Over the last couple weeks I learned quite a bit about the Atari Vegas arcade boards (info here will become part of the website) and figured it wouldn't hurt to get some of this information out there (all of which will be included on the website eventually). First of all the Atari Vegas arcade board is a combination of 3 parts. The Sound I/O board, The System Board and the Video Card.
The Sound I/O board is the first board in the series which has the Jamma edge connector and connector for the hard drive's power on it. This board (as far as I know right now) is pretty much interchangable when it comes to the different games. It also contains the dip switches for making adjustments to game settings (known as hardware dips) as well as the sound rom and Security chip (both socketed and changable). From the boards I have seen this board had several revisions ranging from 1 to 6. It would appear that some games need a dip switch changed based on which version of SIO board it is using. The ones I have seen personally are the original 1.0 version and the 3.0. Both of which look basically identical. This board also has interfaces for additional controls such as guns, players 3 & 4 as well as the interface for the additional hardware needed for the 49 way joysticks. The Hard drive connects to this board with a 4 pin molex to 4 pin molex cord for power. This same cord may also connect to several cooling fans depending on your setup. This board also has a connection for unamplified stereo audio if you do not plan to use pins 11 & M for the second speaker and the on board amplifier.
The System Board which connects to the video card and sound i/o board with dual pci connectors on either side, is basically the guts of this system. It houses the main processors and several other important chips. This board comes in 2 different flavors. They are named Vegas (the original) and Durango (upgraded version). Both board are capable of running Gauntlet Dark Legacy, NFL Blitz Gold, NBA Showtime and Sports Station (both sports games on one board). The Vegas Board can additionally run Gauntlet Legends and Unreleased fighting game Tenth Degree. The Durango board breaks compatibility for those last two games but can run the newer game War Final Assault. The easiest way to determine which system board you have is to simply look at them. The Durango board has an extra metal heat sync on the video card side and (atleast the one I have) has a Sticker by the video card pci slot saying RM5271/8 which indicates the cpu. Under or near that sticker the word Durango is also printed on the board. The Vegas board lacks the sticker and extra heat sync and a few of the components are in different places. This board houses the Boot or Main program rom as well as revision rom slot which can be used to upgrade games. The hard drive connects to this board with a standard IDE interface (usually a pretty short cable). This can also be swaped for a compact flash to ide adapter for better reliability (no moving parts). The boot and revision roms can be removed and replaced for different games as well.
The Video Card is a standard pci video card which can actually be used in an older computer. Gauntlet Legends, Gauntlet Dark Legacy, Tenth Degree and War used an Obsidian Voodoo 2 3dfx card with 10mb of video ram while the sports games used an Obsidian Raven video card. No games will boot at all if the proper video card is not present. If your Voodoo 2 based games need a replacement card any Voodoo 2 card with atleast 10mb of ram can be used. I have tested this myself and have successfully ran an Diamond Monster 3d Voodoo 2 12mb with no noticable change. As fas as I know, weather a game can display in 640X480 VGA (Arcade High Resolution), is software dependent not hardware dependent. I have tested Gauntlet Dark Legacy which displays in VGA straight from the video card on both the Durango and Vegas System board. However Gauntlet Legends could only display in Standard 15hz or Medium 24hz video which a PC monitor would not be able to handle without a video converter such as the GBS8200. When you are displaying video through the jamma harness a short vga extension cable is used to go from the video card to the system board. From what I heard your harness must supply -5v to the board in order for video to be properly displayed this way.
Video Card Comparison
Vegas 777 Board Set with Voodoo 2 Card and Vegas System Board
Vegas 777 Board Set with Obsidian Raven and Durango System Board
2 comments:
Where can I purchase a io board for gauntlet dark legacy please thank you
Where can I purchase a io board for gauntlet dark legacy please thank you
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