Atari Volcano buttons revisited (wiring & use)

[chiLLbiLLy]

Ok, I know these "how do you wire an Atari Volcano button?" posts pop up periodically and I've tried to assemble and process some of the information from previous posts, but I still want to make sure that I understand things, along with my options.  I also want to make sure I'm not relying on any outdated info, that might make a difference somehow.

Anyway, I've got a couple of Atari volcano buttons (with LED's), an IPAC and an LEDWIZ.  Using MAME, I pretty much just want to mimic their use on real arcade machines, which I know means that they will only light up for certain games (mostly the early Atari stuff, I believe).   Then, the pushbutton part should be able to be used as player 1 & 2 start on pretty much all games, if I'm not mistaken, as it's simply just another type of pushbutton.

My original thought was that you could simply wire the LED parts of the volcano buttons directly to the Num Lock/Caps Lock control ports on the IPAC (which may not even exist as such) and then the button controls would get wired directly to the player 1 & 2 start ports.  (I know there's also a third LED option that the IPAC & MAME are capable of, that being the Scroll Lock, but I believe it's only used in MAME for a 3rd player start button, which I'm not concerned with.)

Anyway, after reading, it appears that you cannot wire the LED's directly to the IPAC.  Please excuse my 3rd grade electrical/electronics knowledge, but it appears that each button needs to have an ohm resistor wired to them (either 220 or 330 - not sure which, but I think it depends on the rating on the volcano button) and also needs to be wired to a power source and a ground.  Does this sound right?

And here's where I get even fuzzier...I'm not clear on how the IPAC is actually going to control the LED's in those certain early Atari games (first coin in makes player 1 blink, etc.), unless it's already done through the previously mentioned connections.

Am I at least somewhat on target here?  Or would it make better sense to wire up the LED's to the LEDWIZ?  I figured this was a possibility, but then it wouldn't handle things like the original volcano buttons on old machines did.  It would just be straight ahead lighting control, like with regular player buttons (fire, etc.).  It would not blink for coin in, etc.

I guess volcano buttons are still not that widely used in this hobby, but I wish someone would have an easy "how-to" guide for wiring and their use/functionality. 

chiLL

[SirPeale]

I guess volcano buttons are still not that widely used in this hobby, but I wish someone would have an easy "how-to" guide for wiring and their use/functionality. 

They're really expensive due to the fact they don't make them anymore.  You can still get the cones new (repros) but they haven't made the button assembly in years.

[ghettodish]

button assemblies:

http://www.ram-controls.com/order-cones.html

[CheffoJeffo]

button assemblies:

http://www.ram-controls.com/order-cones.html

Is David accepting orders again now ?

[BASS!]

hmmm I guess by


11/23/08 - Online ordering system has been restored at RAM Controls.  Click here to place an order.
that means yes?

[mytymaus007]

Has anyone mounted these buttons to a 3/4 wood contol panel, would love o use these for player 1 and 2 and missle command

[smalltownguy]

I'm in the process of getting my volcano buttons up and running on my cab. It's a Mame conversion of an old Atari Rolling Thunder, which used volcanoes for player 1 and 2 start. I've already gotten started on the project with 220 ohm resistors, but I'll see if I can snap some shots of my progress and write up a quick tutorial.

That is, as long as I can get them to work 

[RayB]

Has anyone mounted these buttons to a 3/4 wood contol panel, would love o use these for player 1 and 2 and missle command

I have, but it required routing out a hole and leaving barely 1/8ths of wood thick to mount the buttons. It's the only way to do it really.

[Minwah]

I have, but it required routing out a hole and leaving barely 1/8ths of wood thick to mount the buttons. It's the only way to do it really.

Or, flush mount a metal plate...more work but more suitable for some things. I have done this for joysticks and when I have wanted to 'move' some holes.

[ahofle]

My original thought was that you could simply wire the LED parts of the volcano buttons directly to the Num Lock/Caps Lock control ports on the IPAC (which may not even exist as such) and then the button controls would get wired directly to the player 1 & 2 start ports.  (I know there's also a third LED option that the IPAC & MAME are capable of, that being the Scroll Lock, but I believe it's only used in MAME for a 3rd player start button, which I'm not concerned with.)

Anyway, after reading, it appears that you cannot wire the LED's directly to the IPAC.  Please excuse my 3rd grade electrical/electronics knowledge, but it appears that each button needs to have an ohm resistor wired to them (either 220 or 330 - not sure which, but I think it depends on the rating on the volcano button) and also needs to be wired to a power source and a ground.  Does this sound right?

Whether you can hook them to the IPAC directly all depends on the power requirements of your LEDs.  If they are superbrights, you will not be able to wire them directly to the IPAC as it doesn't provide enough current.  If they are normal low power LEDs, you should be able to wire them directly.  You could probably just wire them up and see for yourself if they are bright enough.  If not, you will need some sort of LED 'driver' circuit to boost the power to them (like this: http://www.retroblast.com/20050430285/Hardware/Review-GameCab-Inc.-LED-Driver-Board.php).  I think ultimarc sells a little LED wire harness which plugs right into the IPAC which would make wiring easier.

Once you have the LEDs wired up correctly, they should toggle on/off when you press caps/num lock on your keyboard (attached to the IPAC's keyboard passthrough).  Next you will need to run a MAME utility called 'ledutil.exe' at startup.  It comes in the standard MAME distribution.  This listens for the appropriate MAME events and blinks the num/capslock automatically for various games.  The shortcut needs a parameter to enable USB mode (works for both USB and PS2 keyboards).  So your shortcut should be:
"ledutil.exe -usb".  Put that in your startup folder and run minimized.

[smalltownguy]

I'm still a bit unclear on this -- I'm looking at the diagrams on Andy's site, and I'm confused. He told me that the minipac has the same header that the IPAC does, but the wiring diagrams have confused me.

Here's the wiring diagram:


Here's the IPAC, with a clear view of the header plug pins, near the ps2 connectors:


Can anyone help me identify which orientation the wiring layout refers to? Should I view the IPAC header with the ps2 connectors on top, or on bottom?

[mytymaus007]

Do you have any pics of your Atari volcano buttons in your control panek or project pics before they were done

thanks tim

[mrclean]

I might order a pair for my dig-dug dedicated. Did they light up or were they just black originally ? The current cones on my Atari Dig-Dug do not light up. One of them is slightly raised above the other one. And the one that sticks up sounds like a micro and the other one doesn't make a clicky sound more like a leaf. So what's acurate. Not a Huge priority but I'd like to get the correct ones eventually.

[smalltownguy]

Okay, I've gotten everything set up. I'm using 2 OEM Atari volcano buttons with LED's in conjuction with a mini-pac. I also have the Ultimarc wiring harness for the mini-pac, which made things a bit easier for this project.

My button assemblies look almost exactly the same as the one shown on the wiki:



My LED's are marked 2.1, so I took the advice of some others and used 220ohm resistors (1/2 watt). I attached the resistors to quick connects using solder and shrink tubing:


Each of these were connected to 5v coming from the header on the minipac. I got my power from pin 7 (see later pic for diagram). I split the power line into 2 lines, and then connected each of my 'resistor assemblies' to the line.

Now that each LED had power going to it, I needed to ground them. This is where I got stuck for a looooong time. After doing lots of reading and asking a few key questions, I finally got the info I needed: pins 4, 9, and 10 act as the grounds you need for your LED's. The mini-pac (or IPAC) 'flashes' those grounds when it captures LED actions from ledutil.exe, a partner program for mame. Now that I finally figured out which pins created the proper ground contacts for which LED, I set  to getting a cable to bring my numlock and capslock grounds to my 2 LEDs. Since I was already using the wiring harness on my mini-pac, I decided to cannibalize a USB cable from my boneyard:


This internal USB cable uses the same pin connector as the mini-pac. I'm going to pull 2 wires out of the connector with my trusty safety pin:


Showing one of the pins removed...


And here's the final result: the Ultimarc mini-pac wiring harness header, with 2 additional wires plugged in. The bottom 2 wires, red & white, are the ones I added to the header block. The wiring harness only makes use of about 4 of the 9 available holes in the block, so adding additional wires to this block would be very easy with more old USB cables lying around, which I have tons of.

Andy's website (www.ultimarc.com) does a good job explaining the wiring setup for LED's, but his wiring diagram for the minipac left me very confused. I've added a few more words and explanations to help aid in understanding which pins do what on the header:



I used pin 8 as the power line for my trackball. Pin 7 was the line I used to power my LED's. Pin 2 carries the other 5v line, and I left that one alone, because it went to the spinner connector. That way if I ever want to install a spinner, I can use the connector.

One of the first things I noticed after lighting these LED's was that depending on whether or not the caps lock or num lock was on or off, they would sometimes get 'out of sync.' When starting an Atari game, player one (num lock) would flash opposite player 2 (caps lock) b/c one was on, and the other was off when the game launched. To fix this, I used a simple dos program to force both the caps lock and num lock to the 'on' state when my front end launches. Voila, lighted, flashing LED's!
Hopefully this info helps others who are trying to figure out how to wire the Atari volcano buttons to work with the IPAC/mini-pac.


If anyone is interested in the little utility programs I used to force numlock and capslock on/off on boot, PM me and I'll send them to you.