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Basic Wiring Question
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brian23:
I concur on the colored wiring. Makes understanding things much easier. Also, using a wiring block helps from tugging on the ipac if you have it mounted on the base of the control panel instead of on the control panel top.

If you do a proper loop, then you will not need to worry if a button goes out, all the others go out. Take a look at my diagram below. Wiring the switches in parallel is what you want to do. Obviously, if none of the buttons/joystick work, then the main ground is broken. If one button doesn't work, but all others do, then it is easy to find where the break in the sequence is as long as you don't wire it in an irregular pattern. Ground the switches in the order that they are on the ipac. R, L, U, D, Sw1, Sw2, ... etc. Here is a quick ASCII picture of how I did it. There may be other ways, but this creates a ground loop with buttons in parallel.
 
                                                                            / To GROUND
                                                                           /
M3talhead:

--- Quote from: RTSDaddy2 on December 23, 2005, 09:11:57 pm ---I'll add two cents, though it's painfully obvious (I think), but I don't recall anyone having said this - and I think I read all posts here so far completely.

Following the ideas in the picture let me also suggest you use different color wire.  For example, I used black wire for my grounds, red wire on all the joystick connects to the IPAC, and green for the buttons.  That way if a button stops working, I check the green connectors first, then look at my grounds to make sure nothing's come loose.  It may sound nutty, but it does help.



--- End quote ---

You're absolutely right on the color bit. The only reason I stuck with red and black was because:

1) I'm a cheap bastard and didnt want to spend $.40 on another 3 feet of colored wire

2) I use a multimeter to test all my connections. Its faster this way.
c64rulez:

--- Quote from: BrokenBones on December 23, 2005, 05:13:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: menace on December 23, 2005, 01:26:30 pm ---I would recommend a couple of ground loops--that way if you have a bad connection you don't lose everything and its easier to track down the offending bad connection.

--- End quote ---
I also used this approach and used a commoning block. I connected each series of joysticks & buttons to this block. refer bottom left hand corner.





--- End quote ---

Was taking pictures of a hydrogen bomb internals not supposed to be censored ?
Spaz Monkey:
Since we're answering wiring questions here, I have one.  Short story long, needed to replace the buttons, the signal wire (not the ground) connection snapped off at the microswitch and got pulled out at the 3x4 molex connector to my jamma harness.  Now, how do I plug the wire back into the male part of the connector?  I'm talking about the the actual male wire connector.
M3talhead:
You'll probably just need to replace the molex pin. You can get them at just about any electronics store. If the pin is still good and has the barbs intact, it might just be as simple as (gently) bending the barb back out and reinserting it into the molex.
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