Make sure you’re using the 5V (not the minus 5V) pin otherwise you may damage your electronics. We stripped down a few USB to Mini USB and Micro USB cords and used them to connect the power supply pins to the Mini USB amp and the Raspberry Pi. You don’t need this much but heck, it’s already there, it’s built to last, it’s powerful and very stable, so we used it. These are some powerful power supplies I tell you, they can output 5V, -5V and 12V and up to 15A. Did it work? Hell yes, here’s proof:Įverything is powered by the original Arcade power supply. So, at Codebits VI, as part of the Hardware Den space initiatives, we restored a few old arcades, keeping the old controls, jamma connector and CRT monitors, and using the Raspberry Pi as the brains for emulation in partnership with the The Arcade Man. You could easily get a cheap HDMI to VGA active decoder on eBay or Amazon, and most work fine, but VGA signals are 31Khz and, even if they weren’t, you’d still need a level adapter / sync fix circuit (this article explains it). You could try to demodulate the composite video into RGB signals but that’s complex and expensive, and you’d lose a lot of information, picture would be poor. The problem with that is the Raspberry only outputs HDMI digital video or 15Khz composite video (no RGB), so there’s no easy / cheap solution to get pure 15Khz RGB signals out of the Pi to feed the arcade CRT. Ultimarc has an excellent article about arcade monitors if you want more details. Old arcade CRT sets can only accept 15Khz horizontal frequencies using separate RGB signals and a sync line (well, not quite, there are 25 Khz monitors too but they’re uncommon). And perfection means you’ll use the jamma connector and the old 15Khz CRT instead of a more modern retro fitted VGA monitor like most people opt to do. You see, if you’re a truly arcade aficionado like me, then you’ll aim for perfection. The Raspberry Pi has been used all over the world as an excellent emulator box to resuscitate old arcade machines, but with moderate success.

Raspberry pi jamma adapter