Can anyone help me finish my arcade cab?

[G.Reef]

A couple years ago I made an arcade cab but I never was able to hook up the buttons correctly. I have an n64 in the cab and my plan was to hook the n64 controller up with the arcade buttons on my cab. Can anyone help me with this? I can pay for any fees needed and I'll pay for all shipping? This thing has been sitting in my basement for 2 years can anyone please help me finish it. Thank you.
   

[Hoopz]

Where are you located?  Someone here may be local to you.

[MikeyMerse]

Why don't you just buy an Ipac? They are only ~$35.00, and are very easy to wire.

[bkenobi]

Why don't you just buy an Ipac? They are only ~$35.00, and are very easy to wire.

An Ipac won't interface with an N64.

[G.Reef]

Where are you located?  Someone here may be local to you.

Southeastern Ohio. Near Cincinnati.

[Hoopz]

Where are you located?  Someone here may be local to you.

Southeastern Ohio. Near Cincinnati.

WTF did they move Cincy from Southwest Ohio to Southeast Ohio?

 

Let's see if anyone says they can help. I'm in Indy so it's not that far but not very convenient.

[ragnar]

To be clear, you have an N64 in your cabinet, not Mame?

So, you need to hack the N64 controller to have it's controls be the controls on your control panel?

I'll jsut say what everyone else will.   IF you have an N64 and it's controllers, you already have the best controller for it.  You do not want to use a CP in this case.  Just hook the N64 up to a normal TV like it was intended.

[G.Reef]

Where are you located?  Someone here may be local to you.

Southeastern Ohio. Near Cincinnati.

WTF did they move Cincy from Southwest Ohio to Southeast Ohio?

 

Let's see if anyone says they can help. I'm in Indy so it's not that far but not very convenient.

Uhh..woops 

To be clear, you have an N64 in your cabinet, not Mame?

So, you need to hack the N64 controller to have it's controls be the controls on your control panel?

I'll jsut say what everyone else will.   IF you have an N64 and it's controllers, you already have the best controller for it.  You do not want to use a CP in this case.  Just hook the N64 up to a normal TV like it was intended.

Yes I have an n64 in the cab. But I need to hook the controller up with the buttons I have for the cab. I already tried and I gave up. If there's anyone local that can help I'd appreciate it, if no one's local I can just ship the buttons and controller to you.

[SephYuyX]

Im a bit confused too.
So youre just running N64, and nothing else? Or youre running MAME and other emulators, as well as an N64?

If youre just using N64, dont bother with hooking up a control panel too it, N64 controller is the best thing to play N64 games. Using an arcade control panel setup is pretty annoying with N64, and unless you have the right kind of joysticks, that wont work right either.

If youre running MAME on a PC along with an N64 console, just use the N64 controller to play the N64, and use an IPac to hook up the buttons to your PC.

If you really do just have the N64 and thats it, and you want to use your control panel to play it.. uh, well.. it probably is possible to splice the N64 and hook it up, but that will require a bit of work to do.. I dont think you can just connect one wire to the other, youll have to hook it up with an HID or something.. idk.

[bkenobi]

While the N64 would be best played with an N64 controller, it shouldn't be that difficult to make this work.  Open the controller and find the buttons you want on your CP.  Follow the traces back to a solder point (hopefully at least most will have something easy to work with) and solder leads to those.  Attach QD's to the wires and plug in the buttons.  


DONE!


...sorta.  The next step is the analog stick and D-pad.  The D-pad can be attached the same way as the buttons.  The analog stick...good luck!

[nitz]

Hacking a controller should work, but could be a hassle if you don't really know what you're doing.

If you really want an N64 cab, I'd just drop a PC in there with an N64 emulator. That way you don't have to swap out cartridges when you want to switch games. I don't think you even need that great a PC for N64 emulation. I had Project64 running on a 1.4 Ghz machine with 512 MB RAM and everything except the most intensive games ran full speed. You'd also have the option of adding other systems too.

The only drawback is that some games aren't emulated well, and others not at all. But the most popular stuff is, so unless you're into some funky obscure games, probably 90%+ of what you want to play will work just fine.

[bkenobi]

Project64 needs a decent system to run some sections of some games at full speed.  The real advantage in using a PC is in that you don't have to swap carts so you will have a cleaner finished product.  I would agree that N64 games are mostly UNPLAYABLE with a CP though.  I'm sure there are a few that work well, but they are more than likely available with other systems anyway (KI is probably a good example).

I personally have a Logitech controller in my cab for console emulation because I was displeased with how the CP felt when playing NES, SNES, N64, etc.  If you like the feel, it can be done though.

[G.Reef]

Let me clear something up, this is for my dad to play the arcade cartridge for the n64, I forget the name but it has pac-man, galaga, dig dug, ect.. So I'm only using the d-pad of the controller on the cab control panel. I'm not going to use an emulator because I wont be playing many different games. and even if I want to I made a door to easily switch out cartridges and feed a controller through. I'm sticking with the n64. Like I said I tried hacking the controller but I don't know what I'm doing, I just would like to have someone else do this. Any help would be great, thanks.

[Stobe]

I would contact Haruman if I were you, and see if he'd be willing to hack a couple pads.

Check this link

[releasedtruth]

The support this forum offers great assistance, but I do believe in the philosophy of teaching a man to fish. Now that we understand what it is you need, I think it's a relatively straightforward operation to map buttons and the D pad to your arcade controls, but don't give up on handling it yourself.

[MikeyMerse]

If I had a working soldering gun, I would charge you ~$40 to do this (not including shipping of course). Just to give you a ball park.

[HaRuMaN]

Yes, I do N64 pads, too.