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Sega Hot Rod Wheel - Connecting Optics?
Silver:
Hmmm yes I'm a bit stumped by the 6 connectors on the pcb.... a lot of arcade wheels (eg atari) seem to have just the 4 - x1,x2,+ve,ground.... but then I do seem to have an extra LED+sensor.
Suggestions for testing welcome - although I don't have a scope or anything to check out changing voltages...?
OSCAR:
I imagine that optic board would just fine with an Opti-PAC, or probably with a mouse hack. The encoder wheel is a different design than most, but basically works the same. Like Arkanoid, it uses a gear set so the wheel turns "X" amount of times per revolution of the wheel. So if the wheel were to make one revolution, the encoder wheel may make 10, 12, 20... amount of revolutions, effectively making it much like a wheel with 60+ teeth.
The IC is likely a buffer chip, in the event the wheel is stopped with the wheel partially blocking the optics. It's not too unusual to see optic boards with more than the "typical" Atari style 4-pin connections. Midway, for example, used a 10-pin connector on the optic board for Tron.
Sorry I can't give you any specific information on that particular optic board, I haven't had the opportunity to play with one of those before. If you could locate a manual for Hot Rod, or if there is another Sega game of the same vintage that used an optical control, the manual may tell you what each pin is supposed to do. If you look at the traces on the board, you may just check to see if some of the pins go to the same point on the board. On the older games, it wasn't unusual to have more than one GND or +5V connection on a board, just in the event of a wire harness failure. Good luck!
Silver:
OSCAR - thats very promising thanks!
I've been hunting down a manual for a pinout to no avail. Its good to know there are other boards with similar number of outputs etc...etc...
I'm trying to trackdown the IC pinout too, to give me the +ve and ground lines, as well as the voltage (or does everything use +5v in the arcade/jamma world?)
Thanks.
PS your spinners are working a treat!
Silver:
Ok, the IC is a bunch of Schmitt triggers by the looks of things - so just taking the TTL (0-5v input signals) and cleaning them up into sharp transistions with different +ve -ve thresholds, so looks like that won't be a problem at all (In fact probably helps to keep it in use).
Its also given me the 0V and +5V on the PCB.
It does look like there are 4 outputs though (coming from the outputs of the schmidt triggers) rather than extra power lines.
How would I go about wiring these to a 2 input optipac or mouse hack?
Silver:
Ok, apologies for gettin' all electro-techie. Basically I've found there is an x1 and x2 output (1 for each light sensor) - each have which have gone though a schmitt trigger on the IC - and then another 2 outputs, say x1b and x2b which are x1 and x2 eached passed through ANOTHER schmitt trigger on the IC....
anyone shed any light on what this achieves?
EDIT: Woopsi - think I've just remembered - I believe schmitt triggers invert the logic as well as the hysteresis effect (different threshold levels). So another pass inverts them again - presumable back to active high/low whichever they started with. So this actually gives me a wheel with both active high and low outputs. Or am I WAY out of the ball park here?
Apologies for answering my own posts... First sign of madness? (Oh no wait that would be deciding to build some huge arcade cab in my flat..... ;D )
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