JAMMA Swap in 60 Seconds

[Flack]

Swapping JAMMA boards is one of the easiest things you can do when it comes to messing with arcade games. In fact, yesterday, I converted my Aerofighters cabinet to a multigame 48-in-1 cabinet in about 60 seconds. Here's what swapping JAMMA boards looks like.



Here's my Aerofighters cabinet. The monitor is mounted vertically, which is exactly what I need for this project.



Here is the 48-in-1 PCB. The board is on the right. I put some DVD cases on the left hand side of the picture for scale purposes. This board is small!



Here's the back of my Aerofighters cabinet with the rear door removed. The monitor is at the top. On the bottom left is the power supply. The giant board to the right is Aerofighters.



Here's a closer shot of the old board.



At the top of the board is the JAMMA harness. It simply unplugs from the old board.



For testing purposes, I've set the new board on top of the old one (I told you it was small!). Note how the harness plugs directly into the new board. That's the magic of JAMMA!



Flip the game on, and like magic, the cabinet is now a new game! All that's left after this point is removing the old board and mounting the new board to the inside of the cabinet.

That's a simple JAMMA swap in under 60 seconds!

[miserere01]

Heh wow, it was just as easy as I expected. Well done on the excellent guide!

[Captain Wrong]

OT: but what the heck is that 48 in 1 board? Looks interesting.

[Flack]

OT: but what the heck is that 48 in 1 board? Looks interesting.

It's a JAMMA board that has 48 games built in. It has a built in menu system that shows eight screens at six games per screen. The first ones I ever saw were 4-in-1, since then I've also seen 9-in-1, 12-in-1, 32-in-1 (I think) and now 48-in-1. Some places allow you to pick the game listing but this one just came preset. Even if I had been able to pick the games, all the ones I would have picked came on this one (Donkey Kong 1-3, Pac/Ms. Pac, Centipede, Galaga/Galaxian, Dig Dug 1/2, Zaxxon, Xevious, etc). A few of the games have been modified so that they will work with a joystick instead of a trackball (Centipede/Millipede/Arkanoid). Each game has its own virtual dip switches which can be changed (just like MAME) and saved to flash. It also flashes and saves the high score tables for each game.

I paid $250 off of eBay with free shipping. The cabinet I installed it into was a working cabinet with a 25" monitor that I was planning on converting to MAME. I figured by the time I bought a computer, an i-pac, and an arcade vga card (to use the cab's monitor) that I would spend more than $250 anyway.

The only thing I don't care for is the 48-in-1 seems to have a mix of 4-way and 8-way stick games. The classics are difficult to play with an 8-way stick (which is what I have in there now), but I suspect others (Centipede, Zaxxon) work better with an 8-way. Maybe I'll throw a switchable one in there.

Here's a link to a page selling the board that shows all 48 games. I didn't order mine from this place but it's the same board. 48-in-1 List of Games.

Note: After buying mine I have since found a 465-in-1 (vertical) for around $300 and a 1066-in-1 (horizontal) for around $550. Both of these use hard drives for storage.

[Captain Wrong]

Very interesting. I was asking because I'm 99% sure I saw that exact board running in a Pizza Hut not too long ago. The menu screen looks just like I rmember it.

So...I'm guessing this isn't exactly...umm...legit?

[Flack]

I can't imagine it is. It says all the games are licensed but I think that means, "someone else owns the license," not, "we paid to use these licenses." They are becoming very popular on routes, especially in restaurants that only have room for one or two games. You can take any JAMMA cabinet, add this board, and voila, instant classics.

Just like MAME, it will never take the place of the originals, but it has its uses.

[XYXZYZ]

You know, if I ever get a cabinet where I plan on frequenty changing boards as opposed to MAME, I'd have to rig up a shelf or somethig where I can change it through the control panel, like Neo Geo carts.

I suppose you plan to leave the 48>1 board in there for awhile? And by the way, are those boots faithful to the originals?

[Flack]

There are quite a few cabinets that have "front" board access. Check out this photo of my RoadBlasters cabinet:



My Bucky O'Hare cabinet in this Sente cabinet, also has front door access.

I haven't had a lot of time to spend on the 48-in-1 yet so I'm not sure if they're 100% accurate, but just at a quick glance they seemed to be spot on.

[Gapporin]

I've seen that 48-in-1 board elsewhere as well (at a Cici's Pizza...pizza joints must love these things), and the first thing I noticed is that they either (a) removed all copyright notices, or (b) used pre-existing bootleg roms.

So, yeah, they're probably as accurate as a bootleg rom set inside of MAME.