Little bit of a necro bump but sharing my solution for wedging a Naomi inside an Astro City. My ultimate goal is to get a Net City for the Naomi but, in the meantime, the Naomi sits in the NAC.
Firstly, I went with a power supply that provides the 3.3V necessary for JVS systems including Naomi.
@AlxUnderBase recommended the NVS-4000 and it has worked really well for me. An added benefit is that I now have stereo sound in the cabinet.
Next, I opted for a TD-IO rather than a Capcom IO. As mentioned in a post above, you can buy or make your own “tall feet” for the Capcom IO so that it sits above the Naomi motherboard.
That wouldn’t really work for me as the PSU I’m using is much taller than what came in the NAC originally. I also went with the TD-IO since it has a smaller footprint and it doesn’t introduce lag like the IO board from Capcom. An IO board from Sega with a JAMMA edge would also work and would be MUCH cheaper but I didn’t want to mess with modifications to get buttons 4/5/6 to work. The TD-IO has a CPS2-style kick harness connector and that’s much easier for me. Another benefit of the TD-IO is that I can chain the JVS IO for analog controls or players 3 and 4. Here, I’m using the very awesome MultiJVS from
@Darksoft and
@winteriscoming. This allows me to connect a couple of DB-15 arcade sticks for some 4-player Power Stone action.
Finally, fitting all of this inside of the Astro requires mounting the Naomi vertically and mounting vertically requires inverting one of the Naomi mounting brackets as it’s too long to fit on the Astro PCB mounting board. I had to mount some access holes on the bottom of the mounting board so that I can reach the screws the attach the Naomi to the mounting bracket.
I’m very pleased with how this setup works for me. I’m running WiPi netboot and just leave the Pi resting on top of the PSU. Having said all of that, there are some concessions and drawbacks:
- Going with a NVS-4000 PSU is expensive and you lose -5V. That means that this PSU does not follow the JAMMA standard. Again, @AlxUnderBase helped here and suggested adding an in-line fingerboard with a negatron for games that require -5V for audio, (Mortal Kombat for one).
- Using a TD-IO in this setup is expensive compared to using a Sega IO or even a Capcom IO. A TD-IO is around $250USD as of this writing but it is open source and you can build one yourself for cheaper.
If you have the tools and are handy, a great alternative is brilliant
cashbox shelf mod.
