Coin Mechanism on my mame cabinet

[konio38]

So the most usless thing that anyone can have in there mame cabinet is i coin mechanism i know, but im doing this as a school project and i really need to put a working one, my question is HOW? Now for controls im using the gamepad hack, to save costs i know that ipac is ready for the coin mechs, but forget it its to much expensive, now im thinking on buying a coin mechanism with a CPU and everything, they come somewhat cheap, so i ask is there a tutorial that i can follow to make this work, i saw on youtube a guy that managed to put one working with mame, but i have no idea what interface he used... What i think i need to do is the same thing as a button, solder a wire to one of the buttons on the gamepad, looks simple but for what i have read, the coin mech actually needs to be powerd so.... this is getting to confusing, can anyone help me im going crazy with this problem.

Thanks in advance

[syph007]

No, only the lights on the normal coin mechs are powered.  The coin falls through mechanical coin r ejectors then hits a switch at the bottom to trigger the coin signal.  It just a normal microswitch.  The ipac just simulates keyboard entry, i.e. the number 6.  So mo most people wire the coin mech switch to the ipac.  Im pretty sure you can just redefine the coin insert key within mame to be a joystick button or anything.   So its not any harder to hook up a coin mech than any other button.   Oh and its far from useless to put one on a mame cabinet, personally I think its a requirement if you are trying to make it look like a real arcade machine, which was my goal.

[konio38]

my goal is exacly like you said, im in fac building an original pac-man replica to celebrate the 30th aniversary in 2010.

So what i just need to do is the samething as a normal button solder the wire to the gamepad button.

[JustMichael]

Exactly you wire the switch just like any other button.

The coin mech is nothing but a coin sorter.  It sorts the proper coins from all the other ones. It drops the proper coins down to hit the stiff trigger wire of a switch.

[Avinitlarge]

Oh and its far from useless to put one on a mame cabinet, personally I think its a requirement if you are trying to make it look like a real arcade machine, which was my goal.

I totally agree. 

[ivwshane]

I have a coin mech on my mame cab and rigged it to take quarters to add credits or by pressing the coin reject button to add credits.

Either way if you have something that will accept an input (ipac, led wiz+gp) then you just connect the coin mech switches to your controller.

[Avinitlarge]

I forgot to say, Ive got my coin validator connected to a hacked joypad

[FrizzleFried]

Saw this picture today and this thread made me think of it...