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Gamepad hack
CGRemakes:
Ok, I'm just about done with my cabinet (finally!). I have put it most of the way together and have it most of the way painted and have all the controls in place. I'm now to the point of soldering the controls to 2 cheap WalMart $10 gamepads. Someone recommended this pad to me awhile ago because they share a common ground. I have a little soldering experience (and I do mean little), but have not worked much with actual circuit board soldering, so any diagrams, info, etc. to soldering this particular gamepad would be greatly appreciated. I understand the idea of how it is done and everything, I just want to be sure that I do everything right because it's easy to mess up, and it can get a bit expensive to buy a bunch of gamepads if I do mess up. By the way, my old website:
http://www.classicgameremakes.com/
has changed to
http://www.classic-game-remakes.com/
(got tired of all the pop-up adds)
I will be posting pictures and everything soon. In the meantime, everyone is welcome to download freeware classic arcade games if they wish.
CGRemakes:
OK, I have a few pictures online now. I still have a bit of painting to do, and I will put the monitor/speakers in. I designed it so that the monitor remains flat, and just uses the swivel base that came with it to tip it back at the correct angle. It works beautifully, and lines right up at the correct angle. I know my cabinet is very simple, but I'm poor and don't really need much more than the joysticks/buttons. I used 8 buttons (including "insert coin" button and start button) per person, and Super Joysticks (not installed quite yet). I noticed that someone mentioned using mat board for the bezel in another thread. Has this been used by many people? What do most people use? I can use some of the wood I used for the rest of the cabinet (3/4" MDF), but I think something like mat board would be easier if it looks good.
CGRemakes:
Another question. I have a few options to go with on speakers. I have some decent car speakers that I can use that have a grill and everything. I also have some old labtec computer speakers. I think the car speakers would be easier to mount, and handle more wattage, but they are of course not magnetically shielded. I don't particularly want to warp my screen, would I run into problems with that? I don't know exactly what the minimum distance is between the magnet and monitor before there are problems. Any info would be appreciated.
paigeoliver:
I replaced the tattered factory 12" subwoofer on my Turbo with a 12" car one, and the red in the monitor instantly gained a gradient sloped towards the speaker. A year later the red went out all together (and is still out, but it looks better that way anyway).
I say just use the PC speakers. That is what I use, they are plenty loud. OR use the AMP out of a pc speaker, and wire up the original 6x9 that came in the cab (if it had one).
aj6500:
Speakers: don't know the min. distance depends on the size of the magnets really. My Gorf cab which I'm trying to resurect (KRK hasn't returned a message in a while) has plain speakers mounted underneath the bezel. You could try the car speakers and just watch for problems. I warped a screen on one of my pc's years ago, but a few days after moving the speakers the screen reverted and was ok. I don't think most pc speakers are actually shielded, the magnets are just so small they don't cause problems.
For the soldering: that's the pad I recommended. Strip the case off the pad and peel the rubber buttons off of the board. You'll be able to see all the traces. Under each rubber button will be a circular mesh of traces, kind of like when you almost interlock the fingers of both hands. They'll be close together but not actually touching. One side of this mesh will be the ground, the other the contact. You'll be able to ID the ground as that trace will connect to 1 side of the mesh on every other button on the board. Take a flat blade screwdriver or similar and scrape the green coating off so you can connect to the copper trace. Don't try and solder through the coating. You can solder into this trace anywhere on the board and it will connect to every button. The other side will run directly to the chip mounted at the top of the board.
On the (contact) side of the mesh you'll see a small copper pad w/no coating. The best way to make these connections will be to drill a tiny hole through the center of this pad. Just big enough to slip a piece of solid 24ga or smaller wire through, and solder it to the pad. Then connect your controller to the small jump wire. Almost no voltage passes through this wire, so wire size is not an issue.
An alternate method is to scrape the coating off of the trace and flat solder to the bare patch. This is what I did on my jukebox controller, but only because I was in a hurry and didn't have a small enough bit at the time. You have to be carefull as heating the board as once it's heated, if you pull on the wire it can easily separate from the board and break the connection. If this happens you can try again further upstream of the break, but the traces get pretty tight in some areas. I lifted 4 traces before I finished. Fortunately I only needed 5 buttons at the time so I had plenty of room for do-overs. I'm redoing my control panel and will be using all 12 inputs on another pad, so I'm going to drill and be more carefull.
Once you have this done w/all your jumpers connected to the board I'd recommend taping the sh!t out of it w/electrical tape. This isn't to insulate the connections, but to take any stress off of the actual connections if you pull a wire by accident.
After that run a single ground wire to the common side of all your buttons, and then to the common on the pad. connect each jumper from the pad to a contact on each button. Program each button for it's function and you should be in business. If you mess up and can't use the gamepad, it's only $10 for another go, so that's good. If you mess up 4 times you could have bought an Ipac and not had the problems, so try and limit the mistakes.
Good luck, and as always No warranty offered or implied and your mileage may vary.