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I should clarify the resolution is running at CGA 15Khz.
The picture on my first post of Jungle Hunt is a VGA monitor, but
I am piping the signal through a GBS 8200 converter.
JD
Can someone explain why this is a thing?
You have the VGA adapter on it - to hook it to a vga monitor (so dont need the jamma adatper there)
connecting the controls through the GPIO - so dont need the jamma there..
what purpose does this serve.. im obviously missing something.
A pi, with a $6 keyboard encoder, $15 vga666 on its own, and a speaker.. and you are under $100
im confused.
The vga666 adapter uses the gpio pins. I would argue that's the part you don't need since pi can output cga and vga resolutions natively. But this solution is fine and works.
You still need to adapt to JAMMA for controls in a real cabinet. So that's why this is a thing.
Can someone explain why this is a thing?
You have the VGA adapter on it - to hook it to a vga monitor (so dont need the jamma adatper there)
connecting the controls through the GPIO - so dont need the jamma there..
what purpose does this serve.. im obviously missing something.
A pi, with a $6 keyboard encoder, $15 vga666 on its own, and a speaker.. and you are under $100
im confused.
No you dont.. you can plug the controls directly to a usb encoder that usb's into 1 of 4 ports on a PI.
so. again.. WHY is this a thing?
I should clarify the resolution is running at CGA 15Khz.
Do you support Native Resolution and refresh rates for each game?
One of the things that really disappointed me with the ArPiCade was that they simply scale everything to 240P 60Hz which isn't correct for a lot of games (for instance Pac Man should run at 224 x 288 60.6Hz, and mortal Kombat should run at 400x254 53.2Hz)
^This IMO is what separates a crap multi-board from a good multi board.
The only Pi board I know of that does support native resolution an refresh is the RPi2JAMMA: http://www.neo-arcadia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=54733 Unfortunately they guy who makes them won't sell them outside of Europe.
Two other suggestion.
1. include a standard CPS1 or CPS2 style "kick harness" header for buttons 4-6. Most games that use more than 3 buttons use one of these connectors and it'd be nice to have on a Pi based board instead of the crappy ChAMMA (Chinese JAMMA) pinout where they shove those buttons on the JAMMA edge. Fighting game fans will really appreciate this.
2. Instead of a 3.5mm audio jack include un-amplified RCA jacks for stereo audio. This is the standard for JVS so it's what a lot of arcade PCBs (and thus a lot of cabs) are already setup for if they support Stereo Audio. having a 3.5mm audio header isn't bad since you can just run an adapter, but it's nice to be able to run a PCB that plugs into your existing cab with as few adapters as possible.
If you really want to go all out then add some konami style headers for players 3 and 4 so that people can use these in 4 player cabs as well.
One of the things that really disappointed me with the ArPiCade was that they simply scale everything to 240P 60Hz which isn't correct for a lot of games (for instance Pac Man should run at 224 x 288 60.6Hz, and mortal Kombat should run at 400x254 53.2Hz)
So this is awesome - I will be needing several of these if you decide to produce a few more to sell.
One thought/question - would there be a way to build an adaptor board like this that doesn't rely on the GPIO pins? That could convert an hdmi signal directly to CGA standard or Medium Res? Something more plug and play/ universal - so it could be used with a Rpi, PC or some of the more powerful SBC's?
I ask because it seems like there seems to be alot of interest gathering for other boards like the ODroid XU4 and ASUS Tinkerboard since the Raspberry pi foundation has said there won't be a significantly more powerful Pi coming out for several years. Its possible the emulation community might start moving their efforts to more powerful SBCs if they feel like the Rpi platform will become stagnant. I believe RetroPie already has an official distribution for the Odroid XU4.
Glad you're producing a solution that uses the native GPIO outputs. I imagine other jamma pi products must be introducing some output lag by going through the active HDMI video conversion step.
Of course, I don't know that for sure so someone please correct me if that's an unfair assumption. My hunch has always been that this is the right way to go about it, and if accurate, it will definitely be a selling point.
Either way, congratulations on a successful R&D. I will support with a purchase when it's ready.
Actually the method used by RaspberryJAMMA/ARpiCADE adds less than 1 frame of lag. As long as you arn't doing any scaling or other image processing and are only converting digital 240p to analog 240p there is no need for a framebuffer or any other type of lag inducing steps.