Okay I spent the last 6 months building a different kind of supergun. What makes it special? Well.....since I took so much time building this thing I got almost every single piece for either a reasonable or insanely low price. And also....it does.....everything. Now since I was aiming at saving money the casing on it looks....retarded.....but it does the job of protecting the circuitry. So by "everything" I mean....everything. I built the rgb to s-video circuit/box/section seperate. It's wired into a scart switch. I have other things that take advantage of going from rgb to s-video....like my japanese megadrive, and my super famicom (looks better than straight s-video out of the sfc multi av). My supergun works on an audio amplifier.....no more little speakers for my pcbs. Since I used a vogatek mark 1 instead of a jamma harness, the regular jamma buttons are wired through a genesis cord. The kick buttons I wired through usb plugs. So finding extension cables for my controllers is pretty darn easy. I also wired the sound in my casing to a stereo audio jack. Had to do this so if I get a pcb with stereo sound then I just wire it into a stereo audio jack and I'm good to go. The goal of this supergun was to convert all the signals to commonly found cables that you can buy....anywhere. So anyway here's a video where you can see it in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68FfmHZ7-rM&feature=channel_page here's one where you can hear the sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_yNVSPgz4E&feature=channel_page I built the entire thing for roughly 200$ canadian. That includes all parts. Arcade controllers, cords, cases for supergun/sg parts. Cases for my arcade pcbs. Power supply. Supergun pcbs (vogatek, rgb to s-video encoding). Controller genesis pcbs. That's the rough cost of everything except for the bare arcade pcbs here's a picture of MOST of it in the almost finished state. Only thing you don't see in this picture is the rgb to ntsc encoding rig which is in a different part of my room.
Nice job. Are those cases plastic though? Don't plastic containers like that generate some static electricity? That's why I used Wood for my SG case. I do like the idea of using the same RGB to S-Video for your consoles, mainly for the Genesis. Do you use those 2 arcade sticks with it through some sort of adapter? And you got any closer up pictures?
What do you want a closeup picture of? Just ask and I can take a picture of any part. Yes those cases are plastic....and no there's no static electricity buildup. All my pcbs are mounted on plastic pcb feet. Well except my rgb encoder that's just held in by twisty ties. The vogatek mark 1 I bought has the regular jamma buttons wired through genesis compatible ports. So the d-pad, start button, and 3 buttons work through it. So I just took some 5$ genesis controllers from a video game store, took out the pcbs, and soldered the button points onto the buttons of my joysticks. For the extra 3 buttons (street fighter kick buttons/neo geo 4th button) I wired them directly into a usb cord. Since usb has 4 pins and 1 ground, this was more than enough for my purposes. Here's the story behind the arcade sticks. I bought the x-arcade with a blown pcb for 15$. And I got the limited edition sf2 stick for 25$ as "broken". Keep in mind we're talking 15$ and 25$ canadian here. So I simply gutted out the blown pcbs on these sticks and turned them into dedicated supergun sticks. They also work on my megadrive since they're using a genesis controller pcb on the inside. Here's a picture of one of the controllers with the end of the cord. As you can clearly see, it uses a genesis plug for the regular buttons, and usb for the extended buttons. It's just a modded x-arcade Today I got in the last parts I needed to finish it. Here's the completed version Here's a picture on the inside of the vogatek box. It's a bit messy in there. But it's much better than having it out in the open with no casing. You'll also notice that the genesis ports I left on the inside of the box. This was because I never have to unplug the controllers. But other things like sound and kick buttons I unplug and plug into other things depending on the pcb. The most frustrating thing was mounting the vogatek onto pcb feet. He didn't give it mounting holes. So I had to use the two holes on either side of the atx port. And additional feet just sit underneath it for support but they're not actually attached to the pcb
Closeups of the plastic boxes were what I wanted to see. The last pic you posted seems to show the majority of SG components in the small plastic box with the PSU external. It looks like you plug the small box into the big box with the neogeo which is neat. You have a very clever setup. It reminds me that I need to work on mine and that I need to get many kick harnesses. Nice setup you have there. Always nice to see a unique supergun.
Thankyou. That's exactly right, you plug the small box into the big box. Small box is the jamma harness converted into conventional ports. Big box is the arcade pcb. I can change pcbs in under 1 minute very easily. This supergun's also very average joe safe. Everything plugs in through conventional ports. You could probably train a 5 year old how to hook up my supergun. And everything is encased in a safe plastic container. PCBS are firmly bolted onto the cases using pcb feet. You can turn them upside down and throw them around and they're perfectly protected. Spill a drink onto it and probably nothing will happen. I originally was going to use computer power molexs for the kick buttons. Then I found a website where a guy had used usb ports and I figured that would be safer than someone accidentally plugging a psu into my kick harness. It's designed to keep everything safe. And it's also designed so you can have pcbs completely setup in record time. Including stuff like extra buttons and stereo sound. I also was careful to find a way to hook up the controllers into ports that are extremely easy to find extension cables for. I've seen way too many superguns that use ports which aren't too easy to find an extension cable. you can also see in the completed form I got rid of the ugly electrical tape holding the ports in place. I got a cheap hot glue gun and just glued them into place. Goes perfectly with the plastic container
not a problem. That's actually the reason I joined this forum. I can't find a better forum for supergun discussion. I forgot to mention what stuff I'm using in it. The jamma interface is a modified vogatek mark 1. I had to solder the video sync jamma pin directly onto the sync pin of the scart socket. I also cut the trace of the negative audio line so the audio could work on an amplifier. The rgb to s-video board is one of these http://cgi.ebay.com/Arcade-RGB-CGA-to-TV-and-Video-Composite-converter-NEW_W0QQitemZ310111127271QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item310111127271&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1209%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50 Again it required modification. The picture coming out of if looked great but it the colours were oversaturated. So I added some resistors to the colour wire of the s-video cable coming out of it and now it looks perfect. And the joysticks use conventional genesis controller pcbs. And the kick buttons are directly wired.
Nice stuff! I wouldn't call $200 cheap for a Supergun, mind you - it can be done cheaper! ;-) Did you take the price of the X-Arcade control into account there? Interesting cheat, by the way - not making your own controller or adapting a console pad, I mean ;-) Mottzilla - as I've said before, anti-static = electrically conductive, which you DON'T want!! Plastic is OK. What are consoles made of? ;-) Oh, and project boxes from electronics stores are plastic, too. The only thing that you don't want subjected to static is the PCB - and you should be mounting them on PCB feet, anyway. Which are plastic ;-) Ever heard the term bench testing? That is where we test a piece of equipment on the bench. Often, you'll find technicians take circuit boards out of equipment and leave them on their bench. You don't do this on an anti-static mat, but usually on the (plastic coated) bench. I've done it thousands of times with no problems. EDIT: Incidentally, you should have found lots of forums on arcade machines! Killercabs, JammaPlus, Neo-Geo.com *ducks*, KLOV/VAPS.....
Thanks alphagamer, For the link! These superguns are weired though. This is the first time I have heard of them. retro, There are metal posts to hold up pcbs. :nod:
yes that 200$ includes the price of both controllers, extra wires for the controllers, pcbs for the controllers....everything. 200$ is cheap for a supergun that's this complete. And it's 200 canadian dollars, not US. Reason I chose not to make my own controller was because I picked up the x-arcade for 15$ and the limited street fighter stick for 25$. Lots of guys around here sell off their stick for dirt cheap once the pcb stops working. I've found lots of forums on arcade machines yes....killercabs has been gone for a long time by the way. I posted on these forums....but most guys there only care about talking about buying a nice candy cab. They don't care about discussing the space and money saving supergun option. Or they only talk about buying a supergun and don't care about building one. Yes there are metal posts to hold up pcbs. But the mounting points on the pcb where the posts attach are fully plastic. If you look at a pcb, it's metal circuits encased in plastic. I think if plastic created static electricity then a pcb sure wouldn't work very well. I'm sorry but.....DUH. I don't know how you can think plastic would cause a static electricity buildup when the PCB is made out of plastic itself. not knowing what a supergun is is fine. Most people don't, it's not a common thing. Most people don't even seem to realize that an arcade game is a big circuit board inside of the cabinet that can be removed and played on something that's easier to store and transport. Like a regular home theatre system. Honestly before I built this supergun I didn't have any clue about a lot of arcade related things. I didn't know what jamma is, kick buttons, suicide batteries, neo geo having some models that aren't jamma compatible but use the same type of port. Also going through this adventure forced me to learn exactly what rgb, s-video, composite, and component video are and how they all work. Doing all this research was great fun because this's stuff I'm very interested in. I also learned a lot about modding controllers. How to change a pcb and solder whatever type of pcb you want into the buttons. Also how to swap arcade joysticks between controllers. Most of this information was easy to find on the internet. You just have to do a lot of reading and thinking on the subject.
