Admin Buttons on a Control Panel

[Thy]

Hola, I'm still in the process of planing out my first cab and I'm pretty close to complete with that side of things. I got thinking about how people have Admin buttons on their cabs, ie the Exit/Pause buttons and started wondering how these were wired up.

I'm planning on a 2 Player with 6 Buttons and the 2 Pinball buttons on the sides. Now from my understanding the ipac2 has spots for 2 joysticks and 8 buttons each, so where does one wire the admin buttons too?

Any help is appreciated, cheers.

-- Thy

[Turnarcades]

i-pacs are programmed to accept any keyboard input for any connection. It has enough connections for 8 buttons each, but as most use 6 buttons for each player, the spare 4 can be programmed for whatever you want. That is how all of our arcades are done, and we have Enter, Escape, TAB and 'P'(pause) programmed into the 4 spare admin buttons as standard.

[Thy]

So can multiple buttons be wire to the same spot on the ipac so that if either are pressed the same thing occurs? For example, the buttons on the side of the CP that would act as flippers in pinball, would be the same as button 1 and 2 on top of the CP.

[Hoopz]

So can multiple buttons be wire to the same spot on the ipac so that if either are pressed the same thing occurs? For example, the buttons on the side of the CP that would act as flippers in pinball, would be the same as button 1 and 2 on top of the CP.

Yes.  That's exactly right.  Many people that have a 4 way joy along with an 8 way joy, wire them both to Player 1.  Either can be used and both are active at the same time.  Doing the same thing with buttons is fine too. 

[Thy]

Excellent, thanks guys, all making a lot more sense now

[TheShanMan]

To expand on what HooPZ said, my plan is to wire 2 pause buttons in parallel (one on each side) so it's easy for either player to pause, and 2 exit buttons in series (again, one on each side) so both players must hit the button together to exit.

I don't think a dedicated enter button is necessary - I use the 1st player 1 button for that (and the player 1 joystick for up/down). I plan to make Tab a shifted key (if you don't know about shifting, see details of ipac) so I don't need a dedicated button for it, since using tab is something I want to be "hidden".

[Turnarcades]

I'm not suggesting our layout is ideal, but as we do custom machines that people generally program themselves, we offer as many buttons as we do in case they want them. Better to have too much than not enough. It works with our default software setup, but my personal feeling would to have just have credit buttons, an escape and a pause button.

[Zobeid]

As long as we're on this subject. . .

I notice a lot of cabinets have side buttons, or in some cases front buttons.  What do y'all use these for?  Especially the side buttons. . .  Video pinball?  Anything else?

Even my old HotRod controller has side buttons.  I may have configured them to work as a coin drop at one time, but otherwise I don't remember using them for anything.  (And a cabinet would have better options for coin drop.)

[NoOne=NBA=]

My Pause button is also the Shift button.
If you press the button, and release it, the game will pause.
If you press the button, and hold it, it will shift the next button you press.

I use my side buttons as extra coinups, to avoid HAVING to use the coin door.
I have the shifted functions on them set to "O" and "K", in case I happen to need those in a trackball game.
I have a modular CP, so it's not unusual for me to set up a CP with no joystick to hit Left/Right.

[CrazyKongFan]

I put 3 admin buttons (using a small pushbutton similar to the HAPP mini one posted in the "Wiring question" thread, although I got mine from Radio Shack). I put the pause button in the center (so either player can hit it), and put ESC and TAB buttons on the top left, so I can change game settings on the fly. I wired up my coin switches in the coin door, but also paralleled them to 2 pushbuttons mounted on the front next to the coin door (I just pushed them into existing bolt holes). That way, I can use either the button, or if I feel like making it more authentic, I can drop a quarter in. Also wired up the switch inside the door with service and reset (F2/F3). So far, it seems to be working good for me with that setup.

[Green Giant]

To expand on what HooPZ said, my plan is to wire 2 pause buttons in parallel (one on each side) so it's easy for either player to pause, and 2 exit buttons in series (again, one on each side) so both players must hit the button together to exit.

Nice to see my series and parallel pause and exit is getting used.  If I inspired you to do it that way, sweet; if not, great minds think alike.   

[MKChamp]

Also, remember the IPAC has the ^shift ability. So, basically the same button on your cab be programmed to 2 different keys. IE. if you press the 'red' button by itself, it signals TAB...if you hold the ^shift key (usually the player 1 button) and THEN press the 'red' button if signals ESCAPE(or whatever you have them programmed to).

On my cab, I didn't want alot of 'admin' buttons, so I only have 2 located under the CP.
1 - ESCAPE and ^shift function as B (B is programmed to pause MAME and bring up Johnny5 to show Control layout)
2 - TAB (my TAB in MAME pauses MAME and brings up the menu...and vice versa)

My player 1 key is also programed as ENTER in mame so I can use that to select the menu items

If I NEED to get more functionality...well, at that point the keyboard comes out...but 99.99% of the time you and your friends are hammering it out in a night of gaming, those are the only admin functions you'd ever need IMO.

[severdhed]

one thing I found to be useful was to reconfigure mame to use multiple inputs for the same function...

for instance.

i have a 2 player panel, with an 8way stick and 6 buttons for each player.  i have a 4-way stick and two buttons that are wired in parallel to player 1's controls.  i also have two pinball flipper buttons, as well as Escape and Enter.

i didnt really want just a dedicated Enter button since it isn't used that frequently for standard playing.  but i did want either player to have the ability to exit the current game.  so i put the escape button on p1 side, and enter button on p2 side, that configured mame to exit the rom when either Escape or Enter is pressed.   I did the same with my pinball buttons...they are configured as N and M (i think).  and i have the pinball games configured to use those keys for flippers, but I have mame configured to pause using either N or M.  that way each player has a pause button, and it re-uses buttons i already have on the panel.

[TheShanMan]

To expand on what HooPZ said, my plan is to wire 2 pause buttons in parallel (one on each side) so it's easy for either player to pause, and 2 exit buttons in series (again, one on each side) so both players must hit the button together to exit.

Nice to see my series and parallel pause and exit is getting used.  If I inspired you to do it that way, sweet; if not, great minds think alike.   

Yes, I definitely got the idea from someone here and likely it was you, so happy to give credit (should have stated that to begin with). I like the symmetry involved, and it works well with my little kids because during 2 player games one of them has a tendency to all of a sudden get tired of a game and it's not fair for one kid to exit the game when the other kid isn't done yet!

Also, I have 1player and 2 player buttons (my original atari "cone" led buttons) in the center of the panel. So again, nice and symmetrical.

My swappable panel is still a WIP so I haven't posted a picture of it yet, but one of these days I will (or if someone really wants to see it).

[Franco B]

In an ideal world I would like three admin buttons on my main CP, Start game, Exit Game (ESC) and Pause.

I'm only going to have two LED WIZ controlled outputs available for two buttons so I am just going to have Start and Exit Game (ESC).

I'm going to use the Exit Game (ESC) button as the shift key and use it in conjunction with the Start Game button as the Pause combo.

I think I will be the only person who will be pausing a game so I don't see it as an absolute necessity on my cab.

I will also use the shifted Exit Game button as the shift key for Tab, Volume up, Volume Down, etc etc.

[Afterburner]

I have an upper and lower CP arrangement (like a staircase) with the upper CP for a flight stick and spinner.

The lower CP has two 8-way rotary joys wired to an older IPAC 2.

I also have two X-arcade trackballs.  They each came with wiring for 3 buttons (they are recognized as 3-button USB mice) and I have my P1  Buttons 1/2/3 and P2 Buttons 1/2/3 wired into the trackballs.

That left me all kinds of room on the IPAC, which was good because I needed the inputs for the rotary encoder for the joysticks.

My admin buttons are small (less than the diameter of a dime) and are mounted on the vertical panel connecting the upper and lower CP.  They are easy to access and don't get bumped accidentally during game play.  They were some cheap panel mount pushbuttons I picked up on eBay for about $8 for a pack of 12.