Amiga to Jamma

Growing up, my brother and I had an Amiga 2000. That computer got a lot of use: we played a lot of games, called a lot of BBSs on our 2400 baud modem, and listened to MOD music.

Originally launched in 1985, the Commodore Amiga was years ahead of all other computers and game consoles in terms of graphics and sound. I first saw an Amiga at a neighbor’s house and I vividly remember the first two games I saw: Sword of Sodan and Dragon’s Lair. Compared to the NES games we were playing, those games were pretty impressive.

That Amiga 2000 from my youth eventually broke, so one day when feeling nostalgic I found an Amiga 1000 on craigslist so that I could still play all those great games and have a reason to keep all those 3.5" 880k floppies. Recently however, the monitor for the Amiga stopped showing blue on its RGB input, leaving only red and green and making everything yellow. However, an Amiga monitor is basically an arcade monitor, which means I can hook it up to my cabinet or supergun!

Since the Amiga has its own power supply and sound output, all I needed to wire up was the video output and the controls to the JAMMA edge. Here are the pinouts for the Amiga side of things:

• Video pinout - Male DB9, wire R, G, B, and Composite Sync to the corresponding video contacts on the fingerboard

• Joystick pinout - Female DB9, wire the directions, button, and ground to the control contacts on fingerboard

It works great and I can basically treat my Amiga like another arcade board! Just plug it into the JAMMA harness and play.