Are you running FPGA/Emulation to protect your boards?

This is serious power. DE-10 nano clone sitting on the Jamma Expander. Load your core, run your rom/s. Still expensive for now, this setup (IF you can buy it) is going to run $400-$500 after shipping and taxes, but the price delta will continue to grow as FPGA gets cheaper and original board sets get more expensive.
Funny thing is those expanders are like the Rolls Royce of choices.

I realized I totally lied because I have a MiSTer in my scratch built DK, but since it had no wiring I did it cheaply myself. DE10-nano, Lepy amp, USB OTG for controls and RGB amp from Ultimarc. 240p out to the CRT and it starts up in about 2 seconds.

The jamma/jvs expanders have some great features but I haven't really found any of them particularly useful.
 

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Most of my games have some sort of multi setup in them, and many of those rely on an emulation or FPGA board, in which case I typically leave the original (hopefully working at any given time) board in the machine but play primarily on the emulation board. A sampling:

TMNT - Runs RaspberryJAMMA for Konami 4P games, but I bought a TMNT board set for completeness.

BurgerTime - Runs a Bitkit, no OG PCB for that one

SF2ce - Has original CPS board, but runs off a Mistercade that is set to play all the CPS through CPS3 (horizontal) games

1943 - Has original board set, but runs off RaspberryJAMMA to play over 50 vert shmups ranging from 1942 and Commando through early 2000's Cave stuff

Afterburner - Has original board set, I also have a SmartyPi that may go in that one

Pole Position - Runs off PiPosition, hopefully P4 Position soon. I'm not wrestling with keeping an original working on that one.

Multiwilliams - Runs a JROK

I have several other cabs with multi capabilities, but the rest are either running multiple OG boards on a switcher, or some sort of chip swapping multi kit like the Apocalypse Sega 16b multi or the HSS 3DK kit.

In the end my goal in this hobby is to relive the experience from my youth, play the games on the right controls, in the original cabinet (or as close as possible), on a CRT monitor, coin operated. Whether the game code is running only on original logic hardware, or on an emulator that has no practical perceptible difference (to me) from original is not as important to me.
 
We have $100 MiSTer clones available now on aliexpress with impressive numbers of arcade boards supported (in addition to almost literally all consoles/computers up to N64/Saturn/PS1). FPGA will absolutely take over in the next 20 years for all but the most stubborn collectors.

I don't even think people on this forum have really given MiSTer a shot, but it runs practically all classics plus MCR 1/2/3, Neo Geo, CPS1, CPS2, Sega Sys 1, IREM M62 and 72, freaking CAVE shooters, Simpsons, TMNT etc etc etc. All with original video timings using a $10 hdmi-to-vga converter (although you probably want to run it through an RGB amp for arcade CRTs).

And I say this as a guy who has a PCB-fixing youtube channel. I have original PCBs in all my cabs because I think that's what the arcade hobby is to me.

We're far into the era where custom 1980s chips are failing, like POKEYs and Namco customs. Thankfully we've had some great people who have been able to reproduce the '80s ones, and the hybrid modules that were so popular for a while in the '80s/'90s crossover.

But now we're entering the period where the '90s chips are starting to fail, for example the mass death of CPS-A-01 on CPS1 boards. And despite a full reverse engineering in 2021 (by WydD on arcade-projects), there has been no reproduction produced, presumably due to complexity, cost, and however you would solder the repro to a 160 pin QFP footprint.

I would be all over an FPGA solution mated with a vector generator. AFAIK currently though, the MiSTer cores for vectors aren't ready for prime time, even if we did have hardware to properly support them.
 
Funny thing is those expanders are like the Rolls Royce of choices.

I realized I totally lied because I have a MiSTer in my scratch built DK, but since it had no wiring I did it cheaply myself. DE10-nano, Lepy amp, USB OTG for controls and RGB amp from Ultimarc. 240p out to the CRT and it starts up in about 2 seconds.

The jamma/jvs expanders have some great features but I haven't really found any of them particularly useful.
Nice setup and execution, a good way to try and control FPGA costs while it's still borderline from a price perspective. Yeah the expander is pricey but a good example of what to expect to see moving forward. Only a matter of time before a single FPGA Jamma board with multiple video-out options, built-in memory and audio amps becomes available for under $150 even under $100.
 
Yes, and no.

For me, it comes down to the risk associated with running original hardware. The "yes" category includes boards with harder to fix (i.e., more difficult components to repair, replace, etc., in particular those harder to source at all), vs "no" category where's it's trivial.

What keeps me up at night are tubes and other assorted irreplaceable aspects of CRTs, far more than game PCBs.
 
Nice setup and execution, a good way to try and control FPGA costs while it's still borderline from a price perspective. Yeah the expander is pricey but a good example of what to expect to see moving forward. Only a matter of time before a single FPGA Jamma board with multiple video-out options, built-in memory and audio amps becomes available for under $150 even under $100.
How assignable are controls on one of those setups?
 
Original game boards or nothing…mainly for the sounds. I'm one of those knuckleheads that can detect sounds being off, and I just can't enjoy a game that isn't 100% original. Yep, it's a curse, and I can't help it.

Jason
 
All done in software on the screen. There's defaults, but then you can override with with an interactive menu that just asks you press the buttons you want one at a time.

Thanks.

That is a limitation of some FPGA implementations, you can get stuck with the JAMMA configuration and have limited ability to customize controls for multiple games (a must for a multi-vector).
 
Original game boards or nothing…mainly for the sounds. I'm one of those knuckleheads that can detect sounds being off, and I just can't enjoy a game that isn't 100% original. Yep, it's a curse, and I can't help it.

Jason
This is why I haven't played my Donkey Kong cabinet more than once in the last 3 years. It has the DoubleDK, and the sounds are HORRIBLE for me! I play my OG DK cocktail instead.
 
90% of my collection is OG hardware. The biggest appeal of FPGA for me personally, is the multigame functionality and other features not found on the original boards. The aspect of reliability as a reason for using FPGA over the original board really doesn't come into play for me unless I'm troubleshooting an issue. It's awfully nice to use an FPGA when I'm trying to eliminate something from the equation. Case in point, I recently repaired the 6100 in @CarrieZ 's Tempest and because she had Scott's FPGA, it was easy to narrow the issue down to the monitor and fix it quickly without wondering if there was a board issue.

I will say that I've considered FPGA as a means of backup for if/when my original boards have problems. The biggest example would be my Cheyenne. I've really teadered back and forth about grabbing one of the FPGA just in case my board has an issue. But I haven't quite been able to pull the trigger because of all the Exidy games, Cheyenne is by far my favorite and the one game that would get play. So it's hard for me to justify dropping the cash on an FPGA board that may never get use. (Of course, now that I've said that, I've probably put some karma curse on my original board that has been running like a champ for 8-9 years 😝)

As for what FPGA I have, I've got @CraftyMech's Bitkit in my Eyes cabinet. The BitKit is one of the few multis that actually gets frequent use of multiple games. (I can't tell you how many times it happens that a multi is in a cabinet, yet never gets used other than one game.) It's great to play all of those obscure games and for myself, there's no reason for me to run my original Eyes board because the BitKit has the better version since it saves scores and doesn't roll the score at 1 million points. That's reason enough for me to run it. But if I ever wanted to go for a new world record, I could just plug the OG board in. @Yoeddy's comment about sound accuracy jogged my memory. I helped Aaron dial Eyes in back in the early development days and I remember the one thing that jumped out at me was the sound. While the game played perfectly, there was something about the audio that wasn't quite right. It sounded lowfi and kind of tinny. Aaron and I went back and forth until he nailed it.

The other FPGA I have is the MisterCade in my Capcom Big Blue cabinet. I knew early when I restored that cabinet, that it was going to have at least the Darksoft CPS2 multi in it, since this would be my Street Fighter 2 cabinet (namely SSF2T) and I wanted to be able to play multiple versions of SF2 in it. I was tipped off on the Mister during the same time as there was a lot of hype in the fighting game community about Mister with regards to the accuracy of the CPS1 and CPS2 cores. In fact, it was getting so good that some tournaments had begun adopting the Mister as a viable platform (instead of having to use several supergun setups.) So, I've got the CPS2 multi and the Mistercade running in my Big Blue with a switcher. The Mister gets more use (mainly for CPS1 games), but I can always jump back to original hardware if I want. Funny thing is that I've had plenty of competivie SF2 player friends over and it's been fun to do a blind test to see if they can tell which is running...CPS2 hardware or the Mister. (Spoilers: Nobody can tell.)

TL;DR
The biggest appeal of FPGA for me personally, is the multigame functionality and other features not found on the original boards.
The only time I tend to use reliability as a reason for using FPGA over the original board is if I'm troubleshooting an issue or can't obtain an original board.
 
I have a couple of FPGA variants, like the JROK and the BitKit, primarily for the multi-game capabilities they have. Secondarily, it's because I don't want to buy the original board for an empty cabinet supported by these options because the boardset is too expensive to warrant buying it (e.g. my Sinistar cabinet).
 
99% of mine are original. I have a JROK in my Q*Bert so I can play all the variations in a single cab. I might have a JROK in another 1 or 2 cabs for similar reasons, but I'd have to double check :p
 
Ha! I tend to do the reverse, I use the original boards and have a multi kit in case the original board dies!

I'm teaching my son to fix stuff, but he's gonna have to be a lot smarter than me to keep our games going stock in the future. I have to rely on the help and knowledge of so many people to get our games up and going (thanks ya'll!)

I don't know about you guys, but I ain't getting younger, so when the time comes for me, ya'll better still be around to help him on the more technical stuff!

So if there's a backup solution and I don't have original back up parts, I will throw it on a switcher. That way he can keep the game going to keep our memories going when I'm no longer able to fix a game properly. It'll drive him crazy though, because multiboards just can't get the feel of centipede right, so he'll never be able to beat my high score!
 
I'm testing my new Assault joysticks on Raspberry Pi 4 enlisting Assault because I can't get the original board anywhere. At least the repro sticks will be made exactly the same as the originals.
 
This is why I haven't played my Donkey Kong cabinet more than once in the last 3 years. It has the DoubleDK, and the sounds are HORRIBLE for me! I play my OG DK cocktail instead.
If it's helpful, the HSS 3DK kit uses a separate sound generator for DK, so it sounds perfect when playing DK on my DKJr.
 
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