Along while back I wanted to either build or buy a SuperGun but I never did get around to it. I did however buy one of my favorite arcade games Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting for 10 bucks when I saw it for sale. After several years I even tested it with a friend's arcade cabinet. I'd like to actually get to use it though so I thought I'd ask what would you say about the cheapest I could build or buy a system for playing Street Fighter II. I am in the USA without any RGB display devices so I'd need composite or s-video ntsc signal output. I do have a barely used 350watt ATX power supply for a PC I could use. So what kind of options do I have? Obviously money is an issue, the less it costs the better. It really doesn't have to look pretty so long as it works and isn't a fire/shock hazard. Any help and suggestions would be appreciated. I've held off on expanding on a JAMMA pcb board collection because of the lack of any way to use them. If I get a system together though then I could try hunting down some of my favorite games.
Unfortunately ATX isn't best reasons I can't remember. Your best bet for the chip would be to pester companies into sending you a sample chip, which cuts out the main cost. Beyond the chip its just the power supply and then various wires and connectors
If you're going to use a PC power supply it should be an AT, not an ATX. As for the encoder, you can either do what steadster suggests or just go and get a premade solution called a JROK ( www.jrok.com ) which gives you automatic S-video and composite outputs (and it works well too, that's what I used in mine). At minimum you're going to be spending around $75- $100...maybe more if you go the JROK route. You need to factor in costs for wire, parts for a joystick (if you're making your own), a Jamma harness, solder + soldering iron (assuming you don't have one), power supply, case, etc.
I beg to differ. While ATX has a soft switch, which adds about 2 minutes of extra work, you're far more likely to find an energy efficient ATX supply. AT SMPS require higher minimal loads, they also require larger transformers and capacitors (they're straight up bigger) since they switch slower. Most ATX supplies in the wild are also less dirty than AT which is reason alone to get one. http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/22
To each his own. When I built my Supergun 2 years ago, the various builders I associated with all called for AT supplies. If you look around at CompUSA, you can get a brand new AT 250 watt Power Supply for $19.99. On my first pass, that's what I used since the wiring scheme was nice and clear which made it easy to wire up to my Jamma loom and JROK. On my second attempt, I went with a Jameco power supply to give my 2nd edition SuperGun a more console-like appearance.
Video most definitely adds the most to the cost of all this. What's the current cost of the JROK encoder if anyone knows off hand? Last time I asked him it was about 80$. I did find this in my searching though. http://crazearcade.com/catalog/prod...d=156&osCsid=80562ed5a3deca947640d8fa117627c0 It's an encoder similar to JROK but about 65$. Getting just the encoder chip from some company probably isn't something I want to do. I've worked with electronics before but I'm not all that skilled/experienced. An encoder board already put together and just needing to be wired up is enough for me to have to do. But I suppose I could hold off on any video related things and first just get the harness and power supply together, see if I can get the board powered and outputting sound. That should be relatively easy. Where though should I buy the harness, and what should I expect to pay for one? About the ATX, your link didn't work for me. How do you wire up some kind of power switch for it? Avoiding buying another power supply would be nice. Though I saw some Superguns with those Jameco power supplies that were quite nice looking. How much do those run? I guess my short term goal really is just to get the board to power up and then tapping sound. Then I'll work on video and lastly controllers. I have about 120$ at the moment to do JAMMA stuff with. And I take it, there's no where/no one that I can buy some sort of bare bones JAMMA setup from? Obviously not having too much work to get this working (as I'm a newbie at it and don't wanna fry or break anything) is very appealing. But buying some MasSystem's SuperNOVA for 300$ or more isn't appealing at all.
It's really up to you as far as the encoder is concerned. Personally, I'd spend the money and go with the JROK. Why? It's a clean solution, easy to wire, and you can tweak the RGB levels with those handy dials with any hassles. The JROK has been around for a few years and I've yet to hear anyone say they weren't happy with it (save for some minor intereference when using Composite on older versions...that's been cleaned up since) Building your own encoder or chip could be more educational or whatever, but you'll spend more time waiting for parts to arrive, etc. Mine cost around $80 a few years ago and I'm still using that same one. Where to get a Jamma harness? I got mine through eBay for around $10. You can get them from various sources, they're not that hard to find. Get it pre-wired if you can, unless you enjoy hand soldering all those dinky wires to each connection point. Getting the board powered up to output sound is a simple affair if you're using an external mini-speaker like I did with my first project. Just wire up your power supply properly and connect the speaker wire from the harness to the prongs on the external speaker. I believe it was a 3 ohm Radio Shack speaker ($5.00) which is similar to what older arcade cabinets used. In my second SuperGun, I used an attentuation circuit and some Red/White jacks to allow sound to output directly through my TV speakers. That takes a bit more work, so pick a method and plan your setup around it. Not that I know of. There are some UK outfits that sell Superguns, but they're almost always set up for SCART output. If you're interested, I may consider parting with my second edition unit if you don't feel like building your own. Good luck.
How much would you want for your second edition unit? And What kind of unit are we talking about exactly. Something you built yourself right? If I was to build a supergun I think I would go with JROK as well since I too have never heard anything bad about those boards. And I've known about them for quite some time. Still, if I can find a unit that is finished or mostly finished I'd rather do that than have to build one myself. It'd probably be fun to build one but later on when I have more time, where as now I'd rather get a working setup for SF2. Anyway, lemme know about that second edition unit, what it is, cost, etc. =)
It's one that I built myself...really compact in a black project case, a Jameco power supply, two controller ports that allow you to use a standard Neo Geo joystick (believe me, those ports are a pain...you have to solder wires to each and every pin) and external composite/S-video/Stereo jacks. Don't know what to value it at though since it is something I built myself. As I said, if you have problems building your own or don't feel like ordering all those parts, let me know.
I sent you a private message SuperGrafx. And Stone, I was wondering what was up with that green wire with the ATX power supplys. I had figured it was some kind of signal wire. If I had cared to pay attension to it when I built this PC I probably would have figured that out.
I'd say always use an arcade PSU where possible. They don't cost much - hey, if you have a spare PSU I'm sure a friend would give you $10 for it! I'd say I could make you one, but shipping to the US would be ridiulous!
Usually it's part of the motherboard setup - you have a tiny header on the board which is just a convenient place to attach a button, then the button hooks the green wire to ground to start the PSU up. I have a massive rotating orange beacon in my room (about 9" high and 6" diameter) which is powered off the 12V line from a PSU hooked up just like this Stone
seconded. while youre at it, consider using a dc-dc converter instead of a standard pc power supply, this one for example: http://www.aone.co.uk/ProdInfo.ASP?ProductID=746 instead of a bulky atx power supply with an ugly-looking harness, you use a slim black power supply with a 12v line (just like notebook power supplies) and this pcb derives all the necessary voltages from that. i used that to make a truly jamma-compatible mame-pc. no more power supply woes, you just plug it in and play, and it even looks like a real arcade game because i put it into an empty cps2-housing, really awesome.
Well I started building my jamma supergun today! And with great results! Much better than I'd thought. Within very little time after some shopping I had the power supply hooked to fuse holders with appropriate fuses and trhat hooked to my jamma harness. Next I hooked up the jamma audio to an RCA phono jack and went to test it out! After some experimenting with the green wire I found it must ALWAYS be held to ground when the machine is on, not just to start it up or shut it down. So anyways, after that, I heard that awesome Street Fighter 2' intro tune. I was quite happy. Shortly after that, I wired up my JROK video encoder without any fuss. But then I had a bit of an issue when I first tested it with a bad connection which was worked out fast so it wasn't that bad. So now I get video sound and power, but no controls yet! I'm gonna build the controllers tomorrow. I gotta find those 15 pin DINs though because for the NeoGeo I need to be able to hook up right to the controller ports since my harness didn't have the "4th" buttons wired. I got a 25 pin DIN set for one player for now incase I cannot find 15 pin DINs. That reminds me I need to get something for the SF2 kick harness. Still, it was alot quicker/easier than I thought for the wiring. Making nice cases and doing the controllers should take longer and be harder perhaps. Probably just take longer more than anything. Also, does anyone know why I might not be getting sound off my NeoGeo MV-1 PCB? I set the switch to mono and didn't get anything. Is a DIP switch setting required? Is there something in the setting menu that must be set? I was disappointed not getting to hear my KoF99' attract mode.
It may very well be a dip switch setting which is keeping the attract mode sound off on KOF 99. You have to remember that the Neo Geo has Soft dip settings, so you'll have to actually flip dip switch 2 on the actual MVS board to enter the soft dip mode and make the sound/credit/difficulty settings using the on-screen soft dip mode. Here's a description as to what the MVS on-board dip switches do. http://www.nickthfury.com/neogeo/mvssys.htm
Ah crap, I didn't even think about the attract mode sound being off! Anyways, happy picture day. http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/1.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/2.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/3.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/4.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/5.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/6.JPG http://ninjagaiden4.thegaminguniverse.com/7.JPG My Supergun now has a very nice arcade controller. Currently it's connected directly to the harness, later I hope to change to 15 pin DINs matching the NeoGeo. Mainly because my JAMMA harness I bought was truely JAMMA and didn't have a '4th' buttons for NeoGeo. I even used some stacons and electrical tape and made myself the SF2 kick harness. Works wonderfully. I'm quite surprised with how well I got this together in such little time. The longest amount of time was spent making the controller boxes. I'd never have gotten it done so well without help from my dad though. He really helped out with cutting the wood and putting it all together. We did have trouble when we made the button holes as I thought they were 1 inch, they needed a 1in. and 1/8th! But it all works nicely now. The main unit box will be in the future, with the DIN connectors so controllers are removable. It's a very cool project. Still more to do too. Second controller, painting the controllers maybe. The controllers and the main box to make everything look nice basically.
Well done, it's looking good! The JROK makes things much more fun IMO. Yeah, you can go through the hassle of building your own video encoder, but why bother when such a professional and functional device exists for such a reasonable price! Best part with building a Supergun is the fact that you stay motivated. Things come together quickly once you acquire the necessary parts. Getting a functional model is easy, the most time consuming aspect all comes down to building the controllers and customizing the whole setup.
Right now I'm going through the painful process of adding controller connectors and wiring the controllers up to a cable and wires in it, rather than just putting the nice connectors on the button prongs. I'll not finish that tonight. I did paint the controllers today though. The are now flat black. Pretty nice. I'll take a picture later. But damn am I tired, I haven't gotten much sleep and long days of working on this. Update: Took all day today but I finally got the controller cable installed in the controller and connectors on the one controller and the player 1 harness inputs. I still have to do the second controller which so far only has the joystick and some of the buttons mounted. I still am waiting on some buttons to get here before I can do the second controller though as I bought a set of 2 joysticks and 12 buttons, so the start button was taken from the 2nd set of 6 buttons. Since I'd never used the crimp DIN connectors before I wasn't quite sure how to do them correctly so that's why it took all day to get all of the wiring done right. It even has the 3 extra buttons output to a seperate harness of sorts so I can connect to the SF2 kick pins or the NeoGeo D button. One more controller to go, then I need to assemble this all into a decent housing box. I'm not sure how well that will go as it truely is a mess of wires... Also the PC power supply forces me to make whatever it is very big.
