Control Panel Wiring Help

[Jedirampage]

Hi all,

I'm about to start wiring my control panel however i need still need to buy wire. What is the reccomended gauge wire for standard pushbottons?  Also from whom would you recomend i buy from ?  Also looking for .187 quick dissconnects

Thanks for your help

[shardian]

The wiring found in cat5 networking cable works just fine for buttons.You can get you wire and disconnects. from www.groovygamegear.com, or divemaster in the bst forum. You can also get them from Lowes, but it is hard to find the proper quick disconnects in their own package.

[Jedirampage]

Also what keyboard encoder would anyone reccomend for 4 players,  i bought a USB trackball from happ so i do not need it to have a trackball interface

[vidmouse]

I'm currently building my first project, and it's a 4p cabinet.
Using the Ultimarc I-PAC 4 --- really made things easy.

For quick connects, search on Ebay for "187 connector"
it comes up with several options in 100+ct quantities,
fairly decent price.

As far as wire gauge goes, I don't think it really matters
as long as your connector gauge matches your wire gauge...
or if you are stuffing two wires into one connector to
daisy-chain, you are one-size up.

[Hawk Daddy]

For my wires I used the old harness out of my MERCS jamma cabinet.  It had more then enough wires to account for all the buttons.  And also it looks more original.

Hawk

[Jedirampage]

What type of disconnect is reccommended? Female or Male? Or does it even make a difference

[shardian]

What type of disconnect is reccommended? Female or Male? Or does it even make a difference

Microswitches has .187 male spade terminals, so you should use .187 female quick disconnects

[Jedirampage]

Thanks for the help with the disconnects, any other reccomendations for keyboard encoders?  I'm building a 4 player cab.

I'll look into the Ultimarc I Pac

[acevedor2]

My vote is for IPAC4 and I got my disconnects from Home Depot and the Wire is 18 gauge from Auto Zone.  Worked like a champ and fairly cheap.  Good luck and cheers.

[Jedirampage]

So far through my research the top two have been the KE72 andt the IPAC-4, can anyone tell me the difference?

[vidmouse]

Not all arcade buttons are .187.  I did get some "budget' buttons
from Dream Arcades that are .110... but, same difference, they
still make .110 female quick connects.

As far as the difference in encoders goes:
KE72 (from their website):
- 72 inputs (consider that for 4player you will most likely need at LEAST:
16 for the joysticks
20 for the buttons (6 for p1 and p2, 4 for p3 and p4) -- 22 if you use
     7 buttons for p1 and p2
08 for the player start and coin buttons
07 buttons if you include pinball buttons (I am)
?? "maintenance buttons" -- ESC key, Pause key, etc

PCI mounting but no actualy PCI connection (means it's bigger
than the IPAC if you're NOT mounting it in a pc)

Need a socket connector for their header (don't know if this is
included, didn't look like it)

Potential trackball interface (KE-72-T version)

IPAC4:
- 56 inputs
- smaller form factor but you have to mount it yourself (I'm using
  a few small screws from a hardware store plus some plastic spacers)
- screw-in type connector blocks included,
  which means that you can connect stripped wire straight from your
  microswitches and screw in to the IPAC without a connector.
- I'm not sure if the KE-72 has this or not, but the IPAC has
  "Shift key" functionality ... if you hold down the player 1 start button,
  you can press other buttons to simulate key presses for
  "Enter", "Esc", "Tab", and so on.  All of these can be custom-defined by
  the setup program available from Ultimarc, but the IPAC already
  comes loaded with defaults so you don't have to set it up if you
  don't want to

Yeah, I'm biased towards the IPAC because I have one.