SCOPE FIEND, HACK HEAD
I took some time to compile a list of games that I designed JAMMA adapters for. This list is a searchable and sortable list should make it easy to find the adapter for your game.
Here is the link to the list. Let me know if there are any additional adapters that you would like to see available.
I will be making a post about the status of the adapters that I am currently developing, so check back for that as well.
I have submitted a couple of new adapter designs and they are currently in production. With these two new designs, I have now created exactly 50 unique designs that cover approximately 500 unique PCBs. This took about 2 years, so that averages about one new adapter every two weeks. Not too bad considering all the other stuff going on.
The two new adapters are:
A few more designs and the project is pretty much completed. On the immediate to do list we now have:
… and maybe a few others that are not on the top of my mind. After that it’s requests only, for not uncommon games.
I’ve been in the field, testing these dongles, make sure they perform as intended. This mainly involves going thrifting and plugging these things into TVs and monitors while curious people stop to look at me like I’m up to something . It combines two things that I like, looking for electronics and playing with electronics.
It turns out that the VGA dongle is a little too big to fit a small percentage of the monitors. The TV monitor dongle needs to have its RCA jacks relocated for easier connection.
While working on this, I decided to create a similar board for arcade monitor testing, which may come in handy when testing arcade monitors in the field. Hardware and software is similar across the 3 devices.
More info on the project can be found here. The project page will have more information on these, and will be updated when these become available.
If you have been following my blog, you know that I’ve been building a single board supergun device which I named the Minigun. Project page can be found here.
While I’ve been developing this product, I realized that there may be a need for a simplified device, or rather a set of smaller, distinct components that can be easily integrated together to create a supergun like device that is customized to the user’s need.
This became very apparent when I began to build an arcade / JAMMA test rig for my new lab. A test rig may not require fancy features like autofire or button mapping, but may require the ability to output video in several formats, or more than one way to add controls to a game.
The result of this is a set of boards that can be easily connected via inexpensive dupont cables, that create the required functionality. The current set of boards include:
Pick and chose the functionality you need and connect the boards together to create a custom test rig or supergun device.
These boards will eventually be sold either as already assembled or low cost DIY kits. More information on this project will be available soon.
As I’ve been building a test rig in my new lab, I recognized the need for JAMMA fingerboards and generic JAMMA adapter boards.
Normally I’m against this type of stuff. I used to build adapters the old fashioned way with fingerboards, an edge connector and some wire, and I hated every minute of it. Not only is it time consuming, but the results end up looking ugly and have a tendency to break over time.
So why do this when I already have an awesome set of universal JAMMA adapters? It turns out that building a JAMMA extension harness is impossible without a decent fingerboard. For quick testing and prototyping, it helps to have a bunch of low cost boards available that can be abused and recycled time after time.
I’m going to make these available as a low cost DIY option for when it’s not practical to use a more expensive matrix style JAMMA adapter.
More to come on these soon. I’m a bit backlogged at the moment and don’t have the cycles to handle any more new orders.
I have received a new set of JAMMA adapters that I’ve been designing over the last few weeks. This set includes new adapters and updates to old designs.
New adapters include:
Changes to existing adapters include:
These adapters will be listed on Ebay after they are thoroughly tested.
I’m moving. Actually I already moved in April, but the process has been ongoing for a while, since January to be exact. There have been no posts or updates to projects since I don’t have a lot of time to focus on that at the moment.
The new place is about 4 hours away. It’s on old home with some history and charm. I took it on as a project too. It’s got great bones and lots of potential, although it has been neglected the last few years and needs a lot of TLC. It’s taking most of my time but I am really enjoying doing something different for a change.
Once everything is settled and more organized I’ll be able to dedicate more time to my projects again. More space means a new lab and rec room. Hopefully that means no more working on the floor and dining room table, and pissing off the wife, but we’ll have to see about that.
I live in Canada. Unfortunately the arcade market in Canada is pretty weak most of the time, so to get all the good stuff I have to buy games from the US every so often.
Most eBay users that sell internationally from the US, are “encouraged” into using Pitney Bowes’ GSP program for shipping abroad.
Ebay users pay for shipping to the Pitney Bowes GSP hub in Kentucky, which is cheap. What they don’t realize is that the cost that they see for shipping is only a fraction of what GSP will cost the buyer. As an example, a $100USD PCB may cost around $10USD to ship a typical PCB to KY, but a Canadian user will likely pay around $35USD plus about $15USD in customs fees. A similar package to Canada via USPS direct, would cost about $16-20USD and it would most likely avoid customs fees.
The benefit to the sellers are pretty obvious though. There is no need to fill out customs forms and GSP shields the sellers from negative feedback as long as the item arrives at the hub in one piece.
Upon receiving the items Pitney Bowes will typically repack the items to save on the remaining shipping costs. This is where my story begins.
A few months ago, I ordered a Sega ST-V motherboard and Die Hard Arcade cart. The package arrived in a crushed box. There was very little protection in the box, basically only the anti-static bag and the PCB itself.
I connected the PCB and turned in on and got nothing… black screen… DOA. Upon closer inspection I noticed a long, deep gash on the PCB that ran across at least 2 inches in length. It looked hopeless. The cut went across several small pitch IC legs knocking them completely off. It severed many, very thin traces, it damaged vias, and appeared to be deep enough to penetrate at least a couple of inner layers of the PCB.
I contacted the seller. Seller swears the game was tested and worked before he sent it. I check the packaging and sure enough, the gash appears in both the anti-static bag and the box iteself.
I became curious, and went through all the boxes that I still had from previous purchases, and sure enough, similar cuts appear on those boxes as well.
I contacted eBay about the situation. They made it very easy to get my money back for this purchase, but I was made to feel like they’re doing me a favor and in the future this favor may no longer be available. Strange, because I’ve been seeing lots of similar problems from other eBay users, and you’d think they would take more ownership of something that seems to be a pretty widespread problem.
This item was easily replaced, but what if you bought something that’s one of a kind? What if Ebay or Pitney Bowes deny any wrong doing and you are stuck with a broken item? They obviously don’t care about your items to begin with if they’re willing to slice the packaging open in this manner and remove padding to save a few bucks.
You may want to keep this in mind the next time you chose to use eBay’s GSP program.
They lost my site again. Hilarious and sad at the same time, because I just made a number of updates and I thought that I made backups along the way. It turns out that the backups I made stayed on the VM and were not all downloaded to my home PC.
I normally keep a backup of this site on a secondary VM that can be swapped in when the primary is lost. The backup site was almost up to date too. I thought I was pretty safe here, and since there hasn’t been a major problem in a while, I let my guard down.
But, Cloud at Cost is awesome at keeping you on your toes. They showed me that I’m not as clever as I seem to think I am. By wiping all of my VMs simultaneously, they made it clear who’s the boss around here.
So I managed to combine a 2 month old backup along with some info from Google cache to restore this to what you are seeing right now.
Silly me, I even opened a ticket to inquire, politely at first, to see whether there is a way to maybe find out what happened, and maybe get my data back. Given how it’s been 3 weeks and I don’t even have an acknowledgment yet, I may be waiting on this for a while I think.
It’s been a lazy summer. Not very motivated to do work. Being addicted to the internet isn’t helping. Stuff that should have been done months ago is still on the back burner.
But… I’ve somehow been able to get a number of things accomplished. There are four new JAMMA adapters that I’m about to release. These are:
These adapters are fairly complex and took a few months to develop. I hope you’ll appreciate the quality, functionality and the price of these adapters and support my work by buying a few of them, from my Ebay page here.
Thanks!