[March 2022]
A while ago I bought the Arcade1Up Super Pac-Man 3/4 size arcade from Costco. It is a nice looking cabinet and great for playing mostly single player games.
Initially I had hoped there would have been some soft-mods available that would have allowed me to add games to the existing system, and without the need of any physical changes or modifications. However for this particular Arcade1Up model (Model: 8218, PCBA: GBX70-V01) there was nothing really out there, other than some preliminary attempts that seemed promising. For the time being, there are no real solid mod tools along the lines of Hakchi.
Instead, I followed the common path of modding my arcade with a Raspberry PI in order to play the games I wanted. More specifically, my intention was to play only Arcade games (MAME-2003 and MAME-2003-Plus) and I have no interest in the gazillion other emulators.
Below is my parts list:
- Raspberry PI 3B – I already had one
- Micro SD Card – I used 32GB because I had it, but probably 16GB is enough
- GPIO Stacking Header for Pi – To hook things up to the Pi
- LCD Controller Board for Arcade1UP – To connect the Pi to the screen
- Joystick and buttons for RPi – To replace the crappy ones from the factory
- RPi Fanless Aluminum Case – Pi heatsink style case without fan
- 3.3Ft HDMI Cord – To connect the Pi to the LCD Controller
- Double sided Gorilla tape – To stick things inside the cabinet
- JST PH 2.0 4-Pin Connector – To connect to Speaker connector on LCD Board
- 3.5 Female TRRS 4 Pole Audio cable – To connect Arcade Speakers to LCD Speaker jack
- DC 12V 2A Power Supply Adapter 5.5mm x 2.1mm – To power the Marquee light
- Adapter 5.5mm x 2.1mm Male to 3.5mm x 1.35mm Female – Adapter for Marquee light power
- 5.5mm x 2.1mm Female to Female Coupler – Adapter for Marquee light power
- 5V 2-Channel Relay – So that Pi can control power to screen and lights
In addition, I also used:
- Different sizes of Phillips screwdrivers
- Soldering gun
- Solder
- Painters Tape
- Drill bit to make 1 inch holes
- Sanding drill bit to slightly widen the holes
- Drill
- Old CAT5 network cable
- Butt connectors (26-22AWG)
- Wire cutter/stripper/crimper
- A few pieces of plywood
- 2 household receptacles
- 2-gang device box (to house receptacles and relay switch)
- Old electrical cord
- Few inches of 14AWG electrical wires
- USB Keyboard
- Computer into which you can plug a MicroUSB card and also use SSH/Putty
The attempt was to keep things the same as much as possible to the original looks and functions of the original cabinet, with the difference of more games and better quality buttons and joystick.
Here is the breakdown of steps:
- 1. Disassemble the Arcade
- 2. Connect the Screen
- 3. Add Holes for Extra Buttons
- 4. Install the New Buttons and Joystick
- 5. Configure Arcade Power/Volume Buttons
- 6. Install RetroPie
- 7. Test the Arcade with RetroPie
- 8. Finish up the Arcade Console and Screen
- 9. Customize the Software
- 10. Amplify Sound
- 11. Connect the Marquee Light
- 12. Build Power Supply
For more details on the hardware of this cabinet, follow this link and scroll down to “Generation 5b”.
To get a sense of what the modified Arcade looks like, check out this video.
What do you think you would charge to do this upgrade on a similar unit. I bought a Pac Man unit like yours. It only had 2 games. Pac man and Pac Man Plus. I need someone to do this mod. How much would you charge?
You may be able to find a Mod Kit Bundle for your specific cabinet. It would most likely be much easier and probably cheaper to get one of those and swap it out with your cabinet parts: https://arcademodup.com/product/arcade1up-mod-kit-bundle/
Just wanted to thank you for your guide!
I received a PacMan XL cabinet for Christmas this year, and just finished modding it with MAME/retropie on a Raspberry Pi 4B with your site’s help. Thanks especially for the pointers on the power/volume buttons.
My only bit of feedback is that (at least for the Pac Man XL cabinet) the amplified audio output from the display driver board didn’t work–audio was heavily distorted. I ended up using an external amplifier, which solved that problem.
One suggestion: in my case (a Raspberry PI 4B), text console rotation is achieved by adding a “video=HDMI-A-1:1280x1024M@60,rotate=90” section to the kernal boot in /boot/cmdline.txt. Additionally, rotation in retroarch required editing /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg to set “video_allow_rotate=true” and “video_rotation=1” to get games rotated properly. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to figure out how to get the retroarch menu rotated, though.
Thank you for your feedback. A couple of comments.
Was the sound distorted perhaps because the pins of your board did not match the same way as shown on my board? Not all boards seem to adhere to the same pin standards from what I remember.
As to the screen rotation; there have been changes in the display drivers, basically large re-writes and architectural changes around the driver stacks. Screen rotations seemed to be one of those things that was negatively affected. You have to go through hoops and jumps to make it work and it looked ugly. It may be easier to stick to older versions of retropie to keep things simple. My arcade system is running disconnected from the Internet and the only times I access it directly (ssh) is to upload games or to tweak a few things, but otherwise it is entirely isolated. Having the latest-and-greatest of the OS and retropie does not really add value as my system performs just fine.