Thursday 14 November 2013

Raspberry PI for Arcade Jamma Adapter with C64 / Atari / Negeo Joystick Port

Hey, 

this is my new project for the Raspberry PI. I`m still searching for a good name :) Anyone?

EDIT : Name found :) The project is called PiJamma. It`s available in our online shop http://www.arcadeforge.de

It`s a kind of Arcade  Jamma Adapter with controller game ports for C64 / Amiga / Atari and Neogeo style sticks. Additionally it has various connector break-outs like screw terminals to make your modding life more easy.


You see here the Raspberry PI with the Jamma Adapter.

Features :

- Raspberry pi GPIO Connector
- Jamma Interface
- Screw Terminals for all kind of signals
- Game controller Port DSUB 9 pin for Amiga, C64, Atari, etc
- Game controller Port for DSUB 16 pin for NeoGeo Controller sticks
- 3 buttons for controlling the emulators. Ie. take Start Player 1, Start Player 2 and Coin for Arcade emulator MAME
- Simple PSU Plug for 5V
- Extended PSU Molex connector for 12V and 5V
- 6 Pin Audio connector to connect a external amplifier. This way the Arduino Line Level sound can used in Arcade cabinets or bartops with speakers only.
- On and Off switch with LED








Ok, here some pics using the connectors.

Raspberry pi audio headphone connector to chinch. The Audio coming from Raspberry pi is line level. I`ve decided to go with extern amplifiers. So the user can decide to use high performance amplifier or home entertainment system or whatever. The design goal is to offer a wide range of use cases and not stick on one sound interface solution.


This board uses the GPIO interface for Arcade Controls. This way an additional Keyboard Encoder like Dual Strike or Key Strike is not needed. The pin count of the GPIO is limited. If someones wants six button 2 Player controls, so Keyboard Encoders can still be used via the USB Port of the Raspberry Pi. So again, no need to make the board expensive. The user decides what he wants.


But let`s face the Game controller Ports. In the picture one sees the famous competition Pro for the even more famous Commodore C64.

I`ve added here the audio breakout. Pinout is
- 12V
- GND
- Audio Line Level Left
- Speaker-
- Audio Line Level Right
- Speaker+

5V is available via Screw Terminal. Using 12V via this connector means that 12V must provided to the board via the Molex Connector. On the picture a sample Mono Amp is shown.


On the Picture a sample Stereo Amp is shown.

See here a simple 12V and 5V PSU. As said before a simple 5V PSU can be used via the basic PSU Plug. In this case the sound can grabbed from the HDMI or the headphone jacks to your own amplifier. 

A short word about the video out. Raspberry offers HDMI and composite out. It would have been so nice to see VGA or something more sophisticated analogue signal. The next post will shown some video adapter to get from HDMI a VGA signal with Scanlines or even RGBS for CRT or Arcade CRTs. 

Thanks for your attention. Comments are welcome :)

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