Remember those PVG SNK bartops... I fixed mine nice.

[Mike26]

I'm waiting for my AWS cab from the groupbuy and trying to bide my time. I've been modding xboxs for nostalgia, and finishing my cabs slowly. I picked up this PVG bartop after searching for one for years and I might have paid too much for it, but whatever. It was limited to 6 neo geo games, and they were emulated via a custom jamma board with a non-rewitable sd card that was rar'd and password protected. Others have broke the protection, and spilled the info that the games are in fact zipped neo geo roms... There's some sort of check in the code so you cann't just replace another neogeo rom by renaming it the old one... Although I did put a unibios in it for kicks and that worked weird.

So for the past 2 nights I've been flirting with the idea of removing the stock sd card jamma board, and throwing in an xbox running coinops.
I am finished and here's the result:

One on/off switch, i spliced xbox into switch as well as speaker amp is powered off +12 volt line and ground from xbox.

Xbox system is tsop flashed, m8+ bios with dvd check disabled so no dvd drive (cuts down on size and bootup time), 120gb laptop ide drive with adaptor, fan speed set to 100% because i'm still figuring out temps.

Xbox to Jamma adaptor fits right where the original board went, footprint matches up perfectly, talk about luck:

Daughterboard doubles as the PSU for the unit, so I cannot break them up.

xbox on the left side wall, xbox to jamma adaptor below and to the left, harddrive behind it.

Decased an old dell speaker system and used the speaker amp to power the speaker, ran the unpowered audio out from the jamma edge because the xbox to jamma adaptor needs 12 volts to power the onboard amp, which this stock PVG powersupply cannot provide via jammaedge:

I pull +12 volts from the xbox psu to the speaker system via the molex connector on the harddrive. I was worried about buzz from an unclean source, but no problems. Sound is great!

Now i can choose from 3335 games, i have a neo geo library of 620 games, nice upgrade from the original 6 with shitty sound...

This is emulation i realize it's far from perfect, hell i still have 2 legit neo cabs for that, but this will make me happy for a while. None of that shotty chinese 3000 in 1 units that use a VIA cpu and bad caps, locked down and non-user upgradable or customizable. This is a good solution that is completely reversible back to stock.

 

[cdamm]

thats awesome. how are you accomodating the other controller buttons from the xbox for emulation? or are you only loading 4 button and fewer games on there?


i still like the idea of throwing in a 1 slot board, but thats a project for another time.

 

[Mike26]

through the jamma edge the four buttons for each player and joysticks are wired direct. The xbox jamma adaptor is jamma spec to that degree... Ther were some things I had to move around.

The main thing was the "select" button since it was wired to if i recall "slam switch 15 on top edge" vs. 11 were the xbox jamma adaptor has weirdly chosen it to be. So that was all I needed to change.

for now I have 3335 games selectable but i might limit it to just neo geo since its a neo themed cab. I need to mess around with this a little longer to get a feel for what would be the best.

I will post up a vid later of the startup and playthru

 

[cdamm]

for now I have 3335 games selectable but i might limit it to just neo geo since its a neo themed cab. I need to mess around with this a little longer to get a feel for what would be the best.

if you do that, then why not just a 1 slot and a 161 in 1 cart? i would think thats a whole lot easier. just sayin.

but yeah- its a really cool concept and the work is nice. im curious to see the video, man. good job!

 

[Mike26]

it might be easier but the 161 in 1 has a ton of hacks and doesn't have a full range of titles. In my opinion, this as far as i am concerned is better than a bootleg multicart.

Also a while back i was contemplating getting a multicart, but saw issues: doesn't that 161 in 1 kill the system over time, glitch and whatnot? My philosophy in a nutshell, is it be safer to leave the original hardware running original stuff, and hacks/bootleg carts don't belong with original hardware. I've heard of too many problems with systems connectors and board malfunctions after using multi-carts to trust one with my mv1, my 2 slot, or any of my legit hardware.

I have no issues with emulation or bootleg carts, but i don't like to mix hardware like that. I think it's important to keep the old hardware free from shitty chinese caps, chinese disregard for voltage limits, etc. Just my thoughts.


Also the biggest reason I didn't run a jamma/MVS hardware in there is because the jamma psu built into the system doesnt have +12volts, and -5. -5 isn't a big deal, but +12volts is important.

here's the video:

 

[cdamm]

looks great. (and let me know if you every want to gret rid of that board- i always wanted to tinker with one).

 

[Tacitus]

If you want to leave the original board with me at the group buy, I can do some research ad work on decrypting and otherwise fiddling with it...


Let me know

 

[Mike26]

thanks man. I had the board up for sale a while ago, but it was up for too much money i guess. I saw what they were going for on the arcademuseum BST forums but whatever. I'll just hold onto it to keep the option of going back to stock a reality.

 

[Tacitus]

thanks man. I had the board up for sale a while ago, but it was up for too much money i guess. I saw what they were going for on the arcademuseum BST forums but whatever. I'll just hold onto it to keep the option of going back to stock a reality.

Well, the offer is there and I'd certainly return the hardware...

 

[Jassin000]

Nice job VT! Looks great, love the blue MS artwork. Maybe change the buttons to match Neo colors? A=Red, B=Blue, etc, etc.

 

[Mike26]

vt i didnt see your msg since i responded before i refreshed. Yea man I would do that, but i have already dumped the sd card data and can send it your way if that'd help. Also I will bring the pcb with me to the pickup to leave with you.

 

[trenog]

I always wondered how close you'd be with the next guy playing on a bartop like that. Seems like you'd have no personal space at all.

 

[Mike26]

yep but i guess its meant for home use so you scoot to either side it's not unusable by any means.

 

[loegan43]

Great job Mike26. I'd recommend swapping out the stock sticks and buttons when you get a chance, they're cheaply made and prone to failure. The bartops aren't that bad to play on, had a pair a couple years back, there were a couple guys trying to crack the software to add more ROM's, but I don't think it ever happened. I think the Xbox is a great idea, congrats on getting it up and running.