Mortal Kombat
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Mortal
Kombat JAMMA Plus Button Map
Work done
Thoroughly cleaned cabinet inside and out
New T-Molding
New Locks and keys
New Joysticks and buttons
Custom made marquee
Installed Cap Kit and flyback
Modifications or additions
Multi JAMMA with 6 controller pcb's and IDE cables
2 PC Power Supplies and power extender cables
4 JAMMA + harnesses for the MK's
Shelf with 5 pcb holders
1up + 2up custom switcher pcb
Mortal Kombat Quick Reference
Manuals
Mortal Kombat 4
Flyers
Mortal Kombat Music and Sounds
Mortal
Kombat II - Choosing and in game
Mortal
Kombat 3 - Choosing and in game
[MK 1-4] [Where] [JAMMA + ] [Multi-JAMMA] [Organizing] [Switching] [PC Power Supply Artwork]
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Every Mortal Kombat in One Cabinet
I took my time while doing the installation and did some researching along the way. No matter how I tried to orient things inside the cabinet it still is a bit of a rats nest because each JAMMA boards vary so wildly. I think it turned out fairly well in the end though.
I started out with purchasing a MK2 with MK2 and MK3 PCB's inside the cabinet off of eBay. I love the side art from MK 2. If I couldn't get that cabinet I would have chosen a MK 4 cabinet that also has cool side art. I later picked up 1, 4 and challenger chipset for MK2. I also got rid of some of the earlier PCB versions for the later ROM revisions. For example an early version of MK3 came out without endings or the characters. I found out that I could use Clays Multi-JAMMA Kit to connect them all together. The only other thing I had to worry about was connecting all the JAMMA + buttons together for all the boards.
JAMMA Plus for the Kick Buttons
I wasn’t too knowledgeable about Molex connectors for the JAMMA + and while looking the internet I saw that someone was selling a kick button harness for the MK extra buttons. Over time I picked up all the harnesses and took some advice from the Real Bob Roberts on the subject. On his main page you will see a section for "JAMMA plus". I basically redid my control panel just like Bob said. I bought all the supplies to do this from Bob. He’s super easy to deal with and fairly cheap. The extra buttons were wired to a Molex plug where one side will go to the control panel and the other to the boards. I tried to think of a better way to connect all the harnesses together and had someone attempt to make a Mega MK harness. After connecting the mega harness I found out that there is wiring issue with the MK 1 board that doesn’t mix well with the others MK's. When I would press the low kick button it would light up all the others. So I had to cut apart the MK 1 harness from the others and wire it separately. I later spliced the MK 2, 3, 4 harnesses together (not pretty) to the Molex plug. That way I can unplug the boards from the control panel and not have to unplug the harness from the board connector. In the end I had one harness to MK 2, 3, 4 and another for MK1. Not totally an automatic switching solution but the best I could think of or had the patience with.
Well, you can build either a MAME or Multi-JAMMA cabinet. I choose to do the Mult-JAMMA from Clay. There isn't any other alternative to connect your games together unless you feel like building your own switching solution. Overall, I give the Multi-JAMMA a grade of 99%. The deduction would be for the instruction manual that can leave one guessing in some sections on how to implement the kit.
When you read the directions Clay stresses the ground connection and having a good power supply. I’ve read in the newsgroups a few problems that other people have had its usually a grounding issue the ground from the power supply to the Multi-JAMMA. Its a good idea to get a solid power supply as all the JAMMA PCB's will be powered on in the cabinet simultaneously. There is no way to power the games individually as they are selected using the Multi=JAMMA.
Pick out a decent power supply for your games. Trust me on this. Get one with enough power for at least 4 games. My first power supply's were terrible and I later had problems with picture and sound. I ended up getting an Antec True Blue 480W power supply that had really great tolerances and had pretty blue LED's to boot. This power supply was able to handle 5 JAMMA PCB's on at the same time. Try and pick up power supply extenders and long IDE cables while your at it. Ive been able to get 3 foot IDE cables from various places but you can always find these for cheap on eBay. Below is a quick explanation between the differences in AT and ATX power supplies.
ATX Power Supply - These power supplies will not turn on normally without a motherboard connected to it. You can power up an ATX power supply by shorting the green wire with any black ground wire. The green wire is the only green one but its pin 14 or PS On. This comes in really handy since your not using it in a computer.
AT Power Supply - Older style power supply that turns on when plugged in so you wont have to mod it like an ATX power supply.
I wanted to have a few extra +5v, grounds and -5v leads for the cabinet but also wanted to limit the amount of hacked wires. I've done both these methods but you do what you feel more comfortable with.
Method 1 (Easiest) - Make a harness that will plug into the hard drive power connectors. The male Molex connector will have +5v and ground. Bob Roberts has all the connectors you will ever need and even has a nice tutorial on crimping!
Method 2 - I took the power supply case apart (usually 4-6 screws) and found the power and ground connections inside. All the grounds and power inside the power supply sort of get lumped together in mass of solder. Some power supplies have a couple free holes in the board for additional wires. So I soldered ground and power (+5v) on the board and ran them outside the power supply opening nicely.
All of the JAMMA pcb's I have tried in the cabinet need a -5v supplied for sound. The Multi-JAMMA doesn't provide this from the cabinet but your PC power supplies do. On both AT and ATX power supplies there will be a white wire. Again, no need to fear as there is only one white wire. I ended up hacking into the white wire to supply the -5v to the boards. The -5v was connected to pin 5 of the High-Current / all voltage power connector B on the Mult-JAMMA switchboard.
Placing all the PCB's in the Cabinet
I built a shelf with 4-5 dividers to separate the boards. You can buy pre-made shelves from Home Depot that will exactly fit a dedicated cabinet. I decided to make my own shelf a little shorter in length to make it easier to take in and out of the cabinet while building. I also used adjustable PCB holders to better mount the boards and made another purchase from Bob. HAPP sells them just a bit cheaper but I like to support Bob because of his customer service and he is just plain cool. Also, the reason for mounting them this way was to let them air cool as much as possible. I tried mounting the power supplies under the shelf but that became awkward and impractical. If I wanted to take the shelf out the weight of the power supplies made it difficult to handle. So I mounted them on the original particle board that is inside the cabinet.
Adding a switch using your existing buttons
So how do you switch the games without drilling another hole in your nice dedicated cabinet for another button? Fortunately, Tim at Arcade Collecting has already created a circuit that will switch between games by pressing the Player 1 and Player 2 start buttons at the same time, to use with Clay's Multi-JAMMA setup. This guy is also another genius that has a lot of great info on his site. So I ordered the parts to make such a thing from an online electronics store and worked on making it.
To put the final touches on the cabinet, I decided to make a custom Marquee, CPO and instruction sheet for the game. It’s amazing what a few hours using Adobe Photoshop and Photo Impact can do. Photo Impact was used to create some of the lightning effects on the control panel. I printed them all out on a plotter using high gloss photo paper and had them laminated. I haven’t applied the CPO yet because it looked like a lot of work to disassemble the buttons and joysticks :)
