The Portable 4 Player Mame Project! updated

[Wayside]

Heres a question:  i have two xin mo controllers and ledwiz.  Obviously.   Ive been reading about remapping and stuff.   The plan is to setup and tear down this pedestal.  when i unplug the control panel from my pc, are all my button configurations going to be reset?  Cause that would suck

[rablack97]

It figures the items I want aren't in stock.  W/e. 

So I pretty much have the pic end all setup with the exception of custom graphics on the mala end.  Got a startup video, only to find out I didn't have the right codec to get it to play the video!   But got that hammered out.

The real puzzle is when I fire up the pc, the tv switched to 1080i instead of 1080p.   Most of the games wouldn't work correctly and I though Wtfbbq!?,  After some dickering with the desktop settings I managed to get it back to 1080p and tadaa!   It's beautiful.   

When you guys apply adhesive backed vinyl cpo, do you use a spray of some kind to help apply it?  What kind of concoction do you use?  Also what gauge wire did you use for your wiring?  18 gauge?

Thanks for your time

Trick question right? Whats software do i use to install windows 7?  What state does the homefield of the Texas Rangers reside?      It's adhesive backed sir, you just stick it on......the concoction is your hand, some masking tape and felt vinyl plastic car squeegee.

18 for electrical, 20-22 for CP and low voltage stuff.

[rablack97]

Heres a question:  i have two xin mo controllers and ledwiz.  Obviously.   Ive been reading about remapping and stuff.   The plan is to setup and tear down this pedestal.  when i unplug the control panel from my pc, are all my button configurations going to be reset?  Cause that would suck

have no idea about the xin mo, i know that with the ipac and the led wiz you dont lose your settings/configuration when power is lost.

[yotsuya]

If you keep plugging in and unplugging USB devices, yes, eventually you will see some issues with the way you've set everything up. It has to do with the way Windows does USB device addressing.

[rablack97]

If you keep plugging in and unplugging USB devices, yes, eventually you will see some issues with the way you've set everything up. It has to do with the way Windows does USB device addressing.

Well i'll be damned, what he said 

[Wayside]

Terrific news!   Got all my stuff in yesterday.   

I'm at work so I'll throw up some photos later.    Keith at monsterarcades.com did a fantastic job.  The cp is very clean and was packaged very well.  I got a ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- ton of packing peanuts and styrofoam now.   

After inspecting the goods I noticed a few things.   

It's a good thing I bought wire for the led wiring.
My trackball didn't come with a light or mount for it underneath, so I have to make one.
I'm a doofus and got my encoders mixed up.  I in fact ordered mini pacs. 
The screws that came with the happ joys are too small.  They slide right trough the mounting hole.   Good thing I have those covered.   The zippy stick didn't come with any screws....

In regards to yotsuya, all my stuff will be connected to a powered usb hub so technically I'll only be unplugging one usb.   Hopefully that won't be an issue.

And rablack I just meant I know some people use a soap/water solution to help align the vinyl.  Was curious if anybody had other tricks to make it easy.

Now to start priming!

[yotsuya]

In regards to yotsuya, all my stuff will be connected to a powered usb hub so technically I'll only be unplugging one usb.   Hopefully that won't be an issue.

I dunno, if you're going to be breaking the connection between the PC and the Hub, you'll probably still see an issue. On a cab I built for a friend, we just keep the controllers plugged in all the time. No issue that way.

From DrVenture's thread regarding his utility to help with this issue:

Essentially, it's my take on trying to solve the problem of what happens when you have a cab that supports USB input devices that might be disconnected or reconnected in various combinations at various times.

Many games support the concept of a JoystickID (and you can use another utility called JoyIDs to set those id's easily). The idea being that it assigns an ID to a joystick and that ID persists for that particular joystick, even if it's unplugged, other devices are plugged in and then the original device is reconnected.

However, from what I can tell of Mame, it doesn't support Joystick IDs. It appears that mame simply enumerates the devices current connected to the system when Mame is run, and subsequently uses those numbers in all the CFG and controller files it reads.

And since windows enumerates USB devices by Vendor ID, and since the vendor ID is essentially a random hex number, there's no telling where specific devices will end up in the enumeration order.

Soooo.. If you have 2 U360's, and you map them in MAME as Joystick 1 and 2, but then you plug in a game pad and it happens to sort BEFORE the U360s, mame will now think they're sticks 2 and 3.

[rablack97]

Lucian did a good vid on applying graphics.

[Skrathe]

Heres a question:  i have two xin mo controllers and ledwiz.  Obviously.   Ive been reading about remapping and stuff.   The plan is to setup and tear down this pedestal.  when i unplug the control panel from my pc, are all my button configurations going to be reset?  Cause that would suck

From My experience I know light guns get pissed off when you unplug it form usb. You will probably also have problems with anything analog.

[Wayside]

Greetings!

I'd like to share my thoughts now that I'm almost finished my project:

First, thanks to everyone who gave me input.  Whether it be sarcastic or not, I can appreciate how frustrating it can be when you know something and try to explain it to someone who doesn't.  I don't consider my self an imbecile, but when it come to electrical, I don't like to take any chances, or risk ruining an expensive piece of equipment.  So I ask as many questions as necessary until I can understand it in my lingo so to speak.

Thanks for your patience everyone!

When all the parts came rolling in I was naturally gung ho to get it going but I calmed down and took a more methodical approach, nowing I don't want to have to redo this whole thing so I made sure I knew what needed to be done.  Many smoke breaks later I started assembling.  I made sure to prime and paint everything up nice.  Sanding etc...I'm more of a wood guy than anything.   Once the pieces were dry I made sure to properly apply my cpo.   Here some fun facts:  that overlay cost me $170 shipped.   Here in town it would have been $20 a square foot just to have it printed, and I had to supply the graphic.   No laminate on it or nothing.  Yay Canada.

I spent probably 30 getting the cpo done and it came out sharp.  I'll upload pics when I get home.

After assembling the base, I got my mounting bolts installed, and I must say it does what I want it to do very well!
Easy off easy on, and the wing nuts with washers secure very well.

After getting it home (I did all the prep work at my shop.  I make windows for a living). I set it up to start wiring.  After aboot 2 hours of re reading all the advice I got, referring to the inter webs, I was confident enough to start laying out the assembly.   I Started with getting the buttons and joysticks wired first.  Wow what a chore.  When you do it the first time it can be hairy, but I managed to get them all going plus the trackball.   Except I mounted the trackball upside down.   Fail.   I thought the arrow meant up not down.    Found all the grounds that I had put on the wrong prong and fixed those.   Fired up mamas to do a test and discovered I had to flash each ipac mini separately.   Fast forward another 2 hours, and BLAM!   The whole board functions!

Now for the big job of ledwiz.   So I start with the top six buttons just to get a feel for it.  And I ran out of wire.....but anyways I try to fire up the power supply only to find out I needed to jump some wires on it first.   Once that was running, I connected the six I had wired, and behold!  Nothing happened.   Wtfbbq.   So I power down, check my connections, everything looks good.  Come to find out buy trial and error, I had the bulbs backwards.   Fail.   So I go and test every lamp and switch all the backwars bulbs around rather that pulling all my connectors and risk breaking one.   Note to new people.   Pre check yer bulbs!

After download led blinky, and running the led test I got em going!  Then I realised I just spent 7 hours on wiring alone so I said ---fudgesicle--- it I'll do the rest tomorrow.

You guys who have provided me with info, no matter how trivial you may think it is, have helped me achieve a 6 year dream of mine.   Thank you very much.


Now what dimensions do you recommend for my base because the one I built gets kind of rickety when you're mashing street fighter.    The one I made is 21 wide, 21 deep, 30 tall.  I've seen some examples around but I think I'm going to have to go with an "A" shape to avoid side to side tipping.   Front and back don't seem to be an issue.

Have a good day!

[bfauska]

Sounds like good progress, but um...

 

Keep up the good work. (unless it looks crappy, since we can't tell).

 

[Wayside]

here's some pics

[bfauska]

Lookin' good.

[Wayside]

Got all the lights to work.  I tried my best to keep it neat but with the supplied wiring harneses it was tough.  As you can see i didnt buy enough yellow.....

So after my light test i went to test the controls again and discovered the entire blue player section and bottom 3 yellow buttons didnt work.   After some reverse engineering i found out it is my ground wire daisy chain.   I didnt work on that side of the board last night, so i dont think i snagged or pulled any of those connections.   I guess the wire is so small, 22 guage, that maybe the wire is broken inside somehow.   I got no other ideas.  So ill have to rewire those connections.

Now my trackball wont register either.   I think its because i nay have unplugged it from the usb hub, and then plugged it into a different slot.   I didnt pay attention because i dudnt think it mattered.   I guess its an addressing issue?    Im considering taking the usb off and plugging it into the miji ipac.   Which ill have to reposition.   But i noticed on the ultimarc site drawing the trackball should have 2 grounds (1 per wire set) but only 1 set of wires has a ground.   Will that matter?  I'm not sure hiw to work around that.

[yamatetsu]

If you open your trackball up you'll probably find that it indeed has two wires for grounds, but that those two are spliced into one inside the trackball. That way you only have to connect one grounds wire to the minipac, not two.

[Wayside]

Sup gang.

So I got everything running.   Spinner came in yesterday, but I'm having trouble mapping controls for some racing games.    I believe I have to go into mame and change the controller for dial and paddle to mouse, but when I tab in game I don't know what setting to change to make accelerate a button control.   Specifically games that had a foot pedal or shift.   Any help?

I had to remake my pedestal base which is why I haven't posted any new pics yet btw.   Old one was too narrow.

Thanks