Best Advice For Building A Rock Solid Testing Station

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Best Advice For Building A Rock Solid Testing Station

I was wondering if anyone had advice on the best way to set up a testing work station for various arcade boards/monitors and power supplies. Since there seems to be an endless number of combos, I didn't know if it'd make sense to have multiple rigs (maybe a vector and raster set up for example) or if there was a way to put together more of a universal setup or maybe just to stick with a generic jamma setup. Assuming that you wanted to be able to test just about any piece of equipment/arcade that you happen to come acrosss, what set up(s?) would you create and do you have any tips for saving time/avoiding frustration. - Thxs - Seth
 
everyone's is different cause everyone has different needs.
You should determine what you are going to test and how much space you have to work with... do you need to be mobile?

I move my test rig around ALL the time so I needed it to be portable. I encased it all in wood

I went from it all tacked down to a piece of wood like this...

IMG_5314.JPG


to my finished 2.0 version here...

IMG_0131.JPG
 
everyone's is different cause everyone has different needs.
You should determine what you are going to test and how much space you have to work with... do you need to be mobile?

I move my test rig around ALL the time so I needed it to be portable. I encased it all in wood

I went from it all tacked down to a piece of wood like this...

IMG_5314.JPG


to my finished 2.0 version here...

IMG_0131.JPG

I've got to ask, what monitor's that?
 
I didn't really think about portability but could see how that would be a big advantage. The biggest thing I'm looking for is something that will allow the maximum amount of flexibility for testing as many different types of monitors and boards as possible. For example, I noticed that your joystick only uses 3 buttons. Does it make a difference when you are testing 5 or 6 button games or do the extra buttons get in the way of games that don't use them? Is there a way to build a gun kit that I could just plug into my test bench or would gun games need their own unique setup?
 
I run straight JAMMA on my test rig and not even 2P. I wanted it more portable. If I needed to test out a kick harness then I could just short the connectors on the kick harness. Why drill out more useless holes.

My test rig works for most standard res monitors with the same power and video hookups.

The monitor is a 7" LCD RGB monitor I got off of someone here.
By making it portable I can test non working machines by isolating monitor and JAMMA boards issues. As long as the monitor and the board fire up off my test rig then the arcade may be a nice pickup. I have some of my own adaptors already to go.
 
Gun games normally have connectors that connect directly to the board. I have a Jamma harness fully loaded, meaning every slot filled except for the key. I then have them all wired to buttons with the jamma Position # labeled on each of them, I have joysticks where the joysticks normally go. I then make or purchase jamma adapters to all the different types of boards. I have a 13" wells autosyncing monitor that I use, and have a iso transformer for monitors that need an iso transformer. I also have a nintendo section that is powered by molex connector with a sound amp, video inverter and 100v iso transformer so I can test nintendo stuff.

-Jake
 
My test rig isn't built currently, but my end goal is to have a "Pinball Wizard" standard for pinouts with molex connectors on all of it. Power supply to have a connector, video out to have a connector(standard pinouts, just with a 4-5 foot long cable). You get the idea right? This way I can adapt a standard test rig to what I'm testing. I have something drawn out for it with more detail, I just got to find it. Vector and raster will be separate as nothing much is common between the 2.
 
I was wondering if anyone had advice on the best way to set up a testing work station for various arcade boards/monitors and power supplies. Since there seems to be an endless number of combos, I didn't know if it'd make sense to have multiple rigs (maybe a vector and raster set up for example) or if there was a way to put together more of a universal setup or maybe just to stick with a generic jamma setup. Assuming that you wanted to be able to test just about any piece of equipment/arcade that you happen to come acrosss, what set up(s?) would you create and do you have any tips for saving time/avoiding frustration. - Thxs - Seth

Fully universal is a pipe-dream. I say just take a stab, and just start building it. It'll evolve over time as you learn more and encounter more hardware. I think everybody that hs done it has made mistakes, and changed their mind as to what works best for them.

Power supplies are particularly a pain to test, as they have widely varying connectors, and many older ones required different AC transformer inputs (i.e. it's difficult to test some regulator boards without the associated transformer power blocks).

On the game PCB side, I went a slightly different direction than most. I didn't create a JAMMA test rig, and decide to make JAMMA adapters for everything. My test rig has it's own "standard" pinouts for video, power, controls, & audio; I make adapters to connect to the game PCB to my various connectors. I keep them for popular/common configuations, and the rest I disassemble (extract the pins) to build new adapters.
 
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