4 Cabinet 4 Player Setup

[notsonic]

I recently set up 4 of my CRT cabinets for 4 player use with a PC or Mister.


It's basically two JVS linked setups. The New Net City and Blast City are a pair, and the Cyber Lead and Astro City are a pair.

The pc is a Dell OptiPlex 7020 SFF running chunksin's GroovyTime image. https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/windows-7-read-only-groovymame-image.13415/
To drive this kind of 2x2 setup, I really just needed to support two of everything. 2 video, 2 audio, 2 controls.
2x audio is easy, I just used a 3.5mm splitter. For video unfortunately I needed to use a VGA splitter. MAME (and maybe CRT Emu Driver) don't support cloned video output. I powered the VGA splitter with a USB barrel jack adapter to try to reduce cable clutter. I also attached the VGA splitter to the case with some screws.



2 Controls were somewhat easy to deal with using 2 JVSPAC2s. I used a 3d printed mount to attach them to the PC case.
The gotchas along the way were that you can't just daisy chain 4 IOs (polling rate is too slow) hence why I needed two. Also 4p support is not working in the current firmware, so another reason to use 2 set to vs mode. I had to custom configure all the controls to remap the second JVSPAC2 from a clone of p1/2 to p3 and 4. (Also I had to flip p3 and p4 since the Cyber Lead is the master.) I've attached the config inis that I put together.

Another reason to remap all the controls is that the default MAME 4 player controls are complete garbage. Basically it is very easy to hit key combos like Alt+Enter and locking Windows. Also, I don't understand why, but pressing L in Vegas games (Blitz, Gauntlet Legends) causes the graphics to disappear. So I just completely remapped everything.




In the future I want to get it working by having two JAMMA linked pairs so that the master cabinets of each of those could be JVS linked and then I could also use real JVS games (Power Stone 2, TTT, etc.) and run it off a single JVSPAC2 in 4 player mode for mister/pc.

 

[notsonic]

Just to add a little more detail on the JVS links. It's nothing special really. For the New Net City / Blast City the Net is the master cabinet. I'm just using the New Net City link board to split the video/audio/controls over to the Blast City. I haven't done anything fancy on the Blast City side, it's just a bundle of VGA, RCA, and USB cable running into the cabinet from the back hole.



Similarly there's nothing special really to link the Cyber Lead and New Astro. I am using the RCA and VGA outputs on the rear of the Cyber Lead for audio and video. For JVS I just ran a USB cable out from the IO board. (I did this quite a while ago. I've since realized that audio, JVS, and video all run over the VGA looking connector on the Cyber Lead's link board. I actually have another link board and the cable but that's another project for another day.) I do have a somewhat hastily thrown in VGA splitter in there for now. The Cyber Lead's link board doesn't actually do audio or video splitting. System 12 games all have two VGA and RCA jacks.

To connect the Cyber Lead to the MAME pc, I just ran a VGA, USB, and 3.5mm cable from the New Net City all the way over to it. I have the back of the cabinet loose to run the cables inside since there's no good way to pass that many cables into the cabinet.



The New Astro I set up the way I'd like to eventually set up all of my cabinets with RCA, USB, and VGA inputs in the rear. It's a mess in there with the NVS-4000 PSU and JAMMA link (that runs to the Blast City) though.