NBA Jam Cabinet

[thebrownshow]

Buddy of mine is looking to MAME an NBA Jam - style cabinet.  The cabinet apparently doesn't have any sideart, so he's not too worried about destroying an original cab.   Just curious what you all think would be the easiest way to get all four sets of controls up and running?  He'll be using the arcade monitor.  Looks like a J-Pac isn't able to handle all four sets, so would it be better to just go for an I-Pac4 and a VGA breakout cable?

[krick]

J-PAC for players 1 & 2
I-PAC for players 3 & 4

You'll need to re-program the I-PAC controls because the defaults conflict with the J-PAC defaults.

A similar question was asked recently.  I'll try to dig up the link.


EDIT: here's two links that you'll probably find useful...

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=55551.msg544718#msg544718
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=55330.msg544118#msg544118

[thebrownshow]

If he's just planning on having the 3 buttons for the four players, why would I need both?

[krick]

If he's just planning on having the 3 buttons for the four players, why would I need both?

Oh... I don't know...  Maybe so he can have joysticks, start buttons, and coin-ups for players 3 & 4?

[hutch1980]

An Ipac 4 would work fine. I have an NBA Jam cab and used an ipac 4 to hook up all 4 joysticks with 3 buttons each and 4 start buttons + coin controls.  And i had extra connectors on the ipac4. Very easy and straight forward to hook up.

[CheffoJeffo]

Yeah, you can use an IPac4 and gut the cabinet as hutch says OR use a JPac and IPac2 like krick says and not have to rewire the cabinet beyond the controls for players 3 and 4.

I agree with krick ... being able to convert the cabinet back to a "real arcade cabinet" is a GoodThing(tm).

Now, i the JAMMA harness is hacked up then all bets are off.

Cheers.

[thebrownshow]

Haven't seen it yet, but I was going to help him add molex connectors to the original jamma harness so he could restore the cabinet if need be.  I'm a big fan of using the j-pac, it's what I've got in my dynamo cabinet, but if there's a configuration that would just need ONE encoder rather than two, I mean, really, what's the difference between rewiring half or rewiring all, either way you're doing some wiring.

Oh... I don't know...  Maybe so he can have joysticks, start buttons, and coin-ups for players 3 & 4?

No need to be a ---tallywhacker--- about it.

[hutch1980]

Yeah, using a JPac+ipac2 would probably be the easiest way to do it. My jamma cable was hacked up before i got it so it wasn't a big deal using the ipac4. I eventually want to make a dual jamma connector to select between a pc using the jpac and jamma boards, then use a switch to swap between the two.