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MV-4 and MV-4F Schematics available!

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lithy

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I picked up an eBay auction of several manuals and miscellaneous Neo Geo MVS paperwork.

The MVS-4-25 cab operation manuals while I now have 3 versions with slight changes between them are generally scanned and online already.

Then I have a conversion kit install manual and 2 slot board service manual that I can also find at least similar PDFs if not the exact one.

But the last two, board schematics for the MV-4 and MV-4F four slot boards, I can't find anything besides an MV1FZ schematic.

These are fairly big:

The MV-4 one is a cover sheet showing the full bottom board then 13 pages of schematics then another cover sheet showing the full top board layout and then 11 pages of schematics.

The MV-4F one doesn't really have similar cover sheets, it's just two sections of 7 and 8 pages for the bottom and top boards respectively.

Would these be useful to anyone to scan? I don't know enough about the technical side of things to know if this is stuff that's already been figured out or not, but I'd be happy to work on getting them scanned if they could go on the neogeo dev wiki or something like that.

MV-4 Bottom board and one page

PXL_20241120_224521544.jpgPXL_20241120_224555721.jpg

MV-4 Top board and one page

PXL_20241120_224539682.jpgPXL_20241120_224547843.jpg

MV-4F Bottom board and one page

PXL_20241120_224609500.jpgPXL_20241120_224602938.jpg

MV-4F Top board and one page

PXL_20241120_224615214.jpgPXL_20241120_224620569.jpg

EDIT 11/22/24 Update:

Ok, the MV-4F is up, the MV-4 will be up shortly.

Some notes:
  • Anything cut off, top/bottom/left/right is like that on my copy too. The positioning is a little all over the place but for the most part I don't think much of the actual schematic is cut off anywhere.
  • There are various handwritten notes and changes, but they are all copied, so it doesn't seem like someone that got the schematic themselves was doing any of it, it seems like it came like this from whatever source originally. Lots of changes on the MV-4 schematic, not as much on the MV-4F schematic. Nothing was added by me of course.
  • The dates on the scans differ between the sections. The cart slot board for the MV-4F for example has a cover sheet showing October 1992, but then the schematics are Rev 1.3 from August 1990 which must have been shared with the MV-4 at that point. Like I said, this is not my area of expertise to know what's what, so I just scanned them as they were stapled together when I got them.
Stuff I thought was cool:
  • Some show Eiji Fukatsu of Alpha Denshi Co., Ltd. in the bottom right of the page, widely credited as the designer of the Neo-Geo MVS board.
  • The MV-4 schematic is Rev 1.0 and the top board portion is dated December 11, 1989, the date I find quoted online is that the Neo Geo was announced on January 31, 1990.
  • If someone would tell me what the date stamps on each page of the MV-4F pages mean, final approvals maybe?
I of course make no claims that I own these documents, I am making them available in the hopes that someone finds them useful or even just interesting from a historical standpoint. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the file in any reasonable way. Specifically if someone is able to put it up on the Neo Geo Dev Wiki, I would appreciate that.

Link to Google Drive (settings should be right so that you can download, let me know if you have any trouble)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QBJ1GBMXKnIyCCzxwddbX2hI7ypoRn0t?usp=drive_link
 
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As far as I know no scans of these schematics exist on the public internet

So to answer your question, yes! these would be incredibly useful to a lot of people and neogeo wiki is the perfect place for them to go.
 
Wow, that is an amazing find - the existing schematics that are public for the 1 slot are incomplete and the scan isn’t great

These look to be in fantastic condition and would be a huge help to the community. If you would be able to get these scanned it will help to keep more 4 slots running in the wild
 
Ok, these are tentatively scanned and on my Google Drive, but even at 1200dpi on my little consumer grade Epson all-in-one, the smallest little numbers get kinda fattened up when viewing the PDF and (inkjet) printing and it makes legibility worse. So first off, if anyone has any advice at where or how to scan these better I would appreciate it. In the meantime if there is something you can't quite make out let me know and I can look at my copy.

Some notes:
  • Anything cut off, top/bottom/left/right is like that on my copy too. The positioning is a little all over the place but for the most part I don't think much of the actual schematic is cut off anywhere.
  • There are various handwritten notes and changes, but they are all copied, so it doesn't seem like someone that got the schematic themselves was doing any of it, it seems like it came like this from whatever source originally. Lots of changes on the MV-4 schematic, not as much on the MV-4F schematic. Nothing was added by me of course.
  • The dates on the scans differ between the sections. The cart slot board for the MV-4F for example has a cover sheet showing October 1992, but then the schematics are Rev 1.3 from August 1990 which must have been shared with the MV-4 at that point. Like I said, this is not my area of expertise to know what's what, so I just scanned them as they were stapled together when I got them.
Stuff I thought was cool:
  • Some show Eiji Fukatsu of Alpha Denshi Co., Ltd. in the bottom right of the page, widely credited as the designer of the Neo-Geo MVS board.
  • The MV-4 schematic is Rev 1.0 and the top board portion is dated December 11, 1989, the date I find quoted online is that the Neo Geo was announced on January 31, 1990.
  • If someone would tell me what the date stamps on each page of the MV-4F pages mean, final approvals maybe?
I of course make no claims that I own these documents, I am making them available in the hopes that someone finds them useful or even just interesting from a historical standpoint. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the file in any reasonable way. Specifically if someone is able to put it up on the Neo Geo Dev Wiki, I would appreciate that.

Link to Google Drive (settings should be right so that you can download, let me know if you have any trouble)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QBJ1GBMXKnIyCCzxwddbX2hI7ypoRn0t?usp=drive_link

Photo below to show the difference in quality I'm getting when I attempt to print from my scan (copy starts between IN20/IN21)

PXL_20241122_151206967.MP~2.jpg

Copied to first post of the thread as well.
 
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lithy said:
e, but even at 1200dpi on my little consumer grade Epson all-in-one, the smallest little numbers get kinda fattened up when viewing the PDF and (inkjet) printing and it makes legibility worse. So first off, if anyone has any advice at where or how to scan these better I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...

I believe I saw a site that explained how to properly scan schematics but can't find it for the life of me now ! :(
I *think* it said you need to scan them in GREYSCALE ? anyone?

edit: found it! it's a rant from The Guru of course!

1-bit black/white is no good!!! These old documents are not in pristine condition and have lighter and darker areas. 1-bitblack/white means either a pixel is black or white, there is no lighter area. If something falls outside the threshold it becomes black or white, either blackening detail to become a black blob mess or wiping it out entirely to white. Of course this scan is exactly like all the other previous scans with unreadable areas. It's important that all text and signal names are fully readable otherwise the scan is almost useless. Next time please, at the very minimum, SCAN DOCUMENTS IN GREYSCALE at 600DPI!!!!! We don't give a crap how big these files are now, this isn't 1994 with a 9600 modem!!! If the original document is still available it should be re-scanned in greyscale at 600DPI and uploaded to archive.org so it is *correctly* preserved for future use.
/RANT
Click to expand...
 
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Perfect, thanks! I am about halfway through the MV-4F again doing 1200 B&W one sheet at a time on the scanner bed instead of through the document feeder.

I will do the MV-4 the same way but in grayscale and if I see a quality difference I'll redo whichever one I need to.

Sorry for the false start everyone, I'll put the link back up when I have at least the MV-4F file done.
 
1200dpi is overkill and could result in artifacting due to interpolation on a consumer scanner. 600dpi is plenty enough.
 
Link restored, MV-4F is up will work on the MV-4. Thanks for all the scanning suggestions, if you see anything off feel free to let me know.
 
MV-4 scan (done at 600dpi greyscale) is up now as well. I did a spot check and it looks comparably legible to my 'original', but again, if you see something off let me know.

Similarly, if anything thinks I should redo the MV-4F (which is 1200dpi B&W) in 600dpi greyscale for any reason, I will, just...not right now :p

Enjoy
 
lithy said:
I of course make no claims that I own these documents, I am making them available in the hopes that someone finds them useful or even just interesting from a historical standpoint. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the file in any reasonable way. Specifically if someone is able to put it up on the Neo Geo Dev Wiki, I would appreciate that.
Click to expand...

It's done ! Thanks for sharing.

https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Schematics
 
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