Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Thinking about getting a RaspberryJAMMA, or have just purchased one and have a newbie question? Walls here are padded, come on in and bounce your question off of them!

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jpizzle
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Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by jpizzle » Thu Apr 29, 2021 6:59 am

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post :) and first ownership of a cabinet but I have dabbled with emulation a few times many years ago. I have recently been given a vertical cabinet (2 days ago) as a gift, pretty bloody stoked but now I am trying to figure out what I have and how I can make it better.

From what I can tell its got a 19 in 1 Horizontal Jamma board (In a vertical cabinet) with a single player joystick and three buttons. The screen is 20.1" LCD.

I do have a Raspberry Pi 3B layering around and I was thinking of going down the path of a Raspberry Jamma to boost the playing experience.

What I wanted to ask is, with the photos attached will it be easy to upgrade to Raspberry Jamma?
Is there a way I can switch from 3 button to 6 button? (Do i need to buy a new piece of mdf etc?)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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dee2eR
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by dee2eR » Thu Apr 29, 2021 7:18 am

Looks like while your cab is basically JAMMA it has a PC power supply powering the board in it (plugged into the edge of the board). You would need to wire power to the JAMMA edge to use RaspberryJAMMA/ARpiCADE in it. The PC style power supply may or may not work well, arcade power supplies usually have adjustable 5v, PC supplies do not. JAMMA power supplies have gotten prety cheap if you need one, possibly best to avoid the very cheapest though. Excepting the power supply the RaspberryJAMMA would plug straight in.

Given your cab isn't a classic dedicated cab if you want more buttons you could just add them to the existing control panel. If you wanted to replicate the panel rather than mod it that would also work. Personally I'd just add 3 more buttons to that panel using a 28mm spade bit/hole saw/router (take the panel off the cab first), depending on what you have. Above or below the existing buttons should work, see what you feel is comfortable. If you wanted to make it 2 player start from scratch, assuming the cab is wide enough to make it work.

If you only add buttons 4,5 and 6 they could be wired to the RaspberryJAMMA kick harness. If you are adding P2 as well you would need to wire the new buttons to the JAMMA edge at which point I'd just add the 4 through 6 buttons there at the same time (RaspberryJAMMA can do either regular JAMMA + kick harness or 6 buttons on JAMMA).

You will end up with a much better setup than the current system you have in there with a Pi based system.

jpizzle
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by jpizzle » Thu Apr 29, 2021 7:47 am

Thanks for the super fast response dee2eR.

The power supply does look just like a PC one. If I can figure out the make/model where am I looking to try an find out if if has the right voltage etc?

I'd like to make it 2 player if I could so I'll do some measurements and see if it is conformable to do that. If not I'll go with your suggestion of drilling 3 more holes and making it a 6 button. Where is a goo place to buy buttons etc?
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dee2eR
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by dee2eR » Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:32 am

I'm not sure where you're located, you may have a local arcade supplier, probably best to have a Google.

Otherwise eBay has buttons, joysticks and power supplies, I wouldn't recommend the cheapest of them you can find on eBay but there's good stuff on there too. The buttons you currently have are the light up type, if you like them you will probably want more light up ones. Quality sticks and buttons will make a big difference to how games feel/play but it's all personal taste. Bad joysticks can particularly ruin the experience when you want/need precise inputs.

The PC power supply would have 5v and 12v (and possibly some other voltages) which is all you need for a RaspberryJAMMA. Unfortunately Pi3 and Pi4 both like a little extra on the 5v (about 5.1v) so the PC supply may not suit (but also may work, I couldn't tell without trying it). A PC power supply may also not opperate ideally with the very small 12v draw of the RaspberryJAMMA as they're made to deliver lots of 12v current primarily (old PC supplies weren't so 12v focused), although if it's working with the other multiboard now low 12v draw is prob not a concern for that supply. Based on my experience if it's original to the cab it's probably a very cheap PC supply, I wouldn't let it near an actual PC...

Whatever power supply you use I'd recommend when you wire it the JAMMA edge use more wire (and ideally better quality wire too, if it's an aluminuim wire...) than the single wire the harness had originally for each 5v and GND connections. They may be barely enough for Pi3 but if you ever update to Pi4 the single wire for GND and 5v will prob be an issue if it's not at least decent quality wire. Seeing the orignal wire is cut off the JAMMA edge already you may as well upgrade it.

Finally, be careful with wiring. Make sure the cab is off and unplugged etc. Don't hurt yourself.

jpizzle
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by jpizzle » Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:49 am

Thank you so much for the advice. Its a steep learning curve for me.

I am based on the gold coast but happy to buy from Ebay.

Looking as the size of the cabinet I think it will only ever be a 1 player start so I'll buy 3 more buttons and aim to connect it to the RaspberryJAMMA kick harness.

These were the buttons I was going to buy - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/313051402798

The joystick I'll test it out over time as right now I have no preference or experience in good vs bad.

I'll re-route the power (safely) to the Jamma edge and hope the PSU does the job. It appears to be a new cabinet build that I am guessing an auction house (where it came from) pay for it to get built in the hope of turning a profit during arcade sales events. So that tells me the PSU might be very cheap. Time will tell.

When you say "use more wire" Do you mean thicker but single or double up on the wires? (I do expect one day to go to Pi4 but not for a good while as i know Pi3 will do what i want for now)

The monitor appears to have VGA, DVI and maybe RCA, whats the best way of connecting it to the Jamma edge?

Will the Arpicade allow me to switch to other emulators to play NES, SNE Mastersystem games also?

Thanks again for all your help.
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by dee2eR » Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:26 am

I'm in Melbourne, unfortunately don't know any specific arcade shops in QLD, I'm sure there are some though.

A good quality single wire would probably do the job but double wires certainly won't hurt. Cabs from the 80s and 90s would generally have four 5v wires and at least 4 GNDs in their JAMMA harness (also they usually used high quality wire). Cheapy harness' these days usually have just one wire and it's very low quality (not copper) and often thin wire with a thick insulation to make it looks like it's a thick wire.

No need to wire your monitor to the JAMMA edge. You can connect VGA directly to the DAC or use HDMI to DVI (and reconfigure the audio out in software so you can use the Pi audio output into the RaspberryJAMMA). Either way should work with the software set to high res. I can build you a RaspberryJAMMA without the low res video section populated for $10 off the normal price if you don't think you'll ever have a low res CRT monitor cab. (I also have a cheaper high res only board in the pipeline...) Composite in would be terrible quality, don't even think about it.

There are emulators for the most common consoles included in ARpiCADE. Support for consoles is currently better on the RPi3 version of ARpiCADE than the RPi4 branch (but RPi4 will eventually be better for consoles too, I haven't put much time into them yet).

EDIT: that monitor looks like a decased PC monitor, and a decent quality one too. I'm guessing it's not the original monitor to the cab, but that's not a bad thing...

jpizzle
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Re: Advice Needed on gifted cabinet

Post by jpizzle » Sat May 01, 2021 3:42 am

Thanks for all your help Dee2er, I'll be in touch soon (DM)

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