Space Harrier to JAMMA

 

 

Here's the pinout for the Space Harrier 50 pin connector.

A1		B1
A2		B2
A3		B3
A4		B4
A5		B5
A6		B6
A7	+5V	B7
A8	Stick Up/Down	B8	Stick Left/Right
A9	Ground	B9
A10		B10
A11		B11
A12		B12
A13		B13
A14	Shot 3	B14	Shot 1
A15	Shot 2	B15	Start
A16	Service	B16	Test
A17	Coin 2	B17	Coin 1
A18	GND (coins)	B18
A19	Coin Counter*	B19	GND (test/service)
A20		B20	GND (PSU)
A21	GND (buttons)	B21	GND (PSU)
A22		B22	5V (Start Lamp)
A23	Start Lamp	B23	Coin Counter*
A24	Coin Counter 2	B24	+5V (PSU)
A25	Coin Counter 1	B25	+5V (PSU)

So the inputs for Space Harrier are very straightforward, there are two axes for direction and three shot buttons, as well as the usual coin, start and test and service inputs. In testing I actually found that the "Shot 1" and "Shot 3" buttons are reversed, though it doesn't really matter.

I bought myself an old analogue PC joystick and set about rewiring it for both Space Harrier and Hang-On. In the case of Hang-On I still use my Out Run pedals for the accelerator and brake, so only the left/right axis of the joystick is needed.

Another decision I made was to not cut the 15-pin joystick connector off, and I also didn't want to connect directly to the Space Harrier board, so instead I soldered all of my connecting wires to another 15-pin connector for the joystick end and a big Molex plug at the other end.

The wiring inside a PC joystick is a little different to what the Sega games expect. Also, if you have an old joystick or buy one it may have extra electronics on the inside for autofire etc. It was easy to connect the fire buttons on the joystick though the axes were more complicated. Looking at the pinout above you can see that there's only one +5V line and one Ground line, so you'll need to connect each of them to both pots. The joystick I have works perfectly, with full range in each direction.

I didn't want to cut any wires I didn't need to on the harness, so I use the Service button on both games for credits. The start button is mapped to the fourth button on the joystick.

 

 

 

Graphical faults on Arcade PCBs

Here are some graphical faults with games I've encountered and have been able to verify on other boards, mostly because I bought a second board to replace the first. In all cases, it turned out that the fault was on both PCBs (and others elsewhere), so here they are for reference.


Dragon Spirit
This is an easy one to spot. On the Namco release, wait for the attract mode to show the dragon attacking the first end-of-level boss. As the dragon is being shot and dies, part of the sprite disappears, as shown here. This can also be seen sometimes during the game itself.

The Atari release is interesting. I bought it thinking it wouldn't have the fault. What's interesting is that a new attract mode is available on the Atari release and on the "New" Namco version. Setting the Rank to A or B on the Atari version changes the attract mode to the one with the obvious fault. The New Namco version has a much shorter attract mode, and the Atari version's is much longer. The Old Namco version only has A and B Rank options available (according to the Atari manual, Rank C is the recommended setting).

I've seen this fault on another PCB in an arcade in Tokyo.



Splatter House
Like Dragon Spirit, Splatter House is a Namco System 1 game, and exhibits similar problems. One example can be seen quite early in the first level, when part of Rick "disappears". It was very difficult to get a good photo of this, you can only just about see the problem.

Here's a nice video by superdeadite showing this problem exactly on his PCB (about 20 seconds in).

I've also seen this in an arcade in Tokyo. Other System 1 games may exhibit this behaviour. I think I've seen it briefly on Marchen Maze, but not on Pac-Mania.


Bubble Bobble
Here's a problem on the two Bubble Bobble PCBs I own. On levels where fire bubbles appear, bursting them and allowing the flames to spread results in some of the flames not being fully visible, or sometimes not visible at all. On the JAMMA+ forum some other Bubble Bobble owners confirmed the existance of this problem. Both of my PCBs are Taito versions. I burnt new ROMs to switch one to the Romstar version, this made no difference.



Dynamite Dux
Another game where I bought a replacement PCB for a fault I thought my first one had. When the rock monster at the end of the first level is attacked (most notably with bullets) some of the rock sprites show corruption. My second board was not fully original, it had decrypted ROMs but still shows the same problem.



Psycho Soldier
This is a well know fault. Thin lines appear on the left hand side of the screen as the action scrolls.



After Burner
This is an unusual one, and may be particular to my setup. If the game's Cabinet Type dip switch is set to "Upright", I get graphical problems visible on the sky when the high scores appear. This goes away if the Cabinet Type is set to either of the "Moving" types. Furthermore, if I turn the PCB on and immediately play a game before the first attract mode starts, I don't get the problem. If I were to guess I would say that the problem is related to my JAMMA harness and perhaps is timing related. I had sent it away for repair and the board came back just as it had been, but with the dip switch changed, so I'm guessing the guy repairing it found nothing wrong. He forgot to send back the joystick and harness too, but that's another story altogether.



Athena and Bogey Manor
An annoyance rather than a glitch with these two games is that they expect the monitor to be rotated through 180 degrees to every other horizontal PCB I have.

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.

Nintendo's Punch-Out!! to JAMMA

Getting Punch-Out!! to work on a JAMMA setup is not a straightforward job, though it's not too difficult if you're determined.

The basic obstacles to be overcome are:-

• Punch-Out!! uses two monitors
• Like other Nintendo games, the video signals are inverted
• The board needs an external amplifier for you to hear sound

Aside from that, the JAMMA adaptor is fairly simple, the power requirements are standard and the controls likewise.

Here's a shot of the board, showing the edge connector. It's a 56-pin connector, the same size as a JAMMA connector. The board can keep high scores if there are batteries installed (bottom right).

The pinouts are available from Mike's Arcade, from where I bought two inverter and sound amp boards. You can make your own if you want, but I figured it would be easier for me to buy them already made, since they're not expensive and they come with the output cables.

Looking at the pinouts, you'll see that the board just requires +5V. The +24V signal is required for the coin counter, but since JAMMA doesn't supply +24V you don't need to worry about it.

For the video, you have to first connect the PCB side's video out signals to the inverters. If you buy the inverters from Mike's Arcade you don't get these cables with the kit, but they are sold separately on the site. They're standard Nintendo video cables, and I have a few that I bought from sellers on various forums. If you're going to be soldering to an edge connector like I did, you'll only need one cable. Simply cut it in the middle, strip the wires and then solder them to the edge connector as per the pinouts - one half of the cable for each monitor's outputs.

For the sound, you'll need another two cables not supplied with the kit, again these are standard Nintendo audio cables. I emailed Mike's Arcade and they sold me the cables separately.

The output (video and speaker) cables and the power cable are supplied with the kit. The manual is available on the site I linked to above, so have a look if you're in any way unsure. The inverter/amp boards require +12V, which is no problem to source from your control box.

Ok, so here's my complete harness. As you can see, it's a big mess. I didn't cut the wires down so they're far too long but it works ok so I'll leave it for now.

So from the edge connector you connect the video and sound signals to the inputs on each converter. From there it depends on your own setup. This is how I decided to do it:

• From one inverter I took the output video signals and wired it to the JAMMA fingerboard, hence the video signal passes through my control box and from there to the monitor
• From the second inverter I took the second monitor's output video signals and connected them to a DIN plug with the same pinout as the RGB output on my control box. This is exactly the same as what I did with my Ninja Warriors harness
  
• For the sound I took the amplified speaker output from each inverter and connected them both to the DIN plug - one to the left channel and the other to the right
• The sound therefore comes from the monitor that the DIN plug is eventually connected to. Rather than use the monitor's own speakers, I connect external speakers to the monitor through its headphone socket. For most of my games, these speakers are connected to my control box, so it's simply a case of moving the jack from one socket to another.
  

Here's a look at the DIN connector I used. As you can see I forgot to cover the wiring with the enclosure before I started soldering. This shows the level of excitement generated by the anticipation of finally being able to play the game.

And here's the final output on my monitors. For authenticity the monitor on the right should be above the other but I'd have to rebuild my desk/shelving for that.


Power Up to Super Punch-Out!!
Super Punch-Out!! was released as an upgrade to Punch-Out!! (it's not an easy swap), so it uses the same pinout, with one addition - that of the "Duck" manoeuvre. To make the player duck on an original machine the player would have to pull on the joystick, almost as if they were trying to pull the joystick out of the control panel. If you have a setup like mine then you can simply use a fourth button (the first three being Left Blow, Right Blow and Knockout Blow). Connect your fourth button to pin 17 on the parts side of the adaptor (pin 18 on the solder side is Right so you'll know you're in the right place).

Power Up again to Arm Wrestling
Arm Wrestling also uses the same pinout as the aforementioned games, but again with slightly different controls. The same Duck manoeuvre exists as with Super Punch-Out!!, so that stays the same (called Pull on Arm Wrestling). Left and Right also stay the same, on the same pins (now called Attack and Counter). The addition comes in a Power button, and its pin is pin 17 on the solder side, so it's directly opposite to the Pull button's pin.

So you can make a harness for all three games without worrying about the inputs:

• Pin 17 on the solder side is only used on Arm Wrestling
• Pin 17 on the component side is only used on Arm Wrestling and Super Punch-Out!!
• Pins 20, 21, 22 and 24 on the solder side are only used on Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!!

So all of these pins can be connected on one harness and the game will only read what it needs to; none of the inputs exclusive to each game is needed by any other game for another purpose.