The definitive guide to wiring up a Sega H Gate shifter to 4 buttons......

[Malenko]

anyone have one?  Its the last hurdle then I can really turn the corner on this build.  Ive read the other thread where there's 1 picture of an extra switch with the caption "dont wire it this way"  wasnt a ton of help.

Pix and small words, Im old and slow.

[BadMouth]

Probably still not as thorough as you'd like, but this is all the time I feel like investing in it.
My shifter is mounted in a CP and isn't wired the way you need it anyway.
I found some pics of it on BYOAC though and drew the wiring on it.
I didn't label the gears because it's a PITA to figure them out with the pivoting action of the shifter reversing everything.
Easier just to wire it up and then figure out which wire goes to which gear using a multimeter to see which one is going to ground.

Looking at switches online, it seems the C (common) tab is always on the end where the lever goes into the switch body.

Adding the extra switch on the front makes it so no switches have a path to ground (no gears register) when the joystick is centered.
If the NO and NC tabs on the original switch are used instead, one gear will always be registering which could cause problems when mapping emulators or navigating PC games.

[BadMouth]

I should add that Retrorepair's method is still the best way to handle this IMO.

For the benefit of people who may come accross this thread in a search,
RetroRepair posted a cool solution to his youtube channel a few weeks ago.

(part # and pinouts are in the youtube description)

Copied and pasted from the youtube notes without permission  :
Check out his youtube channel!

So here I thought I'd show you guys my solution to wiring up a regular Sega shifter (should work with the Ketz shifters too) to a normal common ground USB pad hack or micro controller while keeping the original wiring of the cabinet intact.

I've been using it for a while and it works great, no lag at all!

If you want to try it yourself then here is the list of pinouts you'll need to get it working.

Use a 74LS138 to convert to 4 (or 5 if you want neutral) outputs for a normal USB game pad hack/microcontroller

74LS138 pins:

1 - Shifter Grey/Red wire
2 - Shifter Grey/Blue wire
3 - Shifter Grey/Yellow wire
4 - GND
5 - GND
6 - VCC
7 - neutral output (tie to 12)
8 - GND
9 - 2nd gear output
10 - 1st gear output
11 - NC
12 - neutral output (tie to 7)
13 - 4th gear output
14 - 3rd gear output
15 - NC
16 - NC

I'll add it to the shifter section of the driving cab thread when I get around to revamping it.

FYI, the above is not the correct pinout. 

See here for basic pinout from chip data sheet.

http://circuits.datasheetdir.com/255/74LS138-pinout.jpg

[terminator2k2]

[vandale]

Badmouth - yep this is how I have done many of them, easiest way for sure

[Malenko]

ok, then I'll do it that way too.

Just ordered 2 of them