Console > Cab setup (using Viletim SCART > JAMMA)

[FrancoB]

I've been rehosting some project photos (thanks alot Photofuckit!) and figured some of this stuff deserved a place here so I thought I would post it here at the same time Original post below was from 2014.

A long time ago, i, Mike (Iremfan) put a post up on J+ asking for some help with getting a Megadrive on his cab. He explained that he had gone to great expense to get a setup working int he past but none of them had worked properly. I showed him a pic of some pad hacks etc I had done for mine and he asked me to build him a set for him. As he had had a rough time with it already I said I would make him something for the price of parts and make myself a setup at the same time

I then spent months and months trying out various audio and video amps but I wasn't satisfied with the results so about a month ago I decided to get something premeade and bought a couple of Viletims RGB SCART to JAMMA adapters which work wonderfully, I wish I had got one a long time ago!

I thought I would make some enclosures for the pad hacks and make some boards to mount everything to to make it nice and easy to swap things around.

I cut some MDF boards to fit in Iremfans E2 and my Astro. The E2 PCB mount board is slightly smaller than the Astro one so I made them both E2 sized as I new it would fit in my Astro too. I routed some slots to that we can strap various sized consoles to them.

I then hacked some pads and made some enclosures for them:

The idea was to connect the inputs from the pads to the 40 pin IDC and Hirose DF1B headers, the 40 pin IDC header would connect directly to the RGB SCART to JAMMA adapter and the Hirose header would be used for the kick buttons.

The headers were bonded to aluminum right angle brackets and bolted to the enclosures. I added some grommets to help with strain relief and to tidy up the entries.

I made a Megadrive and SNES set for Mike and the same for me along with Saturn, PC Engine, Famicom and Amiga adapters. These took fucking ages

The PCE enclosure has a switch which maps the Select and Run buttons to JAMMA button 3.

For the Amiga adapter, I dual wired the up button to JAMMA button 2 so that you can use a button to to press up rather than having to use the joystick i.e. for jumping in games or accelerating in driving games. I added a 4PDT switch to enable me to switch the pinout between buttons 1 and 2.

To hold the enclosures to the boards I bonded some 5mm acrylic pieces to the inside of the enclosures and drilled and tapped them M6. I countersunk the back of the board to suit the bolts.

I bought some IDE ribbon cable and made to cables up to suit. Couple of setups mounted and ready to go:

Megadrive setup in the Astro:

Aaaand a final pic for Iremfan as I know this is the game he's looking forward to playing the most

I had quite a few games of Wiz and Liz on the MD last night and it's so much fun

Apologies for taking over a year to sort this out Mike :oops: I hope it will have be worth the wait in the end though

Made a little thing for Monstermug yesterday. He's very kindly RGB modding my AV Famicom for me so I made this for him in return.

He uses his Amiga on top of his Aero table and he wanted to use the Aero CP to control it so I made him up this adapter. He wanted to feed the wires through a 20mm hole in the Aeros legs so I needed to find a way to get a cable through it.

I figured I would use a VGA/HD15 connector as it has the right amount of pins required (U,D,L,R,1,2,3 x2 +GND) and it's a fairly small connector. However for it to fit through I would have to remove most of the outer casing. I planned on just grinding off some of the tabs but as I was doing so the casing split apart completely and allowed me just to take the center section out completely

I added a switch for him to add the jump button to B1/B2 like with my adapter.

All done

 

[RealMFnG]

Very cool stuff. I started a thread over here where I am asking how to go about fabricating such a board. With your setup, the only thing I would do differently is to replace your pad hacks with either the PS360+ or the MC Cthulhu multi-console PCB's.

Seems Viletim/Tim Worthington isn't producing this board any longer. He is coming out with a revised version that does more. Personally, I think the RGB-2-SCART solution you have that Tim produced is almost perfect for us arcade snobs. Lemony Vengeance is producing something that looks very promising as discussed over at the thread I posted. I am going to hold out for what he will produce.

 

[waiwainl]

This really nicely done!
Impressed with all the finished details there. Really good.

 

[FrancoB]

This really nicely done!
Impressed with all the finished details there. Really good.

Thanks!

Very cool stuff. I started a thread over here where I am asking how to go about fabricating such a board. With your setup, the only thing I would do differently is to replace your pad hacks with either the PS360+ or the MC Cthulhu multi-console PCB's.

Seems Viletim/Tim Worthington isn't producing this board any longer. He is coming out with a revised version that does more. Personally, I think the RGB-2-SCART solution you have that Tim produced is almost perfect for us arcade snobs. Lemony Vengeance is producing something that looks very promising as discussed over at the thread I posted. I am going to hold out for what he will produce.

Thanks

Ah nice, I love Tims work. I'll be really interested to see his new version. Have you got any links/info on it? I look forward to see what Lemony Vengeance is up too too

I did do a bit of a project with the PS360+'s predecessor, the PS360, before the plus came out. I used alongside a Ultracade Video Convertor (UVC) for using VGA consoles, namely Xbox 360 in my cabs in 15/24kHz. At the time Akishop were meant to be making a 'Dreams' PCB for connecting controls to a DC but it never materialised, I imagine because they started to work on the PS360+ that has DC support.

I added some ports to the enclosure in anticipation for the Dreams PCBs but as they didn't happen I couldn't add DC support. I should re-visit the project really and use PS360+'s. It would be a good opertunity to neaten it up a bit too as it's a bit rough around the edges as it was very early work.

Shoutout to my mate emphatic for doing the graphics way back when


At the time I also came up with the remote 15/24kHz switch to switch resolution on my MS9 remotely.

Ugly development version:

Nicer later 'kit' version:

Deathsmiles X360 in 24kHz:

Wiring for the relays in case anyone wants it:

I can get part numbers if anyone wants them. The chassis connectors are all JST VH series.

 

[RealMFnG]

Great stuff man!

Tim gave me his blessing to post what he told me about his upcoming board on this forum. But he didn't know that I had been discussing this with two other devs (Lemony and Jammacon's creator). So I didn't want to reveal anything that I shouldn't. I'll keep it close to vest for now. For some reason, he mentioned, he can't get an account here. Told him, I would love to have an open discussion with him here.

That solution you have from Tim is probably he closest to my own preference to a way to interface consoles to JAMMA. I would never convert consolve video to 15khz RGB from anything other than SCART. Love how Tim's board has screw terminals for pass through to the JAMMA connector. So you can skip conversion from SCART when possible.

Only thing about that design you have from Tim is that I would have asked for:

• Buttons 4 and 5 to be outputted to a kick harness connector rather than to the JAMMA edge, along with button 6
• Moves the screw terminals away from the JAMMA edge
• The fingers on his JAMMA edge are a little smudge deeper
• I am not sure how his board handles audio. Does it downmix stereo from SCART and pass it as JAMMA audio to the edge connector?
  • If not, I'd ask that it does do that plus allows output to an external stereo amp

If I didn't have the PS360+'s already, I would just pick up Toodles MC Cthulhu. Cheaper, more accessible, interfaces to all the consoles I'd be interested in connecting to a JAMMA arcade, and uses the same RJ45 cables the PS360+ does. I really don't see any point in interfacing an HD capable console to JAMMA. That leaves every console after the X360 and PS3 out of the picture.

 

[nem]

• I am not sure how his board handles audio. Does it downmix stereo from SCART and pass it as JAMMA audio to the edge connector?

It's on Tim's page:

"The onboard amplifier is monaural (i.e. has only one channel) which mixes both left and right audio signals together."

 

[West]

Nice FrancoB! Always love seeing your stuff. Beautifully thought out.