Sega Mini Cab Conversions

[geotrig]

Can't wait to see the progress!

what he said ,whoever he is


bring back turk !!

[zipper]

Looking forward to seeing these come to completion. Superb quality of work and finish.

"Obviously I'm not going to need to dispense cards so I don't need this slot. Luckily it can just be unbolted and I can make a blanking panel similar to the one next to it."
If you do make a couple of these, could you think about making extras? I suspect everyone who has done a conversion would like to buy one to help finish their cab off... just glued would be fine, rather than bolted.

[Flinnster]

One of my cabs has 2x blanking panels, made of acrylic by the looks of it and glued. They do a fine job.
If anyone doesn't want their original card slots though, I'll grab them rather than having them go in the bin. One of mine is a bit rusty, that's all

[FrancoB]

Can't wait to see the progress!

what he said ,whoever he is

bring back turk !!

Who the hell is this guy geofrig? Bring back my red helmeted knight


Yeah I should be able to make a couple of extra blanking panels zipper, I'll give you a shout when I get to that stage.

Flinnster, give me a shout if you need any help with CAD stuff or anything.


As most of you know I used to do quite a lot of wiring for people. I used to use one of our spare bedrooms for this and I had a fairly decent setup that made it easier to make things up. Wiring can be a chore at the best of times so anything that makes it easier is a bonus. However, in 2015 I changed jobs and my free time was probably cut in half and so I decided that was probably the time to hang up my 'soldering iron for hire'. I had been making things for people for about three years and I never managed to find time to work on my own projects. I'm still asked to make things now for people and I have to say no even though I hate to do so, mainly because I don't have the time but also because my wiring setup is now tiny and it's a pain to make things when you don't have hardly any space to work and not everything to hand.

I went from this:





to this:



I can even get in the room properly to take a photo

Still, it's not all bad. At the time I had my cabs in my living room which wasn't ideal. Since I wasn't going to be wiring as much any more I turned what was my work room into a games room. I need to get some photos of that up at some point too. Maybe once I get some more work done on these minis I'll be more inclined to show it off rather than show it with some random half finished cabs in the middle


One thing I did do whilst on hiatus was to do a group buy for some control panels as I wanted a fair few for myself and I thought some others might want some too. These are the ones I've got left for myself:



There's two 2L6Bs, two 1L4Bs and for some reason I have three 1L6Bs. I only need two of them so if any one needs an extra just let me know. I've also got seven blank panels for making other custom panels. I've got some NOS Taito spinners and NOS LS-30s so I'm planning on a spinner panel and a rotary panel. I'm also planning to make these:



The bottom two are Bishi Bashi panels which should be pretty straight forward. I'll install one on each cab in a VS setup. The same image will be mirrored on both cabs but it should still work well. As I've already got a 2P Sega Bishi Bashi panel I may see if I can get a three player game going.

The top two panels are for something I've been hoping would be possible for quite some time. They're panels for Rhythm Tengoku! I found a video on Youtube of a Rhythm Tengoku cab and thought it would be great to play at home as I used to love Rhythm Heaven on the DS. At the time there wasn't a way to play it at home but I hoped and prayed it would be available at some point. Looking at the control panel on Youtube I could see the buttons lit up and I thought it would be nice to get that working too. Looking at the CP I could see the Naomi must control/drive at least 14 outputs. I knew the Type 1 IO only has 6 outputs and so that couldn't be used. The Type 2 IO has 22 outputs and the Type 3 has 20 outputs. I thought Rhythm must either use one of those IOs or it's own lamp driver board. I was hoping ti was the former rather than the latter as I would have next to no chance of getting a specialised board for it. I did manage to pick up a Type 3 IO though so I put that to one side on the off chance that I could.

And I'm so glad i did! Since then darksoft has got the game netbootable and the Type 3 IO has been shown to work with the game and drive all of the outputs!

skate323k137 over at AP had already got Rhythm Tengoku working with a Type 3 IO and his progress really spurred me on to see if I could get it working. I wanted to see if I could as it would affect how I wire certain parts of the cabs.

Firstly, I wanted to see if the IO worked at all as it was untested. I had a 'wiring jig' which was just a load of buttons mounted in some fibre board and I connected some old wiring looms to that and connected some dupont connectors to the other ends which I could then plug into the 60pin AMP RA connector of the IO. I wired everything up, went into the JVS test menu and...... nothing. I couldn't seem to get any inputs to work. I could see the analogue values changing but I couldn't seem to get any life from the CP. I could remember having similar issues when working with Type 1 IOs in the past and I could remember having to join certain pins together but I thought it was GND pins. No matter what I tried I couldn't get it to work so I headed off to trusty old google. After searching fruitlessly for quite some time I stumbled upon a post of Mitsurugi-W's which game me the anwser I needed. For digital inputs to work, pins 01 (+5V) and 03 (+5V) need to be linked!! I quickly ran back up stairs, linked those two pins and bingo bango, every input worked, phew!

Next up was to see if I could get the lamp outputs working. skate323k137 had already found out that they need to be wired with a common positive input (eg 5V or 12V) and then the negative leg of the lamp/LED connects to the output of the IO. The outputs of the IO are floating until activated at which point they are grounded. This completes the circuit and light the lamp/LED. skate323k137 had kindly mapped the digital outputs from his Net City and the 20 pin AMP RA connector of the Type 3 IO but as I'll be making custom looms from the Type 3 IO I also needed to work out the pinout from the 60 pin connector. To save soldering I connected some LEDs and resistors to a breadboard and connected the other side to single dupont connectors which I connected in turn to the IO.

Ghetto 'wiring jig' panel:



Glutenboard:



Messy as **** but it's only for testing and it's functional.

Bingo!





As you can see the game has a nice test mode where you can turn each output on and off which made figuring the pinout simple. In case anyone wants it it's here:



As you can see there are outputs for each button as well as five other lights on the cab. I've started to look where these are used in the game to see if I can use them on the cab. The marquee for example is LED lit so I might use that along with some other lighting.

I decided to move on to getting both monitors up and running as I wanted to see how I was going to plan all of the Vs wiring; controls, video, audio and light outputs etc. I've only ever had one of the new monitors working so I figured I should install the second monitor and check it works



Mmm, dat new chassis smell



I need to fix the chassis to shelf but first I need to find the right position where nothing would foul.



I had installed the tube in the cab as I figured it was the best place to keep it safe but I had not installed the chassis. I noticed that the neck was really close to the back of the cab and I was worried that the neckboard would foul once it was installed.



Thankfully it doesn't foul and there is more clearance than I though, phew! I tried rotating the monitor a few times and it rotates freely without catching. One of the great things about these cabs is that the 14" tubes are so light!



Once happy with the position I marked and drilled the holes. The chassis needs grounding to the cab so I removed some of the paint using a Forstner bit to ensure a good metal > metal contact.



Chassis in and secured I'll connect everything up tomorrow and fingers crossed I'll get a picture.

[FcoBenitez]

amazing stuff Franco, your old setup was perfect! I might steal some ideas from that setup

[geotrig]

Can't wait to see the progress!

what he said ,whoever he is

bring back turk !!

Who the hell is this guy geofrig? Bring back my red helmeted knight

everything ever !!

looking forward to the seeing the tengoku setup progress !

[jugemscloud]

I've been chipping away at the design for one of my cabs - rainbow island dedicated, the intention is to have every sprite in the game on it (excepting the 3 secret stages) and also show the mechanics of the game as well (original image is 30kpx x 30kpx

DisplayCollapse view

[Flinnster]

#JealousIfYouHaveOriginalPCB Jugems!

I'm enjoying playing Rainbow on a pi->jamma emulation setup currently. Works really well on the little Dino, that's for sure

[jugemscloud]

it was the first pcb i ever bought, and holds a lot of nostalgia for me. when i was a kid my mum was amazing at the port by ocean for the nes and was her favourite game after tetris, she could complete the game and she swears that she did all the secret islands as well but i have no memory of this, i wish i did because it would be its her 60th next year so I'm toying with the idea of giving it to her for that

i still have school jotter somewhere where i drew a picture of the first world boss and the story of it for the what i did this week thing we used too have to do, this is in primary 1 or 2 (1991/92)

[Flinnster]

That's an amazing story! One cool Mum!

Blows away my 'I like Rainbow Islands, it's one of my faves!' by quite some way!

[FrancoB]

Ok, so I got the new chassis and tube hooked up and connected my Naomi setup first as I had it set up already. Crossed my fingers, flipped the switch and......



Who-hoo, she lives!

It's all been sat untested in boxes in my loft for the past few years so to say I was relived to see it working was an understatement!

That picture was 'out of the box' which was pretty good. The only thing I needed to adjust was the trapezoid, focus and colours. The RGB gains/cut offs are on the neck board and the trapezoid place is on a really awkward place in the centre of the chassis:



I needed to pull both the tube and chassis to adjust them. The hori/vert setup in this cab doesn't use a frame as it wouldn't fit when rotated so I knew I needed to be carefull when pulling them out. I didn't want to have to discharge the monitor just to do those couple of adjustments so I made a temporary stand to hold the monitor upright so I could pull everything out together:



31k adjusted, trapezoid (and colours):



15k adjusted (focus only):



There is a bit of compression on 15k which is common with the 666 chassis. [There is a fix] for it though which I'll perform later on both chassis.

I now have two cabs with working monitors It was really nice to see them both running after they've been sat with blank screens for I don't know how long.












Next up was to see how the monitors would handle duplicating the image for Vs/Co-op linking. The monitors take both 15k and 31k through a 15 pin d-sub. For initial tests I just tried using a VGA splitter to split the 15k image and it seems to work great. Please ignore the pikey wiring, it's from a really quick and dirty test loom I made years ago:







I read up on splitting a 31k image and spoke with Invzim about it too and it seemed not the best idea just to use a Y cable so I bought a VGA splitter which worked a treat





31k on small monitors looks awesome


Now that I know I can split the image fine I can get to work on planning the service panels and link wiring etc. So far i know I'll need the following:

*​Separate power switches for PSUs and Monitors. The monitors switch/sync on/off a few times whilst the Naomi is netbooting. I don't know if this stresses the monitors but I would rather not risk it. Seperate switches would mean I can turn the *PSU/Naomi etc on first and then switch the monitors on a couple of minutes later.
*Power switches for JAMMA/JVS and or VGA switches - need to look at this
*Service/test buttons.
*Voltmeters to measure -5v, 3.3v, 5v and 12v at the JAMMA edge/Naomi mobo etc
*RCA inputs and switch to switch between attenuated mono JAMMA edge audio and line level/attenuated stereo input
*Monitor controls - basically I'll mount the existing monitor board behind the panel with the pots poking through. I may need to relocate the 15/31k switch though
*Stereo amplifier controls.
*Controls selection connectors - see below.


Control wiring wise I'm thinking of using JST YL as the cab already uses a fair amount of it and I have thousands of contacts left over. The control panel uses a 21 way YL connector but I'm going to swap this out for 12 and 15 way YLs as it will give me more flexibility than wiring two players through one connector. ​I'll still use a 21 pin YL connector for the VS link cable though.

I'm thinking of wiring it something like below:



Red = Receptacle, Blue = Plug.

The current plan is to make Cab 1 JAMMA/JVS and the Cab 2 JAMMA. Cab 1 would be the 'host' cab for linked games. I do have some spare IOs though so I may possibly make both cabs JAMMA/JVS.

The wiring plan below should allow me to select which system to connect the controls to both when using cab one on its own and when using both cabs in Vs/co-op. It should allow [P1/P2 to be on Cab 1 : P3/P4 to be on Cab 2] or [P1/P3 to be on Cab 1 : P2/P4 to be on Cab 2] ​ etc.

Think that's it now. Still mainly planning at the moment but that should hopefully make things easier later on.

[Flinnster]

No words. Just awesome. I will put my lower jaw back later.

[jugemscloud]

the one thing i never get is why people don't take that little bracket of the top as the square edge of the top give the cab ai much more solid look, and its only there to hold the ludicrous marquee in the first place so pretty much pointless unless your doing a custom marquee or going full stock. looking good though franco always been impressed by the effort you put into working out how to tate these things properly and then the level of craft in the execution.

vs city mini artwork?? i had though of that for my pair but i hate fighters

[NGAES]

Glorious CRT's.

[GeekMan1222]

Good lord fran, you are a wizard a GD wizard

[Makoto]

Stunning setup.

[emphatic]

Looks marvellous, FrancoB.

[FrancoB]

Cheers y'all, It's nice to be working on things again

Made a little more progress here and there.

One of the biggest pains I had recently is that the doors keep swinging open as they don't have any locks in them. I picked up some 5380 locks and keys a while back and they're a perfect fit! They didn't come with any cams though so I made some. Fortunately the locks were the perfect length and so I didn't need to make offset cams and simply had to make some out of some 2mm aluminium. Unfortunately doofus here didn't plan the orientation of the slot in the cams very well and the ones on the left don't work due to the orientation of the hole for the lock body and the way the key is held in the lock when the lock is 'open'. If any one needs to make any then make them like the ones on the right. I should be able to use the ones on the left elsewhere on the cab if I make the slots into 'crosses'







Ideally, the cash box wants to be keyed different to the main/back doors, although it not like they're going to be on location. I did pick up some Blast City coin door locks/keys a while back. If I can find them I'll use them for the cash boxes.

Pretty much got the IO panel figured out. Just need to order a few more JST YL's from RS Components.



Panels are 2mm aluminium. The end pieces will fit perpendicular to the front panel to support it. The audio amps will go in the bottom right hand corner. Hopefully I can get them cut soon, once I have them done I can start the bulk of the wiring.

Buttons for the Rhythm Tengoku and Bishi Bashi panels arrived. They're only cheap ones from China but they're not actually too bad! The BLEE micros on some of them are a little stiff so I might need to change them. They all came with microswitches, lamp holders and LEDs though. All the buttons below came to £27/$38 shipped which is crazy cheap!



To mount the buttons in the panels I need to make some 25mm and 57mm holes. Usually I would use Q-max punches for thinner mild steel panels but these are 1.5mm stainless panels and I don't think the Q-max punches will last long and/or will deform the panels with the amount of force I'll need to apply to punch them through. I don't think normal hole saws will last very long either so I'm going to try some carbide tipped hole saws like the ones below..



Hopefully they'll make light work of the holes.

[emphatic]

Lepai amps are rad, good choice.

[flibustier51]

You are making an amazing job !!
they are really nice