I am trying to figure out if it’s possible to “consolize†the non-Jamma Ms. Pac-Man board to work on a modern wide-screen HDTV and a custom joystick as described below? It seems like the biggest problem for this is screen-orientation. The output of the board would have to be modified so the output would be 90 degrees to the left. It would also have to be something that would work with a modern wide-screen HDTV, which would mean converted from RGB to something NTSC-friendly. Is this even possible? My wife is into retro-consoles as am I, so she completely understands the difference between this and a port to another system. We both understand that it might be way cheaper to just buy the cabinet than “consolizing†one, depending on how difficult it ends up being) We both understand that we will have to find all the parts needed and that even provided all needed parts, it will be difficult to find someone willing to do this for us, and when we do, the cost will be very high. We have been wondering if putting some other games into the same “console†that the Ms. Pac Man is in would help justify the price. Pac-man should be easy since they share the same board practically. We aren’t sure what other games if any could be added to more justify the cost of consolizing the Ms. Pacman. I think I’ve seen some cabinets with Pacman, Ms. Pacman and Galaga a few times. The other thing is a 4-way joystick/cabinet would have to be constructed. Right now she plays Ms. Pacman mostly on our S-video modded Atari 2600, and having small hands, she’s had lot of problems with joysticks (we’ve tried several of the Atari compatible joysticks out there - standard CX-40 , TAC-2, Amiga Power Stick, Competition Pro, etc. ) and they all hurt her hands because except for the Amiga Power stick she has to hold them with one hand and use the joystick with the other. She uses Genesis pads as they hurt her hand much less, but really wants to use a joystick like the game was made to be played with. So we are looking to make a custom joystick “boxâ€. This would be some sort of solid “box†kind of like a night-stand like affair, at the right height to be at hand level for someone sitting on sofa, with a real arcade joystick coming out of it so someone could use the joystick with one hand. Ideally it would be set up so it could be used on other systems too, like the Atari and Genesis and such. So first we are trying to figure out if all of this is even possible, and then what kind of price range we are talking (around $1000, around $1500, around $2000, more?) for parts and labor, and then if we still want to do it, we’ll then worry about finding someone who is willing to do it at that point.
Why not build a MAME cab and use a nice flatscreen monitor with it? My uncle and I did this to a old SuperPac cab we found and we painted it up and stuff and its great. Plus you can have as many titles as you want on the system and it doubles as a VERY nice jukebox I know its not actual PCBs, but if you think about it Computers are: 1) Much easier to hookup and use 2) Much easier to fix and replace parts 3) Much cheeper and more powerful Not saying PCBs are bad as I know there are some hardcore collectors, but I just think they are to big and expensive to actually use should you have them. Good luck though!
The custom joystick box is very doable. I built one following the guide here for a supergun: http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/jamma.html Happ Controls sells a ton of different parts, you can probably find what you want there. As for making it genesis/atari compatible, that adds a little bit of complexity. Probably need to throw in a switch to go between the two. Also for the genesis youll need a 74HC157 chip inside your joystick box. Atari: http://www.epanorama.net/documents/joystick/tvgames.html Genesis: http://www.gamesx.com/controldata/gencont.htm Finally, as for rotating the pacman video, Im not aware of anything available that you can just buy to go and do that. Id think someone could program an FPGA fairly easily to rotate the video 180 degrees on the fly, but doing a 90 degree rotation is a lot more logic because you need to resize the video. Its probably possible, just a lot of work for someone.
You could do the video transform without too much trouble but it'd need a lot of tweaking to look right. To run my Pacman board I bolted an S-video encoder onto my Supergun, then ran the feed into my LCD monitor and rotated that, it worked out much easier. If you did want to use an FPGA it could be done, you'd need to digitise the input video stream at a convenient resolution, store it in a dualport RAM (unless you worked out a convenient interleaving method - much harder than you might think) for one frame, then output it to an ADC. It's mostly complicated by the need to have a full frame stored before you can start outputting it in a different order... I can give you some tips if you're up to it but I'm not going to do it for you Stone
Ok, I didn’t want to respond without doing a lot of research first. Now that I have done that, it is obvious that this project isn’t worth it just to play 1 or two games, but, if a supergun with a horizontal/vertical switch could be made, now THAT would justify making a FPGA to rotate the output, at least for my wife and I, anyway. So I am creating a new thread just about building a supergun with a horizontal/vertical switch using FPGA. Stone, I have quoted your last post in the new thread. It is located here http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16935
