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New cab or modular piece cp...?!?

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Doc-:

--- Quote from: telengard on April 15, 2004, 10:07:12 pm ---So are the RJ45 keystone things easy to crimp or impact?  Do the wires stay put in there?

--- End quote ---

The RJ45 wires are a bit thin, so you need to take some care with them.  First, you absolutely must have the stranded RJ45 wire - which is used for patch cables. The solid stuff is unworkable for crimping and tends to break too easily.

  Since I converted an old non-modular control panel over, in most cases I kept the old wiring in place (22 guage stranded) and just twisted the old wiring with the RJ45 and then crimped it together using an insulated connector.  This is not as pretty as directly wiring it but it seemed a lot more secure to me than crimping the thin RJ45 alone.  I also secured the RJ45 cable to the board in several places with staples so I could not inadvertantly pull the wires out.  So far I have not had any breakage even though I'm handling the joystick panels all of the time.

  On the IPAC of things - the RJ45 sockets are designed to take the wire - you basically just push it into place and two thin edges cut into the wire and make the contact.  For connections to the IPAC itself, I just twisted the wires together and screwed them down, much as you normally would.  In most cases I had more than one wire going into the IPAC (for example there are two JOY1 sockets, two JOY2 sockets and so on so I can map more than one joystick to the same port) which helps to secure the small wires.

One other nice feature - since ALL of the inputs (including the pinball and control buttons on the cabinet) plug into an RJ45 jack, I can actually just unscrew the patch panel and remove the IPAC panel as a complete unit for servicing.

I think the RJ45 is more flexible than an RJ11 - you can support joysticks with buttons, six button panels, or (as I have done) add "thumb" buttons to the joystick panels that align with your six button fighter panels.  Plus if you want to wire the control buttons to a control port you may need 6-7 inputs.

 

GGKoul:
Mortalpawn

I love the design and I'm probably going to wire my buttons your way.  As the Printer cable that I spent wiring all night yesterday is causing me grief.  Since the wiring is too thin.

Just a question, how did you wire the grounds?  Did you daisy chain them and just add the ground to one of the RJ45's?  I assume to one that was always going to be plugged in.  

Can you send a close up of your plates?  As I'm interested in reading what the descriptions are.

Thanks!
-GGKoul

Doc-:
I decided to use a separate pin for the grounds - pin 1 on the RJ45.  That leaves 7 inputs for buttons, or in the case of joysticks I have the four directions plus up to three buttons inputs.  Obviously on each panel itself the grounds are daisy chained to each other from pin 1 on the cable.

A useful byproduct of having all panels grounded on pin 1 is that you can plug button panels into joystick jacks and visa versa.  For example a 4 joystick setup is possible (two player, two joy tank games?) by plugging the second joystick for each player into the button jacks.

I don't have any closeups of the wiring handy - I will try to take some tonight or tomorrow morning.

telengard:

--- Quote from: Mortalpawn on April 16, 2004, 09:16:31 am ---
--- Quote from: telengard on April 15, 2004, 10:07:12 pm ---So are the RJ45 keystone things easy to crimp or impact?  Do the wires stay put in there?

--- End quote ---

The RJ45 wires are a bit thin, so you need to take some care with them.  First, you absolutely must have the stranded RJ45 wire - which is used for patch cables. The solid stuff is unworkable for crimping and tends to break too easily.

  Since I converted an old non-modular control panel over, in most cases I kept the old wiring in place (22 guage stranded) and just twisted the old wiring with the RJ45 and then crimped it together using an insulated connector.  This is not as pretty as directly wiring it but it seemed a lot more secure to me than crimping the thin RJ45 alone.  I also secured the RJ45 cable to the board in several places with staples so I could not inadvertantly pull the wires out.  So far I have not had any breakage even though I'm handling the joystick panels all of the time.

  On the IPAC of things - the RJ45 sockets are designed to take the wire - you basically just push it into place and two thin edges cut into the wire and make the contact.  For connections to the IPAC itself, I just twisted the wires together and screwed them down, much as you normally would.  In most cases I had more than one wire going into the IPAC (for example there are two JOY1 sockets, two JOY2 sockets and so on so I can map more than one joystick to the same port) which helps to secure the small wires.

One other nice feature - since ALL of the inputs (including the pinball and control buttons on the cabinet) plug into an RJ45 jack, I can actually just unscrew the patch panel and remove the IPAC panel as a complete unit for servicing.

I think the RJ45 is more flexible than an RJ11 - you can support joysticks with buttons, six button panels, or (as I have done) add "thumb" buttons to the joystick panels that align with your six button fighter panels.  Plus if you want to wire the control buttons to a control port you may need 6-7 inputs.
 

--- End quote ---

I would definitely need to have at least some rj11's since I have a connector currently for each button.  My goal was to support *any* game layout and sometimes that means some weird combos.  For asteroids there are 3 modules that have buttons.  The left (with 2 buttons), the center (with 1up 2up and hyperspace), and the right (2 buttons).  That's one example.  I have them color coded too so I don't have to do a lot of remapping of inputs.

I also found something called 'pass thru' keystone jacks.  Phone cables are cheap so I figure I could just use those and not have to do any crimping.  WooHoo!   :D

Great idea using these though, thanks for sharing!!

telengard:
So I took the plunge and bought a bunch of keystone jacks etc.  I bought the rj45 ones only because the rj11/12 ones didn't seem as common and the rj45 ones are cheaper.  The only bad thing will be a lot of the pins/wires will not be used.  I got pass through ones too in the hopes of avoiding having to crimp.  I'll just need more cables.  I bought a 24 port patch panel too for $11.  Not too shabby...

I got all the stuff at www.coolgear.com, their prices seem pretty good, about $1 for a 3 foot cat5 cable and 2.50 for the keystones.

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