Pandora Box 3 Multi-Game 520-1 PCB

Jonathan32

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Thanks for the information. I did not know that that was the case. My father also passed away whenever I was a senior in high school (in 2000) due to cancer, so I do understand the delays. I guess we will just have to wait for the adapters then. I have searched the internet high and low for other sites that sell these jamma to mvs adapters but cant find anywhere else that has them.
 

Electric Grave

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Pulled the trigger on one, tough not to at that price. Paid for FedEx express through the alibaba link, hopefully it comes in soon.
I bought one as well about 2 weeks ago. Haven't gotten it yet, I should have expedited it.
 

Xian Xi

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JAMMA to MVS adapters aren't hard to make, MVS to JAMMA is the one where it gets a little more difficult.
 

Zerrminator

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FYI I just bought a Jamma Harness & PSU from them last week and it shipped the next day with tracking. But I'm sure these items were in stock on hand.
 

MrMark0673

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Got it yesterday and was able to mess around with it for a bit. For what it is and the price you can get it for, it's not a bad little board. Perfect board when you have casual gamer friends come by for a beer, though obviously not something that will replace your boards in general.

Haven't tried the VGA yet, but currently I have two vertical black bands on the left and right side (think letterbox but flipped sideways). Don't think it's a sync issue, but like I said I only messed with it for a few minutes so I didn't trouble shoot at all really.

Fun little board, glad I grabbed it.
 

Electric Grave

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I got mine too and I completely agree, nice casual gaming board. Swapping games is so easy that it makes it nice for a good fighting session which this thing excels at specially CPS2 fighters, they play extremely well. Here's a breakdown of what I tested so far.

CPS2 runs the best, fighters play smooth, scrolling games get some tearing but depends how fast it scrolls, slow games see very little tearing, pixel count and uniformity is on point, best looking system on the board.
CPS1 runs second best, pretty smooth, lots of tearing on scrolling games which the CPS1 has tons of but even so the gameplay remains smooth and the pixel count is just as nice as CPS2.
CPS3 looks great, skips frames constantly, perhaps even at a fixed rate, playable but don't look to have a solid fight with this.
Neo runs smooth, looks odd with lots of scrolling issues as the pixel count is not even, very playable though.
Konami games, very playable, pixel count is odd.
Psikyo games, lots of tearing and scrolling issues and it plays somewhat ok, some games run smoother than others. 2 players 'causes frameskip bullets, single player not so bad. Gunbarich and TGM2+ play rough.
Cave games run ok, lots of scrolling, keep in mind this are playing in yoko, for what it is I can live with it but look elsewhere for the authenthic feel, otherwise not bad for a cab that can't tate or something.
Toaplan same deal as cave.
Raiden doesn't play well, audio is horrible.

Some single games I played that felt pretty good.

Puzzle de Bowling
Slapshot
Guardians
Sailor Moon

Keep in mind that scrolling is always going to be an issue but it's less with some games than others. Excellent setup for testing out games you'd like to get into, the number of games aside from the bootlegs is pretty staggering still. For the money (including the jamma adapter) this thing is well worth money. I'm very happy with it and it's perfect for lazy days when you don't feel like swapping games. Way less work than a MAME rig for the Capcom lovers. Neo lovers, better of with the 161 in 1 but this is still pretty cool if you don't mind the graphic shortcomings. Sometimes you really forget about it after a while and after lots of drinks...

Edit Note: Played on a New Astro City Sanwa MS9 monitor.
 
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Zerrminator

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Glad to hear everyone is having the same types of results as me. I've been so happy with this board it actually triggered me to build a bartop arcade around it.
 

Electric Grave

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JAMMA to MVS adapters aren't hard to make, MVS to JAMMA is the one where it gets a little more difficult.

Hey James, that adapter you made is top notch, superb quality. I have a question though, would it be too hard to set button 4 and 5 without the need for a kick harness? If I wanna place it in a Neo cab with the proper jamma adapter of course, I still need the kick harness to use button four which is no biggie but I figure it could be cooler if you don't, same thing with button 5 as the select button doubles as 5 on a MVS cab. Well, I dunno, you know better, what do you think?
 

opt2not

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I got mine too and I completely agree, nice casual gaming board. Swapping games is so easy that it makes it nice for a good fighting session which this thing excels at specially CPS2 fighters, they play extremely well. Here's a breakdown of what I tested so far.

CPS2 runs the best, fighters play smooth, scrolling games get some tearing but depends how fast it scrolls, slow games see very little tearing, pixel count and uniformity is on point, best looking system on the board.
CPS1 runs second best, pretty smooth, lots of tearing on scrolling games which the CPS1 has tons of but even so the gameplay remains smooth and the pixel count is just as nice as CPS2.
CPS3 looks great, skips frames constantly, perhaps even at a fixed rate, playable but don't look to have a solid fight with this.
Neo runs smooth, looks odd with lots of scrolling issues as the pixel count is not even, very playable though.
Konami games, very playable, pixel count is odd.
Psikyo games, lots of tearing and scrolling issues and it plays somewhat ok, some games run smoother than others. 2 players 'causes frameskip bullets, single player not so bad. Gunbarich and TGM2+ play rough.
Cave games run ok, lots of scrolling, keep in mind this are playing in yoko, for what it is I can live with it but look elsewhere for the authenthic feel, otherwise not bad for a cab that can't tate or something.
Toaplan same deal as cave.
Raiden doesn't play well, audio is horrible.

Some single games I played that felt pretty good.

Puzzle de Bowling
Slapshot
Guardians
Sailor Moon

Keep in mind that scrolling is always going to be an issue but it's less with some games than others. Excellent setup for testing out games you'd like to get into, the number of games aside from the bootlegs is pretty staggering still. For the money (including the jamma adapter) this thing is well worth money. I'm very happy with it and it's perfect for lazy days when you don't feel like swapping games. Way less work than a MAME rig for the Capcom lovers. Neo lovers, better of with the 161 in 1 but this is still pretty cool if you don't mind the graphic shortcomings. Sometimes you really forget about it after a while and after lots of drinks...

Nice breakdown EG, was your findings done on a LCD, or in a cabinet on a proper CRT? I'm just wondering if the screen tearing for most of what you mentioned is a culprit of the video scaling coming out of VGA.
 

Electric Grave

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Oh sorry I forgot that important detail. New Astro City MS9 monitor, have not tried VGA yet.
 

kuze

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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.

They glued down the SD card to the PCB to discourage modification, so that was a bit annoying to remove. You can clone the SD card and the copy will work; though it doesn't look easy to modify and do stuff like play the vert shmups in actual tate mode. It is an ARM device running Linux though.
 

Xian Xi

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Hey James, that adapter you made is top notch, superb quality. I have a question though, would it be too hard to set button 4 and 5 without the need for a kick harness? If I wanna place it in a Neo cab with the proper jamma adapter of course, I still need the kick harness to use button four which is no biggie but I figure it could be cooler if you don't, same thing with button 5 as the select button doubles as 5 on a MVS cab. Well, I dunno, you know better, what do you think?

On the Atlas adapter, Neo pins 4 and 5 are passthrough to the JAMMA side. The only thing that is changing is the pin for ground(27,e) is changed to P1-B6 and P2-B6 by setting the jumper.

On the old adapter, it can be done with some jumper wires.

If anyone purchased the older style adapter from me, I'm willing to offer the new one to you for half the price.
 

Xian Xi

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For those that use the hold start option to return to the menu, if you want to add additional credits to the game you are playing, hold start then press continue and it will add a credit. Just remember that you are limited to the amount of credits you initially added before starting a game. So if you added 10 credits, you can only coin up in game 10 times where as the press start+select version you can just keep dropping them in.
 

grey

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I ordered on of these to consolize for my brother.

Planning on using the VGA out, but considering hard to put component/svideo in it.

Should be a fun project.
 

Xian Xi

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Also learned that if you keep pressing the start on P2 side it will add coins from your "bank".
 

Electric Grave

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XX, where is that option, it's either hold start and coin for menu or just press the menu button on the Pandora itself.
 

GohanX

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I ordered on of these to consolize for my brother.

Planning on using the VGA out, but considering hard to put component/svideo in it.

Should be a fun project.

This sounds interesting, but then again I like to consolize everything.
 

Electric Grave

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It's not XX, I mean none of the last things you said apply to my Pandora 3, could we have different revisions? I dunno what is going on.
 

Xian Xi

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It's not XX, I mean none of the last things you said apply to my Pandora 3, could we have different revisions? I dunno what is going on.

Weird, so you pressed the button on the Pandora 3 and it doesn't bring up the test menu?
 

Electric Grave

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The test menu does come up when I press the menu button on the board itself, however pressing the P2 start button doesn't add any coins and holding start for 3 seconds does nothing, also there's no option for it on the menu either. I should take some pics of the menu screen and show you in case yours is different.
 

Xian Xi

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The test menu does come up when I press the menu button on the board itself, however pressing the P2 start button doesn't add any coins and holding start for 3 seconds does nothing, also there's no option for it on the menu either. I should take some pics of the menu screen and show you in case yours is different.

Yes, please snap a photo. It would suck if there are different versions out there.
 

grey

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I am still waiting for mine.

Does anyone have rough dimensions of it? It would help me do a bit of planning.
 

Xian Xi

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I am still waiting for mine.

Does anyone have rough dimensions of it? It would help me do a bit of planning.

It's about the length and width of an MVS cart but twice as thick and styled with a slant like a PS4.
 

Electric Grave

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a153116bd192ff138486b4eab0d90f19.jpg
e8f0037acfb3622a87627928021bbac0.jpg

These are the two sets of options I get on the menu screen. Any thoughts XX?
 
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