albert_c Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 I have had in my possession a Sega New Astro City candy cab for about 6 years. It was interfaced to a Playstation 2 and set up briefly in a home arcade but since then, it has just been taking up space for about a good 5 or so long years. After 2 or 3 half hearted attempts to sell this off to "tire-kickers" on Craigslist, I've decided to rededicate it for HyperSpin running just MAME (mostly just the classics up through the 90's). Picked up a PCIe x16 ArcadeVGA from eBay which should arrive shortly, and have an old PC which I will also re-purpose for this project. Below are specs for the PC: ASUS A8N-SLI-Deluxe Motherboard AMD Athlon XP 4800+ 2 GB DDR 250GB HDD ArcadeVGA MS Windows XP Pro 64-bit I will add pics as I go along. Wish me luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SIMPLYAUSTIN Posted July 24, 2014 Share Posted July 24, 2014 I wish I had a cab Good luck dude, may it revive a classic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HazzardActual Posted July 25, 2014 Share Posted July 25, 2014 please just post a pic of the bare cab. i fucking love sega cabinets, of all shapes and sizes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 Will post pics today. The cab is in good shape even has the original CP. The ArcadeVGA card should be in my mailbox when I get home today. Time to get excited! On a side note, seems that Windows XP 64-bit is lags when on idle a bit too much for my taste. I am going to switch to Windows Tiny7. The drawback is that it is only 32-bit. I don't want to pay for a legit copy of Windows for this project but may get a keygen and use with a legit copy of Windows 7 64bit later. We'll see how it goes. Pics shortly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HazzardActual Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 cant wait. may i request a high res "artsy fartsy" shot of that control panel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 Ok, as promised here are some pics: She has been sitting in storage for a long time. But I have all the essential parts including the coin mech keys and CP keys. I mentioned that have the original control panel, well that is not entirely true. The panel is intact but the joystick (just one) and the buttons have been upgraded. I am really fond of the original Day Glow Green and Hot Pink color scheme of the Sega NAC controls. I may in the future replace the buttons and balltops to match that scheme. We shall see. Here is an inside shot of the CP. Unfortunately, the wiring has been torn out. Finding the molex connectors to keep this JAMMA standard may be a pain. If I am not able to buy a complete new CP with molex connectors, then I will just interface it right to the PC forgoing JAMMA+ standards. Likely, I will do this in the short term anyway. Here is a shot of the coin slot. As you can see, it has not been previously used as an ashtray. But does show some yellowing. And as an added plus, I still have the Yen sticker! Here it is in action interfaced to a PS2 and playing CVS2. You will notice the green tinge. Not sure if I need some adjustment to the monitor or that this is a result of the signal conversion to CGA 15khz. Another CVS2 shot. And one more. Arggggh, the marquee light doesn't work either (not shown). I am hoping the green tinge is due to the interfacing to the PS2. When I play DVD movies with the PS2, there is no green tinge so I am optimistic that the green tinge isn't monitor related.. I will find out after I get the ArcadeVGA card installed into the HyperSpin Project PC. As I have no other source for CGA 15khz output, no arcade PCB's handy or otherwise. If not, I did find a diagram that locates the RGC gain/cutoff monitor PCB so I can get my hands dirty and do the adjustments (oh the joy.....). That's all for now. Next update will be after the ArcadeVGA is installed and ready to be connected to the Sega NAC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 Popped in the ArcadeVGA and I get a very stable POST screen right away! I had to temper my enthusiasm a bit because I acquired this from an eBay auction used and shipped from Spain. Wasn't 100% confident it would work but can breath a little easier now. Also, the green tinge appears to be gone which is great news. The contrast and brightness is a bit off but at least those pots are easy to get to on the Sega NAC and won't take much effort or risk of electrocution to adjust. And here is the Windows boot screen which I will shell later into obscurity. It is also very stable. Notice the green tinge is still gone (sorry for the upside down photos). Alas, all is not so good in Windows XP 64-bit land. The ArcadeVGA 5000 drivers seem to be unstable as hell in this OS. After removing all previous driver installations and manually installing the ArcadeVGA drivers, all I can get is a conflict and the Standard VGA adapter drivers working. So it looks like it is time for me to pop in that Tiny7 installation disc. Just as a sanity check, I maximized Notepad to check for burn-in and geometry issues. There is very little burn-in at all and it only shows up in black screens (POST) and not in color or white screens. Seems so many fighting games were played on this machine while it was sitting in an old friend's home arcade that the floor pixels have left a bar stretching across the bottom of the screen. Also, there is slight geometry issues. I am hoping the geometry issues will be alleviated or will go away once I get the drivers properly installed. Otherwise, I will need to overscan slightly or get my hands dirty to do the adjustments. All in all, the monitor is in good shape, which is the biggest concern for any home arcade machine setup. Time to install Tiny7........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 1, 2014 Author Share Posted August 1, 2014 After switching to Windows 7, I ran into a ton of BSOD's after installing the drivers for the ArcadeVGA downloaded from Ultimarc's site. Turns out, I installed the wrong drivers for my card. After I dug through the box the ArcadeVGA came it, it turns out the eBay seller did pack a driver disc. Once those drivers were installed everything worked! The geometry issue didn't go away but it seems minor; simply a trapezoidal/keystone adjustment pot that I will have to get to later. Also the burn-in is hardly noticeable. Then I proceed to install the rest of the drivers for my PC and find my motherboard doesn't support Windows 7. So, looks like I will be going back to Windows XP 64-bit. It is interesting to note that I get a bit of flicker running 16-bit color or higher at 640x480 (these pics make the flicker appear much worse than actual). And this really sucks because HyperSpin is going to look crappy at 256 colors even if MAME looks good. Quite a predicament. I'll do some more experimenting once I get Windows XP x64 back up and running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
relic Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 youl get there bro its starting to shape up nicely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 Made minor adjustments to the contrast/brightness. The contrast was in the back of the cab which was harder to get to. And the brightness was under the CP. A small effort in that I had to get a mirror to observe my adjustments while in the back of the cab, but wow what a difference! This is coming from a guy that has a projector in his house but this old Sega NAC is just down right stunning! The monitor is probably in better shape than 99% of the Sega NAC's out there. And believe me, I have seen many. Some pics above to share with you all. But it wasn't all so glorious this weekend. Setting up ArcadeVGA with a CGA monitor is every bit as frustrating as it is purported to be. Spent most of the weekend just trying to get everything stable. But now that those hurdles have been overcome, new ones have arrived. Seems my PC is a bit too slow to run Tekken 3. Tekken 3 was one of the last games I played in the arcades before that market went belly up. So it is a must that my cab can run it smoothly. I will be looking to see if I can get Win7 64-bit running on my machine. And hopefully a custom compile of MAME for my AMD XP 4800+ will do the trick. If not, I'm going to Craigslist to pick up a Dell Core 2 Duo desktop. They are selling for about $80 around these parts. It may be a while yet before I get to interfacing the joysticks and controls :/ .....But hey, I am having fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HazzardActual Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 holy shit dude..... that thing is beautiful. Im envious as fuck over here. how much did you pay for the cabinet originally? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polemicist Posted August 3, 2014 Share Posted August 3, 2014 If jealousy is a curse I'm cursed. That thing is awesome. In Australia getting cabs like that is bloody near impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 Thanks guys! Actually, the monitor is so big and crisp that I turned up the softness a bit to blend in the pixels for a less jaggy look (21st century problems). Oh, and the flicker is gone now too! I bought a Konami Windy City and this Sega New Astro City back in 2005 from Richard Paul at the BYOAC forums. I paid less for both shipped than what one of these are going for today as listed from the cheapest commercial sights. I think that Richard Paul guy was just reselling them from another guy named Matsu who was sourcing them from Japan. Lot's of people had issues dealing with Richard. But things went ok here with the exception that the Windy City didn't have an original CP. I ended up selling the Windy City later for that reason. Kind of wishing I still had it though. It would be nice to have a 2nd candy cab just for TATE games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 3, 2014 Author Share Posted August 3, 2014 ArcadeVGA is pretty darn hard to work with because of among other things, the different resolution of games. Thank goodness someone realized that and coded GroovyMame. Anyhow, I just attempted to use Instantsheller to shell into HyperSpin. Now all I have on screen is scrambled pixels. Oh well. I was going to dump Tiny7 in favor of Windows 7 64-bit anyway. Hopefully the processing boost will get Tekken 3 running smoothly. I think that is as much tinkering with the software as I will do this week. Time to clean up the Sega NAC and move her from the garage into the house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HazzardActual Posted August 4, 2014 Share Posted August 4, 2014 still looking for the "instagram" money shot of that CP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 4, 2014 Author Share Posted August 4, 2014 Let me clean her up first. LoL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 10, 2014 Author Share Posted August 10, 2014 Here is a shot of the CP prior to getting cleaned up. I have had this in storage for about 6 years. When we picked this up, the original green/pink buttons and sticks were still on the CP which were replaced with the white buttons and stick. This was then setup as a head to head cabinet for fighting games. We never gave this thing a throrough cleaning. Sort of just a once over. But not this time around, she will be thoroughly cleaned! I bought new buttons and sticks for this CP and will be restoring it to the green/pink color scheme. That stuff should arrive in the next two weeks or so. As for the software side of things, I think I have that pretty stable. I even figured out how to get joystick navigation to work in the HyperSpin UI. And made a video tutorial to help people out with getting that done: I may have to update my PC however, some games seem to run really sluggishly on my system specs: AMD Athlon XP+ 4800 2GB DDR ASUS A8N-SLI-Deluxe Motherboard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scooter1974 Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Looking good so far, can't wait to see it completed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albert_c Posted August 13, 2014 Author Share Posted August 13, 2014 Got some video of the cab in action. Those old arcade graphics really come alive on an arcade CRT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nofxbam Posted August 14, 2014 Share Posted August 14, 2014 Looks nice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnphamus13 Posted August 26, 2014 Share Posted August 26, 2014 Looks great. I haven't touch my cabs in awhile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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