brandon.arnold
Student
COMBO AV EX++ Supergun First Thoughts
Updated: 7/17/2023Overview
Hi all. I wanted to share my experience the past couple of days, with the COMBO AV EX++ supergun. Buying it, what's inside, the good and the bad, and mods I'm considering. It's been produced for years, but I haven't seen any comments about it on the forum so I thought I'd chime in.First, a quick summary: The enclosure, controls, and internal wiring/harnesses are premium, craftsman quality. This is where the high cost is going. The circuitry for A/V conversion is decent, but as-is, it will not be satisfactory for most in this forum (including myself), and will require bypassing or modding. The designer composed the A/V conversion out of generally available, fairly low-cost, packaged components. The result has some quirks. I recommend this supergun to someone who wants a well-built twin fightstick supergun and either (a) is complacent with a decent image quality, or (b) has no problem making lots of changes in the spacious room under-the-hood to extract the best image quality. It could be a modder's dream, in some ways. I will try to describe these options below and in follow-up articles.
Purchasing and Packaging
Last week, I impulse-bought this control box from Sophia Corp. I purchased the full option package, $506 before shipping. Shipping is very high at $187, due to being expedited, international, and the sheer weight and bulk. You can view their inventory at ec.tops-game.jp (right-click > Translate to English in Chrome) and will have to perform any purchases through email instead of their website. It's not a modern ecommerce experience, but I really like working with this merchant and have used them for a decade. I'm not going to share photos, but everything I've ever gotten from these folks is packed beautifully. Such attention to detail, with the packaging, invoice, documents, etc.!Features
There are a few packages, and depending on where you buy it, the packages are conflicting. This page hosted by the manufacturer conflicts with the packages sold at ec.tops-game.jp. In my summary below, I will mostly refer to packages sold by ec.tops-game.jp online merchant.- 2 player controls on a reproduction Blast City plate
- Sanwa Denshi JLF-TP-8 joysticks and OBSF-30 pushbuttons (2x6 pushbuttons + 2x1 coin + 2x1 start and 1x service menu button)
- Sophia Corp offers a "Soft Sound Package" with silent stick (JLF-TPRG-8BYT-SK) and pushbuttons (OBSFS-30)
- Rapid-fire
- The "Full Option Package" on tops-game.jp has an 8-selector knob on the outside for this purpose; the Base Package at tops-game.jp uses internal switches and doesn't provide the knob.
- JAMMA in
- Video: 1x HDMI out, 3x VGA out, 1x composite video out, 1x S-VIDEO out, 1x RGB out via DIN8 port
- This is the HV full option package. The Basic Package from ec.tops-game.jp does not have composite or S-Video. And the page hosted by the manufacturer refers to a normal RS package that doesn't have anything but the DIN8.
- Audio: 1x HDMI out, 1x line level 3.5mm audio out, 2x left and right speakers with volume knob/potentiometer
- The DIN-8 analog port does not include audio, so the display will need to accept audio from the 3.5mm line out.
- HDMI does include audio
- These are basic mono 2" speakers. The bass and max volume are not very good.
- 5V adjustable PSU (model? see PSU.jpg attached)
Video Internals
It is worthwhile to point out a couple of precursor superguns, the Boardmaster and PANA Twin, which wired RGBs directly to the output DIN8 (going directly to SCART). Many have pointed out how inadequate this A/V is, outputting unsafe levels to consumer TVs, that look blown out. The COMBO AV EX++ corrects this with the a basic video conversion board (Gonbes GBS-8220).- Video upscaling/conversion is supported by the Gonbes GBS-8220 (specifically HCKJ-8200 v5.1 which is the latest version; see attached GBS-8220.jpg).
- I had to push a switch on this board for my older Sega Tetris / TGM PCB to work at all, but newer game PCBs worked fine.
- This is not present in the normal (RS) package described by the page hosted by the manufacturer.
- Out-of-the-box, this scaler is not ideal, to say the least. It introduces up to 2 frames of lag and processes all signals as 480i, causing 240p to have some flicker. Colors are okay but not comparable to a RetroTINK or OSSC.
- There is an amazing alternative firmware by Rama (github.com/ramapcsx2/gbs-control) that fixes this, but it is a fairly involved mod. As Bob @ RetroRGB covered in a video a couple of years ago, the board with this firmware outputs 240p correctly with a non-varying 4ms of lag, with 480i having less than a frame of lag, half that of the Framemeister.
- UPDATE 8/11/2023: It turns out the Rama mod is not ideal for this case. Rama's GBS-C project is clearly meant more for consumer console inputs. Sync times on arcade games vary wildly, especially early 90's and before, and thee GBS-C performs worse in the syncing than the original GONBES hardware.
- HDMI video and audio is enabled by a second VGA2HDMI converter taking video input from the Gonbes in (1) and audio directly from JAMMA, attenuated by a rear knob. There is no model number on this board and I don't know the origin (see attached VGA2HDMI.jpg). It does seem to work fine on my LG OLED display and Alienware LCD monitor. I expect this is a zero-lag device, but need to do lag testing.
- For the upgraded "Full Option Package" at ec.tops-game.jp, there is also an S-Video and Composite video output, from a decoder taking input from the Gonbes in (1).
- All of this can be bypassed completely to the DIN8 RGB port (same wiring as the Sigma superguns). This is the same as the normal (RS) package referred to on the page hosted by the manufacturer, which doesn't have any output ports except the DIN8. One can swap between them manually by unplugging / replugging harnesses (see attached RGB_BYPASS.jpg) internally to the unit; see photo.
- Again, RGBs is wired directly from JAMMA in this case, so unless this is going to an arcade monitor, it needs at the very least RGB voltage attenuation pots on the JAMMA harness. Ideally the attenuation circuitry would include an active amplifier (THS7374 or the like) to attenuate the signal and isolate it from the arcade PCB (see Tim Worthington's "AV-Driver for Arcade RBB 'Supergun'" article for why this is preferred to simple potentiometer attenuation).
- Audio is not wired to the DIN8.
Ideas, going forward
Please give me more ideas! I will add them here.- Changing the GBS-8220 firmware to Rama's GBS Control.
- UPDATE 8/11/2023: Don't do this. I tried it. Rama's GBS-C project is clearly meant more for consumer console inputs. Sync times on arcade games vary wildly, especially early 90's and before, and thee GBS-C performs worse in the syncing than the original GONBES hardware.
- Insert some A/V attenuation circuitry before the DIN8
- UPDATE 8/11/2023: Check out my update post, where I did this, in The Real Phoenix A/V amp for custom superguns, COMBO AV EX++, PANA, or Boardmaster
- Wire audio into the DIN8, consider changing it to the Sega Genesis 1 or Sigma Supergun pinout, for compatibility
- UPDATE 8/11/2023: Check out my update post, where I did this, in The Real Phoenix A/V amp for custom superguns, COMBO AV EX++, PANA, or Boardmaster
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