JAMMA Cabinet and Swappable Control Panels

[JAZ]

Hi everyone,

I am about to purchase a JAMMA cabinet, ArcadeVGA card, J-Pac and iPac4. After checking the boards, I have decided to go with swappable control panels (seems like the most flexible option and aviods the creation of a behemoth all-in-one panel). My questions are:

1.I plan to have several generic buttons on each panel. 1 player start, 1 player insert coin, 2 player start and 2 player insert coin. In addition, I was thinking of having 5 or 6 buttons mapped to specific MAME commands (eg. ESC). Do I need any additional, generic buttons or is this too many?

2.My control panels will be:
-General purpose. This would have the buttons listed above, two 8-way joysticks and 6 additional buttons per stick. The player 1 joystick will be a T-Stik Plus so 4-way games can be played aswell.

-Smash TV. This would have the buttons listed above, and four 8-way joysticks, two for each player.

-Heavy Barrel. This would have 2 SNK rotary sticks, 3 buttons per player and Druids adapter.

After checking the boards, I am unsure of how exactly these control panels can be swapped. Does each panel simply connect to the JAMMA loom (via molex connectors or something similar) so they can be removed easily? Or, do I need a dedicated JAMMA loom for each panel?

Lastly, I may go ahead with a 4 player contol panel at some stage. This would have the buttons listed above, four 8-way joysticks and 6 additional buttons per stick.

In this case do I need an iPac4 and a J-PAC or just the J-PAC?

Many thanks,

JAZ

[Lilwolf]

1) you probably don't need the jpac or the ipac4.  

the jpac handles 24 inputs (right? look it up).  You can probably find that a minipac + jpac is more then enough + a trackball controller..... or just the jpac4 + a video amp...

So if you aren't planning on using any original boards in your cabinet... look at different combinations... but you probably are overbuying..


2) As for extra buttons.  I LOVE my unthrottle button (handles BOTH unthrottling and turning on the FPS display so you know when your going full speed).

Also didn't see if you had the pause button.


3)  Consider NOT going with the druin board... It forces the button down ('L' or 'R') for some amount of time until it thinks that the analog -> 12way conversion in mame should click to the next value.  

Instead... consider if you can use NoNameMame or analog+ mame which has all 12 connections directly.  This requires 16 inputs per joystick (+4 more for buttons).  But its SO MUCH BETTER.  turn as fast as you can and it shoots there.  

As for how to do the hotswap... you need to come up with a connector... so get a few 25 pin serial cables (with all connections going through)... there is a name for that cable... dont' remember... then cut it in half and go that route...

[fredster]

No, people do this all the time with MOLEX connectors.  Get one for 9 position player one and two.

When you wire up your swappable panel, just wire it into the molex connector.

A lot of machines are already like that.  

Another way that takes longer is to use contact strips from radio shack and mark them for up dn l r b1,b2, etc.