Hi all,
Many years ago in 2003, I did my first Candy cab PC build using a Jaleco Pony IV. When I got the cabinet, it cost $450.. and came with SF3 installed! I sold the SF3 set for $350. Deals like this are long gone.. In those days I was able to pick up CPS2 for a song.. it was right about when the suicide battery fix was discovered, so I did really well. I no longer have them, but I used to rotate SFA3 and SFZ2A (the fairly rare japanese B board!) in the Pony too. I also had a SF2ce set that I would rotate between this personal cab and one at work (a jamma converted defender.. a complete travesty!).
The Pony IV cabinet itself required no work at all, so most of my time was spent doing early mame software setups. I had fun working on early versions of the iPac and jPac, and did a lot of setup testing with advancemame dev crew and a few others in the emulation scene. There were still video cards that suppored CGA and below, so this was mounting PC motheboard on the Candy cab breadboard etc. I left this cabinet behind in California with a friend when we moved to the UK- one blown cap to fix and nowhere to put it after the move.. my friend quickly fixed it and still uses it today!
Fast forward to now- I recently got the itch again, and ordered a New Astro City cabinet restored by JCL in china. They've been a delight to deal with. Their restorations are primarily the cabinet itself (sandblasting, repainting, decals replaced, all controls replaced, lighting modified to use easier-to-maintain, etc). A beautiful result overall. The tube has a couple scuffs, but no burn in at all.. very happy with it. I added some Xingo art (the topper and instruction card for MS2) to the machine as you can see below.
I set the New Astro City up with a couple different boards inside.. I got a switching 2-slot jamma (with amusing remote control!) from AliExpress, and started off with a Mister/JAMMIX board. I'm also a fairly deep-dive linux hacker, so I ordered a Recalbox Jamma hat/case for Raspberry Pi 5. Originally I was expecting better latency performance on the Mister for CPS2 games, though honestly once I tweaked the latency settings on Recalbox I can't tell a difference. I've been keeping the Mister for the vintage computers.. Apple, BBC, Archimedes, and the lovely 486 core for old DOS CGA stuff.
I also have 2 neo-geo motherboards through some beer-assisted ebay.. so I have an MS2 and MS3 carts as well. I've been using these to compare/contrast with the emulated (recalbox) or FPGA (mister) versions. It's amazing how perfect both emulated & fpga cores are, honestly.
It stays 99% of the time in Recalbox mode. That was soooo easy to get working compared to the much more manual install on the Pony IV. The vertical games in "Squish mode" work surprisingly well. Some have no artifacts at all (PacMania, etc).. others you can see a bit of distortion and missing lines when you play, but surprisingly non-distracting. I suppose Ideally I'd have another cabinet for vertical, but it was bad enough getting this one past Mrs Wahoo.
I had a couple set-up issues.. the PSU on the NAC is "pretty lame" honestly, it was booting with 5.2v coming off the 5v, then it would drop down to 4.9 or so under load. Just enough to upset the recalbox either on bootup (too high) or after (undervoltage detected). The fix was the "hidden dip switch" which is under some anti-static tape.. flipping that switch means it boots just fine and I can adjust the output so it's ~5v bang on under load.
To-do:
- 2:1 sound. I have a shielded speaker / sub set that will fit in place. I've not made up my mind if I want to replace the mono speakers permanently, make a switch to use Jamma or the recalbox stereo out..
- Monitor chassis.. lost picture the other day. The chassis worked great for 3 months, but re-cap etc wasn't part of the JCL price.. I'm not great at the electrical work, so probably will get a second MS9-29 chassis to use and have original repaired/re-capped. Pretty sure it's on the main chassis board as no high voltage to screen or glow in neck tube at present..
- PSU: I have worn buttons/rocker switch. It would be great to recap the PSU too, i think that's the cause of my 5v issue.
Many years ago in 2003, I did my first Candy cab PC build using a Jaleco Pony IV. When I got the cabinet, it cost $450.. and came with SF3 installed! I sold the SF3 set for $350. Deals like this are long gone.. In those days I was able to pick up CPS2 for a song.. it was right about when the suicide battery fix was discovered, so I did really well. I no longer have them, but I used to rotate SFA3 and SFZ2A (the fairly rare japanese B board!) in the Pony too. I also had a SF2ce set that I would rotate between this personal cab and one at work (a jamma converted defender.. a complete travesty!).
The Pony IV cabinet itself required no work at all, so most of my time was spent doing early mame software setups. I had fun working on early versions of the iPac and jPac, and did a lot of setup testing with advancemame dev crew and a few others in the emulation scene. There were still video cards that suppored CGA and below, so this was mounting PC motheboard on the Candy cab breadboard etc. I left this cabinet behind in California with a friend when we moved to the UK- one blown cap to fix and nowhere to put it after the move.. my friend quickly fixed it and still uses it today!
Fast forward to now- I recently got the itch again, and ordered a New Astro City cabinet restored by JCL in china. They've been a delight to deal with. Their restorations are primarily the cabinet itself (sandblasting, repainting, decals replaced, all controls replaced, lighting modified to use easier-to-maintain, etc). A beautiful result overall. The tube has a couple scuffs, but no burn in at all.. very happy with it. I added some Xingo art (the topper and instruction card for MS2) to the machine as you can see below.
I set the New Astro City up with a couple different boards inside.. I got a switching 2-slot jamma (with amusing remote control!) from AliExpress, and started off with a Mister/JAMMIX board. I'm also a fairly deep-dive linux hacker, so I ordered a Recalbox Jamma hat/case for Raspberry Pi 5. Originally I was expecting better latency performance on the Mister for CPS2 games, though honestly once I tweaked the latency settings on Recalbox I can't tell a difference. I've been keeping the Mister for the vintage computers.. Apple, BBC, Archimedes, and the lovely 486 core for old DOS CGA stuff.
I also have 2 neo-geo motherboards through some beer-assisted ebay.. so I have an MS2 and MS3 carts as well. I've been using these to compare/contrast with the emulated (recalbox) or FPGA (mister) versions. It's amazing how perfect both emulated & fpga cores are, honestly.
It stays 99% of the time in Recalbox mode. That was soooo easy to get working compared to the much more manual install on the Pony IV. The vertical games in "Squish mode" work surprisingly well. Some have no artifacts at all (PacMania, etc).. others you can see a bit of distortion and missing lines when you play, but surprisingly non-distracting. I suppose Ideally I'd have another cabinet for vertical, but it was bad enough getting this one past Mrs Wahoo.
I had a couple set-up issues.. the PSU on the NAC is "pretty lame" honestly, it was booting with 5.2v coming off the 5v, then it would drop down to 4.9 or so under load. Just enough to upset the recalbox either on bootup (too high) or after (undervoltage detected). The fix was the "hidden dip switch" which is under some anti-static tape.. flipping that switch means it boots just fine and I can adjust the output so it's ~5v bang on under load.
To-do:
- 2:1 sound. I have a shielded speaker / sub set that will fit in place. I've not made up my mind if I want to replace the mono speakers permanently, make a switch to use Jamma or the recalbox stereo out..
- Monitor chassis.. lost picture the other day. The chassis worked great for 3 months, but re-cap etc wasn't part of the JCL price.. I'm not great at the electrical work, so probably will get a second MS9-29 chassis to use and have original repaired/re-capped. Pretty sure it's on the main chassis board as no high voltage to screen or glow in neck tube at present..
- PSU: I have worn buttons/rocker switch. It would be great to recap the PSU too, i think that's the cause of my 5v issue.
