Author: pcbjunkie

Some information added on new JAMMA Adapters that have been in development over the last few months. This info is long overdue. The new adapters include:

• Bagman
• Taito Space Invaders
• Playchoice 10 Single (updates)

I also made some changes to the existing DIY adapters and JAMMA fingerboards. You can find all of these, along with my other JAMMA adapters on this page.

At this point I’m starting to run of JAMMA adapters to make. At this point I’m open to suggestions on what to make next. Feel free to send me a request.

I added a new section to the site to list the new cabinet adapters. This includes the following dedicated adapters, as well as the three DIY cabinet adapter kits.

• Capcom
• Sega System 8
• Sega System 16
• Konami
• Data East
• Tehkan
• Taito
• Irem
• Universal Mr. Do
• Namco Galaga / Digdug
• Nintendo

The information on these is right here. I’ll be adding these to my ebay items very soon, but at this point I’m afraid I will not have the cycles to take any more additional orders with so many projects about to wrap up.

For now, the plan is to create all the documentation first and then to get these items listed for sale right after that.

I started updating the site again. First I’m going through some of the older pages and doing updated to complete some of the stuff that was left unfinished.

Next, I’m going to add a number of sections for stuff that is going to be released to the public. This includes the new cabinet adapters, video testers, the Rapberry Pi to JAMMA adapter, JAMMA Mate and JAMMA Test Card, and more.

As this is happening, I’ll also start listing my projects on eBay as well. I know a lot of folks have been asking for more info on these projects and where to get this stuff, and as I’m about to do this something always gets in the way.

Please stay tuned, and thank you for your interest my projects.

So it seems like somewhere along the way the hackers managed to modify some files in HTML root once again. This wasn’t just me. A similar hack was used to take over thousands of WordPress sites.

I had to restore from backup again then set up some scripts to watch and report for unexpected changes.

Turns out they had access to the WordPress database as well, and that backdoor was saved in the backup I restored from.

After a simple manual cleanup and some plugin updates and removal, I believe the site is backdoor free and pretty well protected. I’m now looking forward to further hack attempts.

I will probably do a small write up on the methods they used and things that can be done to prevent it. Maybe it ends up helping someone with a similar problem.

First of all, let me thank everyone that took a chance on my new project releases and helped my test them. Special thanks for the people out there (you know who you are) that reported back with feedback and provided suggestions on how to improve things.

The last few months were pretty exciting getting folks out there to put my stuff through the paces. These were some of my most complex projects to date and so the pressure was on.

Now that this is completed, based on the feedback I received, I believe these products are ready for public release:

• PJ – Raspberry Pi to JAMMA Adapter
• JAMMA Mate
• JAMMA Test Card
• Video Testers (4 different designs)
• Cabinet Adapters (11 out of 12 at least)
• New JAMMA Adapters

I will be adding more information on these projects to the site, then listing them on Ebay soon after. Please check these out if you are interested and a big thank you in advance if you chose to support my work.

I sent a number of these out to people that wanted to be the first to test drive these boards. I’ve also compiled some documentation on this project.

The documentation can be found here. It includes the following topics:

• Installing drivers on vanilla distros.
• Configuring controls
• Power management
• Troubleshooting

I’m also creating a default distro based on the latest Retropie release. Most of the work on has already been completed.

This is a big project and getting everything ready is taking a long time. I totally underestimated, once again, how much time is required to get everything ready with an acceptable level of polish.

This came out of nowhere! I enter my url into a browser to find that I’ve won some prizes! Totally unexpected….

Usually, when crap like this happens, it’s Cloud at Cost trashing my VM, but this was different.

Turns out an exploit in WordPress’ Duplicator plugin (which I use for backups) allowed hackers to upload and modify PHP scripts to the HTML root and so they inserted some code to redirect a user to the site of their choice.

All I have to do now is to collect my prize….

Seriously though… the joke’s on them. I usually make a backup after each modification so I just simply restored it, disabled some plugins, and we were back in business. I may have lost some minor updates in the process, but nothing serious.

Based on what I saw though, the hacker also installed a backdoor and made a ton of changes to the WordPress core scripts. It would have been a drag cleaning this up without a full restore.

Wow… 2020 has been an interesting year so far. From the threats of war, to the COVID outbreak, the tension now reaches a boiling point with the riots in the US. Hopefully we will all stay healthy, fix what’s wrong and overcome our differences and resume our normal boring lives… but this isn’t a political blog.

Many of my projects were supposed to be completed now, but with these hiccups resulting in delayed production and shipping, I’m once again behind.

Things are moving forward though. Here’s an update:

Raspberry Pi to JAMMA adapter – Currently in beta testing with a number of people. Still early to call, but I’m waiting of feedback on some functionality issues, and reliability data.

JAMMA Test Card – In beta testing as well. No major issues reported. Will probably be going into production soon.

Arcade Video Tester – In beta testing. Feedback good so far. Soon to be in production.

JAMMA Mate – Issues with the latest hardware design, may need to back to fabrication for another revision. Very close to being completed.

As this was going on, I decided to make arcade cabinet adapters. A lot of people have asked me for these, and here we are. These are basically the opposite of a JAMMA adapter. Instead of converting non JAMMA games to be playable on a JAMMA setup, these will allow you to play your JAMMA boards in one the non JAMMA cabinets listed below.

Many have already been completed and some have been properly tested are ready to be sold. Here’s a list of what’s here and the status:

I decided to spend the last couple of days working on completing the IC Pin Label / Sticker project and it is now online.

The tool will allow you to create an IC or a connector pinout label, on your label printer or a regular household printer, that will actually fit! The tool needs your printer’s DPI, pin list and pin spacing and it will generate any arbitrary pinout label. When printing you will need to disable scaling and print actual size for the label to fit.

Two sets of images can be created. A single image for small label makers, or tiled version for larger label maker (4×6″ or larger) so that labels can be fully utilized.

Once you create a label you can bookmark the URL and reprint it when needed without having to recreate it each time.

There is also a pretty comprehensive list of already predefined devices for you to use here. These can be edited before the labels are created.

There is a couple of bugs and missing functionality that still needs to be dealt with but 95%+ of the work has been done. Not bad for a couple of day’s effort.

Made a small program to generate IC pinouts that can be stuck on a chip for easy pin identification. The difficult part here is to get the image to come out the correct size.

Information on this can be found here.

I may end up putting together a online tool to make these and to generate these for the common chips on arcade PCBs.