MAME'ing Around Part 3

Finally.  The cabeling is done for the control panel and amazingly has tested out fairly well with WinIPAC.  A few of the original buttons are flakey and I may be replacing them in the future, but onward we go on the build.  The wiring seems AOK so I felt comfortable in cinching them up with wire ties to straighten the whole thing out. 

My buddy Stan (also a fellow OHMSpace member) pointed out that I should be doing a shared grounding ring for the buttons and joysticks instead of consolidating the individual grounds...Stan didn't point this out until the panel was mostly wired.  The lower portion of the panel with coin drops and player start buttons has been wired with the shared grounding ring.  I blame Stan for the inconsistency, he should have been watching me closer.

MAME'ing Around Part 2

Quick update: I have added the PC (notice JEG'S logo), test monitor and keyboard (The actual monitor is a large 24" tube that is mounted in the cabinet already).  The I-PAC works well as a pass-through but since the ground connections aren't hooked up on any of the inputs I have not yet tested the "wedge" functionality for buttons and joysticks. 

The PC is a simple XP SP3 box with WinIPAC installed.  I have not installed and configured MAME yet, but the WinIPAC software will allow me to test the controls and debug wiring.

MAME'ing Around Part 1

I have several makes in planning, but I fight the constant issue of starting a make before finishing the last one.  I have dug up a half-done make from years back due to the amount of space it takes up indexed with it's coolness factor. Several years back I purchased a defunct video game cabinet (Captain America and the Avengers) in the hopes of resurrecting it into a fully functional MAME cabinet with hundreds if not thousands of games available on it.  I have added roller wheels to the bottom of the cabinet for ease of access, added a large 24" monitor (a tube, I know...the price was right) with plexiglass shield to hide the fact that it's not original, added a light and speakers to the marquee space and a power switch on the side to juice the whole cabinet.

My current part of interest is the control board.  I have expanded the button layout to a 4-6-6-4 configuration above Captain America's original 2 buttons per player.  All the buttons are currently being wired into an Ultimarc I-PAC to convert button and joystick movements into keyboard strokes that will run the input for the games.  This is a long and tedious task as there are four joysticks with eight wires (four signal and four ground) and twenty player buttons using forty wires, four player start buttons and four hidden "coin" buttons as well as the possibility of wiring the actual coin doors to operate with the plink of quarters.  We're pushing close to one hundred wires that need to be cut to length, stripped and connected at each end before testing can begin.  No wonder I put this project off so long.