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Midway T-Unit and Y-Unit PCB consolidation kits

twistedsymphony

twistedsymphony

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I mentioned this in another thread and I figured I should probably make a dedicated post about it.

If you collect PCBs and have any of the Midway T-Unit or Y-Unit boards you understand how much of a pain these boards can be with their separate sound PCB and disconnected volume pot. To this end I've been piecing together kits to mount the sound board on top of the main board like a 2-board stack and to mount the volume pot to the board stack as well. This not only helps keep them together but it also reinforces the stack to keep the classic midway board "creaking" at bay.

I've been debating selling these kits on my site and to that end I've made a list of every main board/sound board combination, some kits are simple and are just some off-the-shelf hardware, other kits require some small 3D printed parts.

I have a few things I need to sort out before I could start offering these but I wanted to poll the AP community first.

1. Is this something you'd be interested in? If so, what games specifically?
2. If you bought something like this would you want just the hardware to mount the PCBs or would you also want shorter sound board harnesses/ribbon cables and volume pot as well?
3. Do you screw down your boards to a piece of wood or something similar when you put them in your cab to hold them in place or are they "free floating"/just resting in place?

Thanks for your feedback :thumbup:


Here are some examples:

Mortal Kombat II:
mk2.jpg



Smash TV:
smashtv.jpg


*Note that I don't have the volume pot mount completed for this yet.


UPDATE: 2018-10-28

ORDER YOUR KITS HERE: https://bit-district.com/midway.html

Current status:

In all there are 5 different setup :
1. Y-Unit w/CVSD Audio board (2 Black Heat Syncs): [Smash TV, Strike Force, Trog, High Impact Football, Super High Impact] [Design Complete not yet available for purchase]

2. Y-Unit w/ADPCM Audio Board (1 Silver Heat Sync): [Mortal Kombat (Y-Unit), Total Carnage] [Available For Purchase]
*Terminator 2 uses this setup as well but it does not integrate the Gun IO board.

3. T-Unit w/ADPCM (Analog Audio Board): [Mortal Kombat (T-Unit), NBA Jam, NBA Jam TE] [Available For Purchase]

4. Mortal Kombat II w/8Mbit ROMs (no rom expansion board) [Available For Purchase]

5. Mortal Kombat II w/4Mbit ROMs (ROM expansion board) [I will not be offering an option for this, I recommend you perform the 8Mbit ROM conversion.]
 
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1. Hell yes. NBA Jam. MK1 Y-unit, MK2

2. It's a very-nice-to-have for me, since you'll probably know exactly the right lengths on everything, but not at all a deal-breaker. I can make my own, I know it'd be painful to have to make a bunch of wiring for every purchase.

3. I could do it either way. I use one of these more often than not.
 
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Well I wish you had come with this announcement a little sooner, having just purchased 230$ of cases from HighFlow...
I'll answer the questions you posed above anyway.
  1. Super interested, of course I did purchase some already however. MK1, MK2, NBA Jam, Smash TV basically anything Midway that used a external sound board.
  2. Oh wow IF you included shorter versions of the power and sound ribbon cables with each kit (or at least as an option) that would be a homerun!
  3. I have been stacking them up on pieces of cardboard to keep the electrically isolated (dangerously free floating).
 
jassin000 said:
Well I wish you had come with this announcement a little sooner
Click to expand...
I could have sworn I mentioned this to you last time you were at the house... maybe not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in any case, thanks for the feedback.
 
Yes, this would be freaking brilliant. I would be interested in MK & MKII. I actually have two spare main boards in my hoard that this would revive.

I would be interested in the short cables too. I'd like the PCB to mount directly to the main board. I use a supergun, no cabs yet.
 
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twistedsymphony said:
I could have sworn I mentioned this to you last time you were at the house
Click to expand...
Oh you did, but I thought it was like a "wouldn't it be cool if" statement... Not a "I'm going to do this and soon" statement. ;)

At any rate its all good, as mentioned I still have a few Midway boards that will need cases at some future point.
Low on my Midway case priority list is Rampage World Tour (which should use the same PCB as MK3/UMK3) because it hasn't got that dreaded external sound board (but it still creaks/cracks like a mother when I handle it).
 
Sounds like a good idea!
At the moment i just slap a bit of wood between them, but it's not exactly ideal or good for the pcb...
If the setup was a bit less messy it would be more tempting to actually play them more often haha
 
jassin000 said:
will need cases at some future point
Click to expand...
I'm going to leave cases to others at the moment, I don't see the acrylic cases as a good solution personally, and 3D printing cases isn't really viable from a time/cost/durability perspective once you get to larger sizes. I have some ideas on that front but it's a long ways off from being something tangible.
 
I would be inclined for something like this for my Smash TV PCB. The soundboard is somehow already stacked on the main pcb (I need to look closer at how it is done, via feet or something) but the sound pot is hanging off of this long wire and is all over the place and creating interference when it is too close to components on the board(s).
 
gusmoney said:
I would be inclined for something like this for my Smash TV PCB. The soundboard is somehow already stacked on the main pcb
Click to expand...
They actually did this from the factory for Smash TV, IIRC it uses a large metal plate though, the plate is bolted to the main board and then the sound board is bolted to the plate.

the solution I'm building doesn't use the plate.
 
Ohh, I misunderstood what was being asked. I'd rather have the new PCB mount directly to the main board. That would be f*n awesome.
 
SmokeMonster said:
I'd rather have the new PCB mount directly to the main board. That would be f*n awesome.
Click to expand...
yes that's what this is... so the sound board would be mounted directly to the main board. the short cables are just because the factory cables are 3-4x too long once this is done.

I'll take a couple of photos later tonight to remove any confusion. ;)
 
twistedsymphony said:
gusmoney said:
I would be inclined for something like this for my Smash TV PCB. The soundboard is somehow already stacked on the main pcb
Click to expand...
They actually did this from the factory for Smash TV, IIRC it uses a large metal plate though, the plate is bolted to the main board and then the sound board is bolted to the plate.
the solution I'm building doesn't use the plate.
Click to expand...
That is interesting. This is the second Smash TV PCB I've owned, as the first I foolishly traded away, on that first one the sound PCB was not mounted at all.
 
gusmoney said:
That is interesting. This is the second Smash TV PCB I've owned, as the first I foolishly traded away, on that first one the sound PCB was not mounted at all.
Click to expand...
It's possible that this was only done for certain cab variants. the game did come in both a 19" and a 25" version.
 
where's @cpsystem3 -- he did something like this on one of his boards, it was pretty clean...
 
ekorz said:
where's @cpsystem3 -- he did something like this on one of his boards, it was pretty clean...
Click to expand...
It was his NBA Jam TE board, I actually ended up with it, but then I sold it to @twistedsymphony who now owns it.
He accomplished it using these metal standoffs that came from CPS1 board stacks (they screwed the B-board down to the A-board).
 
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