JVS I/ Helper by Mitsurugi-w

My friend Mitsurugi has made a PCB I/O Helper that will help you to use almost any JVS I/O with any platform. Here is a small description:



Hey guys.

I just want to see if anyone is interested in these if I have them produced. I designed this to solve a problem I was having. As everyone knows the days of dedicated pcbs for games is gone and game devs are using pc based hardware systems to release games on. They use a seperate I/O pcb to handle all the the inputs to control the games. I/O pcbs have been used for a long time but the interesting thing is that I/Os that were used by Sega during the Naomi era are still being used for newer systems such as Lindbergh.

Most people that have a Naomi use a Capcom I/O because it is easy and JAMMA standard compatible. But the fact is that using a Sega JVS I/O gives you a larger variety of game selection and newer game platforms will not allow the use of a Capcom I/O.

So my problem was this. I had to make hand-made adapters to play my Lindbergh games and pretty much any racing game. The actual AMP connectors used by Sega are very hard to find let alone the proper pins. My adapters were often very ugly and would break a lot and needed to be redone. I set out to make a cleaner solution to more easily play these games. This is what I came up with:

It has a DB25 and a DB15 port for two players. The DB25 ports use what I am calling the Walsdawg standard. (lol) It is a modified version of the system MAS Systems used back in the day for their Super NOVA Superguns. I used their button mapping but added more buttons, 5V, and analog controls to the DB25 connectors. I like using this standard because it is very flexible and allows for more than enough buttons to control any arcade game from a single connector. The DB15 ports will allow you to use a PC joystick with very minor modification to play flying or gun games. Here is the pinout diagram for the DB25 connections:

If you have other controllers that you want to use you can easily make an adapter for it to work with this pcb. DB25 accessories are easy to find and cheap. The cool thing about this is that it allows you to remap any button using wire jumpers so you could mount one of these in a racing cabinet and then you would have a huge variety of arcade systems and games you could play using a single I/O pcb!



This pcb also deals with a few issues that using a SEGA I/O requires a solution to:

---Power Loopback is automatically corrected. No need to splice any wires for inputs to work.

---Resistors are onboard to emulate the coin meters. Some games will not boot or coin up without coin meters present.



This will work with Revisions 1, 2, and 3 of the Sega JVS I/O to provide digital and analog inputs.

It can also be used in conjunction with the Capcom I/O for analog controls. Now you Capcom I/O peeps can easily play those racing games!

I made two videos. I split it because it was long. Part 1 is the introduction and how it works. Part 2 is the demonstration.


Part 1:

Part 2:

Basically I want to see if there is enough interest for me to do a production run. I made protos for myself and two friends. The production run would not be purple and price totally depends on how many I could produce. Please comment and let me know if you are interested. Also, I'm sure I left some details out as I typed this from work. Ask any questions you may have contact me at mitsurugi_w *at* hotmail.com