quick CP wiring questions...

[countchocula8]

hey guys,

i'm interested in making a control panel for both mame and console gaming.  is it possible to have one panel serve as both without having to disconnect anything (see illustration below)? 

i plan on connecting 1 set of wires to an i-pac2 and another set of wire to 2 hacked playstation 2 gamepads (1 per player)...i'm interested in playing dreamcast mostly so i dont know if it's better to hack dc controllers instead or to convert from ps2 -> dc.  the main reason i would want to go with ps2 is because of the wide availability of ps2 converters to the different consoles, leaving myself some options for future gaming.

has anyone here tried this setup?  can even be done???  any suggestions as to how i can better address this topic?  again, i want to have a single CP that would play both console and mame without going through the hassles of disconnecting and reconnecting every time i switch between the two.

thanks guys.  you're the best!

[Marky_1979]

very good question i would love to do this. What console you gonna use with your cab?

[daveg2000]

Im in the process of figuring this out also, I've mounted a dreamcast
in the cabinet... there is a post around here somewhere
that talks about soldering a diode on the hacked dreamcast
wire, so you dont wreck the IPac.... but both supposedly
do work according to that post.
I dont have time right now to look for it.. I'll do some searching
later tonight...
This is the way I was thinking about going.

[Marky_1979]

what if your not using an ipac i have a hagstrom ke72-t encode that im gonna use can it still be done?

[screaming]

  Why not just wire a couple USB ports and mount them around your CP somewhere?  Then you could plug in any joystick you wanted with the appropriate controller->USB converter.

  I think that's what most people do.  It's a little more expensive in the long run since you need to buy the adapters ($15?) but it's worth it since you'll have any configuration you need.

-sab

[daveg2000]

[jer2665]

[daveg2000]

Yeah.. we dont want the Dreamcast/PS2 joypads sitting on
our control panel, we want real arcade controls for
Virtua Tennis, Soulcalibur, Tekken, etc....

[screaming]

ooohhh sorry!  Standard-disclaimer-applies!

[daveg2000]

Screaming....

why does your avatar affect me so?  Its MESMORZING
in a Truly disturbing way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

must... stop.... watching...... feeling..... ill........

[daveg2000]

Here is the link to the thread about wiring Dreamcast along
with an IPac using diodes

I'll be seriously reading thru this one soon.. I'm almost
to the wiring stage of the cabinet.....

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,9823.0.html

[dema]

I was going to go this route for a while before I decided not to try accomplishing everything with one arcade cabinet.

The best way to do this in my opinion would be to wire the controls from the cp using either wire from a db25 or db37 cable, or else by wiring to a db25 or 37 housing, and then running that cable into the output side of a switch. You then run one of the db cables on the input side to the iPAC controls and the other db cable to the hacked gamepad. You can mount the knob on the switch to your cabinet so every time you want to play console games you switch to the one setting and every time you want to play MAME games you switch to the alternate settings.

There are a ton of threads on this in early to mid 2004 on this which will be able to give you a more thorough explanation as to how to accomplish this.