1000-in-1 board hardware only

[Raven..]

Would anyone be interested in buying the JAMMA interface board used in these?  I really like mine, and I can now get these parts, without the computer portion (so no software developers are harmed).  Not sure what the cost will be yet, but I imagine around $80.

[notaburger]

i'm sorry, but could you explain what this board would be good for?
is it merely a way to interface a pc with a jamma arcade?
thanks

[BobA]

Are these the 2 layer baby P4 boards? By the interface portion I guess you mean the top board and the 3/4 player interface bit.   Do you have any detail on how the 2 main boards go together so I can figure out how to interface it with another SBC?   

Also depending on how it interfaces there might be a software portion needed.

Interested but not sure yet.

BobA

[Raven..]

Are these the 2 layer baby P4 boards? By the interface portion I guess you mean the top board and the 3/4 player interface bit.   Do you have any detail on how the 2 main boards go together so I can figure out how to interface it with another SBC?   

Also depending on how it interfaces there might be a software portion needed.

Interested but not sure yet.

BobA

Yeah, the top board of the Baby Star P4.  It plugs into the video card and the parallel port on the main system.  Software would be handled by your emulators.

[BobA]

Why does it plug into the parallel port?   Are they passing some of their board control switches thru it?  In which case emulator software would not be aware of it.   Maybe something in their front end?

[Raven..]

I don't really know.  I looked at it after you asked that, and realized I had forgotten a couple of connections.  It is hardwired to the on-board sound of the mother board, and the keyboard PS2 port.

Maybe for the controls on the daughter card?

[BobA]

Probably something in the control switches of the daughter board.  They could also send ouput commands to from the computer via the parallel port.    My guess is that without knowing what all these connections are and where they interact you could not get another SBC to work with only the top board.   If the board was reverse engineered again then you could probably get the top board to work with other computers.   Going by their frontend I would guess that you would have to use their front end and control switch setup which means you would need a clone of their HD to get another SBC to work with the jamma board.

[BobA]

Got thinking about the parallel port and found this info refering to the gamebox which I assume is a close copy or maybe the same board since they also mention using 2 supplies.

"The Gamebox PCB uses pure DOS-based Windows 98SE OS as the basis for running the DOS-Mame emulator along with front-end DOS program of ArcadeOS to select the different games from a menu screen.

What's really odd is that the Gamebox PCB (and it's other ilk) uses a seperate ATX power supply unit to power it up rather than using your arcade cabinet or Supergun's PSU. Two cooling fans, one on the ATX PSU & the other's on the CPU itself. So when the Gamebox PCB is powered on, there are two cooling fans in operation for the entire duration -- can get noisy indeed. ^_~

Both the joystick and push button functionality are handled by the ZsNES utility program to register the arcade cab's or Supergun's arcade control inputs to register as "pushed" PC keyboard commands. Several various utility programs are included on the built-in HDD to make sure that everything runs without a hitch.

You can even insert a PS/2 based "old styled" PC keyboard directly into the Gamebox PCB to change game settings, arcade screen parameters, etc. (for easy of convienance)."

Now if this is how your 1000 in 1 functions I can see it not being too hard to get the jamma board portion of it to work.   The Zsnes program may just be a ref to ppjoy which was used with zsnes and the code for ArcadeOS is available so it should be possible to see what they customized to make their system function.

[BobA]

Looks like they are using the lpt port and ppjoy for joy and button interface.   An IPAC or Keywiz would get rid of this bit of custom hardware and probably speed up the operation of the system they probably did it the cheapest way.  If you could get a look at what is on the disk other then the stuff that we know is there (m@me and R@MS) this could probably be nailed down as I am just guessing right now.