My Driving Cabinet, Sega style, Midway/Happ FFB (W.I.P. thread)

[ABACABB]

OK so I have all of this:




and now I'm wondering what in the hell I do now!!!    I also have an AMC servo amp not pictured.  So I know I need a donor wheel and some different pots but I'm almost ready to begin.  You'll also notice that I do not have a cabinet.  I've been searching for one for quite a while and cannot find one close enough to pickup and haven't found one where seller is willing to ship so I'm going to try to build my own cabinet to the dimensions of a Daytona USA cab.  But I will tackle that once I can get these things working together on my PC.

First question,  I have a Happ FFB motor but before I try to connect that to my Sega control panel I was trying to come up with a way to use the Sega FFB motor since I now have 3 of them.  I was thinking of skipping the clutch and using the motor connected directly to the steering shaft.  Here is a pic of how it looks originally in an arcade with belts going to the clutch:



But what if I eliminated the clutch?



I know that belt is not on there properly, I just staged it like that for photo purposes to give an idea of what I'm thinking.  The sticker on the motor says 100volts, 60 watts.  I'm guessing this motor didn't actually use 100volts though.  Does anyone have an idea of what voltage the motor actually used?  Does anyone see a reason why this would not work (once the belt is properly fitted)?

Any input here would be greatly appreciated!!

[BadMouth]

The Sega motor did in fact use 100V.....AC.....like similar to a wall socket.
Not for use with the AMC servo amp.

There is another hack that works with the first generation of Sega motors (Daytona or Sega Rally, but not Daytona 2, SR2 etc).
There is a link to it in the driving cab thread in my signature.

Most people are much happier with that hack, but it requires you to make a custom circuit board and solder components into it.

[Xiaou2]

If an engineer made something a certain way, its probably for a good reason(s).

 Im guessing that motor on its own, with a direct connection to the drive shaft, isnt quite powerful enough.  They use 2 sets of gearing's to ramp up the torque, as well as provide the friction to prevent easy back-peddling from the player.

 If you take that out, it will probably be too easy to overcome the force feedback... and ruin the effect.  As I recall, Segas force feedback wheels were not all that strong to begin with.

 (barring Outruns Shaker motor)

 I think there might even be some system in there that allows the FFB motor to keep spinning, even if the player can overcome the force.  A sort of Slip-Disc/belt transmission.  This would help keep a motor from overheating from being stuck in set spot too long.


 The most powerful FFB Motor Ive ever messed with, is in Race Drivin.  The motor is bigger than most washer/dryer motors.. and it weight like 60lbs.  Pure Awesomeness, "if" the Op turned the output setting to max.

[ABACABB]

If an engineer made something a certain way, its probably for a good reason(s).

 Im guessing that motor on its own, with a direct connection to the drive shaft, isnt quite powerful enough.  They use 2 sets of gearing's to ramp up the torque, as well as provide the friction to prevent easy back-peddling from the player.

 If you take that out, it will probably be too easy to overcome the force feedback... and ruin the effect.  As I recall, Segas force feedback wheels were not all that strong to begin with.

 (barring Outruns Shaker motor)

 I think there might even be some system in there that allows the FFB motor to keep spinning, even if the player can overcome the force.  A sort of Slip-Disc/belt transmission.  This would help keep a motor from overheating from being stuck in set spot too long.

Good point. I guess I was just thinking along the lines of the Happ FFB system, the motor drives a belt directly connected to the steering shafts.  I was hoping to pull that off with the Sega hardware. I guess I'll be moding the Happ motor to fit the Sega motor mount like @Brad08 did.

On a positive note, the first two shifters I acquired only had 3 microswitches in them to run 4 gears. More of a headache to hack.  But my latest Daytona CP shifter has 4 separate switches, 1 for each gear!!!  This will make it pretty straightforward for my shifter hack....

[brad808]

Looks like your well under way! I think you'll be surprised how many hours you can put into this without even having a cabinet.

I thought there was someone around here that was going to try the sega model 2 ffb motor hack but I haven't seen any updates on it?

If someone ever figures out a way to do a sega model 3 ffb hack I'd love to try that out too because I have extra motors and mounts and I'd like to see the difference between that and the happ hack.

Putting the happ motor on the sega mount was easy. I can take pictures of mine if you need help. The only difficult part was that the sega driveshaft are a different size from the happ so the gear doesn't fit without modification. I got a machine shop to put a sleeve in the gear but in hind sight i would have done it myself or bought a new gear with the correct size shaft because they charged me $65

Sent from my Desire HD

[Brian74]

I have a model 3 cab that I have been trying to convert. I have a happ wheel, the logitech donor wheel and a amc. I just got my ps to power my amc. I have the donor hacked and the ps hooked to amc but no joy yet. Look at it this way, you have the time to get all the kinks out of your ffb by the time you have your cab.

[ABACABB]

Putting the happ motor on the sega mount was easy. I can take pictures of mine if you need help.

I haven't had a chance to even look at that part yet but if you could snap a pic or two I'm sure it would be helpful for me.  Thanks for the reply.  I have read your progress and watched your videos, looks great!!

[Brian74]

I more or less mounted mine like brad did. Here is a pic of mine.

[ABACABB]

I more or less mounted mine like brad did. Here is a pic of mine.

Sweet job Brian.  Did you have a hard time getting the Sega gear on that Happ motor?  Did you do it yourself without the help of a machine shop?  I live in a small town and am not aware of any machinists around the area.

BTW do you have a thread showing off your build so far or any how to tips yet?  I like looking at other people's work to see what they did and maybe learn a little more for my build.

EDIT: Scratch the last question Brian.  I remembered the thread regarding "which servo amp to use" was yours.  Lots of good info there.  Keep the tips coming cause I'm sure I'll need them.

[Brian74]

I got the idea how to mount it from brad808's thread. Check out Brad808's build: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=115186.0 I took in to a machine shop like brad did and had them put a bushing in it. I need to start a build thread. I just have a thread where I was asking questions like you have been. BTW what kind of shifters are those? Do they have 4 switches on them or 3? If they have 4, would you be interested in getting rid of one? 

[ABACABB]

The first two shifters I got only have 3 switches.  The one on the Daytona CP does have 4 so I was very excited about that.  I was planning on adding a 4th switch to these shifters like Badmouth did until I came upon my (totally unexpected) 4 switch shifter.  

@Brian74 I had an idea that I think would work with the 3-switch shifter but only if you will be using it strictly for emulator games, not pc or console setup.  Wire 2 of the "gears" to a seperate USB gamepad and the other 2 switches/gears to the buttons on the donor wheel.  You could use the "left/right" switch on the shifter to seperate which device the gear press registers to.  I have 2 or 3 old cheap USB gamepads around that I was thinking of doing this to.  The emulators will allow you to assign buttons to seperate controllers within the same game, but PC games will not.  If you have an extra gamepad to hack, this may be easier than trying to add the 4th switch to a shifter and have it function properly.

[Brian74]

Well my first donor wheel did not have enough buttons to cover everything. I plan on using a ps3 and pc games on my cab. So I went to the local gamestop and found a wired ps3 controller I planned on hack to cover the rest of the buttons I planned on having. Then I saw Virgo's thread for his pc/ps3 encoder. So I bought one of those. After that I went and got a logitech wheel off ebay and decided to use that. God knows Im not the best at soldering but I managed to get all the buttons working first shot out. Now if I could get the rest to work I would be sitting pretty. Then all thats left besides to cab cleaning and refinishing is to hook up my pac-drive to the vr buttons to light them up like ramjet did.