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Wire length (with completed pics of CP)

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RandyT:

I'd agree with your assessment if I hadn't seen a number of people here complain about problems with long wire runs.

There's theory and there's reality.  Theory says you should be able to go 100ft without a problem, but the reality is that long cable runs can cause difficulties, whatever the reasons.

Theory also says, shorter is always better when running wires for virtually any purpose .

Get a handful of PS/2 extension cables and see how many you can put together before your keyboard stops working ;)  Not the same set of circumstances, but it will demonstrate some very real limitations to wire lengths.

RandyT

ShinAce:

If you wanted a decent test, you should compare a 6 foot cable to a longer one. As soon as you add connections, it's an entirely different game.

RandyT:


--- Quote from: ShinAce on February 18, 2005, 11:27:26 pm ---If you wanted a decent test, you should compare a 6 foot cable to a longer one. As soon as you add connections, it's an entirely different game.

--- End quote ---

Fair enough, try a  6' extension and a 20' extension.  You might even find that it works fine with one keyboard, and not at all with another.  That's why I say, don't sweat it too much until you see a problem.  But when you do, don't rule out cable length as a possible cause.

I personally had a problem going from a 6' to a 12'  wihen developing the KeyWiz.  I decided to test the Win2K box  on the other side of the room without trying to move my dev system.  I mistakenly thought I was experiencing an incompatibility with the OS.  Turns out  the dev system didn't like the extra length  of the PS/2 cable.  I moved  everything close enough to reach  with the 6 footer and it worked perfectly.  But not until I spent 2 hours trying to find a non-existent compatibility issue.

So I've experienced instances where cable length can make a substantial difference, but as with anything, YMMV.

RandyT   





Wienerdog:

I've now experienced a problem with 12 feet of Cat3 on a test panel.  Controls seem less responsive on that stick.  Does that mean it's a length problem?  Probably not.  I would blame bad connections before I would blame 12 feet of wire. 

The 12 feet of wire worked good, I was able to run the wire behind the running microwave fine.  I did find out that I can live with a shorter run, so I'm going to switch to about 4 feet of wire, and I can put the encoder in the Player 1 panel, that all but eliminates any wire length concern.  Oh, I was just kidding about the microwave, my point was that there are many things to take into consideration, one of the biggest being how well the connections are made at the switch.  The main concern I was asking about was the voltage/current drop over that thin wire.  Interference is probably more of a concern. 

I'm not saying this problem was caused by the wire, but I was running Mame32 and clicking some of the buttons caused Mame to shut down and send me back to Windows.  I tried moving the buttons to different inputs on the Keywiz, but it was still happening randomly.

On a side note, are the default inputs set up to standard Mame buttons?  This was one of the original Key encoders.  I'm not sure where the disk is and I haven't looked around for any info.  The inputs on the board are marked 1-8 and A-P.  I'm down to the wire for putting these panels together, so any help would be appreciated.  I'm going to be handing this panel over to people with very little MAME experience, and I'm not going to be with them to help.  I'd like them to be able to plug this into a computer and go straight into games without changing configurations.  They will have a keyboard for coins and starting, and the two panels with 6 buttons each.  I know where to input the sticks, but where should I connect the 12 total buttons on the Keywiz?

Thanks for the help, this will save me lots of time.

RandyT:



Email sent.

RandyT

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