Pandora Box 3 Multi-Game 520-1 PCB

Zerrminator said:

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So this is from a ways back but it's clear from these two shots that this board uses a fixed pixel width and scales the games to fill it, rather than varying the pixel clock (outputting exactly however many pixels a game uses across the screen, since different games/hardware have different pixel widths). Given the cheapo nature of this board this isn't surprising at all. You'd notice that when the screen scrolls, certain parts of the screen will seem to sort of have a ripple or blinking pattern, that's telling of a noninteger scale factor. Or that one pixel wide elements (like the border around each character portrait in 98) are thicker in some places than others.

If you just wanna cram games into your cab then that's one thing but if you care about them looking authentic, this is far from it. I'm not trying to sound elitist but if you care about your emulation output looking just like the board is supposed to on a CRT, set up MAME or whichever emulator of choice and look into either CRT Emudriver or soft15khz, they both do the same thing, in that they get certain computer GPUs to output 15khz over the VGA port and they do vary the pixel clock, so you don't have any scaling shit like the above to worry about.

Seeing as this thing is $70, a piece of shit discarded computer that can run everything on here that "runs fine" just as well or better, + JPAC as plug and play "JAMMA controls plug in as a USB controller" and "15khz from PC feeds into monitor" solution, would run you less and be only slightly less plug and play, have accurate video output, and would be much more versatile (I'm sure it can run a ton more games without issue than this thing even if it's some 2ghz Pentium 4 or something).

If you're playing on a LCD anyway though I suppose this wouldn't matter to you. But if you are a CRT fanatic then this getting about as far away from what makes a CRT look the way it does for retro games as can be. If any of you are hooking this up thru RGB to your PVMs and going "yep now I have all these arcade games and they're on a CRT, doin' it right", you're really not.

kuze said:

I received mine and the CPS1 titles play pretty well, though the screen tearing as others have mentioned is a downer. I'd say overall something like jammifying an Xbox 1 would be a better investment for the money in terms of the quality of emulation.

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Oof, Xbox can't do noninterlaced output though, same issue with fixed pixel width too. IMHO if you're gonna use a console, hack a Wii and use RGB from it (you can get NTSC Wiis to do RGB for homebrew), from what I've seen many ROMs that tax an Xbox ran without issues on Wii (Out Zone's the one I know best), and the Wii does noninterlaced video AND can vary the pixel clock!

wataru330 said:

Does this thing display 240p? That would be the only reason I would have to use it, as opposed to a rawmXbox.

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Yes but see above

raziel2001au said:

Can someone with a Pandora's Box 3 confirm if the volume of the headphone jack remains at full blast even when you change the volume on the PB3? Still waiting for my Jamma cabinet, so I can't confirm if it varies over the Jamma connector, but I tried using it meanwhile using headphones, but I can't seem to change the volume. It's all really loud.

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Willing to bet that's just line-level audio and meant to hook up to an amp, where you'd adjust the volume.

Dan, you're over thinking this a bit too much. I honestly doubt that anyone buying this seriously believes they're getting a quality piece of hardware for $70. Mine is in the mail and I'm fully aware it's a piece of shit. It's easy to set up and plays enough games well enough to justify the price tag and that's the bottom line.

I guess but if IMHO you're gonna spend $70 on tons of emulated games, spend 3 hrs one time setting up some XP box with MAME and CRT Emudriver and a JPAC and you'll have an experience that very closely approaches authentic.

I'm really not a fan of garbage hardware like this, convenience factor or not. The idea of people looking at these lopsided pixels on MS9s is kind of a shame.


I mean shit, if people will pay $70 for this maybe there's money to be had selling preconfigured shitty old desktops and JPACs as a bundle? lol

I don't think anyone is denying that, a MAME setup can look awesome. I do have one, but I bought this thing as an ease of use, quick fix, I have most of my boards/carts and whatever but this is a cheap easy solution to fuck around with. My MAME setup is awesome, I'd never trade it for nothing, I love emulation period. I just don't think that from a friendly plug & play device this can't be beaten by MAME. It's cheap, just a casual funtime, not for once do I think it's a replacement for any MAME setup, as MAME has tons more advantages, nor do I think I can replace my original hardware for it. A nice travel companion for meetups, guests that happen to be casual gamers and can get a taste of everything without having to switch boards like crazy, there's just lots of advantages to having one considering the price.

The best part about this unit is how it has evolved over the years, soon they'll improve it enough to become more and more passable gameplay/graphics wise as newer technology ages and becomes cheap enough for them to work with and sell.

Also after playing enough fighting games on this, it plays much better than you think. You do sound elitist and you have every right to be, I do however find that amusing, this device isn't meant to be an end all be all thing, like said before, the price point makes it enticing enough to fuck around with.

Convenience is one thing but I'd think most cab owners would not care about a small amount of initial setup time for a much better end result. You'd think they'd be capable.

Then again we have a guy plugging headphones into the damn thing so perhaps not! ;p

Too much of a hassle and foot print. This is easy and cheap. Not a replacement for me, I still will have my MAME set up and love it more, but the convenience can't be beaten. To swap between this and anything else would be like swapping any single PCB vs a MAME rig which is kinda of a pain, maybe now that you can build mini computers I bet you could fit a sick mame setup on a small foot print but still, I like this Pandora 3 device for a quick dip. I wouldn't call it garbage, not by a long shot.

If anyone owns a cab for the sole purpose of playing a pandora's box.....there's serious issues there.

Fair enough, and if it's less shitty than it seems that's actually really great.

Just to be clear I'm not writing all this to say "ewwww, fuck all of you who enjoy this thing, you must enjoy games DanAdamKOF's way!", I just really want to make it clear to everyone in this thread that going from no ROMs in your cab to having a kickass MAME setup is something that in most cases can be done in a couple hours after you get home from work, without even needing to get out the soldering iron, for less than this thing costs.

edit:

pipes said:

If anyone owns a cab for the sole purpose of playing a pandora's box.....there's serious issues there.

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I've seen people sell and buy consolized blue elfs, and seen people run them through superguns. My head explodes every time I think about it.

And further more, they deserve twice the screen tearing and muted, crackling sound than this shit box can even muster.

I can't wait.

DanAdamKOF said:

Then again we have a guy plugging headphones into the damn thing so perhaps not! ;p

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Haha, that's only temporary.

Waiting for my New Astro City to arrive. I think you're probably right about it just being a line-out and therefore always full volume. That is my suspicion as well, but hoping to confirm that with someone else as well.

If you're curious, the reasons I got the PB3 was:
* Cheap (this is cheaper than a JPAC but fully stand alone without needing a PC as well)
* No boot up sequence... the last thing I wanna see when I turn on my Astro is a Windows boot screen
* Convenient way to test out my cabinet (will likely buy some real hardware down the track, but I don't want to buy a neogeo and games right now just to test if my cabinet is working)
* IF I ever built a mame system, I'd probably just put the complete rom set of mame on it and end up only playing what I knew about anyway since I'd be overwhelmed by all the choices... bringing me to my final point:
* Many of the games on the PB3 I'm not actually familiar with, and if I built my own setup, I probably wouldn't ever try them, so it's a good way to try out a bunch of new games, and I might run into something I really like.

At the price point of the Pandora's Box 3, it's a really cheap way to wet your feet without fully committing to buying the real hardware. Will it end up being my permanent setup? Probably not, but right now, it makes sense to me as a way to try it out.

That's how I look at it anyway.

Let the Pandora Triple Fever flow Adam, let it flow.

DanAdamKOF said:

So this is from a ways back but it's clear from these two shots that this board uses a fixed pixel width and scales the games to fill it, rather than varying the pixel clock (outputting exactly however many pixels a game uses across the screen, since different games/hardware have different pixel widths). Given the cheapo nature of this board this isn't surprising at all. You'd notice that when the screen scrolls, certain parts of the screen will seem to sort of have a ripple or blinking pattern, that's telling of a noninteger scale factor. Or that one pixel wide elements (like the border around each character portrait in 98) are thicker in some places than others.

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Looks like that hasn't changed from the Pandora's Box V2. I have the V2, and the only games that look good on 15khz output are CPS1,2,3 games. Everything else gets nearest neighbor scaling to Capcom's 384x224 resolution and looks ugly as shit. I guess the designers chose this over varying the pixel clocks so that users wouldn't have to adjust the monitor between different games. Otherwise, it wouldn't be usable in an actual arcade environment.

From all I've heard about the CPS games, the price point makes it VERY enticing. I could see myself using it while I save up for a CPS multi and/or a few actual boards.

I still have some JAMMA boards left over from what I sold last year, and I still have a bunch of MVS games, but for me the real meat & potatoes are ST and HF. As long as those run correctly, I'm set.

Is there a way to get games to boot automatically at start-up? It would be cool to boot up to ST, then kick out to the menu when you want to play something else.

DanAdamKOF said:

Convenience is one thing but I'd think most cab owners would not care about a small amount of initial setup time for a much better end result. You'd think they'd be capable.

Then again we have a guy plugging headphones into the damn thing so perhaps not! ;p

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Well then most cab owners aren't me (and it looks like a lot of people disagree with you) because I tried the Mame/PC route and I hated it. Too much setup for my taste, hardware too big and clunky, accidentally having games exit on me mid game, fumbling around with stupid keyboard and mice on the floor when things go wrong. Until someone shows me a better all-in-one option I'll be sticking with this Pandora 3 and enjoying it.

DanAdamKOF said:

I mean shit, if people will pay $70 for this maybe there's money to be had selling preconfigured shitty old desktops and JPACs as a bundle? lol

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I'd buy one off you w/ the quickness. I can't be assed to do it myself.

Pasky said:

These are up on ebay for $63 shipped:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Box-3-jamma...184?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c53945488

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I bought this on 6/2, it shipped on 6/3 and arrived on 6/9. Which is crazy quick from China and shipping was free.

So far I have mostly played CPS123 titles and have to say they run flawlessly, sound and look great. Played Final Fight from start to finish and it runs silky smooth, no slow down or audio issues, same with SF3 3rd. I am running this through vga on a tri-mode Makvision monitor.

Now there are a a couple things I have issue with, one being no option for free play. I had to setup a dedicated coin button on my cab. This wasn't a major issue for me but could be for someone else. These seem to be geared for commercial use. Another issue I have is there is no secondary audio out with this version, Jamma only. I was tempted to order another but the lack of 2nd audio out is a no go.

Overall the device is very impressive. BTW Xian Xi your Atlas adapters and kick harness are fantastic, thanks.

rxdoga said:

Another issue I have is there is no secondary audio out with this version, Jamma only. I was tempted to order another but the lack of 2nd audio out is a no go.

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Are you saying your board does not have the 3.5mm Audio out connector beside the VGA out like the photos I posted on Page 1?

Zerrminator said:

Are you saying your board does not have the 3.5mm Audio out connector beside the VGA out like the photos I posted on Page 1?

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That is correct. It is either not there or not visible. I'll open it up and post pics soon.

Edit:

rxdoga said:

That is correct. It is either not there or not visible. I'll open it up and post pics soon.

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Thanks rxdoga, I'd like to see the inside pictures as well to make sure it's a "real" PB3. I might be down for ordering one and it sounds like that seller has crazy fast shipping.

Yup, that's a totally different PB3 layout.

Where do I get info on the adapters Xian Xi makes? Does he ship them to Australia, what do they cost?

raziel2001au said:

Where do I get info on the adapters Xian Xi makes? Does he ship them to Australia, what do they cost?

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Jamma Nation X Store > Arcade > Board Adapters

Xian Xi said:

Yup, that's a totally different PB3 layout.

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So what's the deal with this banana cart? Is it a legit PB3? I hate to use the word legit in this case.

That's not a pandora 3....

Isn't the yellow cart with the different volume adjuster and no audio jack just the VGA only output version? Does the yellow cart output 15khz at all? If not, it is a PB3, but a VGA only one as posted early in the thread.