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Wiring for dummies?
BilldaCat:
I have a MAME cabinet that I bought from a user that is no longer working. Only one button works, but the machine is fine if I plug a keyboard into the i-pac. I suspect something is wrong with one of the wires, but I don't know which one, and I'm hesistant to go ripping about the wiring which I don't really understand.
Does anyone have a likely cause, which wire is bad, what I should do? I am very un-handy with tools, so explain stuff to me like I'm 5. Thanks. :(
Sephroth57:
wait so everything works fine if you plug a keyboard into the ipac. meaning u plug it in, and the arcade buttons work normally?
BilldaCat:
Sorry, I meant by everything, meaning that I can play with the keyboard controls. So the I-PAC isn't the problem, is what I'm trying to say. The buttons still fail to work (except one, oddly enough.. player 1's 5th button. (?))
Witchboard:
I'm new to this, but I would think it's a ground problem. T 1st players 5th button sounds like it's the first in the link to the ground. I haven't really played with these things yet, but thought I would help brainstorm.
krick:
It's really not that complicated. Each button needs two wires. One for the signal, one for ground. Pressing the button connects the wires together like flipping a lightswitch.
Ground wires are usually "chained" from one button to the next. If the ground breaks at one, all the buttons "down wind" of it will stop working.
Have a look at the wiring. You should see a wire that connects all the buttons together. Try to find an obvious break in that wire, or possibly a connector that has just slipped off one of the tabs on the button microswitches.
Even if you can't understand wiring, you should be able to spot wires that are obviously not connected to anything.