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CRT using RCA cables and Pi 3B+ not booting

Started by Ashtownimore, Nov 12, 2025, 01:23 AM

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Ashtownimore

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Hi there, I am relatively new to emulation on Arcade machines so please bear with me. Sorry for the long post!!
I may as well give you a rounded out picture of my situation so as to try and prevent anyone having to ask a ton of follow up questions (sorry in advance).
I have an old Pac-Man machine that was gutted and redone with a JAMMA harness. The joystick and buttons are still original but pretty much everything else has been replaced. I can attach pictures too if needed.

It has a switching power supply and is wired to a coin mech and the buttons of course. When i got it inside was one of those 60-in-one's from China (an ICade).
the monitor was replaced with an old not-quite-to-size CRT desktop monitor. After doing some research i came to the conclusion that since i already had a JAMMA harness already wired up which was fully functioning the Raspberry-JAMMA was the way to go. I got the standard board with no ad-ons and a Pi 3B+.
I set up the software (3.X) and plugged it in, after some messing with the settings, I got the start menu to pop up but alas slightly disturbing copious amounts of dust did something to the monitor and would only flash the menu on screen and was basically useless. It was time for a replacement any way so had a lot of fun putting in a new monitor and learned alot! The TV CRT which I heard is much better than computer monitors for gaming turns on and seems to work great.
The Pi now was giving me solid red (power good) and 4 slow 7 fast flashing green which i think means there is an issue with booting. After multiple SD wipes and rewrites i concluded i might have corrupted the thing and so got another fresh one.
I later learned that the Etcher program that i saw recommended had some issues in the newest version and decided to use win32Imager for the first and only time ive written data to the new card without doing any partitioning resizing because i heard that could cause issues too (I did do that on the old SD card).
I tried the hdmi safe mode # getting uncommented and still nothing.
Now here's the kicker: I cant find an answer to this anywhere online specific to the ArpiCade....
I have RCA connectors and a coax connector in the CRT. After buying the wrong cable (twice) i got a recommended one for CRTs using that one AUX diagram and recs from the Pi forums. The cable is a 3 ringed 3.5 mm jack to RCA males that go into the TV (not for camcorders I checked). I've plugged combinations of everything into the Raspberry JAMMA and the Rpi itself with no dice. Swapping orientations of the RCA video audio mono, plugging the jack into the pi and then into the jammaboard, plugging in an hdmi at the same time, and editing settings accordingly to shutoff hdmi in the Config files, unhashing and rehashing resolution commands.. Nothing works...
Im really at a loss and any help would be greatly appreciated.
I didnt want to mess with anything else besides a clean instance of 3.X and a clean SD lest it corrupt/explode into a millions pieces lol.
The CRT works great and shows a little video logo for a few seconds in the corner so i dont think its the monitor. Its a TOSHIBA color tv 20" if that matters. I would give you a model number but it was worn off (from 1995).
Ive seen on forums functions for composite video in the config files for things like NOOBS and Retropi but nothing for this and the code looking different from those anyway.
I have never seen a question here or the old forum about RCA connections for video and will try anything at this point to get this working lol.
Thanks for any help anyone might have.
Cheers

dee2eR

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Welcome.

There's a few things in there so bear with me if I miss something...

Your Pi3B+ may be the newer revision that needs ARpiCADE_3 v11.  You can find the vanilla 3.11 release in the release section of this forum.

The 3.5mm aux plug on the RPI is not a good way to get video out.  ARpiCADE isn't set up to do so either.  Without changes to the software your cable definately wont work... and I can't recommmend trying to change the software side of things, ARpiCADE uses a lot of different low resolutions to cover the many refresh rates of old school gaming and I'm not sure if the composite output of the RPi can do it (at oner point it was 480i out only, not sure if that ever changed).

Best bet for low res video is the RGBS from the JAMMA edge or the RGBHV from the DAC VGA output direct into the TV.  Unfortunately many TVs do not have RGB inputs, ones that do usually use scart plugs (a scart to vga cable may work).  If you don't have RGB inputs (scart or 4 or 5 RCAs for video, or on a pro monitor 4 or 5 BNCs) Component inputs (3 RCAs for video) are your next best way to do it, either by uising a RGB to component converter or HDMI to component converter.  If you only have a composite video (1 RCA for video) input the results will not be as good as they could be using pretty much any other input type, but similarly you can get converters for RGB to composite or HDMI to composite.

If you do need to use/get a converter make sure you get one that doesn't do any scaling.  Scalers will add lag and damage the video quality.

Ashtownimore

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Thanks for responding so quick!
I did try using version 3.11 and that didn't work either
The nature of composite with ARpiCADE clears things up for me a little bit too.
The TV dos indeed have 3 inputs and I tried using an hdmi converter as well but to no avail
 Idk if this is what you're trying to get at with all other forms being easier but I feel like it might be worth it/less expensive in time and money just to install an entirely new CRT with VGA. Now that I know how to do it I can apply what I did to fitting this one in a chassi with a new one. That being said, is there anything issues that could come up that might require different hardware?
But yeah finding a good working CRT would probably be easier than to add extra hardware I know nothing about.
Thanks again

dee2eR

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3.11 should boot on any RPi3B+ or RPi3B, unless they've done another silent hardware revision...  The default video output of all versions of ARpiCADE is low res so depending on what you were plugging into it's possible it was running but the image wasn't displayed (if whatever monitor doesn't like low res 240p, 480i etc). 

Does it always do 4 long LED flashes and 7 short?  According to this: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/configuration.html#led-warning-flash-codes , that indicates a power issue.  Have you only tried the arcade power supply?  Have you measured the 5v at the JAMMA edge at all?  Do you have an RPi power supply that you could try outside the cab to rule out the arcade power supply?  If you can test outside the cab does other RPi software boot?  If you have never used the RPi for annything it's also possible it is the issue, it's rare but sometimes a dud is sent out (my first RPi400 had a power problem straight out of the box and had to be swapped).  If multiple power supplies and softwares all have the same 4,7 flashes I'd contact the seller you got the RPi from, the monitors/wiring you have will be unlikely to be the issue.

I have a HDMI to 3 RCA component video + 2 RCA stereo audio adaptor somewhere, I'll have a look for it... if I can find it I'll do some tests with it, pretty sure if it's the same as what you have what you already have may work out.

If you're going to get another monitor I'd look for a CRT with RGB input (low res) if you can, not a VGA monitor.  A VGA monitor is very likely to need a 480p video signal (ARpiCADE set to highres mode) rather than run the games at their original resolutions and refresh rates.

An original arcade monitor (tube and matching chassis) may make sense, if you can find a good working one.  A proffessional production monitor like a PVM or BVM will give the best possible results, they were built better than any TVs or arcade monitors and have exquisite low res pictures.  If you're going for a TV I'd try to find one with an RGB SCART input (you would also need to get an SCART plug and wire the JAMMA video output to it, guides to do  that can be found online but not here).  Arcade monitors (that are still good) and PVM/BVMs have become generally hard to find at decent prices. 


Ashtownimore

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Very interesting...
Man I could have sworn somewhere on a forum on the rip site it said that code meant boot failure. I guess don't trust everything you read on the internet :/.
From what Ive seen that same code tends to be a trend. Tbh with the amount of times I've went in and out from behind the blasted thing it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility the initial issues I had with the booting on the old monitor were flashing different codes. That power supply is old even by the look of it.
The reason I thought that wasn't it was the fact the menu came up on the other one, but then again this is a bigger screen (15" to 20"). Could very well be. Conveniently there is no model numbers to track down what it is specifically. I will get ahold of another one and see if that solves it.
I am very curious to see what kind of result that adapter you have gets to see if that could also be a bottleneck.
As far as getting ahold of a PVM or BVM is the correct size and obviously availability at least in my area.
Can you recommend any Rpi power supplies that work well with jamma? Haven't really researched that but I bet I could find something. Also clarified my understanding of the high res function so thanks.

dee2eR

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Get a JAMMA power supply if you need a new one, may as well keep the cab able to run JAMMA boards.  An old failing power supply could take other components out with it (depending on how it fails).

Having an official RPi power supply can be useful for testing outside of the cab but you don't want to have two 5v power supplies connected at once.

Any signal converter worth using shouldn't add any sort of bottleneck, you only want the format converted not any sort of scaling or other modification to the actual image sent.  In the case of HDMI to RGBHV (and I think component too) it's just a digital to analog conversion and shouldn't add any lag or artifacting etc.

Ashtownimore

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Yeah the way it's wired everything goes into the power supply in there already, so it would probably either need to get rewired entirely, that's good news about the converter. Were you able to find one or was your last post a result of that?
I'll get a new power supply and see if that fixes it.

dee2eR

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No luck finding it yet... been a couple of years since I had it out.  I'll have a better look over the weekend.