Hey all

Joined
Oct 5, 2016
Messages
39
Reaction score
3
Location
Arizona
I am looking to build on an existing arcade. Cruis'n series. I am trying to understand what I need pertaining to pcb, jamma boards, control boards, sound boards, and power supply. Some arcade boards have more than one, two, or three.

When I cruise through eBay, a lot of items are titled , pcb, jamma, jamma pcb, pcu board, etc.

So my questions are; pcb and jamma synonymous? depending on manufacture and date, do I need one of each? I understand the power supply, controls, I believe some boards have sound on them and some don't? So I figure learning the cruis'n series for this and hopefully I will start to recognize and understand other arcades and their individual needs.

Thanks, Matt
 
Welcome!

Might be good to start a thread in one of the other sections, like Technical - Videogames - General Repair And Help, with your game-specific questions, but real quick:

JAMMA is a standard. It defines the 56-pin pinout for a game board to interface with a JAMMA harness, and therefore, the cabinet. JAMMA was introduced around 1985, and was the standard for pretty much all game boards by around 1989. Most game boards post-1989 have a JAMMA connector on them. Would suggest googling that separately, for more info.

Some game boards (PCB's) are all-in-one units, others have multiple or many parts. Mortal Kombats, NBA Jams, etc, had a CPU board and a sound board, connected to each other through ribbon cables. Donkey Kong has 2-board or 4-board sets, the respective boards of either set connected to each other through ribbon cables. NAOMI has a main board that the game plugs into, and an I/O board. NAOMI 2 adds a GD-ROM drive. As you can see, there are many flavors of game board hardware. System16.com has some good general info with pictures, on many of the different arcade hardware architectures. Wikipedia is also a good source for individual hardware architecture information (for what wiki info is worth), and there are probably a couple other information repositories that other members could suggest.

BTW, love your avatar. :)
 
Last edited:
Thanks for replying. I'll hit up those suggestions, appreciate it.

I love the avatar too. Recent episode.
 
Back
Top Bottom