How can I output gun recoils using mamehooker?

[charlieram]

Hi, I'm hoping for some help with my guns, I have just bought and assembled my Aimtrak Light guns with the recoil units. I am very impressed with the kick back, I am using a 24v 5amp ITE psu I got off Ebay and they give a good effect but...
During testing of the guns I am finding it very confusing to the mind when I am out of bullets and the game is telling me to reload but because the gun is still recoiling I carry on shooting until I realise , It is even worse when two players are shooting.
So I have been reading about Howards mamehooker and it looks like I can use that to monitor mame gun game outputs (where supported and model2 through troubleshooter 2 when implemented) and output these to the real world. I have a serial port and also a parallel port header on the motherboard, Is there a 'preferably' easy way I can build some kind of circuit to control the 24v psu through one of these ports to fire the solenoid directly rather than the aimtrak trigger signal wire? and would it also be possible for the mode to be switched between aimtraks mode and a mame control mode by also using a control pin on the serial/parallel port?
A lot of questions I know but I'm hoping some electronics genius can point me in the right direction, I dont know much but I'm ok soldering and I know the difference between a diode and resistor but I really Have no Idea about how to create this interface and I dont want to blow up my PC.
Thanks for reading and hopefully thanks for the advice and schematics!

[charlieram]

Well no replies  I know I can use mamehooker to control the parallel port but I'm more worried about the 24v psu driving the solenoid frying the PC, I have been reading up on lots of things that are quite confusing to me. I did electronics at school about 24 years ago and a lot has changed since then, the last computer interface I used was to drive a stepper motor on a BBC model b computer!
Anyways, in the aimtrak solenoid kit there was a small pcb with the new trigger switch on, this also has the 24V psu, Solenoid, common ground, trigger wire and solenoid trigger wires connected, could I just replicate that circuit minus the trigger switch and then connect what would of been common ground to a ground pin on the parallel port and solenoid trigger wire to one of the signal pins on the parallel port without frying it and bypass Andy's trigger signal. I know that would not allow switching between Aimtraks method of only triggering the solenoid while pointing at the screen and mamehooker but tbh I think it would be better for the solenoid only to fire when you have bullets available and if the game has no outputs available then I'd rather have  no feedback. Obviously I would prefer it if the aimtraks were ably to receive the inputs directly from mamehooker but Howard seems to think that is a no go unfortunately, But andy if your reading this and you have something in the pipeline please let me know before I pull the guns apart and start desoldering!

[GoYouSalukis]

I can't help too much, other to say that I know you can use an Optoisolator to safely isolate your printer port outputs from your 24V circuit. Here is a quick link:

http://www.arunet.co.uk/tkboyd/ec/ec1optoiso.htm

[BadMouth]

I'm using the circuit in reply #10 of this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,110552.msg1172710.html#msg1172710

It should work just as well with MAMEhooker as it does with the recoil output on the aimtrak.

[charlieram]

Thanks for the replies but seeing as I didn't get any replies in the main forum I thought it was probably the wrong place for this type of question. I started a new thread in the Automated projects forum  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,132537.0.html and DaOld Man is being very helpful. I will be trying it out very soon hopefully.