Need suggestions for a 4 player board

pacray

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I have tried Pandora's Box but can't get 3 & 4 player to work. I am looking for an option that plays 3 and 4 players, pretty much ready to go out of the box. Any suggestions?
 
The Pandora dx and up should support standard HID encoders for player 3 and 4. I've done it with a pandora but i find it just easier to use a Windows pc with ipac as i was able to get more games up and running and was able to adjust them on the fly much easier.
 
Thanks! So I can wire players 1&2 using the JAMMA wires, and when I attach the encoders it will resolve to the player 3&4 inputs, or is there some configuration I need to change?
 
RaspberryJAMMA/ARpiCADE has a four player add on board that supports JAMMA & either Midway or Konami three and four player looms. Could be worth a look if your Pandora doesn't work out.

* disclaimer, I make the RaspberryJAMMA hardware and ARpiCADE software.
 
Thanks! So I can wire players 1&2 using the JAMMA wires, and when I attach the encoders it will resolve to the player 3&4 inputs, or is there some configuration I need to change?

You need to go into the configurations menu of your Pandora and make sure it has support for four players. The Pandora DX and up should support four players. There is usually an icon of some gamepads which will indicate your board has support for players three and four to play with gamepads.

You plug your encoders in and jump back into your configurations menu. You can leave player one and two alone and begin configuring players three and four.

Those very cheap $10 encoders You can get from eBay and Amazon seem to work decently well for this but again I opted to go with a full-blown PC and ultimarc ipac encoder.
 
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My vote would be for the RaspberryJAMMA/ArPiCade option. There was a PandoraDX in my TMNT when I bought it, and while it did work with 4 players overall the Pandora experience sucks. A modern Oi-based setup emulates better and is a better experience.
 
I am running about a hundred 3 and 4 player games on my ARpiCADE TMNT cabinet...


NOTE: Not plug-n-play ... needs a little configuring ... but not terribly difficult.

EDIT: A vid I made years back...


Also take note that my cabinet is running a Pi4. The newer Pi5 is quite a bit faster even... and the newest version of the ARpiCADE 5 is working with 4 Players. I'm on the verge of upgrading, frankly...
 
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If you are using cheap zero delay encoders, I had an issue where I had to connect a button to the "Mode" connection on the pcb. Activating it changes the color of the led on the board and I assume the connection type. Unfortunately this setting is forgotten every time the board loses power.

Aside from that, my vote would be pi2jamma or arpicade like others have stated.
 
the newest version of the ARpiCADE 5 is working with 4 Players. I'm on the verge of upgrading, frankly...
This is good to know! The last update I saw the 4P adapter wasn't working with Pi5 yet.

I'm actually running a vanilla RetroPie setup in my TMNT right now with non-JAMMA wiring but I will soon be converting (back) to JAMMA so I can run a CRT and add an original board back in there as well, and I will be switching to RaspberryJAMMA/ArPiCade then. Good to hear I can use a Pi5!
 
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