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Question about wiring 3 sided cocktail cab?
Turnarcades:
Isn't it then pointless having a three-sided design? Wouldn't it just make sense to just build a single end panel or stick with the side-by-side controls? I know it's better to play vertical games vertical but part of the point is to have two ends for head-to-head play.
Has anyone here with a 2-ended cocktail found a way round this or used an external app for screen flipping?
javeryh:
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on February 12, 2009, 07:22:27 am ---My first cab was a 3-sided cocktail (a design that I still love -- 4-ways on the verticals and 8-ways on the horizontal) and I wired up both sets of Player 1 controls to the Player 1 inputs on the IPac and same thing with the Player 2 inputs. It works fine, except when somebody grabs the "other" set of controls. This mostly happened when the kids were smaller, but still happens now when they want to annoy each other.
I entertained putting in a "kill switch" on each CP to just cut the common ground, thus deactivating the CP in question, but it hasn't been a big enough issue for me to worry about.
If I had it all to do again and had an IPac4 lying around (wait a minute, I do have an IPac4 lying around!), I would probably do something along the lines of what Franco B suggests and wire the P1 and P2 controls to the horizontal side and the P3 and P4 controls to the vertical sides, although it would take some time to reconfigure the inputs for the verticals. Since I spent the time configuring the verticals to set dips for cocktail mode, etc, it's not a lot more work.
--- End quote ---
Wow were we separated at birth? I was going to post the exact same thing right down to my first cab was a 3-sided cocktail that I used an iPac2 on but if I could do it all over (which I plan to eventually) I'd use an iPac4.
Also, TurnArcades, I think in Mala you can configure the FE to face horizontal or vertical (with different lists) depending on which controls are touched but you need an iPac4 for this. I'm not sure about screen flipping for player 2 if it wasn't part of the original game design but maybe there's a MAME setting for that? A lot of vertical games with alternating 2 players have a cocktail mode. Games with 2 player simultaneous would obviously not work vertically.
Ginsu Victim:
Current nvidia and ATI cards have hotkeys for screen rotation. Couldn't you set a button that rotates the screen so that your FE rotates to where you need it? FE might not look that great rotated a certain way, but it's worth a shot.
xtravbx:
Thanks a ton for the replies everyone. I'm still stuck though with same questions like turnarcade! Say I do wire it up each controller gets their own input, the only thing I plan on using the opposing end controllers for is for flipping vertical games where it goes back and forth between player 1 & 2. So really I could still double up since they are still just player 1 and 2, but I think I will do it as an ipac4 just for the ability of 4 people to play the cab, even at wonky angles.
But to reiterate - for vertical games, does MAME flip those as they should be flipped? Because if not, I’m not sure how I want to wire this thing just yet.. Thanks everyone!
CheffoJeffo:
--- Quote from: xtravbx on February 12, 2009, 10:59:21 am ---But to reiterate - for vertical games, does MAME flip those as they should be flipped? Because if not, I’m not sure how I want to wire this thing just yet.. Thanks everyone!
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For games where the original boards supported cocktail flipping, you set the dipswtich and it should work just fine. There are some games where cocktail flipping doesn't work in MAME, but none in my play lists.
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