MAME / Multijamma horizontal cabinet

[tcleary]

My brother has a slikstick mame cabinet with the pc outside, so the inside of the cabinet is pretty much empty.  the idea he had is to put a 6 way jamma switcher in there, wire up a jamma harness so it's possible to switch from pc sound to jamma sound, pc video to jamma video, pc controls to jamma controls.

once that is setup one of the 6 jamma slots will be for a neo geo 1 slot board (with jamma to neo adapter), that slot will be for a neo 108 in one cart, a neo geo 4 slot in slot 2 for any other neo geo games or dedicated carts for any that run crappy on the multi. (the multi neo carts don't work well with multi slot neo boards)

then a horizontal multi in slot 3, and then 3 slots for any other jamma horizontal pcbs (just have rastan at the moment).  this should be quite a project.

here's my to do list to get me started

get jamma power center setup in the cabinet
get jamma harness wired up and switchable (I think audio and controls will not be a huge deal but I'm uncertain about video.  the monitor is a billabs multisync which has vga and the standard video connector, but I'm not sure what happens if both are on at the same time, maybe vga gets priority until it's cut off?  no idea but I need to find that out)

also need to learn more about wiring buttons to multiple things.  right now the buttons/sticks are wired to an ipac 4 player interface.  so should I just split those connections out to the jamma controls so the wires go to both?  or will that cause problems?  maybe I need to install diodes.  anyone done something like this?

get the jamma 6 slot working with rastan would be a good first step.  then mess around getting jamma to neo geo.  also not sure about what to do for neo geo button 4, the jamma standard has 3 buttons per player. 

so lots to think about but it should be a cool project.  any advice is appreciated!  stay tuned.

[emphatic]

I would just set it up as a pure JAMMA cabinet and get J-Pac to hook up the PC. Then get a 6 in 1 JAMMA adapter from http://www.arcademvs.com/ARCADE_ACESSERIOR.htm for $90

Best of luck!

[tcleary]

time for an update.  got controls wired up.  I just wired a ground from the jamma connector to the ground loop on one of the buttons, then wired the controls by stripping some wire and shoving it into the quick disconnect and jamming that on the associated button, makes a nice solid connection and it worked fine as long as the pc was on.  the pc has to be on because the ground loop needs power which comes from an ipac.  the only downside is i need to have the pc on to play jamma boards, but that's no big deal. 

I have yet to test if my double wiring messed up anything when using the controller in windows (waiting on a vga switch to make it easy to switch back and forth)

I wired the jamma video outs to a vga breakout cable from ultimarc.  for some reason the picture looks washed out no matter what I do with contrast/brightness, I think it probably has to do with the puny wires on the breakout cable, so I'm going to try wiring my own with heavier gauge wire.  another theory is i need a video amplifier between the jamma board and vga connection on the monitor, but I don't think that's it.

so I have video and controls, what about sound?  well I have a bookshelf speaker hooked up as a test, but I am getting a switchbox to switch between pc/jamma mono/neo geo stereo.  this may be trickier than I thought though.  I have pc speakers in the cabinet right now, not sure about the ohms on them.  I know jamma standard is mono 8 ohm and that worked fine with a bookshelf 8 ohm speaker.  what I need to know is how to wire it so I can safely switch between the pc true stereo, jamma mono split to two speakers fake stereo, and neo geo true stereo.

wiring controls, the slikstik panel is a beast


finally a picture

[tcleary]

this project was a failure!  it is simply impossible to hook up mvs to that monitor, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.  we found a good deal on a 25" neo cab and fetched it.  so this will be a switchable 1 slot or 4 slot neo cab.  took of the cpo because it was in awful shape, going to order a new one along with a new marquee to hold 4 minimarquees, do some painting, and it should be pretty nice after all of that.