Cell's Chinese Vewlix L

[Cell247]

I wanted to get a used Vewlix F but the cheapest I could find one with shipping to me in Austin Texas was $6000 from RiverService. I just couldnt justify that price. So I found this deal at Coinop:

http://www.coinopexpress.com/products/m ... _7837.html"

But then they had a sale on these:

http://www.coinopexpress.com/products/m ... _7872.html"

Price was around $1950. After reading that these AO members: http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11703" had ordered from Coinop and were happy with their purchases, I decided to order the L listed above.

Product ID: 007872
Item Type: Cabinets Only
Manufacturer: Taito
Country: China
Year Released: 2008

You can see it says made by Taito but country - China. I asked as many questions as possible before actually making my payment. They assured me these were real Vewlix. I asked for pics and they sent me some, but they could not send any pics of the inside.



I may have been drunk, Im not sure, but I bought one. This was about 70 days ago. After a really long time it was finally ready for shipping and I asked for pics of it being crated.





Well you may notice that now the cabinet is black with white. I was excited as this looked more like a legit L to me. So I emailed them to ask if my cab now was black and white when originally it was black and sliver. You also have to realise that every question takes a few emails. Now they say yes that this is the cab they are shipping. So more weeks go by and then I have to deal with United Logistics to get this to my home. But somewhere along the way from Coinop to the over seas agent to shipping to United Logistics there was a break down. So now Im told I dont get residential shipping unless I pay an extra $150. Coinop is telling me to not pay and they will handle it. But yesterday it arrived in Austin and I didnt feel like waiting so I went and picked it up. Now the warehouse hit me with a $55 in and out fee. I said fine. Then they hit me with a $20 forklift fee. The forklift moved 4 feet total I think. United Logistics says they will reimburse me. We will see. Ok here we go:

































I wanted to check out the monitor so I took it out:

































Here are my first thoughts on it.

1. Externally, its identical to my friends F except for the ashtray space which is not deep. This is normal for an L though.

2. You can see the LCD panel is a Wei-ya and Samsung. It looks to be VGA only but thats not true. You will notice the wire harness to the left of the vga. Its part of the Jamma harness and supports 15k and 24k. I think the native resolution is 768p.

3. When looking at the control panel wiring, it also is identical to my friends F. But the rest of the wiring no. You can see it has a jamma to jvs converter.

4. To my not so happy surprise, its 220v and not 120v like we they have in Japan and here in the US. So thats why they included this:




I honestly never thought Id ever have to use one. But now I do.

[Cell247]

So first thing I do is try out my TypeX2 board. Doesnt work. Gives me an I/O error. I try a few different things. So I move onto the Xbox 360. First I get out my new 360 PS3 PC pad hacks. Plug in the xbox to the vga cable connected the the LCD. Plug the sound into the rca jacks on the Jamma to Jvs converter. Turn everything on. I can hear the xbox startup tune but no video. I unplug the Jamma harness and get a pic but no sound. I then remember a member on NewArcadia had the same issue a few weeks back with his Chinese L. So I use google translate and try and figure out what he did. To get it work you unplug the the wiring connector that connects to the LCD. Leave the Jamma harness plugged in and now I get sound and video. Sound is really loud. There is no volume pot. So tomorrow I will get a rca adapter with volume control. It sounds pretty good though.

The screen looks ok. Id like to run a lag test on it. But it feels great with SSF4 AE. Im pretty sure there is a plastic piece infront of the lcd. Id like to remove it but then there would be a gap between the screen and the metal casing of the lcd. Maybe something can be done. The screen has a remote board where you can access the menu. Normal things like contrast brightness warmness sharpness rgb color adjust. I feel like the picture could be better. I mainly blame the plastic cover. But it could be I need to adjust more in the menu or the LCD just isnt that great. I really havent spent enough time with it.

I have a spare Sun power amp from a NNC. So maybe Ill rewire this thing. Not sure all what Id need. Id rather wire it up to proper JVS. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. One other thing is that it has a strip of small blue LED lights under the marquee holder. Its really bright. All in all though the cab is really nice and it will be fun to see what all I can do with it. I ordered these parts from Taito about a month ago:

F9007023A CONTROL SIDE COVER-L White

F9007024A CONTROL SIDE COVER-R White

N9351343A DX DISPLAY CARD BASEKIT（VEWLIX L）

G6000359A INDICATION STICKER S

I think white control panel sides will make it look even better. But Im not sure if the movestrip lighting basekit will work as the cab is wired differently. Im going to hook up a jamma pcb next and see if I can get it to work. I also had to put my NNC into my roomates room though.








Hooked up Progear to test the Jamma side of things:








It doesnt look good. Doesnt stretch or fit the screen also. Some of the image is cutoff. Over all its pretty bad.

Here are some more pics of the wiring:








I wonder what that small button swith does?











Deathsmiles II actually looks pretty good.

[Cell247]

Just picked this up for some volume adjusting:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index ... kw=2102975"

Works great.

Later in this thread, necron99 posted this info on the LCD panel:

I forgot to add, I found this spec sheet for the panel in your cab. This is just for the Samsung panel, nothing about the WeiYa electronics.

http://www.volvo-lcd.com/images/down/20 ... 545155.pdf"

General Description Description

LTA320AP02 is a color active matrix liquid crystal display (LCD) that uses amorphous silicon TFT(Thin Film Transistor) as switching components. This model is composed of a TFT LCD panel, a driver circuit and a back light unit. The resolution of a 32.0” is 1366 x 768 and this model can display up to 16.7 Million colors with wide viewing angle of 89° or higher in all directions. This panel is intended to support applications to provide a excellent performance for Flat Panel Display such as Home-alone Multimedia TFT-LCD TV and High Definition TV.

Features:

RoHS compliance (Pb-free)
High contrast & aperture ratio
PVA (Patterned Vertical Align) mode
Wide viewing angle (±178°)
High speed response
HD resolution (16:9)
Low Power consumption
Direct U-Type 4 CCFLs (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp)
DE (Data Enable) mode
LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signaling) interface (1pixel/clock)

Module Size 760.0(HTYP) x 450.0(VTYP) mm 50.5 (DMAX)
Weight TBD (Max) g
Pixel Pitch 0.51075(H) x 0.51075(V) mm
Active Display Area 697.68(H) x 392.25(V) mm
Surface Treatment
Display Colors 8 bit - 16.7M colors
Number of Pixels 366 x 768 pixel
Pixel Arrangement RGB Horizontal stripe
Display Mode Normally Black
Luminance of White 450 (Typ.) cd/m2

Thanks necron99!

I got the Type X2 to work. Same thing as above. You have to have this disconnected:



Leave the Jamma harness plugged into the converter board. Also plug the USB into the same card. Basically having the CGA wiring plugged in takes priority over the VGA. I turned the Type X2 dip switch 2 to on for 720p:


























Trouble Witches seems to only output at 480p. I have the Xbox360 set to 768p but its still doesnt look great:








I hooked up a laptop and jacked up the resolution. But I assume its just upscaling:

[Jan]

thumbs up for this review !

interessting to see how different this cab is.

thx mate.


ps.

when did you get the RS quote if i may ask ?

[Pete]

Nice report !

[DandySephy]

Wei ya panel
Wei ya P271

Samsung Panel, Weiya electronics

[DandySephy]

No, hence why I pointed it out.

It never ceases to amaze me when people say "you know what I mean" when what they say is completely wrong and not just tied up in semantics

This post was brought to you by the pedant brigade

[DandySephy]

Yeah, I should read 'I have packed the cab' as 'I put a single piece of bubble wrap around it' next time

Thats a cheap shot man, I thought we sorted this out

[andygeezer]

Wei ya panel
Wei ya P271

Actually what is wrong with Wei-ya LCDs?? They look perfectly good to me in the flesh as good as any retail LCD of similar price..

Another person coming to conclusion without ever seeing one in the flesh..

[Korszca]

That looks pretty good Cell. Strange they didn't tell you before that it would be running at 220v.

[emphatic]

Must be considered a bargain, huh?

[Cell247]

thumbs up for this review !

interessting to see how different this cab is.

thx mate.


ps.

when did you get the RS quote if i may ask ?

Thank you.

Here is the email I got from RS:

from RS AnJing an@rs2006.co.jp
date Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 7:28 PM
subject Re: Used Vewlix F
mailed-by rs2006.co.jp

Dear Finn:

Thanks very much for your mail.
We can get you a Vewlix F very soon. Price 498,000 yen ( shipping charge by sea is about 150,000 yen and by air is about 200,000 yen).

please consider and wait for your reply.

Best regards,
RS An

I assume that is the price for a new F. They were the only ones to even respond to a request for a used F. So I guess my statement above is wrong. The only F I could find for sale would be around 650,000 yen.

Nice report !

Thanks.

That looks pretty good Cell. Strange they didn't tell you before that it would be running at 220v.

Yeah I agree. But it works fine. Maybe later I will work on changing it.

Must be considered a bargain, huh?

Im not sure if I would say that. Now that the price appears to be $3351.95 USD from Coinop for this same cab, I guess maybe. But honestly I dont think anyone would pay that price for this version.

[necron99]

I asked for a price quote from RS back in Feb, I received the following on Feb 25th.

Thanks a lot for your mail about viewlix cabinet.
As you know, there are 2 kinds of vewlix cabinet in market, one is F
type, which uses a higher quality monitor, a higher price . The other is
called L type, less high, cheaper.

For brand new machine: F---490,000 yen, L----320,000 yen.
Second hand machine: L, F ----around 200,000 yen to 250,000 yen.

cheers,

[necron99]

I forgot to add, I found this spec sheet for the panel in your cab. This is just for the Samsung panel, nothing about the WeiYa electronics.

http://www.volvo-lcd.com/images/down/20 ... 545155.pdf"

[Cell247]

I forgot to add, I found this spec sheet for the panel in your cab. This is just for the Samsung panel, nothing about the WeiYa electronics.

http://www.volvo-lcd.com/images/down/20 ... 545155.pdf"

Thank you!

[necron99]

I found a better version of the pdf document. It has more pages and includes the response time as well.

http://www.treeviewthai.com/product/pdf ... 20AP02.pdf"

[Cell247]

Thanks.

I wonder how this compares to other similar LCDs. I really want to remove the clear plastic screen. Im not sure how hard that would be.

[necron99]

As a note, the Panel is 1366x768 as native resolution. So if you do anything else you are just rescaling and depending on the quality of the electronics in the scaler. That res is the standard for SFIV, and I am pretty sure the same native res on the Vewlix F and original Vewlix L. The quality of difference between the WeiYa and the Sanwa electronics comes in to play here. For the cost, I would assume the Sanwa is better, but you never know without some kind of testing.

Personally i would play anything that can output 720p or 768p at that res. Older stuff that is lower res, you will have to let it scale. There is no point in outputing a game 1080p or higher.


cheers

[Cell247]

I agree. I have the TypeX2 set to 720p output and what games can support that look good. Also the Xbox is set to 768p and it looks pretty good also. I hooked up Progear to the Jamma harness and it looks really bad. Even worse than I thought it would be. Ill post a pic later. Im still not sure why they would even wire it up Jamma at all. Seems like if they wanted to make it cheaper they would just wire it JVS and forget the converter and also the CGA wiring to the LCD. The Sanwa in the F is a lot nicer. But I will try and run some lag test on this monitor. Also I still want to remove the plexiglass protector.

[necron99]

I have a couple of questions.

1. It is wired as JAMMA with a convertor. Is it wired JVS with one of Taito's Vewlix JAMMA convertors added to it? Or directly wired from the various components straight to a system board with a JAMMA interface. (Probably a 3rd party board). This would mean it is missing the standard system board out of the normal L or F. (It wouldn't make sense to use a Taito Jamma convertor because it would be an added cost, but it would be awesome if you could pull it out and go straight JVS.)

This is the part I mean:
http://www.arcadespareparts.com/arcade_ ... 13178.html"

Aside from the fact there are many bootlegs, it appears many boards for use in China and setup for JAMMA not JVS, probably for compatibility with older cabs. That is probably why this came wired for JAMMA not JVS.

2. If it is JAMMA only, could you use a Capcom NAOMI I/O board to connect to the JAMMA harness, and connect your Type X2 via that? For the best results on the monitor you would connect the VGA from the Type X2 straight to the Monitor, bypassing the I/O.


cheers.