroduced

with new features such as a colormon- itor and a cabinet that did not“looklike” a dart machine. When I frstheard that we were going to make acabinet out of plastic, I could not imag-ine that it would work. But it was veryattractive and had an added beneft,being lightweight. I will not forget theday that I was helping someone on thephone with a networking problem.The second machine was in anotherroom and after the third time runningback and forth, he said, “Hold on.”Pretty soon he was back telling me hewent into the other room, picked up themachine, and placed it side by sideso we could troubleshoot easier.

And with the Galaxy II we now havea new method of collecting stats byuploading them direct to an Internetserver using our newest league pro-gram, League Leader. This has provedmore reliable that having Dartman forWindows calling every night. What willbe next? I have not even commentedon a few projects like the juke box,Lucky Touch, Chuck A Luck Darts,at Arachnid I was invited to a largelocal tournament. With the 5000 seriesmachine there was work to be donewhile there. As the tournaments grewin size, and we made better machines, itgot to the point where I felt like theMaytag guy! I wonder sometimes ifthe players even knew why I washangingaround. Of course over the years I gotthey did. And seeing them happy was myreward.

ShowsThere were many shows that I attend-

ed, such as AMOA and ASI. I remem-ber one show where, since modemcommunications was catching on formany manufacttures (we had done itsince 1991), I called and suggestedsince Arachnid was a leader inmodem communications andnetworking, thatthere should be a forum concerningsuch at the convention. Not only wasthere a seminar, but two, and on one Ihad the pleasure of sitting on a panelnext to Nolan Bushnell, founder ofAtari, Inc., and people from

Microsoft. So, now we know theanswer to my

dad’s question, “What will you do afterone is designed?” D ad was prettyhappy for me over the years and kept upwith what I was doing.

On the personal side. . .I met my wife, Shari for the

second time (we kind of knew eachother inhigh school, but only to say hi in thehallways) at a bowling alley, and Itold

Shari and I have two wonderful chil-dren, Shawn (KA9BXA, also a HAM)(43), married to Sara, has three chil-dren, Jessica (6), Cassidy (5), and Riley(4), and Wendy (38) who has a son,Dustin (15), who is a straight Astudenttaking honors classes at Christian LifeSchool.

Chief Tuba Man!And did I mention the

mentioned to Shari that Isure had fun in highschool (class of 63) play-ing tuba. I wondered if Icould still play? I decidedto look around to see if Icould fnd one I couldaford. After about a year of lookingIfound one, and I found out I could stillValley Concert Band and soon got mylip back. Then other groups needed atuba and I always said yes. I ended upplaying for First Brass, Knights ofDixieland, Rockford Concert Band, Rockford Wind Ensemble, and twogroups I started myself, the Dixie BlueNotes and the Tarnished Brass, a lowbrass quartet consisting of one tuba

HAM itup!I have been an

amateur radioopertor (HAM - noone knows for surethat) for years. ForChristmas 1989,Shari bought me aSound Blastersound card. I amnot much intoplaying games so,other than music,what could I dowith it? HAM radio has a mode calledSlow Scan Television which is convert-ing pictures to sound and sending theimages over the airwaves all around theworld. Since the images are convertedto sound, could the Sound Blaster doit? I had not seen where anyone elsehad tried, but why not give it a shot.When I had it kind of working, I got onthe air to try and see what would hap-

pen. I did not expect whathappened. I received aphone call asking if I wouldspeak about what I haddone at a HAM radioconventionin Dayton, OH. The DaytonHamvention is the largest

about 25,000 HAMs attending. I endedup selling the program that I wrote,and the users enjoyed using it. Iwas asked to speak about updates andimprovements for several years.

In 1998, I took on another HAM

radio project, a magazine. The pub-lisher of Amateur Television Quarterlyneeded to step back and fnd someonenew to take over. He had asked severaltimes over a year before I said OK. It isstill going after another 10 years withabout 550 subscribers. It paid for someof the HAM toys that I enjoy.

Working at homeSome of you may know that in

January, 2008, at age 63, I was diag-have trouble walking and talking.Arachnid has been very supportive andright now I am working from home,doing things that I can do, like typingand documenting things that I know.

I appreciate all that Arachnid hasdone for me over the years, and all thefun times we have had!

You can contact Gene at:geneh@bullshooter.com