ARpiCADE Forums

My setup:
RasPI 3B+
RaspJamma board
Image version 3.X
New VGA monitor
All of the above are NEW and purchased within the last week.

Existing hardware:
Jamma harness, 60-in-1 card, Min Dong 9916-A power supply. Everything works fine, e.g., I can play the 60-in-1 card in the cabinet and everything works.

I plug in the new RasPI into the RaspJamma converter. I download and flash version 3.x onto a MicroSD card.

I plug the unit into the Jamma harness and a USB keyboard into the RasPI. I plug in the VGA connector. I power on the cabinet and I get nothing. The monitor says No Support then goes into power saver mode. The RasPI has an LED light on but nothing is displaying on the monitor.

I read a few other topics and threads and also tested the adjustable power supply. I am getting exactly 5.11 V out of the power box that is connected to the Jamma harness.

I'm stuck on what to try next. The VGA and power supply work fine because I had everything running the 60-in-1 card. The RasPI is OK because I connected it to another monitor with HDMI and it booted fine and I was able to get into raspi-config and so on.

By process of elimination, does that mean I have a defective RaspJamma board or I am doing something wrong?

Thanks!
Michael L.

If you didn't change any settings the issue is it's running in low res (the default settings for ARpiCADE).

You can set it to high res in config.txt using a text editor on your PC. There's a commented out high res setting in there, don't forget to also comment out the low res default setting.

I changed the hdmi_mode to 1 and it is now visible. Thank you for that and for getting back to me so quickly.

I don't have audio. The speakers are wired to the Jamma harness. If the sound comes from the RasPI via HDMI how do I get it through the harness and into the existing speakers? Do I need to configure anything in the text files?

How is you cabs audio wired? If it's through the JAMMA edge and there's stereo speakers the cab is not strictly wired JAMMA, as JAMMA supports mono only. You may have MVS style wiring (basically JAMMA modified for stereo, as used by NEOGEO).

There shoudln't be any need to setup the audio in software unless you're trying to source it from the RPi rather than the DAC (HDMI to VGA bit).

I figured it out. The volume control knob on the arpicade card was turned all the way off.
Lesson learned on that one

Just curious if I do connect new speakers directly to the RasPI, what config changes need I make?

You can't connect speakers directly to the RPi. It outputs line level, like the DAC does.

If you do want stereo sound you can install a stereo amp and use the audio output of the DAC without making any changes to the software. There's no point using the RPi audio output, unless you're using HDMI or DVI to your monitor.

Any recommendation on a stereo amp that you've seen work with ArPIcade ?

I can't really recommend any specific but you shouldn't need anything too special. These old games are generally far from HiFi sound. You're best to find something that suits the cab to minimise the work needed.

If you already have speakers try to match the amp output impedance to them, you won't need crazy wattage. As long as you're giving the Pi enough power a USB powered system would probably work. Otherwise if you have 12v available at the JAMMA power supply you may want to get a 12v amp (not a crazy powerful car amp, JAMMA power supply won't be able to handle it).

If you don't already have speakers a small powered 2.1 system can work great. Especially if your cab has a power strip in it.

Whatever you get make sure it has line level analog input, not a digital input (or both is fine but you want analog). You could probably make a digital input amp work but it would need software config.

For anyone else reading this, if you have a CRT monitor in the cab and are installing new speakers make sure they are magnetically sheilded (or very far away from the monitor) or expect many colourful screen issues.