Expert: Carl Myers - 1/7/2012

Question
QUESTION: I work for a casino on egames i.e. slot machines. Somehow I have also been asked to help with the ATMs. I know very little about ATMs and the procedures for install/moving. I was asked to move an ATM, a Triton 9700, from one location to a location to where we had a Triton 9600. I moved it to the location and hooked it up. Everything looked good. We put in money and tried it. We put in the card and pin. It went through motions. It seemed to take a while and then came up and said processor error. Do you have any thoughts? Could it be that it is calling from a different number? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

ANSWER: Hi Scott,
My apologies as I had meetings out of the office today and am just now sitting down to check e-mails.
If the following things don't work, please call my office and ask for either Bobbie or Brian on Monday after 10am eastern.  937-766-9396, Bobbie is at ext 13.

First, check and make sure the telephone jack is working.  Hopefully there's a cheap land line phone laying around somewhere that you can plug in.  Call an 800#.  Try 1-800-flowers or any other 800# you know that works.  IF the call goes through then your phone line is good.

If the phone line is good, please plug the ATM phone line into the jack and try another transaction.  

Are there any errors on the screen?

Tell you what, the phone jack is good and there are errors and you're still at work, give me a call on my cell up until 11pm eastern tonight or sometime after 11am eastern tomorrow (saturday).  937-360-7378 and I'll walk through a few things with you and see if we can get this resolved for you.

Carl

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I was called back to work and I just got your message. While I was here I did attempt to do a balance inquiry. Now it tells me system unavailable. I have the 9600 sitting next to this 9700 and am using the same phone line. The 9600 is working but the 9700 is not. When I print out a test receipt on both ATMs most of the same functions are enabled. On the 9600 the triple DES is enabled and on the 9700 it is disabled. On the 9600 a quad serial board is not installed but it is on the 9700 though the EPROM does not support quad serial board. There is no MAC master key loaded on the 9600 but there is one loaded on the 9700. The only other difference is the cassette low checking. Like I said I don't know much about ATM setups but am now thinking it might have something to with the triple DES. Hopefully this information helps solve my issue. I should be in tomorrow and I could give you a call. The only problem I may have is, I don't think I will be able to get them to load money into the machine on Saturday. I appreciate any assistance. Thanks~Scott

Answer
Hi Scott,

It sounds like you have a crazy life if you're getting called back to work after you leave.

Was the 9700 doing transactions prior to it being moved?  If so then it's possible the encryption keys were lost by the ATM's memory due to a 'tamper error' when the ATM was unplugged and moved and you will need to contact whoever your casino worked through to buy the ATM or the casino will need to get set up through someone else to get them to program the ATM to work with a processor.  

If the 9700 is new then it will need to be fully programmed with a terminal id #, encryption keys, etc and you will need to find out who the casino is signed up with or the casino will need to find someone to work through.  In either case, you'll want to keep the 9600 running as it could take a few days to sign up with someone, have encryption keys assigned and delivered, and get them out to program the ATM.

You might already know this, but a side note: the 9600 will not be able to be used after March 15, 2012 unless it's 'upgraded' due to ADA regulations that will be enforced after that date.  The upgrade on those will make it ugly looking because more or less it will have a credit card swipe looking machine put on and the expense suggests buying a new ATM is a better option.

Hope this has helped,
Carl