Just got a Hong Kong made Supergun II and need to make it work!

Well, today I got this quite cheap from a collector (of ancient computers) that just couldn't figure this out.

It's a Supergun called Supergun II. It's made in Honk Kong and it's pretty popular here in Spain, many of my friends have it. Here you can see some pics courtesy of the seller:

http://www.zonadepruebas.com/post.php?fid=5&cat=2&pid=4&page=1

Tomorrow I'll make my own pics, including its inside, I hope Broken hosts them.

It features a small arcade PSU from Wei Ya, and a PCB with a RGB encoder, I can see the Sony CXA1145P chip. It has S-video output, sound through 2 RCA jacks, and an AV out that I think is the same as the Neo Geo, from which I should be able to pull out RGB and sound though scart. Actually a friend of mine will sell me a cable for that.

In the pictures, it is missing a floppy IDE cable that connects the supergun to the JAMMA harness, and it doesn't have any video cable. I just used and old floppy cable, and it works.

I've tried it, but the only video cable I have right now suitable for it is s-video, and my TV doesn't have s-video plug, but I used a s-video to scart adapter. Well, the picture was black & white (with some color flashes some times) and it was blurry. I couldn't try the sound. I'll have to wait for the RGB cable. In the back there's a NTSC/PAL selector, a Color System selector (4.43 o 3.58, I'm wondering what's that) a ndtwo pots for adjusting brightness and video sync. Inside there's another pot that says "50K VR".

The controller is a modified PSX one. I couldn't open it (damn tight screws in deep holes! ) to examine its guts. The button layout is

1 2 3 X
4 5 6 X

and it is designed for JAMMA+, so there's no D nor select button. In the JAMMA harness small pcb, there are 6 spots where you are supposed to hook the kick harness. So I would need to solder a wire between some of this spots to the right pins of the JAMMA harness to be able to use them. And in case you were wondering, the controller ports in the supergun are DB15 but they don't fully follow the Neo pin-out, only the directions, ground and start, the buttons go differently. I thought on rewiring the controller ports, but they use IDE like cables inside of the supergun, so it would be just too complicated. Eventually I could build an adaptor if I want to use my other controllers.

Now, some other cons I see... the PSU is not grounded, the spot FG is just empty. The AC cable only has 2 wires, that get plugged to the wall through 2 flat pins, so I need to use an adaptor to the 2 round pins we use here (the PSU has a 110V/220V selector). Actually we don't have a true third pin for ground, what we do with grounded things is that they have a piece of metal at the end of the plug. So I don't really know how to ground this thing... should I just install a piece of metal inside of the supergun and wire the FG to it?
By the way, there is a nice fuse mounted in the back of the gun, but it is just not connected anywhere... any suggestion on where to put fuses?

What do you think? Has anybody actually seen this stuff somewhere else?

"Color System selector (4.43 o 3.58, I'm wondering what's that)"



NTSC actually comes in 2 flavours. 4.43 is 'true' ntsc and 3.58 is what is affectionately known as PAL 60.

Re: Re: Just got a Hong Kong made Supergun II and need to make it work!

soopafamicom said:

NTSC actually comes in 2 flavours. 4.43 is 'true' ntsc and 3.58 is what is affectionately known as PAL 60.

Click to expand...

No, 4.43MHz (actually 4.433619) is the PAL color subcarrier frequency. 3.58MHz (actually 3.579545) is NTSC.
PAL 60 means PAL color signal (4.43) and 60Hz vertical sync.

If your TV blows up, then you have it on the wrong setting

The FG connector on the PSU isn't really necessary. To be completely "safe" or whatever you should hook it up, but in most cases it isn't needed.

OK, I've just tried it in another TV that actually has a real s-video socket, and the image was totally stable but still b/w. Then I started messing with the NTSC/PAL and 4.43/3.58 switches, and I got color. However, I changed the settings again, the color went out, and then I couldn't get it back. Weird. I still think I'll just get RGB in color through the scart connector when I get the appropiate cable.

And now a weird thing about the controller. It is a stick that features two DB15 connectors, one male and one female. At first I thought the female one had been added, but no, it was already there. In the controller box, it says "compatible with Sega Saturn, Playstation, Neo Geo 3DO, SuperNes and Super Famicon" (notice that there was no comma between Neo Geo and 3D0). However, it came with only one cable, a regular DB15 extension one. I understand it originally came with cables for the other consoles, that would fit in the male DB15 and in the other end the plug for the particular console. I've seen other controllers like these, but this is the first one I see that is supposed to be neo-compatible. To use it in the supergun you need to plug the DB15 extension cable in the female plug.

So OK, I tried it in my other supergun that follows exactly the neo geo pin-out and my MVS board. The controller indeed worked, with this lay-out:

Sel D D X
C B A X

and start worked as start. Now the FUNNY thing is that if I pressed the select button in the controller, the MVS board would reset!!! How the hell is this possible? I didn't think it was possible to reset a mvs board through game controls! What's going on here? Any idea?

I've sent detailed pics of the supergun to Broken, I guess they'll be up soon.

Amano Jacu said:

So OK, I tried it in my other supergun that follows exactly the neo geo pin-out and my MVS board. The controller indeed worked, with this lay-out:

Sel D D X
C B A X

and start worked as start. Now the FUNNY thing is that if I pressed the select button in the controller, the MVS board would reset!!! How the hell is this possible? I didn't think it was possible to reset a mvs board through game controls! What's going on here? Any idea?

I've sent detailed pics of the supergun to Broken, I guess they'll be up soon.

Click to expand...

It's not resetting when you're actually playing the game right?

If you use the select button on a 1 slot, it acts like if it's gonna go to the next cart, but since there's not other game, it just starts up the same game.

Amano Jacu said:

I've sent detailed pics of the supergun to Broken, I guess they'll be up soon.

Click to expand...

We now have a gallery for it.




Nice looking SG. I like the way its layed out.

Devilman78 said:

It's not resetting when you're actually playing the game right?

If you use the select button on a 1 slot, it acts like if it's gonna go to the next cart, but since there's not other game, it just starts up the same game.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't explain myself right... The controller has 8 buttons, labeled as the Playstation ones, plus two buttons labeled select and start. When connected to my supergun that uses the neo geo pin-out, the button labeled as L2 works as select (I use a 1-slot with unibios, so it actually acts as coin button in MVS mode), the button labeled start works as start, and the button labeled as select resets the board.

See the pic:

Amano Jacu said:

Sorry, I didn't explain myself right... The controller has 8 buttons, labeled as the Playstation ones, plus two buttons labeled select and start. When connected to my supergun that uses the neo geo pin-out, the button labeled as L2 works as select (I use a 1-slot with unibios, so it actually acts as coin button in MVS mode), the button labeled start works as start, and the button labeled as select resets the board.

See the pic:

Click to expand...

Well if that button is not connected to select on the board, and when you press it your system resets, it could probably be that it's connecting 5V to ground...depending on the power supply, it would reset or turn off for a while.

I really doubt the joystick is connected to some sort of reset circuit.

Have you tried tracing the button back to the supergun?

Devilman78 said:

Well if that button is not connected to select on the board, and when you press it your system resets, it could probably be that it's connecting 5V to ground...depending on the power supply, it would reset or turn off for a while.

I really doubt the joystick is connected to some sort of reset circuit.

Have you tried tracing the button back to the supergun?

Click to expand...

I haven't traced back the button (as I can't open the joystick), but I agree that it is, most likely, the problem. My other supergun has the exact neo-pinout, so it has +5v on pin 8. My guess is that the select button on that controller is connected to pin 8, so when you press it it shorts 5v to ground and then the psu resets.

Thanks.

Amano Jacu said:

OK, I've just tried it in another TV that actually has a real s-video socket, and the image was totally stable but still b/w. Then I started messing with the NTSC/PAL and 4.43/3.58 switches, and I got color. However, I changed the settings again, the color went out, and then I couldn't get it back. Weird.

Click to expand...

The function of the NTSC/PAL switch must be to short pin 7 of the Sony video encoder to either ground (PAL) or VCC (NTSC) while the 4.43/3.58 switch will switch between the 2 crystals that set the PAL or NTSC operation of the encoder. I fail to see why they choose to put two separate switches since the only meaningful settings are PAL/4.43 and NTSC/3.58 and not other mixed options. Note that the 50/60Hz stuff that's usually associated with PAL/NTSC has nothing to do with this.

where did he get taht and where can i get one they are the nicest super guns i have seen

neo*geo said:

where did he get taht and where can i get one they are the nicest super guns i have seen

Click to expand...

As I said this supergun was commercially produced in Hong Kong, and somebody imports them to Spain. Almost everybody that lives in Spain and wants to get a supergun finishes buying one of those to somebody that has them in stock here.

When I wanted a supergun in February 2002, I asked my friends and they told me they could get me one of those superguns, but for 360€ without controllers. That was way too much for me, so I finished buying a second hand ravengames Mark I in this board for 90 pounds, that was of very poor quality but it did the trick for a while.

This Supergun 2 is so expensive because it includes s-video output, so it needs a RGB encoder. But here in Europe we can just directly use RGB though scart, so we don't need that.

So how I finished getting one? I saw this auction:

http://cgi.es.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3056794431&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOAB:US:6

The seller, located in the same city as me, says a friend got it in Hong Kong and they have absolutely no idea on how this works, so they can't test it, and are selling it "as is". From the pic I notice it is missing the floppy IDE cable and some video cable. So I thought to get it and have fun trying to repair it. The price was low because there was no warranty that it would work.

Its biggest problem is that the controller port is not Neo Geo compatible, so what people used to do here is use a MVS board with controller ports like MV1F or MV2F, and then use AES sticks (as actually many of its users had the AES and switched to MVS this way to save money). Since all my controllers are Neo Geo compatible, I'll have to mod the controller ports or construct an adaptor.

The function of the NTSC/PAL switch must be to short pin 7 of the Sony video encoder to either ground (PAL) or VCC (NTSC) while the 4.43/3.58 switch will switch between the 2 crystals that set the PAL or NTSC operation of the encoder. I fail to see why they choose to put two separate switches since the only meaningful settings are PAL/4.43 and NTSC/3.58 and not other mixed options. Note that the 50/60Hz stuff that's usually associated with PAL/NTSC has nothing to do with this.

Click to expand...

OK, so I'll have it at PAL 4.43... Anyway, as I said I'm going to use it through the RGB cable when I get it, so I guess these settings will be useless, right?

Amano Jacu said:

OK, so I'll have it at PAL 4.43... Anyway, as I said I'm going to use it through the RGB cable when I get it, so I guess these settings will be useless, right?

Click to expand...

Yes. Maybe they could be useful if you wanted to record a game with a VCR that only accepts composite (or s-video)...