TGM3 Ownership Dreams

Hello TC folks!

Tetris has been my life long favorite, and I'm beginning to get a bit more serious about it. Now that I have the means, I've been looking to build a TGM bartop cabinet or get a supergun setup.

The biggest snag I've hit so far is being absolutely inept at soldering, so I'm trying to come up with a solution to play TGM3 at home - I've done quite a bit of searching, but I can't find a prebuilt setup anywhere short of having a full cabinet shipped from Japan.

Is there any advice you can offer on getting a legitimate, playable setup into my home?

Any advice at all is welcome!

 

It's kind of pricey, but you can buy a pre-made supergun like this one. They are convenient. You just use the included jamma harness to hook up a pcb and then you can hook it up to a TV with composite or s video (or if you can find the right cables, you can convert an 8 pin din to SCART and use that with a tv that has a SCART connection or convert that to component video).

 

Thanks for the reply and the suggestion! I did take a look at what was available on eBay, but most of the setups look hand built and I don't know what really goes into the construction of them. My fear is I buy one that would break, or that it wouldn't t have the adequate parts I need for good play. Are there any specific things that are worthwhile for me to look for? Any recommendations on brand of manufacturer, or someone in the community? I know that JAMMA standard PCBs are TGM 1 and 2, but TGM3 is Taito Type X and runs off of Windows XP embedded if I remember correctly. I'm trying to put together a reliable setup to play all 3 flavors of TGM if possible.

SCART output is something I'm very familiar with thanks to being obsessive about display perception from old consoles on HD TVs.. I bet I could use one of my upscaler units to get 720 or 1080 output with the right aspect, so that part is at least covered.

 

I actually have a pre-made supergun very much like the one I linked. I replaced the sticks and buttons, and I think it has a better feel, but it was perfectly playable before (though, mine came with clover shaped restrictor plates on the sticks that would have to be filed down or replaced). It seems to be reasonably well made.

I only own TGM1 and 2, but I think TGM3 also has a jamma connector (someone who owns TGM3 would have to confirm or deny that claim).

I haven't used any upscaler units, but I do know that the ones included in HDTVs introduce some lag. Perhaps a dedicated unit would be better, but I'd be wary of it and use a CRT TV as comparison if you want to test it out.

 

Hey!

All the material at smallcab.net is very efficient and cheap, so even though it depends where you are coming from, you can order pluggable material. I never soldered once and just had to plug their stuff. Works wonders!

 

Qlex, thanks for chiming in on that bit from smallcab. Its massively less expensive than some other solutions I was looking at, and while I can't solder.. I can surely figure out how to create an enclosure that can contain my PCB with the super gun and the power supply. I think I'll go with that. It would allow me to externally route my cables for the joystick and the video output also. Awesomeness.

 

It's very late (3:44 and I need to be at a meeting at 11) but when I get back tomorrow I'll write you up a full guide on what's needed to set up a supergun from Smallcab. You won't need to do any soldering thanks to the Undamned USB decoder, though I would recommend learning to solder if you're going to be owning arcade boards or CRTs in the future.

 

Thanks Kevin! That's awesome, I'm very excited about this... Maybe to save you a little time, here is the understanding I have so far from reading and research:

I need the smallcab unit
400w minimum ATX power supply with 5v would supply the smallcab unit with power
The unit outputs SCART, so I can use the separate hardware upscaler that I already have for use with my SNES / 64 / Genesis
I need a Jamma board -TGM1 and 2 might be hard to source and a little spendy, so for proof of concept I need a JAMMA board for testing. After I know my setup is good I can source a Tetris board.
Arcade sticks use DB15 more or less a VGA connector, I should be able to use NeoGeo, Saturn, or a few other sticks with different adapters
JAMMA boards are variable size, so I won't be able to build an acrylic or wood solution for easy swaps.. that part of the plan is a work in progress
To prevent the JAMMA board from just kind of hanging off the edge of the smallcab unit, I will need a JAMMA harness or edge connector to make things clean

My background is all electronics and computers, so aside from the soldering I'm in pretty good shape to get this figured out. Let me know if there is any info I could provide that would help!

 

Hi Kevin, I know you are a busy fellow but did you ever get some time to detail things a little more? I keep looking on forums but some of the info is hard to correlate and I want to make sure I'm getting a setup that will work. Because speed.