Twin GTI Club Conversion [Help needed]

[sergiMD]

TLDR: Logitech Driving Force EX (the PS2/PC blue one) wiring diagrams wanted. Thanks

Hi there,
Last December a group of friends and I bought a GTI Club twin cab. It wasn’t the game I played the most back in the day, but we liked the looks and it was cheap enough. The seller didn’t know if it was in working condition, but for the price we thought it was fair enough if only for the seats , control panels and wood.







Finally, after 2 weeks waiting , the cab was at my friends garage. We made a first round of cleaning and started to figure out all the wiring and components. The seller already pointed out there was a missing PCB and power supply



The original project: the restoration

We downloaded the owner’s manual and after several attemps, it passed the tests and the game boot correctly. You can imagine our excitement. We were expecting nothing in this regard but instead we got a working cab. Screen, sound, and controls work almost to perfection (Handbrake too!).




At this point we thought the best route was to get a second PCB and keep the cab with its original game. And try to repair the second CRT which showed no signal.
But turns out GTI Club wasn’t a popular game in Spain (at least not like Sega Rally or Daytona) and it wasn’t cheap to get a working PCB without costly (and risky) international shipment.
We found a very cheap board with unknown working condition and took the chance, but the PCB was dead.



But this wasn’t the only bad news. Sadly, after a couple of parties at our friend’s garage, the working CRT started to switch off by itself after shorter periods of use each time.  At one point, it won’t turn on anymore.
With this situation we sat and thought “Are we going to spend more money trying to repair old components to stick to one game? Or can we try  to turn the cab into a multi-system emulation machine?” And we ended up going for the later.

[sergiMD]

The PC conversion

After a lot of reading in these forums, we decided to go for a PC Conversion:

• Replace the 2 CRT with 2 flat panels
• Use the Haap Wheel Hack using a couple of Logitech Driving Force EX pot wheels and a couple of AMC servo amplifiers.
• Add buttons to control pc games, and rewire the original ones along with the sequential shifter
• use a frontend to launch and quit the games without mouse and keyboard

The screens
We bought a couple of second hand 27” tvs that fit almost perfectly in the cab. The we built a mount using the original frame of the crts







The control panel
Right know we’re stucked wiring the wheel buttons. Wheel and pedals work perfectly (and force feedback!) but it seems we have some kind of short with the grounds of the X, Circle buttons and the directional pad. L1,L2, Start and the rest work fine.

Every post or tutorial we've found where there was a mention of the wiring diagram of the Driving Force EX has the images dead. So I’m asking if anyone has a copy of it (or at least an indication of the grounds used by the directional pad and main buttons)

Thank you in advance

[deano7649]

Good work with your conversion so far 

Don't know if this link is any help to you for wiring the logitech buttons...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B637CSO6oe1fUVcyV09mSmdZSlU/edit

[sergiMD]

Good work with your conversion so far 

Don't know if this link is any help to you for wiring the logitech buttons...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B637CSO6oe1fUVcyV09mSmdZSlU/edit

Wow, thanks! Seems this is a different model because it has analog paddles (ours are digital). Anyway, I'll have a look at the pinout and see if the other buttons use the same.

[BadMouth]

Every post or tutorial we've found where there was a mention of the wiring diagram of the Driving Force EX has the images dead. So I’m asking if anyone has a copy of it (or at least an indication of the grounds used by the directional pad and main buttons)

I think I saved the original web page somewhere if this ever happened.
I will look for it later today or tomorrow.

[BadMouth]

Here is the original info from Mark's Basement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B637CSO6oe1fUVcyV09mSmdZSlU/view?usp=sharing