Ridge Racer 2 and Rave Racer link play working in MAME WIP test build.

[Viper015]

I stumbled across this forum searching to make these arcade games linkable, Thankyou to John Bennet for the efforts to get Ridge Racer 2 & Rave Racer working in linkup. Thanks Also to MrThunderwig for your batch input. I have these two setup working based on the information youve provided through this forum. Great work. Much appreciated.

 first tried Johns Ridge Racer 2 setup with Mame 239 & it wouldnt work but realised his specific Mame exe was required. Ive found Ridge Racer 2 & Rave Racer to act the same as Wing War when linking 3 machines together. Wing War would link up but crash out shortly after due to it being a 2 machine linkup, with two machines Wing War behaved & was stable as is Ridge Racer 2 & Rave Racer.

I have 3 seperate machines with different wheels connected to each so been happily testing this stuff. You guys have done an awesome job getting these two work & Im happy to help test scenarios with 3 machines if it helps the cause.

When these machines are run at the same time the linkup works but Ive found if thier not then one of the 3 machines acts likes its crashed or runs at like 2 fps, they become unresponsive so Ive learned to make a batch file to run them in linkup seperate to when I play solo as trying to change the master/slave in the service menu is horrible if I did that playing solo. not sure why but its network search related, anyway my 2 cents worth.

[John Bennett]

Hi folks - great to hear it's working for more of you.
I've not managed to get three games to link up properly yet. I'm clearly doing something fundamentally wrong, I've just not managed to work it out, but I'll keep trying, just had to pause this for a few months to clear a backlog of other arcade projects.

I hope it's ok to hijack this thread to ask a question of you controls/PC people....
How do you interface the controls of Ridge Racer to your PC?
I ask there's an I/O PCB there which communicates with the game PCB via some form of serial/SPI/I2C link (and this PCB has all controls I/O and also the sound DACs on it).

So has anyone managed to connect an I/O PCB to a PC via some homebrew interfacing electronics? 

[buttersoft]

I haven't heard about interfacing an IO board directly. Wouldn't you need to write a USB descriptor? Or at any rate break the signals back down to something a board with an existing USB descriptor could use.

Most of the time people are using something like an L2M2 or arduino or MMOS controller with H-Bridges to drive the existing hardware, i believe. There's a few threads on the front page, but the best example might be Empo's thread - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,159162.0.html

[John Bennett]

Thanks. Yes, looks far from trivial - I/O board has the audio DACs on it too, so it'd be (custom)MAME->USB->CustomPCB->I/O PCB, with quite a high transfer rate.

I thought it worth asking as it would reduce the modifications required to a machine, but I can see why it's not an obvious route now 

[flybynight]

I've the Japanese twin cab and am happy to take photos/videos.

I interface the PC to the cabinet and it works perfect. You bypass the original PCBs and Io board and interface the PC to the wires of the cabinet IO harness.
All you need it the bog standard UHID interface from Ultimark then a few molex/JAE connector blocks and the wiring schematic. You also need a small 12v audio amp for the sound.

Everything plugs in and out so you can swap back to the PCB and the PC any time.


It's better than the real thing to be honest as it's 480p resolution on the PC  rather than 480i resolution on the PCB (I swapped the original MS8 15K monitors with WellGardner 92000 quad sync CRT's)

The UHID doesn't do force feed back but that's ok as the Japanese cab doesn't come with force-feed back, just a steering spring


I do have all the parts to implement for force feed back on the PCBs:
1.The namco FFB board (part number 2419962101)
2.motor (standard HAPP motor)
3.transformer (240V AC to 24V AC @ 3Amps transformer and 240V AC to 15V AC @ 0.5 Amps transformer - namco did an all in one transformer unit for this.)
These FFB parts were in USA Rave Racer, Dirt Dash and Motor Cross Go.

As far as I know, nobody has made a DIY "L2M2" type PC interface for the namco force feed back board 2419962101 so if I install that in the cab, FFB will work on the real PCB but then there would be no force feed back on the PC.

I have the FFB kit for Sega Ford Racing (FFB board connected to the parallel port - again no PC driver that I know of) and an FFB all-in-one board Immersion USB from Global VR - this one seems to be the best option for PC but then you would lose FFB on the real PCB.