Nintendo Playchoice Arcade System in Jamma Cab

[Pit]

Hey,


3 years ago I had the opportunity to buy a Nintendo Playchoice 10 Arcade System (Aka PC10). I confess, first time the purpose was to pull off the ppu to rgb-mod my Nes.

I was luckily and had the chance to buy 2 PC10 systems.

Since I own a New AStro City Candy Cab, I decided to play the second PC10 in my Cab .

From the start, PC10 can not be hooked up directly to a jamma cab, since PC10 is not jamma standard. So I needed to adapt the wiring, here's a guide that decribes what i did :


- First : The PC10 system needs a color inverter so the display will be correct on the screen :





I bought it from Mikesarcade. This color inverters is also used as a mono sound amp.


- Two : A jamma connector and a jamma fingerboard are needed for the wiring adaptation :







- Also you need this, IDE20 :





And different switches with the following specs :

# 1 switch 4 poles ON/ON
# 2 switches 3 poles ON/OFF/ON momentary


Then  a google search gives the PC10 pinout :





Some pins are for the "upper monitor" and others for the lower monitor ; I have a PC10 dual monitor system that originally uses two screens : one to display the games list and how to play menu (PC10 system can handle 10 games on a single board, you choose the game you want to play at the boot screen) and a second screen to display the game choosed. This is why I needed to add a switch to chosse between the two displays.


Also the PC10 as a second connector (that uses IDE20 standard) :





Note : 24V is not necessary, and my cab does not supply such a tension^^.


So, regarding PC10 wiring and jamma wiring, here's the wiring adaptation :





AND





Some terms are in french but I guess you'll understand the general wiring .



It ends with a PC10/jamma adapter like this :





(Yes, it's a mess^^').


And with the PC10 board hooked up :





And finally it works !


- Screen for game selection :





- Then I switch to the gaming screen :






Took a lot of time of wiring, but the entertainement is worth the work

[Ghegs]

Heh, cool. I have a supergun and I've occasionally toyed with the idea of getting into PC10 stuff, but then I remember I already own most of the games on cartridge anyway. How much did you pay for the PC10, and how much do the games usually go for?

[Pit]

I paid 50€ each PC10, since I found the two boards at an old exploitation and the owner was discounting all of is stuff.

For the games, usually around 30-50€ on french forums but it can be more expensive depending on the title and his "rarety'.

[Ghegs]

Just €50 for the PC10? I guess their demand really dropped off after NESRGB became available. And the games aren't too badly priced either. Kinda tempting. But I guess the games are the exact same as their NES counterparts, unlike with VS. System?

[phreak97]

I did the same thing only I used a single monitor playchoice pcb:)

[Pit]

So, I came back to my playchoice 10 recently, in order to add a second monitor to have the full display like the original cabinet.

As I didn't want to add a monitor more than 14", I tested many mini lcd monitors, VGA or RGB input, without success. Video signal from the upper monitor of the playchoice 10 seems to be uncompatible with modern screens.

So I decided to buy a small sony PVM monitor, and found a 9" one. A small CRT monitor but with nice display, and that's enough for my purpose.

Time to work ! I took my jamma adapter and upgraded it with a second color inverter.



Second color inverter from Mikesarcade.


Playchoice 10 to jamma adapter, it needs some refresh, what a spaghetti mess!



Looks like cleaner.



Done ! Oh ok, I admit it's still a mess of wiring^^'.



Time to test...



...I win .

[P]

Nice job!

I guess the games are the exact same as their NES counterparts, unlike with VS. System?

Yeah I wonder that too.

Reading information online, it seems the PC-10 has, in addition to the Nes hardware, a separate Z80 CPU that handles coin-insert, the instruction window, game select and such PC-10-specefic things. Each game board also have extra ROM-chips with Z80 code and data for the instruction text to be displayed. So it's possible that the system is fully compatible with normal Famicom games, unlike the VS System.

How are the games gameplay wise? No changes?

[Pit]

No gameplay differences for all the games I own.

In addition to the instructions texts,  some PC10 games have a record keeping feature, for example the fastest times in Punch Out.

Those games with extra features are hard to convert to the famicom, but for other games that are identical to the famicom version, it seems it's just a matter of putting prg and chr on a donor cart.