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My first arcade PCB. Am I doing this right? :P

Paranoid_Andy

Paranoid_Andy

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Hey all, I'm Andy.

I'm new to the home arcade scene and just got my first game, Final Fight. Seller said it's authentic, hopefully that's true. I have everything seemingly setup but there are several switches on the PCB and supergun that I'm just not sure about. If any of you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate you viewing the photos of my setup and letting me know if anything seems out of place before I hit the power button and possibly fry something. I'll be feeding the scart into my OSSC and the controller out piece is a SNES controller adapter. The power supply is a typical ATX.

I guess some games use different voltages or something like that and the supergun needs to be set properly for that or something? I think I read that somewhere lol.

I also plan to use a Neo Geo MVS 1 with this as well as a CPS2 + Darksoft when everything gets here.

Here is a link to the photos:
https://imgur.com/a/G2PFt

Thank you for any help or suggestions!
 
welcome to the hobby! some quick notes:

Try for 5v at that voltage reader on the supergun. 5.0 to 5.1 should be fine. Pretty much all boards are looking for 5v. If you're nervous, you can plug in the supergun ONLY and it'll probably show you some voltage (5.1 to 5.2 I'm guessing). A lot of folks here graduate into a H.A.S. and buy a variable power source, but I imagine Final Fight will boot with an ATX. I can't for sure say it's wired right, since your connector has 4 less pins that the supergun can accept.

I'm not familiar with that supergun, but it looks like audio might need to be connected (unless it's part of the SCART, I'm not sure). The OSSC and your TV may not exactly behave with one another, but you can connect your OSSC to your TV and at least boot up it's test-screen to make sure that's working -- then turn on the game.

The DIPs on the Final Fight board are here: https://www.arcade-museum.com/dipswitch-settings/7794.html

If you ever plug in Street Fighter 2 you'll have to figure out how to handle the extra buttons, but for Final Fight I think it only uses 2 or 3 buttons, which are all routed on the Jamma edge, and you should be again, fine.
 
Agreed - very nice and clean Final Fight board. Welcome to the hobby!

The Retroelectronik SuperGun with an ATX power supply is okay for starting out and it'll definitely let you play Final Fight today. But if you are going to build up a library of PCBs, definitely watch the H. A. S. thread on this board and upgrade to one of those along with a proper adjustable arcade power supply when @RGB makes new ones available. You'll want the HAS for its higher build quality and additional capabilities (its sync regeneration circuitry is VERY nice when you're using an OSSC upscaler), and you'll want the arcade power supply so you can precisely dial-in the proper voltage on other PCBs. Final Fight and other Capcom CPS1 games are fairly voltage tolerant, but many other games are less tolerant and can draw a lot more power.

Everything looks like it's hooked up correctly in your photos. Turn on the SuperGun first without it connected to the game and confirm that the voltage readout is 5.0V or a little bit higher. Then power down, plug in the game, and power on again. Generally speaking, you want the power readout to show between 5.0 and 5.1V with a game connected and running.

If the game doesn't sync with your OSSC, try lowering the Upscaler setting to Line2X, 3X or 4X in the menus. Also try increasing the H-PLL Precoast and H-PLL Postcoast settings.

Have fun! Post some pics of the game running!
 
Hey everybody! Thank you so much for the replies and information!

This is great. Learning a lot lately and I love it.

ShootTheCore suggested some pics of it running, so I decided I'll just make a video of my first time trying it :P

I had a bit of an audio issue, but I think it's my Supergun. Hard to say atm but I at least seem to have figured out a workaround.

Thank you again!

You can watch here:
 
Everything looks nice on that board, but not sure if it uses a buffer for the video output. From the looks of it they just put three pots on the output which is not how you properly shape high impedance video from arcade hardware into low impedance consumer hardware.

food for though 1:44:42 to 1:48:06


Whatever the long term consequences are for this are undetermined, but that reason alone is why I would go with a HAS since it does have a buffer.
 
Thanks for the shout out! We are nice people here for sure.

As much as you love that OSSC, don't get me wrong it's a great device, if you're going into a CRT you might as well take direct RGB signal out of the board. What inputs does your CRT accept?

Seems like you're going SCART with RGB signal, processing it up to HDMI digital, then into SVGA(?) then back to analog. I only use my ossc for my LCD tv. Maybe I'm wrong, anyone?
 
@ShootTheCore I can't wait to stream it! I set all the dips to the hardest settings and gave it a try for a little bit and it's INSANE! I love it lol!

@SNK-NEO-GEO Hey thanks for the welcome :)

@ChuChu Flamingo Not sure about that myself either. Hopefully it's done correctly. I haven't noticed any issues as of yet. Also nice avatar! I love how if you listen carefully when they first show him in the movie how you hear a faint music/sound play that is supposed to resemble the Terminator movies :D A nice touch hehe

@ekorz You are correct about my setup. For the final HDMI to SVGA I use this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tendak-Act...707538&hash=item4673c04576:g:ou8AAOSw3fZaTfqw

The reason I used the OSSC was because I was playing on a new gen monitor before I was able to get myself setup on a CRT. Also the scanline control is great. The CRT has just a SVGA connector on the back. I still like using the OSSC because I like to live stream and it just seems to work fine having an HDMI splitter going to my monitor and other going to my capture card. I didn't see any issues with just staying on the OSSC for my monitor however I'm happy to listen to suggestions if you think I'm holding myself back.

Also, today is a great day! My MVS-1 came in today :D However it seems to be having an audio issue. A loud humming sort of noise. I was thinking I would make a post about that and see if anybody has any ideas if I don't find anything via google search first.

Pleased to meet all of you!
 
Hi Andy,

Responding to your audio issues...

In the video you mention audio being output from one speaker. This isn't necessarily an issue as standard Jamma is typically mono, so perhaps the supergun designer has simply only wired up one channel of audio. Usually people just bridge the left and right audio outputs together so that audio is output from both speakers.

Re MVS, I think it's a related issue. MVS uses stereo sound and differs from the standard Jamma specification slightly. I would speculate that your supergun should have a switch to accommodate stereo game boards. If so, flick it to stereo. If not, pending on model of MVS, there will be a mono/stereo switch in it. Set it to mono. If both the supergun and MVS have an audio switch, just make sure they both match. E.g. both set to mono or stereo.
 
Regarding the MVS, start with a recap and check/clean the volume slider.

My 1 slot still produces a slight buzz when there is no game music, but as soon as there is sound the buzz is gone (or not heard ;) )
Did a recap but still there is a very minimal buzz, but I’ll leave it like that as it doesn’t bother me.
 
My Omega CMVS also has a slight buzz in the audio, especially when the screen is bright. Not sure exactly how your setup is but better shielded cables might help.
 
It's possible the supergun is set to mono while the MVS is set to stereo. If that's the case, and the supergun has incorrectly used Jamma pin L as audio ground, this would explain the loud buzz.
 
@Frank_fjs I'll do as you suggested and take a look at my audio settings a little closer on the MVS to see if I can find any discrepancies. Hopefully it's an easy fix although I get the feeling I might need to recap. As for Jamma outputting mono, that's interesting. The supergun I'm using has a stereo/mono switch however I'm not sure if that would be of help for this issue. I'll have to look into it more. Thank you for the tips :)

@PascalP I think a recap may be in order as well. From the looks of it, they seem kinda old. I'll attach a photo. I can live with a slight buzz, like my Duo-R has, but this buzz seems to be a bit more intrusive to be honest.

@udongein I've heard of the brightness/buzz issue in other systems as well. Maybe it's tied in with some sort of interference from a video line that is too close to audio and when it has more power running through it creating more interference depending on the strength of the power being output? Just a thought but I could be way off lol.

I'd like to get a recap kit for the Neo-Geo. I found this on google, however mine seems to be a 1FZS. Not sure if that matters. If you have a suggestion for a different kit feel free to lemme know.
https://console5.com/store/snk-neo-geo-mvs-mv1f-mv-1f-cap-kit.html

This is what it looks like after I cleaned it up a bit. It was pretty dusty. There's a lot of hot glue all over it. Not sure what that's about.
https://imgur.com/a/l5oZV
 
This is on their Wiki, so you might want to double check and go to your local electronic store to buy them;
And while you're at it, use 105C caps ;)

MV1FZS

Value Quantity
4.7uF 25v 10
100uF 16v 4
470uF 16v 6
 
Re the supergun stereo/mono switch, it would definitely be of help in this scenario. If it's set to mono while the MVS is set to stereo it would cause interference, pending on how the supergun is wired. Only takes half a second to test this theory, well worth doing before replacing caps that may not need replacing.
 
udongein said:
My Omega CMVS also has a slight buzz in the audio, especially when the screen is bright. Not sure exactly how your setup is but better shielded cables might help.
Click to expand...
This is pretty common with not fully shielded scart cables. Retro Console Accessories and Retro Gaming Cables default cables just shield the RGB and Sync afaik, not the audio. If you upgrade to the fully shielded ones everything is shielded.

Basically the sync line/video lines introduces crosstalk in the form of buzzing to the audio lines that run parallel with it. If you don't shield the RGBS lines you get nice diagonal lines from crosstalk. The buzzing is at its worst when displaying a pure white screen or anything bright as that introduces the most noise on analog devices.

for short runs those default cables are good, but some consoles like the SNES/modded NESRGB seem to be more susceptible to buzzing due to their inherent design (NES for example uses solid colors a lot of time due to sprite limitations). So for those systems many people recommend getting a fully shielded cable if slight buzzing annoys you. On my setup upgrading to a fully shielded SNES cable did make a difference in the audio hum, but even the default cable I had before upgrading wasn't bad. You would only hear it if you listened via headphones or cranked up the volume to ear shattering volumes on bright screens
 
Paranoid_Andy said:
I can't wait to stream it!
Click to expand...
Good luck... Most capture devices won't accept the output from the OSSC, some TV's too it really depends on the refresh rate of the board/console.
You could use a iScan VP30/50/50Pro to adjust the sync rate for capture however.
 
Hmmm. After cleaning the MVS I went ahead and plugged it back in and the audio was much more akin to my Duo-R. Maybe even better. Not sure what that was about but I'll take it! I went ahead and tried switching to mono on the supergun but it just seems to quiet down the overall volume. Kinda weird. I'll have to toy around with it more to see what kind of results I get when I'm not so tired XD

@PascalP Even with the audio seemingly okay now, I might go ahead and order some caps in case something happens in the future. I like to be prepared for things like that :P Thanks for the useful info about what my specific unit needs!

@Frank_fjs I don't think my MVS has a stereo/mono switch? Not my model anyway it seems. As long as the audio holds out the way it is now suddenly then I'm happy. I'll fire it up again tonight and see how it responds.

@ChuChu Flamingo Yeah man. I use cables from RCA and they are fantastic! I can turn the volume up pretty darn loud and hear almost nothing. I went with the heavy duty coaxial upgrade and it was worth it imo.

@jassin000 Understood. Fortunately I have a Avermedia HD internal cap card and it works like a dream. I've been streaming all of my retro consoles to it and never had any issue at all. You can see in the video later on in my original post that Final Fight captured just fine. Thank you for the warning though. I can see a lot of heartache for anyone making a mistake with that one.

Well everybody. I'm tired so I'm off to sleep for now. Thank you again for all the suggestions and information. It really is appreciated. Have a great day and I'll ttyl!
 
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