What is the OMVS Project?

The OMVS started as a pet project of mine to challenge myself and see if I could design a CMVS (Consolized Multi Video System) unit using the information that was available on the Jamma-Nation-X website.  I had long been a fan of the Neo Geo in the early 90s, and found myself intrigued with the hardware after one of my collector friends picked up an Arcade-Works Omega console.

As a person that loves hands-on experience, I began looking for free software to start developing my project, and ultimately settled with TinkerCAD for the shell design, and later EasyEDA for the PCB design.

As with most projects, everything is an iterative process which tends to get better with every iteration.  Once I had settled on the rough design of the case, I began piecing together the components and wiring schematics based on various forums posts and tutorials from the Neo-Geo forums and Jamma-Nation-X.  The first iteration of the console did not include a THS7374 amplifier at all, and went with bare resistors and capacitors to attenuate the video signals to safe levels for my home setup.  This has long since changed and I initially starting including the CMVSRGB board from Oshpark in my builds.

The first few builds I sold to friends or members of the Neo Geo Cabs & MVS Collectors Facebook group were originally hand-wired.  After creating three or four builds in the same manner, I started looking into PCB design to streamline the build and reduce the chance for human error during the wiring phase.  This later led to designing a breakout JAMMA board as well as a Genesis 2 port to make the build more rigid and easily maintainable.

Through chance, I had made friends with a local retro enthusiast who helped showcase my initial builds to some people in the retro gaming scene.  Once I had been mentioned on Twitter by SmokeMonster, I was included in a loop to make this a collaborative project between me and Tian Feng.  Sticking with the original tenets to develop the build as much as possible with free software, the boards were revised by TF to improve the video circuitry and add features like an e-fuse to the front board for better overall design.

The case continued to change rapidly based on a variety of board and design changes, but ultimately, we arrived at a solid base line for the start of a strong console.  Both the boards and enclosure were designed to be as modular as possible, so that improvements and changes to the project can be easily adapted in with minimal issues.  Over time, this project may continue to grow to include more than support for only the MV1C mainboard.