Mame hooker 4 gaming cabinet wip & issues

[hulkinator]

Building a gaming-casino type cabinet from scratch 85% done...

Using Mamehooker 4, winxp 32 sp2, mame 143...

Just curious about stuff not working right if its me...

I am using keyboard leds for 3 extra outputs through uln2003...a lighted led on keyboard was a low on the ic pin (other side of leds were tied to +5v through resistor) going through ULN2003 chip this ment this was inverted...so i tried

lampx=kbd 1 1|kbd 1 0

that didnt work nothing was happening i gave up after lotta time trying stuff and ended up inverting through a cmos inverter before uln2003 and that works all ok with the simple

lampx=kbd 1 %s%

also this odd bit...:

8th bit of parr port through uln2803 using this to control (all other bits work fine using this)

lampx=lpe 1 8 %s%  ***doesnt work but only for 8th output?***

but sending raw data 128 dec to port does set 8 output high and works fine!:

lampx=lpt 1 128

i tried ecp, epp, spp lpt port setting with no difference...odd

[Howard_Casto]

You are going to have to explain your problem a little bit better for me to help.

I have now clue what uln2003 is.... I'll need some info. 


The thing about keyboard leds is they might work correctly and they might not.  It depends upon your system.  This has to do with the oddball way that I have ot interface with them.  Basically I keep a buffer of the state of numlock/capslock/scrolllock and simulate keypresses to turn the lights on and off. 

As for the lpe interface, it looks like a glitch on my end.  It strikes me as odd that nobody has reported it considering that most of the dedicated mamehooker setups thus far use the parallel port!  Anyway, my bad...... I haven't had a parallel port on my pc in quite some time, so I had no way of checking this.     I'll fix it for the next release. 

So thanks for the bug report and I'm sorry I can't help with the keyboard stuff!

[hulkinator]

ULN 2003 (or 2803) is just a driver for additionnal current from logic level (each lpt pin)...high level on input will turn on output...low will turn off...IIRC up to 500ma i am using to drive each button led and other stuff....

My keyboard IC was putting each pin HIGH for each 3 keyboard leds to off and low for leds on...so I was tapped directly to those pins...everything was working but inverted and this is normal...so needed to invert this to connect to ULN2003 to drive signal on same logic...that why i tried to invert signal by software to ULN2003 by using:

lampx=kbd 1 1|kbd 1 0 *** didnt work | seems to be problem...nothing was happening much (0 condition to left of | and 1 to right correct?)

Adding a CMOS inverter chip (inverting signal by hardware rather than software...before its goes to ULN2003) works and I now simply use this

lampx=kbd 1 %s% ***and this works perfect was working fine but inverted before i added cmos inverter chip...and this was normal...

So i think problem is more in interpreting | with kbd maybe? since lampx=kbd 1 %s% works (with or without additional inverter chip) looks like code to activate kbd leds with | maybe the issue...just with kbd? dont know...havent tried using | much, didnt need it anywhere else (yet)

Thanks