Chase H.Q. to JAMMA

I've decided to write up some of my "adventures" with arcade and other gaming, hopefully some of this will be useful. I'm going to focus on getting unusual hardware to run on a JAMMA setup for the moment, since most of us here in Japan wouldn't have the room for real cabinets.

Over the last few days during these holidays I've been trying to sort out some of my JAMMA harnesses and figuring out what I need to get to sort out some problems I still have.

Today I "finished" my Chase H.Q. JAMMA harness. I say "finished" because I have neither the steering wheel nor pedal for it. So instead, for the moment, I'm using an Arkanoid spinner and the buttons on my Sigma 9000TB.


This side of the board is pretty dirty, the other side is spotless. Anyway, it works ok, so I'll not be washing it any time soon.

I use this spinner, it's pretty straightforward to connect up, Left, GND, +5V, and Right connections in order as you look at it in this picture.

There are two boards, and they require +5V, -5V and12V. The main connector has 56 pins (i.e. the same size as JAMMA), and through this you can easily connect the power and controls (wheel, accelerator and gears etc.). The video is separate: a small 5-pin connector is used for this, and the bottom board has its own power connector, which is exactly the same as other mid-80's Taito games such as Bubble Bobble. The accelerator is just a switch: it's either on or off. Because I'm using a button instead of a gear stick, the button has to be held down to keep the car in high gear. This gets sore after a while. Turbo is also just mapped to a button, so that's straightforward. I'm probably going to try connecting up my Speed Racer pedal as it also functions as an on/off switch, I just don't have the right connector to try it out yet. The steering wheel definitely won't work.

From left to right in this picture below, the pinout on the video connector is: Ground, R, G, B, Sync


The power connector requires 5V (the red wires) and Ground (the black ones). Unlike other Taito games, 12V is not needed by this lower board. The seller of this Chase H.Q. pcb sent the wiring with it, so I was able to connect it up to a JAMMA card pretty easily.


For the sound, I used RCA connectors and connect directly to my speakers, thereby bypassing the control box entirely.

The game works pretty well, it's unfortunate that a wheel such as that used by Out Run can't be employed here, but it's still fun to play.


Got a nice photograph of my monitor for once...

I've searched around and haven't found entirely accurate pinouts for the PCB, but go to Antelope Arcade's manual section and download the Electrocoin Chase H.Q. manual. Looking at my harness, all that's missing from their pinouts are the left speaker connections. They're directly across from the right speaker's connections; connect the Speaker- pin to Ground.

Doing it this way, the Volume 1, 2, and 3 connections wouldn't be needed, and I didn't connect the Centre pin either, though it would be needed if I ever got a real control panel. There is no brake on Chase H.Q., so don't worry about that. Connect the Handle+ pin to Right on the spinner/wheel, and obviously Handle- goes to Left.