Cab sound issue-Double Dragon wiring :Update: problem solved

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astrodan88
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Cab sound issue-Double Dragon wiring :Update: problem solved

Post by astrodan88 »

problem solved; thanks!
Last edited by astrodan88 on Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Jockel
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Post by Jockel »

no problem. glad we could help ;)
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robivy64
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Post by robivy64 »

What was the problem, and how was it fixed? Just curious for future reference...
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astrodan88
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Post by astrodan88 »

I'd been having a problem with a cab I'm working on and after racking my brain I gave up and posted my question. No sooner then I posted I remembered one last thing I could try. Sure enough, that was the problem. I just deleted the question because I didn't want to bother people. Here's my original question and the solution in the hopes that it may help someone else avoid my dumb mistake.


"I'm working on an arcade cab (4 player X-men) and I've been testing it with different boards I own and I've encounter some strange things that I can't figure out. I should say also that the board mentioned has been tested on another Jamma cab (New Astro City) and are 100%.

The problem I encountered was with a Double Dragon pcb. The -5v was not hooked up in the cab when I bought it so I hooked it up because I knew Double Dragon needed it. But when I turn on the cab the board starts to smoke. Holy shit! I turned it off and saved the board (still tests fine).

I then decided to swap out the power supply with a brand new one. I hooked it up but no improvement. All boards still 100% except Double Dragon. Double Dragon gave a loud buzz through the speaker when powered up and was immediately powered down."

Here's what I forgot:
The M and 11 pins on the jamma harness were wired to the L and 10 pins respectively.

A short time back I encountered a jamma board (Battletoads) that was set up to output stereo sound, even having individual volume pots for the left and right channel. When I put it in the X-men cab (or a few other jamma cabs) it wouldn't output any sound. It turns out Battletoads outputs sound for the left channel through jamma pins L and 10 and the right channel through jamma pins M and 11. I talked to the previous owner of the board and he said he wired the M to the L and 10 to 11 on the jamma harness to get sound. M and 11 weren't even wired on the jamma harness in the X-men cab so it did what he said and sure enough, it worked.

Fast forward a and I'm working on wiring the cab so that it's has interchangable harnesses for other 4 player games than just Konami. While I'm at it I'm redoing some wiring and I test a few other boards in the cab. Every other board I try works fine but when I try Double Dragon I get the catastrophic results previously mentioned.

I don't know what happened but despite the fact that M and 11 are listed as unused on every Double Dragon pinout I've found (even in the manual) some bad things happen when they get crossed with the other sound channels. If anyone knows exactly why this happens, please let me know. Maybe someone out there knows about the Double Dragon board or electronics in general and can say more. All I can say is for all those out there than own Battletoads and Double Dragon (anybody?) and plan on playing them on the same mono cab, be aware of how the sound is wired.

Here's the pinouts for Double Dragon and Battletoads for reference.
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robivy64
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Post by robivy64 »

Smoked yikes!

At least it was Double Dragon and not something more expensive. I always keep a cheap test board handy for wiring work.
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