In Part 2 I started breaking down the technical details with the Sega/OHMIC IR LED boards. Here in Part 3 I’m going to continue breaking down the technical details.
Archive for the 'Arcade' Category
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In Part 1 I discussed a high level overview of how the Sega/OHMIC IR light gun setup works. Here in Part 2 I’m going to start breaking down the technical details.
In 1997 Sega released Jurassic Park The Lost World Arcade; a Light Gun Shooter on the Model 3 Arcade hardware. This was the first game to use Sega’s new IR gun technology, a system that they’ve used for nearly every light gun game they’ve produced since.
Recently I’ve been fixing up a Taito Vewlix F cabinet, this cabinet has the optional “JAMMA Kit” which includes the incredibly crappy Wei-Ya P271 Power Supply. This Power supply is notorious for pulsing the 12V line and killing itself (and potentially PCBs) when run on 120V AC.
Continue reading ‘A Better Vewlix Power Supply’Last week I posted an article on getting light output from Salary Man Champ on Konami System 573, I suggest you read that first. Much to my chagrin the shift-register circuit I used there didn’t work with Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ. Through pictures I found online it seems that the 2 Player Hyper Bishi Bashi champ cart, while using the same light output pinout and having the same outward appearance and a very similar looking cartridge PCB actually used a very different light output circuit. Rather than a pair of shift-Registers it uses a pair of 74LS175 D-Type Flip Flops.
Here are some photos of the HBBC 2P cart (courtesy of nem on Arcade-Projects.com)
Continue reading ‘Light Output on Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ for Konami System 573’
I’ve been playing around with a non-rhythm game version of the Konami System 573 hardware, namely I’m interested in the various “Champ” games, these are collections of manic versus mini-games where you smack buttons and hilarity ensues. The most popular is Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ and Salary Man Champ. If you’re unfamiliar with the game each player has just 3 colored buttons (no joystick) and the buttons also light up corresponding to what’s happening in game.
Continue reading ‘Light output for Salary Man Champ on Konami System 573’
What is ROMIDENT and why should you care?
When troubleshooting an an arcade PCB it can sometimes be helpful to compare the ROM data on your PCB to the ROM data within MAME. MAME is more than just a way to play classic games, the documentation within the source code is invaluable to understanding how the hardware works, and the ROMs themselves can serve as a tool to compare and verify the ROMs on your original arcade hardware.
To this end MAME has a great feature called “romident”. You’ll first need to use a EPROM reader/writer to read the data off of you EPROM or mask ROM and save it to a file, then you can check to see if that file exists in MAME by running this command: Continue reading ‘ROMIDENT Drag and Drop Tool’
I’m a big fan of metal cages over my Arcade PCBs. They’re the best way to protect the PCB and they help cut down on electrical interference so the game runs at it’s best. I own an ST-V (“Sega Titan-Video”) PCB (which is the arcade equivalent to a Sega Saturn) and I knew it had an optional Video board used in the “Print Club” machines. While trying to find info on that optional board I discovered that in the Print Club machines also had a cage around the whole ST-V Board setup! I found a complete setup for a reasonable price (less than that of a spare ST-V board alone, so worst case I break even) so I bought it.
A number of people have expressed interest in the size of this cage and others in seeing what the guts of this thing looks like so here’s a quick photo dump.
Continue reading ‘Sega ST-V “Titan” Metal Cage (Atlus Print Club 2 PCB)’
If you have or want to build an arcade machine that displays and plays emulated games as authentically as possible then there are a number of things to consider that are quite different when compared to building a normal gaming PC. This guide assumes that you have a functioning arcade machine already and that you’re simply looking to install a PC in it to use along side your arcade PCBs.
Continue reading ‘Building an Emulation PC for an Arcade Machine’
I’ve done a brief video tour of my Game Room for those that are interested.
If you want to know what it looked like before I got back into arcades, or a more detailed look at some of the Collectors edition console games on the shelves I have a similar video from 2012