Superully's Superduper PCB Testing Station

[level42]

I'm pretty sure some things in life would be a lot less enjoyable if we would have had a beak........

[Laschek]

- as you can see, two different adapters are supported: tv ideal and msg. apart from the obvious difference in looks, what is the technical difference between those two?

The "MSG" pinout can be found in any Hellomat manual, for the "TV-Ideal" pinout, well, check any manual for ADP TV Ideal Standard or Twin Liner etc. Speleo has them on his site.

[Superully]

The "MSG" pinout can be found in any Hellomat manual, for the "TV-Ideal" pinout, well, check any manual for ADP TV Ideal Standard or Twin Liner etc. Speleo has them on his site.

thx sascha, but how about an example? let's say i wanna test a bubble bobble pcb - what do i have to do?

[Superully]

I give you an example, it's really easy. You need a fingerboard, a connector, a few wire clips, and the appropriate pinout of your game.

This is an adapter I made to test Konami boards like Amidar or Time Pilot on my Jamma MAK:



On the left you see the fingerboard with 2x28 pins to fit the Jamma connector of my MAK.
On the right you see a 2x18 pin connector which fits the Amidar PCB.
You take a look at the pinout of the game and find the pin where eg. GND is connected. Find the GND pin on the Jamma side and connect them. Do this for all the connections you need. Finished.

Note that in this particular example the adapter can be used with quite a number of games which all use the "Konami Classic" or "Scramble" pinout. This is not always the case. In fact many pre-Jamma games have their own unique pinout.
Plus it is possible that bootlegs may have a different pinout than their original counterparts.

Concerning the test station you have:

-Instead of the Jamma Fingerboard you need one that fits your "TV Ideal" connector (more pins) or a loom for the "MSG" connector.
-Make a Jamma to MSG adapter or a Jamma to TV Ideal adapter (or both) and adapt you to-be-tested-games to Jamma. Because Jamma fingerboards are easier to find and I guess cheaper than TV Ideal fingerboards or those MSG/Hellomat looms. 

thx sascha! so basically i'm creating a MSG / TV IDEAL adapter to Jamma and then an adapter for the individual games to jamma, right?

i'll go through all the adapters i have, perhaps there's something in there i can already use! i'll post more pics tomorrow (if i don't forget about it)!

[Laschek]

thx sascha! so basically i'm creating a MSG / TV IDEAL adapter to Jamma and then an adapter for the individual games to jamma, right?

Right!

[Luigi]

I have built two consoles for easier testing of unknown PCBs or known PCBs without soldering a specific adapter. Turned out very well and very handy 

[Zorg]

mine was also built in order to be abble to test any pcb without making any soldering first:





mastermind is the key ;-)

it should be improved:
add an additional variable transformer in order to have pecific voltages delivered (I think on some ealier PCB that need 18V or 24V or any other voltage not provided by the standard JAMMA PSU)
add a volume control

 

[level42]

Impressive stuff !! Good to hear from you again Erik, long time ago !!!

[Superully]

@thorsten & erik: both of your machines look really impressive. wanna share with us how they work? testing any pcb without soldering?

[baritonomarchetto]

Wow, what excellent examples of "universal" test benches you have there!

[Zorg]

instead of soldering wires on any adapters you just to have one "octopus" per kind of connector.

see picture above, there is an 22pin connector octopus wired  

you plug the PCB you want to test to the corresponding octopus, then following the pinout of the PCB to test, you just have to plug the corresponding wire to the corresponding "hole" on the test bench

each hole on the test station is wired to a standard jamma connector.

see pic


in fact you don't solder anything once the test station is made, you just realise the adaptation moving wires.
once the PCB is tested, then you have to make the real adaptator  as icyured by laschek

not sure I'm really clear.

this way you can quickly check any PCB

[Luigi]

It's just as simple as Erik wrote. PLUS I have made "overlay templates" for common pinouts. In the picture you see the one for PCBs with Konami-pinout. So I put it on the panel and just have to do the connections.

[Etienne MacGyver]

They look very cool and usefull !

Also i think i can build something like that 
hmmm  i feel a new project comming up 

[Superully]

what is an octopus? and please, no pics like that

[Belike]

Cool equipment.
By the way, how do you connect the monitor and is it also working with different kind of chassises?