An Exercise In Frustration
I have been trying like HELL to get my multi-shooter PCB's all to play nicely with each other and I have failed miserably thus far and it's getting to me. I've probably spent a good 20 hours trying every which way to get all 6 game (now 5, more on that later) to work right in the cabinet. I've come close… very close… but not close enough. The problems seemed to start a few months back. At the time I had only 4 PCB's running in the cabinet… Area 51/Max Force, Area 51: Site 4, and two Atomiswave units (running Extreme Hunting and Ranger Mission). At first, and for some time the games all played reasonably well with each other. I did notice a little "static" on screen when the Area 51 PCB's were running, but nothing too bad and certainly not distracting enough to bother with.
Flash forward A few months and when I was taking a video of the game room I noticed that the static on A51: Site 4 was pretty heavy… much more so than it had been. I blew it off figuring I'd come back to the issue at a late
r time. About a month ago I won a Point Blank PCB off ebay and wanted to add it to the cabinet. After taking the time to modify the PCB to use the HAPP guns I have in the cabinet I installed it and was reminded of the static issue. Not only was A51: Site 4 affected, but so was A51/Max Force (to a lesser extent) AND the newly acquired Point Blank. I guess it was time to address the issue.
It didn't take long to recognize that the static issue was actually cross-talk from my Atomiswave PCBs. You can clearly see the Ranger Mission title screen "ghosting" on screen when the two Area 51 games AND Point Blank are running. When running both Atomiswave systems the statis is worse and it's more difficult to make out what you're seeing because both Atomiswave boxes are somehow getting video signals through the switcher. If I remove Ranger Mission you can clearly see Extreme Hunting "ghosting". You can even see Ranger Mission "cross-over" when running Extreme Hunting and vice-versa, however the ghosting isn't nearly as bad and doesn't really distract from game play. Oddly, when the Atomiswave units are removed from setup there appears to be very little to NO ghosting of the other titles.
After some discussion with Clay Cowgill (the creator of the multigame) he was pretty baffled as to what was going on as well. He made a number of suggestions including making sure the grounds for the power supplies were all connected, etc. After making sure everthing was connected correctly I still had the issue. Checking voltages it appeared that one switcher was a little low on the +5 reading 4.98 VDC… i figured I'd up it a little and that is when the first major "oops" happened. While Area 51: Site 4 was running I attempted to bump up the voltage slightly. When I "touched" the damn voltage adjustment pot I hear a "POP" and Site 4 went down. I immediately powered down. I figured the PS may be the issue all along so I replaced it. Upon powering up, Site 4 came up with a semi-staticy blank screen. I can hear the "computer" (the game runs on a PC montherboard with a JAMMA I/O PCB (callet a JAMMIT board) attached)… power up and POST. When I press start to play the audio SCREAMS out of the speakers … majorly over-driven… and nothing comes on screen. I've tested the PCB in another JAMMA cabinet and it does the same thing. I suspect I've ruined the JAMMIT I/O PCB. Area 51: Site 4 was toast. 🙁
About this time I received another gun game in the mail I picked up pretty cheap, Sharp Shooter. I verified the game worked by plugging it directly in to the JAMMA harness, but for the life of me I could not get the damn multigame switch to "lock on" the game. It simply bypassed it. After talking to Clay some more it seems this PCB may have a slightly odd sync signal that the PCB doesn't recognize. Luckily I also have an older version of the Clay multi JAMMA handy which doesn't automatically recognize when a game is plugged in by the sync signal, but instead it uses DIP switches to tell it how many games are attached. I pulled the newer JAMMA switch main board out and dropped in the older one and sure enough, Sharp Shooter came up fine. Unfortunately, just like Area 51: Site 4 (and the other non-Atomiswave PCBs), it suffers from the same cross-talk "ghosting" issue!
At this point I have already pulled both switcher power supplies… i've attempted to run different games with different supplies. Hell, I've tried to run ONLY the Atomiswave games with just ONE switcher… and no matter what I do, I can not get the damn Atomiswave units to STOP ghosting on one another or any other game attached to the system. I can configure the 3 non-Atomiswave games to work fine with each other… but as soon as I add an Atomiswave box to the mix, the cross-talk/ghosting occures. Clay is not sure what is happening and at this point as run out of suggestions other than to suggest to try one of the cheap Chinese switchers as they only power up one unit at a time. Having spent so much time and a fairly decent amount of money on his multi-JAMMA solution, I am not thrilled with the thought of having to purchase, modify, and install one of the Chinese switchers. On top of the switcher, I'd also have to wire up 5 extension harnesses… that doesn't sound too fun to be honest. But I am not sure what other option I have.
At this point I am on the brink of just giving up on the idea. I could run just the two Atomiswave units… sure, they do ghost with each other a slight bit, but it doesn't affect gameplay. My 
favorite shooter thus far is Extreme Hunting … which is an Atomiswave title. I also could give up the Atomiswave units and just focs on HAPP pistor shooters like Area 51 and Sharp Shooter. The negative to that is that, like I said above, Extreme Hunting is my favorite shooter thus far. I guess I could also run just the three HAPP PCB's and when I want to play the Atomiswave titles it's not too difficult to plug them in to the switcher to use then remove them afterward…. but it's MADDENING. It's not supposed to work like that. The whole concept of spending the money I spent and the time I've invested is so that the games will all play well with each other.
Which brings me to my final thought. At this point I'm becoming emotionally involved with this issue. After spending as much time as I've spent on this project, I'm having the urge to simply give up and move on. Perhaps the Showcase cabinet would be a prime candidate for the Darksoft Multi-CPS2 system I am building? Hell, with the amount of space on the control panel I could build a 4-player panel for the 4-player CPS-2 games. The only thing stopping me from going this route is the fact that I really do enjoy the shooters from time to time. >ARGH!<
What I will likely do is rip the whole damn thing out and start from scratch. I'm currently using the JAMMA harness that came in the cabinet. That's got to go. I need to start with a fresh brand new quality harness and work from there. Being a showcase cabinet, unfortunately that means extending the harness to get tot he control panel, which isn't a though that I savor, but at this point I am not sure where else to go or what else to do. Even doing so I still am looking at a GOOD possibility that the Atomiswave units still won't "play nice" with the other units. What I really don't get though is WHY it worked fine (very minor cross talk/ghosting) for the first few months then out of the blue start acting up.
