Pole Position MAME?

[deano728]

Are there edge connectors available that I can buy that will fit into a pole position harness (there are 2 of them) so that I can connect a JPAC and an arcade VGA for driving games?  I want to keep the original harness intact because the PP boards still work and I want to be able to play the original...  Any ideas and anything I should be aware of before trying to get this going?  Thanks!

[Luigi]

22-pins are common.....Bob Roberts has the 15pin-connectors, too.

http://www.therealbobroberts.net/conectas.html

Search for : 15/30 Common on Atari games

Good luck 

[ArtMAME]

What do you hope to accomplish by using a JPAC?  Pole Position is not JAMMA compliant anyway and the only switch you could possibly use it for would be the shifter. 

The steering wheel is an optical encoder and the pedal is an analog pot.  You would need an Optipac for the wheel and an Apac for the pedal.  Are you wanting to interface these also using the JPAC?

The only other thing I see you using it for is possibly for the video amp on the JPAC but you can get just the video amp from ultimarc. 

Not trying to bust your balls, just trying to see what your thinking is on this.  I have an idea of how it could possibly work, but let me hear yours.

 

[deano728]

Thanks for the feedback - this is why I asked.  I am sorta new at this and guess my strategy won't work.  I don't really have a strategy for accomplishing this, however, I do want to give it a try.  If you wouldn't mind sharing the correct way to do this, I would appreciate it. 

It sounds from your email that I could somehow buy the edge connectors from Bob Roberts(Thanks Luigi!) then getting an optipac, which I could hook into an arcadevga, correct?  I am not familiar with Apac, but I am guessing I can find that on the ultimarc site?  Any other pitfalls or things I am missing?

Will the steering wheel and gas pedal allow me to make selections in gameex or any other front end? 

Thanks for the heads up ArtMame!

Dean

[ArtMAME]

Well I have MAMEd a completely dead Pole Position, so I am pretty intimate with the logistics.

First off, I will just come out and say that if you have a working Pole Position, just keep it that way, and get a different cabinet to MAME.  It will take a lot of work and heartache just to get a MAME version of Pole Position working correctly.  Have gone as far as I could with it and I still did not get it 100% (see below).  If you have your heart set on a Pole Position driving MAME cabinet, get another dead/stripped Pole Position and use it, there are plenty of dead ones around.  Or you could just wait until your PP dies, yeah I know, that’s morbid, but PPs are notorious for breaking down.

First off, the steering wheel acts like a mouse X axis, that is left and right movement.  I am not familiar with GameEx but if you can use left/right mouse movement to select games, then that is possible.  You would use the Optipac to interface the wheel to the computer.  It is basically a glorified mouse PCB.

Now the pedal acts like a PC joystick, you know the old flight sticks that have the 25-pin connector, which a lot of the PCs don’t have today unless you install a sound card that has one.  There are USB analog sticks available now.  You would use the APAC to interface the pedal to the PC.

Now the shifter on the original PP only has 1 microswitch, and it stays either ON or OFF to control the Hi/Lo gear in the original game.  Now the standard version of MAME does not support the ON/OFF shifter scheme of the Pole Position shifter.  If you just hook up standard compile of MAME, you will have to change gears by moving the shifter DownUpDown or UpDownUp depending on which way you have it wired.  You will not be able to switch gears by just moving the shifter Up for Hi and Down for Lo.

You have to recompile the MAME code to support the ON/OFF shifter.  Which I don’t know how to do.  There are a few threads on here that subject.  I was able to get a recompiled MAME.exe that supported the PP shifter, but I had to futz with the ROM files to get it to run, and after that, I was missing the car explosion sounds during the game so I never got it fully working 100%.

So basically all the controls you will have will be Left/Right mouse movement, single axis Analog Joystick movement, and one switch for the shifter.  You could get 2 more switches by wiring up the Coin doors. 

So all that is just for Pole Position (and Pole Position 2).  Now if you want other driving games on there, they may have slightly different control schemes like 4-position shifters, gas and brake pedal, extra buttons, etc… so you have to find a way to deal with that.

OK, that was a mouthful… so before I make up a wiring diagram showing you how to interface all that with the PC while keeping the original wiring harness intact, let me know if you still wish to continue with this…

[SavannahLion]

Now the shifter on the original PP only has 1 microswitch, and it stays either ON or OFF to control the Hi/Lo gear in the original game.  Now the standard version of MAME does not support the ON/OFF shifter scheme of the Pole Position shifter.  If you just hook up standard compile of MAME, you will have to change gears by moving the shifter DownUpDown or UpDownUp depending on which way you have it wired.  You will not be able to switch gears by just moving the shifter Up for Hi and Down for Lo.

I don't have my laptop to look it up, but I'm pretty sure there is an IC that will give you the ON/ON state you're looking for. Something like a really simple PNP transitor and two slots on the encoder might do the trick at a minimum. Or using a NAND IC like the 7400, 7401 or 7403 might do the trick. Less a power filter capacitor (probably not even required) and some soldering time, dead bug it, and you've got yourself a MAME "adapter" that converts your On/OFF switch an ON/ON switch (still takes up two slots on the encoder) for about $1 or $2 US. Something like this HCF40107B with the open collector outputs should fit the bill... no?

[deano728]

Wow, Thanks for the detailed explanation.  To think I was so excited about this project - you just crushed my hopes and dreams and left me feeling empty!  hehe.

Well, I have 3 working PP boards and recently had the cabinet rewired with a brand new power supply, so she probably won't die for a while.   I never thought I would be bummed about that.

Let me think about it.  My vision was to be able to play sprint, outrun and all of the cool driving games on my PP cabinet.  I even had visions of wiring up a couple of buttons to play spyhunter.  I do appreciate your offer to help me accomplish this task.

I just had a thought about the shifter.  Can you map each event (up) and (down) to a key through MAME. (Say up is "z" and down is "y")  Is this possible?  I think there are programs you can buy for windows where you can create macro's based off of keyboard commands.  Thus if "Z" is pressed, we could have the macro do "up/down/up" and "y" would do "down/up/down"  I haven't ever looked at the shifter, is there a way to accomplish this and separate the shifter into 2 separate commands?

Dean

[ArtMAME]

Sorry dude... just letting you know what I had to go through. 

I got my Pole Position cabinet for $1 at a Superauctions, and it wasn't only merely dead, it was really most sincerely dead... so I did not want to go through the trouble of troubleshooting that, and paying for board repair, and who knows what else... plus I had to vacum all the rat turds out of it, clean up the rat pee... etc...

Anyway, I stripped it completely, and used a couple of mouse hacks to interface everything (I just wired a microswitch button to the pedal where pressing the pedal would actuate the button), and put a thrift store PC in there... got it done for under $100.

I later switched out the monitor for a 19" PC monitor because the Kortek I put in there was having fits.  The revamped Pole Position now now resides at a daycare facility where the kids are enjoying the heck out of that thing.  I may do another PP project later on when I have room for it.

Again, sorry to bum you out, I would say hit Ebay, CL, or the next auction and see if you can get another driving cabinet for cheap and use that for MAMEing.  If you have a nice working Pole Position, the best thing to do is to keep it that way...

[ArtMAME]

I just had a thought about the shifter.  Can you map each event (up) and (down) to a key through MAME. (Say up is "z" and down is "y")  Is this possible?  I think there are programs you can buy for windows where you can create macro's based off of keyboard commands.  Thus if "Z" is pressed, we could have the macro do "up/down/up" and "y" would do "down/up/down"  I haven't ever looked at the shifter, is there a way to accomplish this and separate the shifter into 2 separate commands?

Dean

I tried wiring up the NO and NC contacts to separate inputs on the IPAC, but it did not work...  tried a bunch of things... NOTHING!!!

Have not used macros, but I doubt that would work either since you are not really completing a keypress when you hit the NC contact from the alternate position...

You really need a recompiled MAME.exe or you could do what SavannahLion suggested with the ICs...  but that gets a little deep... you would need a breadboard, some soldering skills, some components, and some patience... and still if it has not been tried, you still don't know if it will work...

[SavannahLion]

but that gets a little deep... you would need a breadboard, some soldering skills, some components, and some patience... and still if it has not been tried, you still don't know if it will work...

You can, but you won't need it. I may be wrong, but a resistor and capacitor to smooth out incoming voltage to power the IC (split from the USB might be a good source) and the IC itself. With three parts, there's almost no point in using a breadboad, deadbug it and voila. If you're building a decent cab, a soldering iron is a good idea to have and it's good practice.

[deano728]

I have the patience, but not the knowledge to pull this off.  I do really appreciate the time you guys spent explaining to me what I would need to do.  I can do most of what you suggested, I can probably figure out the compiling if there are threads dedicated to it, but I have no idea what a deadbug is or a breadboard and I don't have any electrical background.  Thanks again, I wish you guys lived on my block, I would definitely buy you a beer and have you show me what the heck you are talking about!!!  Thanks again!

Dean

[styxx]

I tried wiring up the NO and NC contacts to separate inputs on the IPAC, but it did not work...  tried a bunch of things... NOTHING!!!

I have a working solution...(just finishing my driving CP )

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=79932.0

 

[deano728]

That is the coolest thing ever.  Talk about a project though!  Man, I never imagined how complicated this would turn out to be!

[SavannahLion]

I tried wiring up the NO and NC contacts to separate inputs on the IPAC, but it did not work...  tried a bunch of things... NOTHING!!!

Wait, isn't the PP shifter switch a SPST switch? I didn't know the switch is replaceable with a standard SPDT Cherry. I was assuming you were using a SPST switch.

Maybe IPac disables an input if it discovers it's stuck "on" on boot up?

[deano728]

Are there similar issues if I found a "sprint" or a "badlands" cabinet that I wanted to modify?  Or are the shifters in these games different/better?

[deano728]

Does the new product U-HID solve any of the problems with converting a Pole Position to Mame?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=80370.0

If not, will a super sprint cab allow for an easier converstion to run driving games?

[Kremmit]

Does the new product U-HID solve any of the problems with converting a Pole Position to Mame?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=80370.0

If not, will a super sprint cab allow for an easier converstion to run driving games?

The U-HID will let you connect all of the controls to a single encoder; no need to buy separate I-PAC, Opti-PAC, and A-PAC boards.

Super Sprint uses a Medium Res monitor, which might complicate things for you.