Building Golden Tee Fore Machine

[taylormadelv]

You don't need an adapter. There is a VGA cable that runs from the 3dfx card to the gt board. Just take it off the GT board and plug your monitor cable directly into it. You may need a gender changer. I believe you also have to change the dip switches on the board to go to hires mode.

I am in the process of a very similar project and I have been watching this thread closely. I got a GT Fore! green board from a klov'er here and then I was lucky enough to score a complete World Class Bowling cabinet 2 weeks later to put it in. The power supply was critical to get the HD to spin up, only the ATX PS in the bowling cabinet would power the game up, when I tried a power switcher outside the cabinet to test, it would never work. Funny thing was that the power switch on the PS was OFF when the WC bowling was in it, I had to turn the PS switch ON.
I was under the impression that GT Fore! only outputs med and low video resolutions, not a VGA type signal. I may transfer all the GT guts to another cabinet but that cab has a VGA monitor in it and I was expecting to have to run a converter to get the picture to display on a true VGA monitor. I saw your post and now I am curious if I can actually get away with running this directly to a VGA monitor..........
Once you play GT with a Missile Command 4.5" trackball, you will not want to go back, it's just very involved to play a non-mame version of GT with a MC trackball but it might be worth it.

 

[ArcadEd]

You can see from my pictures (sort of) that there is a black vga cable coming in the back with a blue plug and it plugs right into the cable off the 3dfx card. I can double check my dip switches this afternoon. but it looks fine.

 

[taylormadelv]

I will try this later and post results as well.....

 

[taylormadelv]

My GT Fore! Green board, I can't recall the version but it's 1.xxx, so it's old; would NOT work with a boat anchor, old CGA, CRT computer monitor. I picked an old POS monitor on purpose, all it would do is keep "clicking", trying to sync and would never take. Hope this is usefull.....

 

[ArcadEd]

Interesting. And did you try to set the dip switches to the higher res mode?

Here is a picture of my boot screen. Again, hooked up via the vga cable.

 

[taylormadelv]

I tried again with all dips in OFF and it did work this time with an old CRT monitor. I have not tried an LCD yet. That 27" in a real GT cab is a BEAST! I want to replace mine with something newer, not sure what yet. But it looks like I can get away with a VGA or CGA in this setup.

 

[ArcadEd]

Nice. Good luck with the project.

 

[mdwg2020]

Still no wiring schematics available

Also, can you hookup volume up/down buttons? I remember you use to be able to hold down flyover and click left/right at the same time. That seems to work on my '04 board but not by '05.

 

[mdwg2020]

Oops, I am good. It looks like b-24 will do the trick. Thanks a ton.

 

[mdwg2020]

Finishing Build - Couple of Questions

1) Is the power bypass cable something proprietary that I have to get from ITS or can I find one at Best Buy or a PC store?

2) Do I have to ground my trackball? I see two grounds coming from the harness?

3) What is the correct orientation of the trackball? I believe I read that the harness should be coming from the lower right-hand corner when you are looking at it.

4) Does someone have a picture of their JAMMA harness connected? I am trying to determine which way to plug in my harness to ensure I have it connected to the correct pins. From what I see, the harness is not "keyed".

I will post pictures of the cabinet I built as soon as I can get this guy running. Thanks for all of your help.

 

[mdwg2020]

Still Need Help

So I do have some answers:

2) Do I have to ground my trackball? I see two grounds coming from the harness?

Looks like I can simply ground them to a screw inside the cabinet.

4) Does someone have a picture of their JAMMA harness connected? I am trying to determine which way to plug in my harness to ensure I have it connected to the correct pins. From what I see, the harness is not "keyed".

Pin 1 should be attached to the shorter slot on the Jamma connector.

But I still need help with these two.

1) Is the power bypass cable something proprietary that I have to get from ITS or can I find one at Best Buy or a PC store?

3) What is the correct orientation of the trackball? I believe I read that the harness should be coming from the lower right-hand corner when you are looking at it.

 

[mdwg2020]

So I do have some answers:
1) Is the power bypass cable something proprietary that I have to get from ITS or can I find one at Best Buy or a PC store?

It looks like I won't be able to simply find a power bypass cable with the 9-pin molex connector and three 4-pin hard drive style power connectors coming off it.

This is a completely proprietary cable. What I have done is bought a couple of hard drive power "Y" connectors, and cut the 9-pin connector off the power supply, and then connect all of the wires appropriately. Looks like everything is now powering appropriately.

 

[mdwg2020]

You don't need an adapter. There is a VGA cable that runs from the 3dfx card to the gt board. Just take it off the GT board and plug your monitor cable directly into it. You may need a gender changer. I believe you also have to change the dip switches on the board to go to hires mode.

So I removed the cable from the 3dfx board, and plugged directly into my television (RGB input port), and a dell flat screen monitor, and neither screen would pick up the golden tee video output. Any thoughts on what I can do?

I tried all the dip setting changes on S5 to no avail. My Status 1 light is solid green, my Status 2 light blinks green, and I have red D75 and D77 showing solid. I know the board and everything works fine as we just pulled it out of my buddies golden tee cabinet. I just want to use my television instead.

Is there a difference between VGA and RGB (the input connector that connects on my TV)?

 

[ArcadEd]

Some Tvs label the VGA 15pin port as RGB. Should be the same.

Now is the stock vga cord still plugged into the 3dfx card, or into the golden tee board?

You need to remove the end from Golden tee board so it goes directly from the 3dfx card to the TV.

 

[mdwg2020]

Some Tvs label the VGA 15pin port as RGB. Should be the same.

Now is the stock vga cord still plugged into the 3dfx card, or into the golden tee board?

You need to remove the end from Golden tee board so it goes directly from the 3dfx card to the TV.

I assumed the label for RGB on my TV was synonymous with VGA. I removed the end of the cable that was connected from the 3dfx card to the GT board, and plugged that end directly into a Dell Monitor VGA cable.

On the other end I tried connected to both the dell lcd flat screen monitor as well as my 60" Panasonic television (with the aforementioned RGB input).

Nothing shows up at all on my TV or Dell Monitor. The Dell Monitor stays in sleep mode like it isn't getting the signal at all.

I see people talking about a CGA/EGA to VGA converter, but I don't want to spend the money on it if that is not the problem. I just don't know what else to test at this point.

Thanks for any and all help you can provide.

 

[mdwg2020]

I see people talking about a CGA/EGA to VGA converter, but I don't want to spend the money on it if that is not the problem. I just don't know what else to test at this point.

Thanks for any and all help you can provide.

Can you review the attached PDF which discusses the signals possible on my television and let me know if you believe it is not supported? If it is true that the signal from the 3dfx card is either CGA/EGA, then I am guessing I need to purchase the converter.

 

[taylormadelv]

This is funny, because while my boat anchor crt vga monitor works great with GT Fore!, I really have no idea what resolution it is running at or the vertical frequency. It does look really good though, I'd guess at least 1024x768 but I'm guessing. But from what I read here, I bet it's 25khz which my old boat anchor will lock onto but a nice, new lcd tv will not.

 

[ArcadEd]

I have run it on few LCDs and it's always been fine. Last one was a 24" Gateway lcd pc monitor.

Just so we are clear,

3dfx card has a cable running from it to the GT Board. You removed the end from the GT board (leaving it plugged into the 3dfx card) and simply attached your monitor cable to the end of the cable coming out of the 3dfx card.

In a nutshell, instead of the 3dfx cable being plugged into the GT board, it's being plugged into the TV.

 

[mdwg2020]

This is funny, because while my boat anchor crt vga monitor works great with GT Fore!, I really have no idea what resolution it is running at or the vertical frequency. It does look really good though, I'd guess at least 1024x768 but I'm guessing. But from what I read here, I bet it's 25khz which my old boat anchor will lock onto but a nice, new lcd tv will not.

So I would need to purchase a CGA/EGA to VGA converter, is that right? Anybody know the better cheaper ones to purchase if so? Some of them look like I will need to use the actual video inputs from the Jamma to plug into the converters, and then go to the television.

 

[mdwg2020]

I have run it on few LCDs and it's always been fine. Last one was a 24" Gateway lcd pc monitor.

Just so we are clear,

3dfx card has a cable running from it to the GT Board. You removed the end from the GT board (leaving it plugged into the 3dfx card) and simply attached your monitor cable to the end of the cable coming out of the 3dfx card.

In a nutshell, instead of the 3dfx cable being plugged into the GT board, it's being plugged into the TV.

That is exactly what I did. It looks like my TV my have some settings to change the resolution once the RGB cable is installed, so I need to try that and see if I have any luck at all.

Not too optimistic, but I can pray.