Converting Beast Busters to JAMMA - my odyssey

[awbacon]

So I am going to keep a bit of a journal on how I convert my Beast Busters 64 motherboard over to a JAMMA standard, using NeoTurfMastas guide as my base.

The major difference is I am planning the conversion to be non-destructive. Basically as opposed to cutting the wires behind the plastic connectors and wiring directly into them, I was able to find the male version of the connectors, allowing me to convert the board with quick plug and play harness compatibility.

The connectors are JST YL and VL. The VL is the four pin power connector, which uses a heavier gauge pin setup.

So far I have done the following :

Modified a DB15 flight stick to the correct pinout per TurfMastas guide.

Ordered all parts (connectors, pins, mobo and cart, pins, JAMMA fingerboard, etc etc)

I’ll be making videos of the process (already did for rewiring the flight stick, just need to edit) to follow along with the entire process.

Should be fun. Thanks to TurfMasta for cracking this secret years ago. Hopefully I can add something useful along the way as well.

Now I just need to wait for my Bb64 setup and pins to arrive in the mail. Fingers crossed they don’t do something like lose the board

 

[awbacon]

Have most of the JAMMA harness wired. Everything except grounds. I am having a head scratching moment, since TurfMastas tutorial has two +5V lines to the JAMMA pcb, but it does not have the two Ground cables connected. Yet the front connector that splits up to the Sub pcb has two ground male pins with wires that bypass the Sub pcb and go into the Hyper motherboard itself.

Schematics have these grounds installed, but the tutorial doesn’t. Not sure why so haven’t don’t anything in any direction. Unfortunately you can’t message TurfMasta here so I’m a bit unsure

 

[awbacon]

The front connector has the two 5v leads, and two grounds. The 5V leads go to the sub pcb then into the motherboard. The grounds bypass the sub pcb entirely and go directly into the motherboard.

That’s my confusion



My rev 2 board has the grounds coming in off pin 1/2/A/B on the JAMMA edge then up into the motherboard. So my assumption is these grounds have to be hooked up

 

[DaisyAge]

I would ground them as it's never good to have voltage without it. It is interesting however, maybe you only need a grounded connection from the start to the end and the offshoots don't matter?

 

[suicidekiller]

Schematics have these grounds installed, but the tutorial doesn’t. Not sure why so haven’t don’t anything in any direction. Unfortunately you can’t message TurfMasta here so I’m a bit unsure

You could send him a message over twitter: https://twitter.com/turfmasta

Good luck with the project, reminds me a bit of my own HNG64 Driving Board adventure

 

[awbacon]

Lol driving board is next for me. Keep torturing myself

You could send him a message over twitter: https://twitter.com/turfmasta

Good luck with the project, reminds me a bit of my own HNG64 Driving Board adventure

 

[awbacon]

I’m just going to install the grounds. Schematics call for it, plus his tutorial does say you “may want to wire additional grounds”...and since I don’t see the 5v signals getting ground from anywhere else, it seems logical.

The 12v lines both have grounds in, so maybe that ground gets to the main mobo from the large sub pcb to mobo connector, but that’s not info I have schematic wise

 

[awbacon]

I haven’t been able to find a suitable connector in stock for the four pin 12v / ground connector on the sub pcb, but the male pins there are identical to Molex pons (at least in side and shape) so I pulled four pins and leads from a four pin power cable I had from a power supply I wasn’t using, and now I have the four leads needed for 12v power and ground. Not a final solution but for my testing it will be perfectly fine.

Kind of doing rev 1 and rev 2 on this. First building everything with proper connectors I can then finding a solution for what I am missing, then I’ll finish finding the connectors I can’t find

 

[awbacon]

The grounds are shared between the 5V and 12V section, so clearly the grounds the tutorial has wired up go into the motherboard in the main multi pin connector and back out. That’s why 5V grounds aren’t hooked up in TurfMastas tutorial. Technically unneeded

I’m still going to put them in, as the schematics list it and my rev 2 board has grounds going from the JAMMA edge directly into the front area of the main mobo. Can’t really have too many grounds after all lol

But that’s the answer on that

 

[awbacon]

power is all wired up. Had to splice leads for the 5V lines as female pins weren’t in stock, but jump wires were. 16 AWG so I spliced them to 18 AWG into the fingerboard. Once I find the correct housing for both power sections I’ll get them in their appropriate housings. For now it’s solo plugging in.

Cleaned up the 12v lead area. 5v wires are much longer due to having to use jumper wires so undecided what I am going to do with that.

A few more ground wires to wire up for audio and coin in but otherwise the harness is 95% done.

Otherwise video is next once the pins arrive Thursday. Till then project is on hold

 

[awbacon]

Forgot I had alligator clips lol

She’s alive. No sound or controls wired yet, but one pins come on thurs I can finish he job!

 

[suicidekiller]

Nice! Would love to lay my hands on BB2nd someday just because it's the last HNG64 game I haven't played yet.

Keep us updated

 

[awbacon]

Nice! Would love to lay my hands on BB2nd someday just because it's the last HNG64 game I haven't played yet.

Keep us updated

Will do. I still need to find a driving motherboard. I have all the games minus one racing game and the motherboard for it. So 6/7 games and 2/3 boards

 

[awbacon]

Just waiting on the JST YL female pins to complete my jamma harness connections into the larger connectors on the board

Have the top smaller connectors and the DB15 port wired for the flight stick.

Should have all the parts by Friday latest. Fingers crossed I don’t run into any issues w/the flight stick

 

[wataru330]

Not trolling, just genuinely confused-would plugging an Atlas converter into your HN64 allow it to work on JAMMA w/ out the hassle?

Are you planning on still using a gun, or making a change to the control scheme?

 

[awbacon]

Not trolling, just genuinely confused-would plugging an Atlas converter into your HN64 allow it to work on JAMMA w/ out the hassle?

Are you planning on still using a gun, or making a change to the control scheme?

The JNX One? Beast Busters 64 has no jamma interface. This project builds a jamma and DB15 output to run via supergun.

Control will be handled via a flight stick, so same general idea as the original control scheme

 

[wataru330]

The JNX One? Beast Busters 64 has no jamma interface. This project builds a jamma and DB15 output to run via supergun.

Control will be handled via a flight stick, so same general idea as the original control scheme

Ahh, thanks for clarifying! I had no idea the mobos were different. I incorrectly assumed that because my mobo had a jamma edge, the shooting game mobo did too.

Is the driving mobo it’s own type as well?

 

[awbacon]

Ahh, thanks for clarifying! I had no idea the mobos were different. I incorrectly assumed that because my mobo had a jamma edge, the shooting game mobo did too.

Is the driving mobo it’s own type as well?

It would have been so much easier if it had a JAMMA edge lolol..dunno why SNK didn’t include one.

And yeah the driving motherboard is different than the fighting or Beast Busters boards

 

[awbacon]

Done! I have a few connectors arriving tomorrow (12 pin single row and 4 pin 12V) but I just had a full play session of Beast Busters with a completely removable harness setup.

Only wire I don’t have wired up is test, as Turfmastas tutorial has it on a different pin than the manual. I just need to hook up a temp wire in each position to see where it belongs.

Otherwise it’s a full, reversible conversion to jamma and a flight stick with all correct connectors

 

[awbacon]

Oh and it def needs a pre-amp. Audio off the jamma edge is too low.

I may work on a stereo harness out into some powered speakers

 

[DaisyAge]

Is there a little switch on the mobo to switch between Jamma and MVS audio? I've seen some boards with them. It might be worth exploring to see if you can get amplified audio from there

This PDF shows position 6 and 7 as Jamma/MVS switches. Maybe that will help some. http://www.neogeocdworld.info/images/hng64/docs/Hyper NeoGeo 64 Manual.pdf

Here's something else from JNX http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/images/h64rev2stereo.jpg

 

[awbacon]

Is there a little switch on the mobo to switch between Jamma and MVS audio? I've seen some boards with them. It might be worth exploring to see if you can get amplified audio from there

This PDF shows position 6 and 7 as Jamma/MVS switches. Maybe that will help some. http://www.neogeocdworld.info/images/hng64/docs/Hyper NeoGeo 64 Manual.pdf

Here's something else from JNX http://www.jamma-nation-x.com/jammax/images/h64rev2stereo.jpg

That’s just relevant to the rev 2 fighting board.

I made a few mods. I had to splice the 12v wires since the pins that came with the connector housing were different and my original pins did not fit in. No biggie minus the fact I forgot to put the cable management cover over the wires before I soldered everything lolol. So I need to come up with a solution to that.

I dumped the service wire as well. Useless with coins wired / test menu.

That’s about it. A few cosmetic cable management items but it’s done. Def rev 1 though. Could def be improved in a second pass. I wish all the pins that weren’t the JST YL style were in stock...would have avoided having to splice wires into jump wires that were in stock / had the right female pin style.

Part availability is a bitch on this haha

Starting next Friday I’ll be dumping videos of the process on my YouTube channel. Four part conversion series.

 

[DaisyAge]

Well what pins are you missing? I can keep looking. I recently got hit with some type of Neo Fever and cannot stop obsessing over this shit lol. Looking forward to your videos, I subscribed instantly.

 

[awbacon]

Well what pins are you missing? I can keep looking. I recently got hit with some type of Neo Fever and cannot stop obsessing over this shit lol. Looking forward to your videos, I subscribed instantly.

I could not find the JST VL pins, the JST single row connector pins, or the 4 pin 12V JST pins. I did everything through Digi-key, and on those three they were out of stock on solo pins. They did have jumper wires so I spliced those into my jamma wires.

Unfortunately the wires for the VL and 12V were 14 and 26 AWG respectively, so I could not fit the wires into the through holes on my jamma board, so splicing was the only option. Worked fine but wish I didn’t have to.

Considering the original mod was all spliced into the wires coming from the game board itself, I am happy to splice from the JAMMA edge to be honest

 

[DaisyAge]

JST VL Pins:
http://www.smallcab.net/female-male-connector-p-1219.html
https://www.conrad.com/p/jst-bvf-61t-p20-crimp-contact-vl-series-nominal-current-details-20-a-741651