Introduction: Jammafying Daytona USA Arcade PCB

Daytona USA is a gross selling driving simulator that I really loved playing back in the days. The game is fitted with custom controls (wheel, pedals, shifting gear and VR buttons).
In order to play this wonderful game using a standard Supergun, follow the steps in this instruction set.

Stuff you need:

  1. Daytona USA arcade PCBs:
    1. Main baord including: rom board, cpu board and video board - stack of 3 boards
    2. 839-0683 - filter board
    3. 837-10652 - sound board
    4. 837-10539 - I/O board
    5. 839-0658 - I/O filter board
    6. 839-0657 - I/O filter board
  2. Soldering iron with some soldering skills
  3. DuPont connector pins (male and female) - link
  4. DuPont crimping tool
  5. 24-26 AWG wire
  6. Jamma 56 pin finger board - link
  7. Wheel and pedals that uses potentiometers - I got mine second hand
  8. Daytona USA wiring schematics - got from the web link 1, link 2
  9. 5 colors push buttons with relays - link
  10. Arcade PSU - link
  11. Standard consumer supergun that uses neo-geo controller port pinouts
  12. JAMMA pinout diagram - link
  13. Patients and a lot of it ;)

Enjoy :)

Step 1: JAMMA Layout

Lucky us, the normal JAMMA pinout has enough inputs for all of the game's needs:

Throttle, Brake, Steering, VR1, VR2, VR3, VR4

I did not implemented manual shifting. I guess some additional inputs will be required.

Make sure to connect: COIN, START, TEST and SERVICE (will come handy when calibrating the wheel and pedals)

A little on the diagram:

  1. The inner columns are the Component and Solder side of the JAMMA finger board.
  2. 'Racing' conlums indicates the target routing
  3. 'DB15' under P1 is the controller connector pin to be wired. It is based on Neo-Geo pin layout (and so are my supergun's controller ports).

Step 2: Powering the Beast

In order to power the system I got an Arcade PSU (with a POT for the voltage).

The boards sucks current so you will need to make sure that the voltage on the game board is no less than 5.2V

Powering is needed on the following componnents:

839-0683 filter board - 16 leads of +5V and 16 of GND

837-10652 sound board - 4 leads of +5V, 4 leads of GND and 1 of +12V

All the wires have been gathered in a bolt fixture plastic device (common used when connecting lamps on ceilings)

Use the daytona service manual schematics for wire details.

Step 3: Controls

The game handles the control input via the I/O board. check the pinout in the schematics for each of the described functions.

I got a racing wheel and some pedals second hand. The most important thing is that the controls will have POT and not encoders.

It is recommanded to use 5K ohms POT as they are being used in the original machine. I rewired the excisting POTs (which were 10k ohms) and needed for special calibration.

How to wire POTs ? link

From the wheel I got the main cable with the DSUB15 going to the Supergun's P1 controller port.

The other side is connected directly to the wheel's POT and from there a double row of DuPont male pins with the following layout (face view):

VR1, VR2, VR3, VR4, Start

+5V, Throttel, Brake, GND, GND

of course you can use other layouts as you please ;)

The VR buttons were wired pretty easly - common GND and sIgnal for each one which were crimped to 4 female DuPont connectors,

Pedal inputs: +5V, throttle, brake and GND were wired using a 4 female DuPont connectors.

Step 4: Important Tips (at Least I Think They Are :) )

  1. Double check the +5V and GND wiring. examine the schematics and make sure you know what you connect to where.
  2. Use the Dupont connectors, I think they make a very clean outcome.
  3. Use the test menu of the game to check wiring, especially for the POTs - you will need to center the wheel (80H)
  4. The game outputs video at 24Khz so normal CRT will not sync. I am using the GBS8200 for convertion,
  5. Ask me anything regarding the porject. Better ask than damage your boards ;)