JAMMA adapters - opinions on making

modessitt

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I'm building some JAMMA adapters for various boards I have to test, and I have a question for those who do the same.

When building an adapter for a game that has other games that can be swapped in, how do you decide to build it? For the game that has the most control inputs? Or just the basic power, video, sound, and generic controls so you can tell if it's working?

The reason I ask is because I plan to build one of the Taito Classic ones to test some boards (I know all Taito Classis's aren't the same, but the ones i have all have the same power, video, and speaker setups), but some boards only have two buttons, while others have more complicated control panels. Do I build it for the most complicated? or just get it where I can start and make sure I have good gameplay and not worry about whether a fifth button works, especially if buttons 1-4 do.

And I'm making a JAMMA-to-Sega System 8 so I can test a couple Choplifter pcbs. Should I just build it for the Choplifter, then add some extra jumpers later if I ever have a different System 8 board that needs more? or do I look up the pinouts on all the System 8 boards, and build the adapter to fit that one, knowing all the others will work with it, too?

Also, does it matter which buttons I wire up as S1 and S2? For example, a Scramble psb has inputs for Fire and Bomb. As long as can tell they are working, should it matter? or should I check the control panel layout and pick the closest to the joystick as S1 and so on?

Opinions? Just trying to make things easier to test on the bench...
 
I usually wire up adaptors fully. This way I don't end up troubelshooting a non-working button all because I forgot to install a jumper. This includes second player controls that would be only used on the cocktail setting.

I don't worry too much about the switch to button alignment, unless I plan to use the particular adaptor permanently with a board in a Jamma cab.
 
Unless it is going to be a dedicated cabinet for just that one game, I usually wire them up with a player one and a player 2 control 15 pin molex connector on the harness side, fully loaded. Then I can plug any control panel in with just a pigtail to adapt between the JAMMA harness and the control panel I'm installing. That way I can have a control panel with a single joystick and two or three buttons and a control panel fully loaded with two sticks and three buttons and all I need to do when I switch games is switch control panels and plug it the the game in and plug the control panel in. This works great for my JAMMA converted Defender since the control panel is just a board anyway. It doesn't take much to build a control panel dedicated to the control setup and it's plug and play.

ken
 
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