Cabling for JAMMA audio, video, and DC power

[brandon.arnold]

Hi all. I would love to get y’all’s opinion or find a vendor or DigiKey part for reasonably good conductors of JAMMA speaker and video signal (very short runs we use in various projects between 1ft and 2m). Maybe shielded, multiple conductor coax of the appropriate gauge is overkill, but if anyone has a recommendation for that, I’d be open to it.

I have noticed noise in speakers and video from JAMMA cables using typical 18-20 GA wire for inputs/speaker/video and 14-16 for power. A lot of times it is simple hookup wire without any shielding, and I’m sure it is a combination of input impedance limitations of the length of the cable and cross-talk between unshielded conductors, for non-DC signals.

As such I would love to have a go-to cabling that may be slightly over-engineered but remove any worry of noise being introduced to the signal.

Power: GND/+5V/-5V/+12V up to 36W DC
Speaker: SP+/SP- or Left +/-, Right +/- around 1W, 4.3 Vrms
RGBS: around 1W, 5.7 Vrms

Any part recommendations for each of these?

 

[Big_P Big_p]

Most of the jamma harnesses and wire used is just cheap crap from china. To give you an example I made an 80cm (31") long JAMMA extender using @Frank_fjs pcb design. It uses a standard ATX 24 pin cable with 18awg wires for power, video and audio and a 34 Pin IDC for inputs. Multiple wires for 12v, 5v and gnd. I thought about exactly this in making them this long but never needed to go a shielded route. My not so cheap harness looses 0.4v (on the 5v line) over its 50cm travel while the extender looses 0.1v. Combs separate the cables out and keep everything neat which may also help with interference

 

[brandon.arnold]

Great info, man, yeah I found some basic shielded (but not coax) options that I used in a project but I think you’re right. Thanks!