Arcade Motherboard

[ydcl]

Can someone explain an arcade motherboard to me?

I just saw one for sale on eBay and what would I have to do with it to get it to work normal?

By that I mean how many parts would I need to get it to boot.

 

Cheers!

[number six]

Arcade games are usually made up of these parts

 

Cabinet

Monitor (usually RGB)

Controls

Power Supply

Logic Board

 

Connecting all of this together is a harness. The harness is a mesh of wires that unifies all of this into a working game.

 

The requirements to boot up an Arcade Game Logic Board would depend on the game itself. After 1986 typically most games ran on a standard for this wiring called JAMMA. Thus on these JAMMA compatible logic boards you have a JAMMA connector which then plugs into the JAMMA Harness sorta kinda like a big cartridge. Games created before this period are all over the place and the wiring can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer or even game to game under the same manufacturer.

 

So if you just have the logic board you'd need to create the harness, then you'd need to wire the harness to a power supply, an RGB monitor and finally the controls (ie joysticks).

 

This really isn't something that is easy to do on the fly, your best bet would be to buy an arcade cabinet then run the board in that. If its compatible you can just swap the board in and out.. if its not compatible (ie on a different wiring scheme) you can use an adapter. There are some obvious considerations.. no adapter is going to make a Pole Position board run in a Mortal Kombat or vice versa.

[ydcl]

Arcade games are usually made up of these parts

 

Cabinet

Monitor (usually RGB)

Controls

Power Supply

Logic Board

 

Connecting all of this together is a harness. The harness is a mesh of wires that unifies all of this into a working game.

 

The requirements to boot up an Arcade Game Logic Board would depend on the game itself. After 1986 typically most games ran on a standard for this wiring called JAMMA. Thus on these JAMMA compatible logic boards you have a JAMMA connector which then plugs into the JAMMA Harness sorta kinda like a big cartridge. Games created before this period are all over the place and the wiring can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer or even game to game under the same manufacturer.

 

So if you just have the logic board you'd need to create the harness, then you'd need to wire the harness to a power supply, an RGB monitor and finally the controls (ie joysticks).

 

This really isn't something that is easy to do on the fly, your best bet would be to buy an arcade cabinet then run the board in that. If its compatible you can just swap the board in and out.. if its not compatible (ie on a different wiring scheme) you can use an adapter. There are some obvious considerations.. no adapter is going to make a Pole Position board run in a Mortal Kombat or vice versa.

Ok Thanks, I do own one myself. A street fighter 2 champion edition. (I do want another machine eventually.)

I was just curious since it was only $10 for the motherboard.

 

This is my machine:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/214481-our-new-arcade-machine/

[number six]

That cabinet is a pretty standard mid-late 80s Dynamo cabinet. It's Jamma and should run any standard Jamma PCB without much problem.

 

Only considerations would be..

 

Monitor Orientation - your cabinet has a horizontal setup so unless you want to tilt the entire monitor around its best to stick with games made for this setup. ie not a shooter that uses the monitor in a vertical setup.. although you can tilt the monitor in this cabinet to vertical if you'd like it'll just take a little bit of work (taking the bezel / glass off.. pulling the monitor out and rotating it, etc)

 

Controls - Jamma standard is a max of 2 joysticks and 3 buttons per joystick. Additional buttons require an aux. harness. Your SF2 has one for the kick buttons. If you get another game that uses more than 3 buttons you'll have to adapt that additional harness.. ie Mortal Kombat would run in this cabinet but for the extra 2 buttons per player you'd have to make an adapter for it to interface with your SFs additional buttons. The actual buttons themselves are all the same its just the way they are wired to the PCB since it exceeds the Jamma standard

[Nebulon]

_{$10.00 is a good deal for an arcade mo-bo.}

 

_{If you ever are looking at getting a board for an older coin-op, be sure that there aren't any missing boards. Some of the classic coin-ops have 2 or 3 boards (and maybe even a daughter-board as well).}

Edited April 22, 2014 by Nebulon

[SoulBlazer]

I seem to recall hearing about in the 90's it became common for many companies using 'suicide boards' for their logic boards -- that after a few years, the batteries on them would die and take the board with them, rendering totally useless. Doesn't that made getting some working boards for some games very hard?

[Keatah]

Just take apart a PC with MAME on it and voila! You've got a mainboard that can run hundreds of different games. I know, that's not what you're asking for. I just feel like being snotty.

 

 

In addition to what was mentioned in post #2, don't forget the speakers and their power & impedance (watts and ohms ratings). They should be match to the cabinet and mainboard amplifier to sound their best.

 

And then there is the coin slot..

 

As you can see, lots to wire up.

[Keatah]

I seem to recall hearing about in the 90's it became common for many companies using 'suicide boards' for their logic boards -- that after a few years, the batteries on them would die and take the board with them, rendering totally useless.

 

Was that for planned obsolescence? Or for anti-piracy measures?

[number six]

 

Was that for planned obsolescence? Or for anti-piracy measures?

 

Anti-Piracy.

 

The biggest issue here was the CPS2 boards which all had suicide batteries. There's a workaround for this (google phoenix cps2).

 

It was sporadically used by other manufacturers.. the only other one I ran into was Sega. My Moonwalker suicided on me which was a downer.