New arrival - MVS stuff

Some nice bits turned up today. Viewpoint full kit with pretty tatty art, windjammers mini marquee, metal slug X cart (repro label but genuine case / boards) and a euro puzzle bobble 2 cart.

I swapped a couple of these into the U4, currently in there I have windjammers, viewpoint, magical drop 2 and metal slug.

New arrivals - cabs and boards

My summer holidays have started and I need something to keep me busy. This lot should definately do the job!

One of this pair is for me, the other wil be moving on soon enough. More on these two in the next couple of days.

I also got this lot: progear (conversion) and mobo, raiden 2, aero fighters, thunder dragon and alcon (AKA slap fight). I already have aero fighters and raiden 2 pcbs but the lot of them came bundled in with one of the cabs. Selling those pair will help off set some of the cost of the cab buying.

New arrival - MVS card reader

I bought this CP for the card reader since my U4 didn't have one.


I removed the card reader only to find it was absolutely filthy and stuffed with mini cheddars


It scrubbed up OK though. I gave it a clean and straightened out a couple of bent pins. I haven't got a card to test it with yet so not sure if it works. Can't see a reason it wouldn't though

As you can see the (non-cleaned) area in the U4 it would be mounted in was looking a little empty.



And as it is now it's in place. Although I don't have a card I was looking forward to using the headphone sockets on this pcb. Unfortunately when I came to attach this lot to the mobo I saw the 4 pin headphone attachment has been ripped off the motherboard. I guess I'll need to find a replacement header and get it soldered on.

SNK candy 18

Someone asked me for a pic or two of the SNK candy 18 I have. I thought I'd take a few and put them up here. There's not a ton of info on them so it make be useful to someone. These are extremely awesome and very small cabs.




The marquee holders are nice. The back plate is very thick with a bevelled edge. It gives a cool illuminated edge look when the marquee light is illuminated.

This is the most common panel I've seen but I know there are at least two other panels for these cabs: an awesome 1L panel and a mah jong panel. I don't own either at the moment although hopefully I may pick up the mah jong one soon... An awesome French guy is seeing about reproducing the 1L panel too!


As you can possibly tell I didn't give this cab an internal clean when I got it... The underneath of the cp is pretty dirty too as you'll see lower down. The rest of the exterior looks nice though! This cab is 200V converted. I'm unsure how much of the PSU stuff is original.


Nice flip up lid with holding mechanism. Smoked glass over the monitor. These have MS718s in them. All of the ones I've seen have had nasty burn on the tubes. I'm unsure if that's due to the stock tube used or the age or the way they were used.

Here's a rarity. SNK cabs have attachments below the cp for this ashtray holder. You'll see the little metal attchment on nearly any SNK cab (for example my MVS U4) but they're almost always snapped off. I've not seen another intact one. I'm considering trying to repro to arm part to use with the cab attachment parts I have so I have a holder for my U4.

Divestment 2

I got the 18 wheeler cab up and running and I've had a few credits over the last week. This was always a project for enjoyment and interest rather than something to keep. Now I've had a play with it it's time for it to move on. I've arranged to sell it to a friend cheap. He'll be using it to make a MAME driver. As such he won't be needing the naomi mobo and cart so they'll be staying with me. Not that the cart is much use without the dedicated i/o and stuff! It's all going to stay here for a couple of weeks til he comes over to collect. Hopefully I'll be having a weekend get together some time in august. More on that as and when.

My holidays have started now. To pass the time and keep me out of bother I have another few bits to be playing around with. There's the empty naomi shell, monitor and stuff I picked up a few weeks ago to piece together and I also have another two cabs on their way. One's a bit of a dog to restore for myself. The other's a non worker to revive and sell. More on them when they arrive in 10 days or so.

Neo print again

Someone linked me to this auction on the Aus ebay for a neo print machine. It had some pretty cool internal shots so I've stolen the photos. Despite having never used one of these machines, and not being interested in owning one, this blog is rapidly becoming the world's leading source for neo print information. I am moderately amused and proud.

Initial D project part 3

The last thing to do is to hack in the 360 wheel. To do that you need to dismantle it.

First remove these allen bolts and lift off the face plate


Then undo a load of T8 security torx screws on this base and to remove the bottom part of the white case below

That'll reveal the gubbins



You need to disconnect this lead which runs to the buttons in the wheel


Then remove these allen bolts which will allow you to reove the wheel entirely

Like so


I bought this daytona dash to use. It avoids hacking up the ID one to allow the conversion to be undone in future if I want.




I then fabricated a board that attached to the rear of the dash and screwed this to it. I trimmed the case down a bit but kept it there as it was useful for the pcb mounting etc. I'll put up meausrements for the board when I remember. I put a lot of screws through that grey section in the pic above into the wooden board. The central axle sits like this. Notice I had to trim the central plastic section the steering axle runs through. I also had to file the metal mounting plate to expand the axle hole from from 40mm to 50mm.


I then cut back the wheel shaft's cover to make up for the space lost due to the mounting board etc



And that was about that!

The wheel sits pretty close to the dash at the moment. I really need a longer version of the white wheel axle thingy to allow it to sit 4 or 5 cm closer to the driver. I have a friend who'll hopefully make me one some time soonish. The cab will need to be out of action while that's happening though so I decided to play it for a month or so before I go for that. It's playable now if not ideal.

Here's a little vid of a friend giving it a whirl.



As for other things I may possibly do:
Add the missing buttons in the dash and wire them up to something. Currently only the start button is populated, that's the degauss
replace 4 way shifter with an up / down and wire it up. Currently the shifter is just for show. I use the paddles mounted on the wheel
swap monitor, either for another 31k CRT with no burn (this has ID burn and isn't amazing in terms of geometry etc) or possibly or an LCD. The Sega framed LCD upgrade is unfortunately out of my price range at the minute.

Initial D project part 2

Next job was to sort the pedals. I took apart the microsoft pedals and had a look at the potentiometers.




Metering them across the points highlighted up there showed the are 5k ohm. That was great news since that's the same value as in sega pedals like the new old stock initial D ones I picked up last week. The microsoft ones only move through around 10 degrees, a lot smaller rotation than the sega ones but the value changes are the same.

Here are the pots in the ID pedals.



They terminate in 3 pin AMP connectors. I stripped those off along with the jack on the end of the microsoft pedal leads and (after spending a fair bit of time checking the wiring) connected up the microsoft wiring to the sega pedals with a terminal block. I took a closeup so you can see what goes where.




At some point I may swap these over to AMPs or another neat solution but it'll do for the moment.

The great news is that it works perfectly! I was pretty excited when it just worked since I'd kind of expected more of a struggle to get it sorted. They work 100% fine. a full range of values across the full play on both pedals i.e. reading of zero when not depressed, reading of 100 when fully depressed and 50 reading in the middle. These are a massive improvement over the microsoft ones.

Neo print stuff on YAJ

A friend pointed me in the direction of this YAJ auction for all the internal gubbins from a neo print cab. I've taken the photos out of the auction and put them up here for when that link goes dead. Nice to have a peek at the guts!

http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e112462178

Initial D project part 1

First, build the shell....

I got this cab in pieces. The first step is to pop the shell back together.

Start with the main base section


Add the pcb mounting boards. Empty in this case apart from the transformer and little power distribution board.

The pedal mounting box thingy goes on next. Four bolts.

Then the lower monitor frame. More bolts either side.


Side panels next.

And then the top monitor mounting bracket.

The monitor goes in next. There's a 29e31s in this one at the moment

On with top monitor cover and the topper box. I had to remove the front section (just a couple of security torx screws) to insert some of the bolts and wire it up

You can also pop on the rear monitor cover at his point once you've hooked up the monitor power and VGA and fiddled with any pots you need to on the chassis.

The seat also came in a lot of bits. his small base section goes on with a few bolts

Followed by the larger piece which bolts to the main body of the cab.

In the shots below the main body of the cab is all assembled. I've also popped the pedals in place (more on them later), inserted a 5.1 audio amp (big silver box in the base) and attached some speakers to it. There are the two original speakers flanking the monitor, a central one which you can see in the behind CP space, a large active woofer under the seat (decased) and two speakers in the gull wings. ID didn't come with gullwing speakers despite having the cases for them so I fitted a couple I had lying around. They're a lot smaller than the stock ones but do the job.