Author Archive for Michael Pica

twisted’s PCB Bubble Wrapping Guide

I’ve had a few requests to put together a guide on my PCB bubble wrapping technique. There’s a lot of text here because I wanted to provide insights into why I chose this method and do it the way that I do. But if you just want to know how to wrap, scroll down and follow the pictures. I tried to make it good enough that you could follow this guide without reading any text…

The Problem

I’ve got a lot of arcade PCBs, over 500 at last count. Storage has always been an issue. How do you keep them safe and dry, dust free, and static free while also keeping them compact and a solution that works for tiny boards like a Cave CV1K all the way up to an old SNK Triple Z80 3-board stack, and something that’s not going to cause me to go broke implementing it x500?

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Konami’s Jackal Rotary Stick Version

I’ve been buried with my work for months now, but it’s a quiet Thanksgiving so I decided to dust off a project. I’ve been rounding out my collection of Rotary stick game so decided to dive into Converting Jackal to the Rotary Stick Version a go.

Some Background

Konami’s Jackal (also known as “Top Gunner” in the USA or “Tokushu Butai Jackal” in Japan) is a top-down Run-and-Gun. The game only ever officially released as a joystick and button game. but the PCB has a 13-pin header like you’d find on SNK Rotary stick games and there is a world region rotary stick dump in MAME, and a few “bootleg” dumps of Rotary stick versions of the game.

ShouTime has this picture online showing a PCB with additional hardware populated: http://collectedit.com/collectors/shou-time-213/arcade-pcbs-281/jackal-world-by-konami-7895

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Repair Log: Namco System ND-1 – Namco Classic Collection Volume 1

Last week I caught a listing for a “Free non-working unknown Namco PCB”:

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NAOMI/Net City VMU Mount

As you may know the Sega NAOMI hardware is based on the Sega Dreamcast console. along with this it also shares the “Maple Bus” which is what the Dreamcast used for controller ports. A handful of NAOMI games actually support the use of Dreamcast Controllers and/or VMUs (what the Dreamcast called it’s very cool memory cards).

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All Known Official Control Panels for Taito Vewlix

The Taito Vewlix line of cabinets has a modular control panel similar to past cabinets they’ve made. In addition to supporting the cabinets below they also made adapter brackets and conversion harnesses allowing it to support any panels made for Sega’s spec, as well as any panels made for the Taito Egret II/3 spec.

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All Known Official Control Panels for Taito Egret II, Egret 3, and Atomiswave SD Cabinets

When Taito launched the Egret II Candy cabinet they gave it a modular control panel similar to the one Sega used on the Astro City. They continued this same panel design with the Egret 3 and Atomiswave SD cabinets. This panel design is larger than that of Sega’s but uses the same mounting pattern for the carriage bolts. This means that Egret II, Egret 3 can use any panels made for Sega’s spec, but not the other way around.

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No Battery Mod for Y-Unit, and other Arcade Boards

A while back I worked out a drop in RAM replacement on the Midway Y-Unit Arcade hardware.

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All Known Official Sega Panels for Astro through New Net City

When Sega launched the Astro City Candy cabinet they gave it a modular control panel to make swapping the panel as easy as swapping the the game board. They continued using this control panel Design up through the New Net City and many cabinets in between.

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All the officially released Flavors of the Net City/NAOMI Universal Cab

A while back I was having a discussion around the many variants of the Net City and NAOMI Universal cabs and it got me thinking about how many “official” variants of these cabs there were.

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Monitor Rotation for Vertical Games

A lot of arcade games run with the monitor rotated 90 degrees from the “normal” format that we’re used to with our TV’s. If you’ve ever tried to install one of these games in an arcade cabinet you might be scratching your head as to which way to rotate the monitor. The Truth is it depends on the game…

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