Well not a official Nintendo supergun but I was bored of seeing generic superguns in hobby boxes so I tried to make something different. So here is the MES (Mahjong Entertainment System). Which plays Japanese Mahjong games, the Mahjong connector came around the same time as the JAMMA standard but is wired up completely differently but uses the 56 Way connector that JAMMA boards too. As the Japanese knew that the Mahjong connector would not leave Japan they didn't put idiot safety on them, namely that Mahjong boards are not keyed, so you could plug in Mahjong boards upside down but I don't think many people did and the edge connector is away from the board unlike most JAMMA boards which have the edge connector cut into the board so the JAMMA edge is along the board edge. They also don't use -5V. The Mahjong control panel seems to be from a tabletop unit, which I bought a GFront had them cheap and was a lot less money then buying the switches seperately... So what features does it have Normal buttons, probably don't do anything? Well they all do. The power button does exactly that, it switches on and off. However putting 240V through the original button would have probably caused some problems so I desoldered the button, filed the aluminium holder down and used an old computer AT power button which fitted and drilling two holes meant I could screw it in and fit the plastic power button to it. The reset button is wired to the Coin Switch so I can press it to gain credits The power led is wired to 5V so I can tell it is on. The NES controller ports are still there but more about those later. I decided to use a 20 way connector for the Mahjong controller mainly as it was easy to solder too and made it easy for me to use the other 10 pins for something if I needed too. It has an 8 way Din socket wired to Megadrive RGB standard so I can use a generic Megadrive SCART lead. I can also use a generic SCART to Component box (about $20) to use on HDTVs which works well on the boards I have. As I knew I would probably use a speaker I just wired in some generic phono sockets in the old Audio / Video holes so I could hook up an 8ohm power speaker. it uses a generic IEC PC power cable, and the PSU is switchable so I can use it everywhere I also used the fan from a Dreamcast to give the PSU some cooling as they can get quite warm in long use. It is wired straight to 5V. The red button is a latching switch for the Test Switch The toggle switch switches between speaker - and ground as certain games require one or the other and will be quieter or have distorted sound. Seems older boards require ground and newer boards require speaker - connections... The blue button is just a service switch which isn't use that much but one game I have needs it to jump through the service menus. Still it's not finished as I want to do the following things... Tidy wires and add a sheet of thin stiff plastic so I can push the loom into the NES and close the door to make it look like a NES. Finishing making a NES controller board so I can use NES / Famicom plus controllers directly on JAMMA boards (mainly two button games although no reason I can't use Select or Start as the third button), I could also wire up a 15 pin D socket to use Famicom joysticks too... Make a JAMMA loom (will lack -5V but that won't be a problem, if I do need it then I could wire -5V to an unused pin in the Mahjong connector and maybe a toggle switch for safety). Add another latching switch so I can use look at games stats using the Analyser button Add a toggle switch so I can make the service button a memory reset button (which will clear the game stats). Build an audio attenuator board so I can use audio on a TV via the SCART socket.
Crafty, I just hope the NES was already broken when you took the case from it. That is certainly a unique looking Supergun. I don't know anything about Mahjong though.
I thought it was gunna be a supergun for Nintendo games, with an inverter and such. But still nice, if only I knew how to play mahjong
Cool. I was thinking about building an MVS supergun inside a gutted NES last summer, but never got around to it. You clearly went the extra mile with yours, hooking up the power LED, and keeping the power / reset buttons.
Yeah I was thinking the same on both accounts! Great job, however my Mahjong skills are really poor! Something I saw the other day on eBay in the UK was really cool, but I have no space for it. A Mega Drive arcade with 6 slots! Yep, I nearly chocked! £150 BIN but the lower tube was mucking up. It might still be available so have a look! How cool would THAT be?
Hehe, quite novel! I thought I'd post here in reply to the mahjong controller discussion, rather than hijack Parris' thread any further ;-) So the controller has an encoder in it? That's interesting. I thought it must have used a matrix. What's the pinout of the mahjong connector? I can't seem to find any info.
The Mahjong controller uses a matrix, using 5 common pins and 6 pins for Player 1 and Player 2, the latter not being used that much. I'll post a pinout later as even on Japanese sites a lot of them only have it incomplete. The controller itself uses a standard pin out too so normally the mahjong controller has a standard 12 pin connector which the loom can plug into.
Er every Mahjong game does, except for early to mid eighties games which might use the generic Nichibutsu pinout or a custom pintout . Some other games like Hanafuda and some other gambling games also use the Mahjong pinout as it supports the keyboard matrix. I'll post the Mahjong and Nichibutsu Mahjong pinout soon.
Hmm, interesting. There are a lot of games on KLOV which are marked as unique, and a few as JAMMA (not that I'm saying KLOV is totally accurate - far from it, I know). Also, all Nichibutsu games through to the 90s are listed as Nichibutsu. Did they stick to their own connector? In fact, up to 1985, Nichibutsu is marked as unique. Sounds like their connector came out around the same time as the JAMMA standard. Ahh, that site can be sooooo confusing sometimes!
