Still some confusion, though. I don't understand all the focus on the pinout. Wouldn't any connector do, or even directly soldering the board to the yoke (I'm NOT doing that!!) work, as long as u had the right number of connections in the right place?
Making the right connections to the right places is the first reason for the focus on the pinout.
The second reason is that I'm trying to keep the cheapskate chuckle-head noobs from hacking off the molex and soldering the wires straight to the AVR.
Don't maim for MAME! What happens if the AVR goes bad? What if they don't finish the build? What happens when they decide to sell it?
If you don't hack the original harness, the yoke can be easily swapped to/from an original game or removed for maintenance, no problem.
Another reason to keep it original is that Atari used a special wire with more strands which makes the wires more flexible.
Chips4sle sold five NOS SW yoke harnesses on KLOV several years ago. Those (+ a hydra harness) are the only ones I've found there. (A good replacement for a hacked harness is rare.)
& what's an 'analog wiper'? Sounds like something that returns analog inputs to 0?
Here's a modified pic from Le Chuck's
SW Micro build showing the insides of a potentiometer.
The black resistive element is a resistor.
5v on the top tab and ground (0v) on the bottom tab allows you to select a voltage (a.k.a. "potential") between those values.
A wiper arm slides over (wipes across) the surface of the board, making contact between the silver ring in the center and a point on the resistive element.
The contact point is the bump on the right side of the wiper.
When you center the knob, the arm makes contact at the green bar, giving you 2.5 volts on the wiper. (assuming it is a linear pot)
When you turn the knob to the blue bar, you get 4.5 volts on the wiper.
If you reverse the 5v and Gnd tabs, green will still give you 2.5v and blue will give you 0.5v.
Scott