Namco 246/256 I/O Kit

I recently began shopping on Yahoo Auctions Japan (YAJ) again. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but having enough spare parts to keep my cabs going for the foreseeable future, JAMMA PCB prices going through the roof, and having most of the games I really wanted anyway I was looking for something new to enjoy.

Now if you've ever shopped on YAJ for arcade stuff, you'll know there's a few sellers on there with incredibly huge inventories of stock. A couple of these sellers had an abundance of Namco 256 mainboards. I decided I'd pick one up for around 3000 Yen (~£22). Now these were just the mainboards, with no I/O and no games, and the only game I could see going for a reasonable price was Gundam Vs. Gundam Next. I purchased one of those, and now I needed an I/O to connect the board to my cabinet.

These are a little different to the usual I/O boards you see for your JVS hardware, they are specific to the Namco 2x6 hardware. This kit is the System 246 B kit, compatible with 246 and 256 hardware. This kit is specific to joystick games.

Here's the kit box, full of packaging tape and stickers, not particularly pleasing to the eye, but then again these were never intended for the average consumer.

And the contents of the box

If you ever decide to go into this range of Namco hardware, ensure you have all of the parts contained within. These are:

Main PCB
Kick Harness (Below PCB on photo)
Ribbon Cable (Top Centre)
Power Cable (Centre)
Phono Cable (Top Right)
VGA Cable (Botton Right)

There are various I/O kits for the Namco 2x6 hardware, as it was used for more than just regular joystick games. Read more about them on the Arcade Otaku Wiki