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Daytona USA full restoration


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First of all I would like to apologize in advance for my English writing, because English is not my native language.

 

Back when Sega launched Daytona USA in the arcades, like so many people, I also had a lot of fun with this machine. After so many years I had the idea to play this loved game again, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Then I thought, it would be a great idea to build this arcade machine. The idea kept in my mind for a long time and got stronger as the months passed. So finally I got the decision to build a sit down Daytona arcade machine from scratch. While I was looking for images and accurate dimensions of this arcade machine, I found for free a Daytona arcade from a friend of mine. He told me that the machine was not working but sadly it was in a terrible condition. Unfortunately the machine was left in a field for more than 20 years, without any cover from the weather. So all these years the machine was without any protection from rain and sun. More precisely, all metal parts were totally rusted and wooden side panels had completely rotted. Far more worse, monitor was not working and all pins in all pcb's were corroded. I only counted more than 20 damaged lines in the CPU pcb. Just imagine this, when I opened the metal case below the seat, the water was about 10 centimeters high. There was no hope to resurrect all these boards and the monitor.

 

When I received the machine to my home, I disassembled all the parts so I could move them to the basement.

 

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Disciplines of rust.

 

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I had to manually remove all the rust from all metal parts and painted them black as they were back in 1993.

 

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And here is the base with new anti rust paint (it is shiny because the paint is still wet).

 

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Some parts below the seat fresh painted black.

 

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The new mdf panels have arrived home.

 

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My wife created the side logo from the scratch in 300 dpi.

 

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I had to decide which version I should use. Saturn version is not as good as the arcade version and Dreamcast, it is a liittle bit different in graphics. Ps3 and Xbox360 versions are perfect by far but I wanted to use a crt monitor and not a modern one. Finally I think that M2 emulator was the best solution. I had a spare motherboard with a Core2duo 3.16Ghz, 4gb ram and an Ati 4350. This setup works fine with Sega M2 emulator. Sega used a 29 inch crt monitor and so I got a 29 inch crt tv. However, games of M2 emulator in 50hz crt tv's are not running smooth (there is instesively problem with scanlines in the backgrounds). So I tried to find a crt tv with vga input, but there were not many crt tv's with vga import in my country and for almost a year I didn't find anywhere. Finally, I found and bought a brand new vga crt 28 inch pc monitor. I know that it is a inch smaller but fits fine with Sega's bezel.

 

Here is a test with vga crt pc monitor running Daytona in resolution 640x480. Pretty nice, isn't it?

 

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One thing that I wanted was to keep the original steering wheel and pedals. While a Logitech G25 or G27 seems like a decent solution, but the total price of restoration would have reached very high. So I used a cheap pc steering wheel where I had for years. I build a simple wooden part for connecting the metal shaft with the pc steering wheel unit. Unfortunately the force feedback is not strong because the pc steering wheel unit uses a small 24v. I know about L2M2 but I am not able to build this pcb. However I have keep the parts of force feedback just in case I find a decent solution in the future (though I am not sure if the force feedback pcb actually works).

 

So here is the Logitech wheel that I used. It has force feedback but the motor it is only 24v and this voltage is not strong enough to move the wheel of Sega left and right. I can hardly feel the force feedback behind Sega's wheel.

 

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Here is the simple wooden bracket for connecting the metal shaft of the wheel with the Logitech mechanism.

 

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I had to improvise for setting up the potentiometers of the pc pedals in the Sega's pedal mechanism. Yes I know, it's not beautiful but it does work.

 

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Here I have connected the side panels just for testing, I had to see if they are aligned with each other.

 

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And here is a test running Daytona.

 

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For my sake, all speakers and sub woofer still work.

 

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The side decals glued on the side panels.

 

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A new thin red line around the metal base.

 

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Pedals frame painted chrome.

 

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I painted black the plastic back cover of the seat and I have printed a new decal for the backseat.

 

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And this far the machine looks like this.

 

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Right now I am trying to figure out how am I going to connect the 4 shifts of the gear box with IPAC. Sega used 3 switches for 4 shifts. If they had used another one switch, things would be much easier.

 

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Actually, there is no template, it's all handwork. I put the original wooden panels on top of a mdf panel and draw the outline with a pencil and then, I used a jigsaw and a router. However, I can measure for you all the panels if you want.
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Hi Telonio,

 

What type of monitor did you end up a buying a 28inch crt tv with scart input or actually a pc monitor with VGA in?,i didn't think they made them that large, have you got a model number or some details i can look into?

 

Thank you!

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It is a pc vga monitor with maximum resolution of 800x600 (or 1024x768 I don't remember exactly). I am running m2 emulator at 640x480 resolution. It is made here in Greece by a company named GD.Tronics. You can send them an email here: gdtronics at gdtronics. com. However, I am sure that the shipping cost to Australia, will be much more expensive than the price of the monitor itself.

 

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Thanks telonio appreciate the info, i'll look into some specs for now. id' like to try run it in original resolution so from what i am reading around, ill need to find a multi sync or an original monitor that can do 25khz and not sure how M2 work's with emudriver more homework! I know one of the other boys asked the question about the dimensions of the cut outs, i am trying to find an old cabinet at the moment, but i may end up getting it made up, if it ok and i go down that road,, have got a list of the various cut sizes of the cabinet handy. If not don't stress im just thinking just in case i can't source something.
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  • 1 month later...

The Daytona cabinet sketch is based in a file that I found somewhere in the internet. However I measured and wrote all the dimensions in my cabinet (which I think it is pretty common worldwide cabinet). Let me know if something is missing in the dimensions.

 

Please keep in mind that the dimensions are in centimeters and not in inches.

 

http://i65.tinypic.com/10okzdw.jpg

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Thanks telonio appreciate the info, i'll look into some specs for now. id' like to try run it in original resolution so from what i am reading around, ill need to find a multi sync or an original monitor that can do 25khz and not sure how M2 work's with emudriver more homework! I know one of the other boys asked the question about the dimensions of the cut outs, i am trying to find an old cabinet at the moment, but i may end up getting it made up, if it ok and i go down that road,, have got a list of the various cut sizes of the cabinet handy. If not don't stress im just thinking just in case i can't source something.

 

CRT Emudriver and M2 can definitely work together in 25khz!

 

That's what I'm running in my current build

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hi Telonio , thanks for the reply my friend but i cant seem to see the file attachments for the dimensions, maybe try shoot across via pm if that works, unless Im missing something, appreciate it again cheers :)
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
I am back to this project and today I've just found that the hard disk is dead. I replaced the hard disk with a new ssd and I installed windows 7, m2 emulator and Logitech application for the pc wheel and pedals. M2 emulator runs games just fine, also ramjet lights the vr panel with no issue. However, while the Logitech profiler recognizes the wheel and the pedals and I can calibrate them properly, but wheel and pedals do not work when running daytona in m2 emulator. Actually, for some reason, the wheel is deactivated when in m2 game. I have assigned m2 emulator exe in the Logitech profiler but I am smashing my head to find why they do not work inside m2 emulator.
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I am back to this project and today I've just found that the hard disk is dead. I replaced the hard disk with a new ssd and I installed windows 7, m2 emulator and Logitech application for the pc wheel and pedals. M2 emulator runs games just fine, also ramjet lights the vr panel with no issue. However, while the Logitech profiler recognizes the wheel and the pedals and I can calibrate them properly, but wheel and pedals do not work when running daytona in m2 emulator. Actually, for some reason, the wheel is deactivated when in m2 game. I have assigned m2 emulator exe in the Logitech profiler but I am smashing my head to find why they do not work inside m2 emulator.

 

I'm sure you have to activate the analog inputs for the wheel, accelerate and brake in the m2 menu

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  • 6 months later...
  • 9 months later...

After so many time here I am continuing and finalizing the restoration. I have to apologize for such a big delay because I had too many serious problems in my life and restoring the arcade was obviously not a priority. So once again, here we go..

 

I did some tests and the results were these:

 

The wheel plastic bracket broke easily when I turned the wheel with force. One turn of the wheel to the left and this happened.

 

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You can see here that even the potentiometer bracket broke.

 

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I had to think a permanent solution for this. The plastic case of the pc wheel couldn't stay there because it couldn't handle the force from the Sega's wheel. So I had the idea to connect to the potentiometer of Seg to the Logitech pcb. I thought that it wouldn't work as I thought that they had probably great differences in ohms. However, to my surprise it works perfectly.

So I installed again all the gears behind the dashboard. Notice the middle plastic gear, there is the potentiometer that is connected to Logitech's pcb.

 

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But the major thing was the 4 gears. If Sega had installed 4 switches for the 4 gears, it would be much easier than trying to find a way to output 3 switches to a keyboard encoder. So I bought a 74LS138N micro-controller (which costs less than 1 dollar) and in one side I connected the 3 switches and the ground and the other side of the pins the 4 outputs for the IPAC. It works just fine and I am very happy with such a simple solution.

 

 

 

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And here is all the pcb's right now behind the dashboard. Apac for the VR panel lights, Ipac for the VR panel buttons, Micro-controller for the gears and the Logitech pcb for the wheel.

 

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Now I trying to find a better solution for the pedals since the hot glue did not work and I will post soon an update. As it is now, there is no force feedback in the game, I am trying to find a L2M2 pcb unpopulated or not and I am also trying to find a way to connect a 48v power supply that I have to the Logitech pcb motor (which is surprisingly 50v).

 

Thanks for reading and sorry for my bad English, it is not my native language.

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Edited by telonio
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