Professor Pacman - Complete board replacement solution

brado426

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Hi,

Over the past couple weeks, I built a driver board for the lamps and LEDs and a Raspberry Pi 3 image to control it via GPIO for @shertz's Professor Pacman machine. For @shertz machine, we have ensured that the mod is 100% reversible by constructing an alternate wiring harness to plug the control panel and audio into.

While I was doing this, the strangest thing happened. Out of the blue, someone contacted @shertz, who also had a Professor Pacman, and saw a similar project we did back in 2005. They wanted to do the same thing for preservation and reliability at shows.

This got me thinking that maybe there are other Professor Pacman owners who would like to do this. This is such a rare game that I really thought this would be a one-off.

I still have 7 boards left. When they're gone, there's zero chance I'll be revisiting this project again. I'd be happy to share the Raspberry Pi image and provide information needed to get things working.

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To answer some questions that have been asked in PM:

1. I can provide you with the driver board and the Raspberry Pi 3 SD Card image for $100. I'm happy to provide guidance of what we did with @shertz Professor pacman, but you need to handle everything else yourself.

2. This is a complete hardware replacement. Raspberry Pi 3 runs the game and controls the driver board via the GPIO port.

3. Driver board says 12V on it, but when I went to install it in a real Professor Pacman, I realized the lamps are actually 6V. So only connect 6V to the driver board power input.

 
Anyone who wants one of these boards can feel free to Venmo me $100 shipped and I'll send a board out to you, a link to the Raspberry Pi 3 image and will provide you with help setting it up.


I now have 6 boards left. Once they're gone, that's it.

Thanks,

Brad
 
Here's the control panel wiring diagram. We are using this USB Zero Delay joystick for arcade controls available on Amazon and eBay (for even cheaper).

As long as the buttons all have common ground, it will work fine. One ground connection is good enough, of course.

If you use some controller other than this, you'll need to remap the controls in MAME in the Raspberry Pi image.


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Here's some links to the stuff you will need besides the driver board. A link to the Rasbperry Pi 3 image is also provided below:

You will need the following:

Raspberry Pi 3: https://a.co/d/bcflDlT
DUPONT cables: https://a.co/d/ersHsvC
6V Power Supply: https://a.co/d/7Fsmihf (This is a heavy-duty adjustable power supply. you can also get a 6V Wall Wart plug in power supply. As long as it is 6V and around 2000 mA (2 amps), it will work.)
Zero Delay Arcade USB Interface: https://a.co/d/5ZbUs5K (you'll need this for the controls)

You will also need an audio amp of some kind to connect to the 3.5mm jack on the Raspberry Pi. I use a cheap car amp, but you can really use any stereo amp. I haven't tried the one linked below, but I see this cheap amp on Amazon that should do the job. Looks like it also runs off of the 6V you'll already be using for the lamps:

https://a.co/d/dpNcgM2 - Audio Amp
https://a.co/d/iTuq7Zz - 3.5mm cable

If you want to connect the Raspberry Pi3 to an Arcade monitor, you will also need these, which will convert the HDMI video from the Raspberry Pi 3 to CGA (15khz)

https://a.co/d/9LtJNex
https://a.co/d/0PtDscx

You may be able to get some of this stuff cheaper on eBay.

Here's the Raspberry Pi 3 image:

ProfessorPacman.zip


drive.google.com drive.google.com

It will require a 16GB SD Card minimum. I'm using these industrial SD Cards: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304514119603
 
I've built and shipped out 5 boards! I had no idea 5 people would need one of these things!

If anyone else wants one, I'll need to buy parts so I can more boards. The cost would be $200, which includes limited support.

Otherwise, I'm going to call this project finished and put it aside. I hope this helped to bring these dead Professor Pacman machines to life!

We will have the original Professor Pacman machine I did this for at California Extreme next week. So stop by and check it out!
 
A question was posed to me as to whether you could use 12V LEDs instead of 6.3V incandescent bulbs with this board.

Yes, you can use 5V or 12V LEDs as long as you supply the proper voltage to the board's power inputs. If you want to use original 6.3V incandescent LEDs, you'll need a 6.3V 2 amp (preferably 5 amp) power supply for that.

If you use 5V or 12V LEDs, you'll just need a standard 5V/12V switching power supply as is used in most standard JAMMA arcade machines.
 
Here's some excellent points from HudsonArcade. This guy knows what he's talking about as he has done countless other proven arcade projects. He also has a degree in the field electronics -- unlike myself.

I think the likelihood of the transistors ever failing is very low as they are way over-rated for the current/voltage. If they ever did fail, HudsonArcade is right... bye-bye Pi.

I like the idea of eliminating the VGA -> CGA board. If I ever do one of these projects again, I'll probably look into doing all of the below and see if I can make it all work.


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