Recent Posts

All speakers for 7.1 lounge system now primed and ready for final paint! Ooooh close to fitting these puppies. BTW all have been tested (as matched stereo pairs) prior to getting to this stage to make sure the sound is on point. All having matching grills and custom bracket mounts. I'll cover that next post.

That's excellent information Zebidee! I've gone and got myself the CH341a set.  Anything i may do with it will not impact my more important goal of getting this done though. I already had the USB extender lead, and I'll sell myself some blank EEPROM chips, I find myself much cheaper than online. After some further investigation there are many service menu entries which shouldn't be reset or basically messed with. I'll be very careful when the time comes. The capacitor hack (or some variation of it) sounds good to me. It's a single button press of the AV button, I may use a transistor/optocoupler to momentarily parallel the existing TV/AV switch to avoid any unwanted voltage issue, we'll see.

So, some further progress on this project. I now have a working control set and a working Front End! In keeping with my requirement for a really basic Front End menu I've ended up developing my own in Python. I'm ok at Python programming but still needed some A.I. help with the Pygame side of it which I'm not that familiar with. That said, I'm still going through with beta testing Loadman's Mala 2.0 beta. It's worth doing, more so for future projects than this one. The challenge with setting up a Front End on a system like this is that you really need a second LCD screen in play until everything is done and tested. It's just too hard working on a CRT at 240x320 in Windows. Developing my own FE let me do just that. Yes I can add Snaps etc later if I want, but I like it simple and fast. So no pics or it didn't happen as PBJ says, I'll go one better and provide a video.  The end goal is basically as per this concept with maybe a few color tweaks:

Here's the video replay. Enjoy, it's even in 4K if you so desire.  You gots to click it baby.

Pac Man Legion: Cabinet progress

noooooooooooooooo......

Hope you find a buyer soon. Maybe Pauline or Gina needs a backup?

I’m glad you’re okay but your post made me sad. 

Comes a time ,😔

Sorry for the necro question, I came across this thread trying to resolve the 'cars flicking in Daytona with network play' thing and the conclusion seems to be 'there's no real fix' but have any of you tried it on a VRR/FreeSync capable display?

With FrameSkip and FrameSync to 1, I had flickering.  Vsync was off since I was using 180hz FreeSync displays, but I decided to turn it on and voila?  The framerate is a bit funny, it's 58fps, then jumps for a moment every few seconds, but nothing flickers and the audio doesn't seem to desync either.

Honestly, this topic will never be closed until the issue is resolved; it’s been nearly 13 years since the first post, and a lot has happened since then, MAME emulating Model 2 decently, and just a few days ago, teknoparrot also running Model 2 games great (I hope teknoparrot sorts this out once and for all). Still, it would be interesting if you posted a video of the result and a mini-tutorial here.

Agreed. I'm currently fooling around with this custom ARM HW that is able to run Daytona at full 60FPS without a sweat. It runs natively on it. Minimal linux Kernel + Daytona Emulation code with many fixes. It natively boots into Daytona. There's just the Kernel and the emulator. No Operating System. It acts just like a real arcade.

No network issue. No flickering/lagging/synchro issue.

It currently workj with USB steering and I'm going to develop a PCB to interface with the DriveBoard, IO Board PreAmp, and the most difficult, the original CRT (if you don't want to use LVDS or HDMI output). The soundboard will not be needed anymore.
Oh, native 16:9 also. Color is perfect, too.

I want to build this so I can still enjoy my real cabinet without the fear of getting a Soundboard or CPU stack to stop working.

wow wow, this has potential! Please document it on YouTube or GitHub; it could be the solution for many who are still struggling with the Link System, If you manage to enable native resolution for CRTs, FFB, and output lights, I’ll ditch MAME and the Model 2 emulator the very next day.

Honestly, this topic will never be closed until the issue is resolved; it’s been nearly 13 years since the first post, and a lot has happened since then, MAME emulating Model 2 decently, and just a few days ago, teknoparrot also running Model 2 games great (I hope teknoparrot sorts this out once and for all). Still, it would be interesting if you posted a video of the result and a mini-tutorial here.

Nah I spoke too soon.  I thought it was resolved but it's more like it made it 'less bad'.  With enough time it occurs and it seems nothing is different at all.  So no fix, please ignore my above post.

In the end the only suitable solution was to  use DaytonaThrottle between Machine 1-4.  There are very short audip drops every 15s or so, but it's tolerable.

Man, that's a shame, . Anyway, I hope SailorSat find a better solution than DaytonaThrottle. Until there try running the Link System through MAME; I think there's potential there.

Awesome! Thank you 

When I added led lights for the marquee, I just chopped up a 12volt wall wart since I had an extra plug on the smart strip and wired them in. Was pretty easy.

Impressive! I can visualise your circuit, but wondering if you have any schematics to share?

Not a problem, I've included the schematics for the RGB board below, I had to add some text to make it more readable to someone who hasn't stared at it as long as I have Hope it didn't actually make it harder...

The autoswitching is an innovative addition. Just an idea, but was also wondering if you might use a MOSFET (or a double-channel mosfet) instead of relay in the future as the circuit is low power and not running a motor? Mosfets are faster, lower power, cheaper, less negative EM feedback.

That's all true, but I prefer the simplicity of the relay circuit. Even in the worst case scenario if it fails, it will just render one input useless until it's replaced, and the small signal relay I ended up using costs about $1USD, so it's not too bad

Yeah, I initially tried to literally "filter" the higher frequencies, but that is actually really hard to do if the ones you want to filter out are only 1.5 or 2 times the one you want to keep.

I'm assuming that's because it's barely 1 octave higher at most, and from what I've seen from filter circuits in other fields (audio mainly) the octaves need to be far apart for adequate attenuation (like 30Hz vs 10KHz, as opposed to 5KHz vs 10KHz). In audio where phase doesn't matter as much (unless we're talking about destructive interference between 2 drivers for example), you can just cascade filters to increase the rolloff to 48dB/octave or more. For video, I'm assuming the phase distortion from cascading filters to get a steeper rolloff would ruin the 15KHz signal's timing anyway. So yeah, your PLL method is definitely the way to go!

Your wish is my command... here is an Aussie lowboy cab I built from scratch about 4 years ago, equipped with a component-modded 20" CRT TV and powered by GreenAntz. It took a long time from concept (2018) to completion (2022), mainly because I realised that I had to actually invent GreenAntz RGB to Component transcoders first, in order to run signals into the TV. It currently lives in our guesthouse. Click on the pic to go to the entire build thread, or just click here for more shiny finished pics.

Well that looks incredible! Perhaps the lowboy was also a thing here in South Africa
I'll have to go through the thread with my father who I'm going to be building the cabinet with, but this is a fantastic resource for us!