Setup help

Installing ARpiCADE for the first time? Having issues? Check here first for solutions and tips on installing.

Moderator: dee2eR

Post Reply
Pepsikrazy
Community Member
Community Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:33 pm

Setup help

Post by Pepsikrazy » Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:46 pm

Hello i am very new to this arcade building, and recently purchased the Hi-Res arpicade unit. Please forgive me now as i am sure i have either forgotten to do something or missing something obvious. I recently built a 2 player 6 button cabinet for this Arpicade unit. As well i had a friend load a raspberry pi4 with an image and roms i installed. I have tested the unit on my tv with a controller and keyboard with no issues. I installed the arpicade and pi in my cabinet, it fires up, the image is on the screen but can not get the arpicade to recognize the buttons and joystick. I tested another board in the cabinet to make sure my wiring was good, and everything worked as it should. As i mentioned, i am sure i am forgetting something. Please forgive me as I am not very computer smart, but i am trying to understand. Any help to get me to understand what i did wrong is very much appreciated!!

dee2eR
Inventor
Inventor
Posts: 1857
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:07 pm

Re: Setup help

Post by dee2eR » Mon Nov 29, 2021 4:49 am

What is the image your friend set up for you? Is it actually setup for use with the RaspberryJAMMA hardware?

You may need to install mk_arcade_joystick_rpi or similar GPIO joystick driver for the inputs to work on software not presetup for RaspberryJAMMA by default.

Your other option, of course, would be to use ARpiCADE as the software as it is pre-setup for the RaspberryJAMMA hardware. For high res you just need to adjust config.txt prior to use. Not knowing the details I suspect most, if not all, stuff setup on the other image could be copied over.

Pepsikrazy
Community Member
Community Member
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:33 pm

Re: Setup help

Post by Pepsikrazy » Mon Nov 29, 2021 6:39 pm

So i had my friend do the raspberry pi, but he did not do as i asked apparently and did not install your software. So i spent my weekend trying to figure this stuff out. So now i have downloaded your software on to a disk, and managed to get it to load. Still having a couple issues. The most noticeable is the picture seems to shake, a friend said this was due to frame rate? I am not to sure how to adjust that. As well i am not sure how to set it to hi res. Not sure where to find that, or how to turn it on. Please forgive me, i dont know anything about changing command lines, or anything that. The other issue, so far that i am having was the button setup i assume. While testing the one rom i had on there ( providing it was a good rom) i could coin up, but when i hit player 1 start it would freeze, but load when hit 2 players. And the service menu kept popping up randomly as i was trying to test the game. This is just 1 large learning curve for me. I was very happy to see the arpicade main screen load up, for me thay was a win!! Just need to work on the fine tuning now. Any help or suggestions are more then welcome!

dee2eR
Inventor
Inventor
Posts: 1857
Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:07 pm

Re: Setup help

Post by dee2eR » Thu Dec 02, 2021 1:21 am

The picture shaking is likely the 480i (low res interlaced) default video setting. While many LCDs will display a 480i image it will not look nearly as sharp as a 480p (VGA standard) image. It's not strictly a framerate issue on your monitor but the interlacing that makes the picture unstable as it's quickly swapping between alternate lines.

You can edit config.txt on your PC (or on the Pi, let me know if you want Pi specific instrucitons) with a text editor. In general (on Windows) you will want to use Notepad++ rather than one of the built in Windows text editors as they are likely to break Linux files (config.txt isn't likely to break, though a lot of other files will). There's comments in file but essentially you just want to comment out the line setting 480i (put a # in front of the line to comment it out), and un-comment the 480p high res line. Please let me know if you need more specific instructions for this.

For the input issues, I'm not sure offhand what the issue is. I'm happy to work through it with you though, I'm sure we can work it out. The random service menu issue you're having makes me wonder if your cab has a (possibly switched on, possibly shonky) test switch intermittantly sending the test signal... hard to be sure without further testing.

The best way to check the inputs without MAME/rom/whatever setup getting in the way is on the command line. You can test them by exiting all menus using f4 and once at the command line typing
jstest /dev/input/js0
for p1 (use js1 for P2). Once finished ctrl+c to exit the test, then
sudo reboot
to reboot the system.

It's also worth checking your voltage at the JAMMA edge, recently it has been reported that low voltage at the JAMMA edge can cause input problems. Your voltage should be around 5.1v for a Pi3 or 4 based system, between 5.1v and 5.2v is good, if you have to go over 5.2v it is an indication your power wiring between JAMMA edge and power supply is inadequate.

Hopefully that helps but please keep asking if you need to.

Post Reply