Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters

I picked up an Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters PCB (I got a second recently) and Hall Effect joystick some time ago. The board itself is mostly JAMMA, so there's nothing complicated about getting it to work.

The joystick itself and how it connects are the main problems. The stick is very big and heavy, its depth from the baseplate (I don't know the real name) to the bottom (with a bit to spare) is 14cm, and the diameter is also about 14cm. I've tried some unusual solutions since I don't have the real panel. I bought a plant pot and a plastic box, but neither were strong enough to hold the joystick in place, as it's far too heavy. I think the best solution would be a big wooden box in the same style as a cabinet's control panel.


Because of the slightly different pinout, I made a JAMMA to JAMMA connector and then soldered a Molex connector to it. The game doesn't originally use this connector, it uses these red connectors as shown on the board here. I do have the original connector, but it's slightly broken so I just switched connectors over.

The pins used on the JAMMA connector are

PARTS		SOLDER
25 L/R Player 1		c L/R Player 2
26 U/D Player 1		d U/D Player 2

So I just connected my joystick to pins 25 and 26 on the JAMMA to JAMMA harness. The joystick also needs +5V and GND, so they just come from their respective pins.

Here's the connector on the joystick.


You can see (maybe) that the pins from left to right are X, +V, GND and Y. So this makes it easy to connect up. The +V and GND pins obviously go to +5V and Ground on your JAMMA harness and the X and Y connect to L/R and U/D respectively.

The buttons are wired a little differently too, which makes the JAMMA to JAMMA harness indispensible.

PARTS		SOLDER
18 PL 1 DUCK		V PL 2 DUCK
19		W
20 PL 1 JUMP		X PL 2 JUMP
21		Y
22 PL 1 FIRE		Z PL 2 FIRE

The Jump button is also used to start the game.

Here's the board itself, two boards actually. There are two test switches, one on each board. You can use the test mode to calibrate the joystick. Mine works very well even after all these years, obviously when buying one it's imperative to ask the seller about its condition.




UPDATE:  I eventually managed to buy an original control panel for the game, as shown below, with two joysticks. Unfortunately one joystick had a broken Hall Effect sensor so I had to install the joystick I had bought some time ago. As you can see the panel is pretty big, and has a metal plate in front. I can rest it on the shelf on which my monitors sit. I modified my JAMMA adaptor so that I could easily connect to the original wiring on the panel. The only thing missing is a coin switch, so I use my Sigma Raijin coin input for that.

Sega System 24

Here's some information for those interested in Sega's System 24 hardware and games.

Sega brought out the system in March 1988, and the basic idea was that by simply swapping out security chips and a floppy disk, the operator could easily change to another game. In the end, it didn't quite work out like that.

The first game released was Hot Rod, an overhead driving game, and its cabinet featured steering wheels for each player - the maximum possible number of players was four on tabletop versions and three on the upright versions.

In October of 1988, Scramble Spirits was released. A shooting game, clearly this needed a standard joystick and buttons style cabinet. From Scramble Spirits on, the idea of switching to another game became more popular.

What's special about the System 24 hardware is primarily that the system requires a 24kHz monitor (medium resolution), which clearly prevents an operator or home enthusiast from using any standard cabinet. Secondly, the game itself is contained entirely on a standard high density floppy disk - at least with the early games.

Here are three game disks, and a security chip. Each disk-based game has a matching security chip. As previously mentioned, the idea was that operators would simply swap these to swap games.

On the right is a standard Sega-supplied disk drive, with heavy metal casing. On the left, a more recent standard drive.

However, Hot Rod did not have a security chip, and nor did most releases of Scramble Spirits. This means that any game can be converted to these games, as long as the operator can get hold of a copy of the floppy disk, and can burn the two standard EPROMs on the board. Copying the floppy disk is trivial, as the PCB can make backup copies.

Starting with later releases of Scramble Spirits, games came with a security chip - an FD1094. These games include:
Crack Down
Dynamic Country Club (Disk version) - there is a non-disk version, discussed below.
Gain Ground
Quiz Shukudai wo Wasuremashita
Rough Racer
Super Masters Golf

Rough Racer is a driving game similar to Hot-Rod, and the two golf games (Dynamic Country Club and Super Masters Golf) require a special control panel.

As mentioned, there is a non-disk version of Dynamic Country Club; instead it uses an extra board, which is mounted on top of the main board. Below is an example of such a board.


So Sega essentially abandoned the disk idea and went for this new system. The games which use these boards are:
Bonanza Bros - this is the only one of these games that uses a floppy disk
Dynamic Country Club (ROM version)
Quiz Ghost Hunter
Quiz Mekuromeku Story
Quiz Rouka Ni Tattenasai
Tokoro San no MahMahjan
Tokoro San no MahMahjan 2

Here's a picture of a setup with all three boards. On top, the small security board, and on the bottom, the floppy drive interface board. In the middle, obviously, is the main board.


Here's a shot from above. On the left you can see two EPROMs with yellow stickers on them. Following the picture is a discussion of which games use which ROMs. To the right of these ROMs are two 68000 chips. The righthand chip is the security chip, if needed. Otherwise, it is a standard 68000.

Now, the ROMs:
Hot Rod and the Japanese version of Scramble Spirits use the same two ROMs.

Non-Japanese versions of Scramble Spirits use the same ROMs as:
Bonanza Bros
Crack Down
Dynamic Country Club (disk version only)
Gain Ground
Quiz Syukudai wo Wasuremashita
Rough Racer
Super Masters Golf

Now, given that some of these games are not particularly popular, and in some cases require specialist control panels, the games (PCB + disk drive) can often be bought quite cheaply.

In my case, I bought a NOS Crack Down chip and disk from the US, and bought a cheap PCB to put them in. Also, if your PCB happens to break, it's easy to swap to another. As long as the disk and security chip are working, the game is safe. Backing up disks is straightforward, so obviously it's a good idea to do so often, just in case.

These are the games which have their own ROMs, their own security boards, and no floppy disk.
Dynamic Country Club (ROM versions only)
Quiz Ghost Hunter
Quiz Mekuromeku Story
Quiz Rouka Ni Tattenasai
Tokoro San no MahMahjan
Tokoro San no MahMahjan 2

Again though, they can be used as spare parts for other games. I bought Quiz Rouka Ni Tattenasai for this very purpose.

And here's a game in action, Gain Ground, one of the more popular games on the system.

Hang-On to JAMMA

I recently added another Sega racing game to my collection: Hang-On, the motorbike game from 1985. I had already bought the harness from a real cabinet a while back, so connecting it up was pretty straightforward.

To control the game I'm using an old analogue PC joystick and Thrustmaster pedals, so I simply swap connections to play this. Obviously the original design calls for handlebars which I hope to buy very soon, but in the mean time it plays very well with the stick and pedals. The controls needed are wheel, accelerator, brake, coin input and start. The only one of these unavailable on the panel is the coin input, so I connect the original test panel and use the service button.

First, there are four power connectors, of the usual Sega 10-pin AMP type. As you can see there are four boards, and each one has a power connector. There are also three interconnecting cables between the boards.


The video and sound connectors are the same as those on Out Run. The video connector is on the lower large board and the sound connector is on the upper small board. The smaller boards are not just for sound though, they also hold many graphics ROMs, so if you're testing your boards and you can see the road but not the bikes, the problem is either power or a bad connection between the boards.

1 Red
2 Green
3 Blue
4 Sync
5 GND
6


1 Left
2 Left Ground
3 Right Ground
4 Right
5
6

This is the main 50-pin connector for the game's controls. Again it's similar to the other Sega games of the era. In this case there's no separate 20-pin connector for the controls, they're all together on this one connector.

A1			B1
A2			B2	Brake
A3			B3
A4	Acc +5V		B4	Angle +5V
A5	Acc		B5	Angle
A6	Acc GND		B6	Angle GND
A7			B7
A8			B8
A9			B9
A10			B10
A11			B11
A12			B12
A13			B13	Start Switch
A14	Service		B14	Test
A15	Coin 2		B15	Coin 1
A16	+5V (from PSU)		B16	Start Lamp +5V
A17	Coins GND		B17	Start Switch GND
A18	Coin Meter*		B18
A19	Coin Meter*		B19
A20	Start Lamp		B20
A21			B21
A22	Coin Meter*		B22	Coin Lamp +5V*
A23	+5V (from PSU)		B23	+5V (from PSU)
A24	Coin Meter*		B24	Service and Test GND
A25	GND (from PSU)		B25	GND (from PSU)

So to start with I connected the Test and Service buttons on my JAMMA harness to the test panel I received with my Space Harrier boardset.

For the accelerator, brake and handlebars I already had the full harness so they're terminated with Molex plugs. Again, see my Space Harrier write-up to see how I completed that first. I later bought a different, better PC joystick, shown below. This joystick has the pins all wired up, even those which are not connected at the joystick end (in other words, a wire runs from the pin through the cable to the joystick, but the wire is left hanging and is not connected). This was of enormous benefit, since it meant I didn't need to run an external wire for the Y axis.

The best manual I've found for the wiring diagram is the Sitdown Wiring Diagram from KLOV. You can see that A16, A23 and B23 must be connected to the JAMMA harness to supply +5V to the board. A25 and B25 must be connected to ground. So you'll have a lot of +5V and Ground connections on your JAMMA harness, be careful that the +5V and Ground lines don't touch.

The four Coin Meter pins can again be safely ignored.

I plan to buy Super Hang-On when I get the chance, its main addition is the Turbo button, and I also hope to buy its control panel which I can use with both games.

 

Out Run and Power Drift to JAMMA

One of my favourite games, and that of many arcade enthusiasts, is the original Out Run released by Sega in 1986. It was always a dream to have my own Out Run at home, but without the original cabinet I didn't think it was feasible. However I read up on how it could be done using a PC wheel and pedals so I decided to give it a go. I managed to put together a working system using an old Thrustmaster Formula T2 wheel and Microsoft Sidewinder pedals. Since then I have acquired two Power Drift PCBs, with the original control panel and pedal. These also work with Out Run, so I was able to modify the harnesses I had made. I was never keen on using something like a Dreamcast wheel because I really wanted to be able to use pedals and a proper gear stick, but it's a good way if it's easier for you and you don't mind too much not having pedals.

So I've ultimately ended up with the situation where I have two JAMMA harnesses, one each for Out Run and Power Drift. Both harnesses connect easily to a Power Drift control panel and pedals. I also have a set of pedals for use on old Windows (95/98 etc.) systems. I simply cut off the 15-pin connector and wired it directly to my Out Run harness; since getting the original Power Drift hardware I've desoldered the PC pedals and instead soldered them to Molex connectors. I still have my Thrustmaster wheel if I ever wanted to connect it back up. I have no idea how you would use a modern wheel and pedals with a USB connector though.


First, let's look at the pins on these boards. The boards need +5V and GND to be connected through the two power sockets, which are 10 pin (2 rows of 5) AMP sockets. Getting the right connectors is not easy these days, so what I've done over the last while is to buy several full harnesses from Sega games of this era, and then cut them up to make what I need. Given the right harness, usually only slight modifications are needed.

Here are two of the AMP connectors (alongside the video connector), the yellow wires are for +5V and the white ones connect to ground. As you can see there are eight of each colour and they all have to be connected. You'll need to connect power to another socket which I'll show later.

The video connector is straightforward, you can clearly see that from right to left the pins are Red, Green, Blue, Sync and Ground.

Now have a look at this picture, the connector on the left is the aforementioned Out Run video connector, the smaller one on the right is that of Power Drift. The pins are in the same order, but the connectors are obviously completely incompatible due to the difference in size.


With power and video wired up to your JAMMA harness, you can now check that your game at the very least actually works.

Next, look at these sound connectors. Again the Power Drift connector (left) is much smaller than that of Out Run (right). The pins are Left, Left GND, Right GND and lastly Right. You can't connect directly to your JAMMA harness as you need to amplifiy the sound. Besides, you don't want to buy an expensive Out Run PCB and then listen to the music in mono...


In my case I have external speakers (just standard PC speakers) that I use for my control box anyway (simply connecting the the speakers to the headphone jack) so I just cut and stripped the wires and then soldered them to two RCA plugs. From them I can connect to my speakers using a standard audio cable. The picture below shows the Power Drift audio cable I made.


You can clearly see how beneficial it is to have the original cables for these games, as making them would be a hassle. With the original cables you can simply cut, strip and solder them to your JAMMA fingerboard. The next step is to connect the controls.

In terms on the controls, we have the steering wheel, two pedals, gear stick, coin input, start switch, and finally the test and service switches. These connect through two connectors on the board, one of which has 50 pins and the othe 20. The 20 pin connector is for the accelerator, brake and wheel. Unlike a game like Chase H.Q., the pedals and wheel are all fully analogue (Chase H.Q.'s accelerator is simply an on/off switch).

On the 50 pin connector, for the coin inputs and their ground connections I use my normal controller's coin input, since there's no button on the original control panel for it. On my PC wheel (the Thrustmaster) I was able to wire it up to one of the buttons in a straightforward fashion. You could easily connect both the test and service switches to a controller in the same way. I've connected mine to buttons 2 and 3 on the Player 1 side.

This picture shows the wiring on the inside of an original control panel. The rightmost connector is that of the start button. The four pins are for the start switch and its ground, and the start switch's lamp and its +5V connection. Obviously with my Thrustmaster controller I had no need to connect the lamp pins as there's no lamp.


The red connector on the left is for the gear stick. It has two wires, one for the switch itself and the other for its ground. So changing the gear simply tells the game that the switch has changed from one state to another. On my PC controller, the stick didn't "stick" in position, so to engage the low gear, the stick had to be held in the "up" position. Releasing the stick would engage the high gear.


The brown connector in the centre is for the wheel itself, which has +5V, GND and a potentiometer connector. Again, on my PC wheel, this was pretty straightforward. The problem with computer and console controls is that they're usually very light and playing with them in an aggressive way (or sometimes not even in an aggressive way) will loosen up the parts. In the case of the wheel, I found that the potentiometer would gradually rotate so that the car in the game would naturally drift to the right when it should have gone straight. In order to counter this, I simply used the test mode to find the middle position and then taped down the potentiomter. Generally it stayed in position after this. With the genuine wheel I have had no such problems as would be expected.


Here's a picture of the connector for the pedals from a Power Drift cabinet. There are four pins leading to six wires. So the two pink pins go to +5V, and the two brown ones are for Ground. The two centre pins connect to the two potentiometers on the accelerator and brake.


My problem with the original pedal fixture is that I've yet to find something to attach it to (and it's very heavy), so I went back to my original PC pedals (Microsoft Sidewinder pedals). In this case I simply connected the two +5V connectors on the pot together, and likewise with the Ground connectors. Then I soldered four long wires to GND, +5V, and the two potentiometers and then terminated them with a Molex plug in the same order as the Power Drift pedals shown above. The problem with these pedals is that their range is not as great as the real pedals, so they can't reach either 0% power or 100% power. It means that when not pressing on the accelerator, the car will still move. This is not such a problem as if you really want to stop the car you'd simply step on the brake. When fully pressed down, the car will go top speed, and I have finished the game, so that's no problem. The only real problem is that on the high score screen, the game doesn't register the pedal being pushed so no names can ever be entered (this problem also exists on Hang-On)



Let's have a look now at the pinout for the 50 pins connectors. First up is Out Run.

Out Run pinout - 50 pin connector

A1	Coin 2		B1	Coins GND
A2	Coin 1		B2
A3			B3
A4	Shift		B4	Shift GND
A5	Start Switch		B5	Start Switch GND
A6	Service		B6	Service and Test GND
A7	Test		B7
A8			B8
A9			B9
A10			B10
A11			B11
A12			B12
A13			B13	PWR AMP GND*
A14			B14	GND (from PSU)
A15			B15	GND (from PSU)
A16			B16	Coin Meter GND*
A17			B17	Coin Switches +5V*
A18	DC Motor*		B18	DC Motor*
A19	Coin Meter 1*		B19	Coin Meter +5V*
A20	Coin Meter 2*		B20
A21	Start Lamp		B21	Start Lamp +5V
A22			B22
A23	PWR AMP*		B23
A24	+5V (from PSU)		B24
A25	+5V (from PSU)		B25

Here's a photograph of it so you can see how it lines up. The counting starts at the right and works left. The top row is the A row, so the rightmost pin on the top is Coin 2.


I have seen pinouts for Out Run on the Internet which differ from these, so be careful. I took these pinouts from the manual and looking at my connector, they are definitely in the right positions. For instance, I've seen the +5V lines on A24 and A25 noted as being on the B side, but clearly on my connector they're not. As I say, be careful and check your own board. If you buy a harness with the board then you'll know it must be right (as long as the game was working of course).

The pins marked with an asterisk aren't needed if wiring up to a JAMMA system and you don't have coin counters etc.

The +5V lines on A24 and A25 and the Ground lines on B14 and B15 should be connected to your JAMMA harness.

On the left the three-pin connector connects to the gear stick's connector (though the middle pin isn't needed) and the four-pin connector on the right is for the Start Switch and its lamp.

Now, with Power Drift you have to be very careful. The second board I bought had a different pinout on the 20 and 50 pin connectors, the first board seems to be for an upright cabinet, and its manual is widely available on the Internet. My second board is that from a Deluxe cabinet, shown below. I've just managed to buy a copy of the manual, so I can reproduce the pinouts here.


This is the upright Power Drift's pinout below. It has slight differences to the Out Run pinout, so be careful.

A1	Coin 2		B1	Coins GND
A2	Coin 1		B2	Gear GND
A3	Gear Switch		B3
A4			B4
A5	Start Switch		B5	Start Switch GND
A6	Service		B6
A7	Test		B7	Service and Test GND
A8			B8
A9			B9
A10			B10
A11			B11
A12			B12
A13			B13	PWR AMP GND*
A14			B14	Service and Test GND
A15			B15	GND (from PSU)
A16			B16	GND (from PSU)
A17			B17	+5V (from PSU)
A18			B18	+5V (from PSU)
A19	Coin Meter 1*		B19	Coin Meter +5V*
A20	Coin Meter 2*		B20	Coin Meter +5V*
A21	Start Lamp		B21	Start Lamp +5V
A22			B22
A23	PWR AMP*		B23
A24			B24
A25			B25

This is the Deluxe cabinet Power Drift's pinout. As I've mentioned, I've only just found a copy of the manual so I had already made the harness without fully knowing the pinout.

A1	Coin 2		B1	GND (from PSU)
A2	Coin 1		B2	GND (from PSU)
A3	Gear Switch		B3	PWR AMP GND*
A4			B4	Gear GND
A5	Start Switch		B5	Start Switch GND
A6	Service		B6	Coins GND
A7	Test		B7	Service and Test GND
A8			B8	Coin Meters GND
A9			B9
A10			B10
A11			B11
A12			B12
A13			B13
A14			B14
A15			B15
A16			B16
A17	Coin Open*		B17
A18	Coin Close*		B18	Sub Board +5V*
A19	Coin Meter 1*		B19	Start Lamp +5V
A20	Coin Meter 2*		B20	+5V
A21	Start Lamp		B21	+5V
A22			B22	+5V (from PSU)
A23	PWR AMP mute		B23	+5V (from PSU)
A24			B24
A25			B25

I've had some confusion with these Ground and +5V pins, as the wiring diagram isn't so clear. So I'll work through them on my board and see what I can confirm. It looks like pins B22 and B23 should be wired to +5V on the JAMMA harness, I have B23 connected, without it the inputs to the game won't work, and I expect B22 is the same. I tried connecting B20 to +5V and it wasn't good, reset the game and had it been connected for long looked like it was going to start smoking. So B20 and B21 look like they connect to somewhere else but I'm not sure where (network system possibly?).


Now let's move on to the 20-pin connector for the wheel and pedals. Again, first we have Out Run.

A1	Acc +5V			B1		Wheel +5V
A2	Acc Pot			B2		Wheel Pot
A3	Acc GND			B3		Wheel GND
A4				B4		Brake +5V
A5				B5		Brake Pot
A6				B6		Brake GND
A7				B7
A8				B8
A9				B9
A10				B10

Here's a photograph of this connector, as you can see there are only the nine pins, and it's pretty straightforward to connect these to a PC wheel. As I mentioned earlier the two +5V and Ground wires for the pedals come from the same source, so as you can see below I use a four-pin connector on my PC pedals to easily connect to this connector. The three pin connector goes to my Power Drift panel's wheel. If I wanted to I could easily do the same with my PC wheel if I ever wanted to use that again.


Here are the 20 pin connectors for Power Drift. The upright version's pinout is completely different from that of Out Run, and the Deluxe version is again different from the other Power Drift, though it is the same as Out Run's (more or less).

Power Drift (upright version):

A1			B1
A2	Acc Pot		B2	Wheel Pot
A3			B3
A4	Wheel +5V		B4
A5			B5	Brake Pot
A6	Wheel GND		B6
A7	Acc +5V		B7
A8			B8
A9	Acc GND		B9
A10			B10

Power Drift (deluxe version):

A1	Acc +5V		B1	Wheel +5V
A2	Acc Pot		B2	Wheel Pot
A3	Acc GND		B3	Wheel GND
A4	Banking +5V		B4
A5	Banking Pot		B5	Brake Pot
A6	Banking GND		B6
A7			B7
A8			B8
A9			B9
A10			B10

A4, A5 and A6 are for the banking on a real moving cabinet and I have left them disconnected.
I also received a small extra board and its connecting cable which I left unconnected. This is for the the motor in a real cabinet.

So ultimately I've made three harnesses for these games. I have two Out Run boards with the same pinout and two Power Drift boards with differing pinouts. I've also made a harness for Hang-On, the details of which you can see here.

I've swapped EPROMs on the two Out Run boards. One of them now runs the old Japanese version, which has a different track order and some other differences. Being an earlier version, it is not quite as polished as the later releases. I've also converted my other board to the newly released updated version, for which you can get the ROMs and all relevant information from the marvellous reassembler.blogspot.com; unfortunately as my pedals won't allow me to input my initials on the high score screen, I can't make use of the new ROMs' ability to save the high scores.

Here's my Deluxe version working perfectly.