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Supergun (playing an arcade PCB at home)

A supergun is the adapter that lets you plug a JAMMA arcade board into a TV / monitor at home, with no cabinet: it turns the JAMMA edge into an RGB output + gamepad inputs + power. The "living-room preservation" route for PCBs.

What it's for

An arcade board expects a JAMMA harness (power, RGB video, sound, controls). The supergun provides all that outside a cabinet:

Function Detail
Power +5 V (adjustable, critical for customs), +12 V, -5 V per the board
Video RGB 15 kHz → SCART or to a scaler (OSSC/RetroTINK) for a modern TV
Controls gamepad connectors (dedicated pads or Neo-Geo/DB15/USB adapters)
Service buttons Test, Service, coin (essential for settings)
Sound mono/stereo amp + headphone/RCA output

Watch-outs

  • +5 V adjustment at the JAMMA edge: too low = crashes, too high = destroyed customs (measure under load). Same principle as the candy cab PSU.
  • Kick harness: some boards (SF, 6 buttons) have buttons off-JAMMA → extra wiring.
  • 15 kHz video: a modern TV won't take it directly → RGB SCART (CRT) or a scaler (see HDMI adapters/scalers).

Commercial superguns

Several models exist (MAK Strike, HAS, Minigun, DIY Neo-Geo superguns…) + JAMMA→HDMI boards with a built-in scaler. Some consoles are outright official superguns — e.g. the CPS Changer (a home CPS-1) or the Neo-Geo MVS→AES consolisation.

Multi & safety

  • Multi-carts (Darksoft, NeoSD…): see Arcade multi.
  • Many PCBs have a suicide battery (CPS-2/3, System 16…) → handle it before playing (see the converts pages).

Repair

A supergun is simple (power + connectors): check the voltages, the JAMMA connector, the RGB cable. The most critical remains the +5 V adjustment.

Repair & maintenance

Modernise (video, PSU, JVS, upscaler, PC/FPGA) → Modernising a cabinet. JAMMA→TV adapter: PSU and harness. Methods: PCB fault-finding · Recap · Traces & vias.

Sources & attribution

Review & corrections

How this space is used

Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board? Say so here, with what you observed (model, board revision, serial number, measurement). Every report is cross-checked against a source before anything changes — an unverifiable correction is published as “reported by …, not cross-checked” rather than silently applied.

Reading is open to everyone; posting requires signing in with Discord. Reports from the wiki's declared reviewers are handled first; anyone else's are read too, but go through a human before anything is changed.