Wiring
Be careful, don't be this guy!!
This was another fun and easy part of the project. Wiring the control panel to the I-PAC was
not very hard at all. I ran the software that came with the I-PAC and and
changed a few buttons. All of the buttons are wired NO (normally open),
and the commons are all jumpered together. The wire cost was about $20
total. The I-PAC says exactly which wire goes to each terminal. I
used the PS/2 connection of the I-PAC, since I could not get USB support in DOS mode.
Control Panel
I-PAC
The trackball comes already wired practically.
I just had to wire the two blue lighted, left and right mouse buttons.
The track ball just plugs into the mouse port and away you go.
The original cabinet came with a voltage converter from 120V to 5V or 12V.
I used this for all the lights in the cabinet.
Original wiring
I mounted the computer
to plywood to mount in the cabinet. I saw this on another website and I
thought it was a good idea. This way the computer will stay a lot cooler.
The mounting brackets for the motherboard and the hard drive are just a mounting
bracket from inside a regular computer case. One other thing about this
type of design is that the motherboard has a on/off switch also. This is
usually wired to the button on the front a computer case. This meant that
when the power supply was on I then had to short this connection, for the
computer to actually turn on. I wired this to a button on the top of the
cabinet. So when the cabinet gets plugged in, this button is then pressed
to start the computer. I also wired two separate fans in the cabinet to keep the
computer and the monitor cool. One fan is in the bottom of the cabinet and
the other is blowing air out the top of the cabinet to keep a fresh air
circulation.
CPU mounted to plywood
The monitor was a
little weird at first. To connect a arcade monitor to a computer use have
to cut apart a standard VGA monitor cable and realize what each wire is for.
Mr. SaLTy's Arcade is a good
website that gives the best way to accomplish this. I did exactly
what the website said. The only trick was that I only had a vertical sync
on my monitor so a twisted the vertical and horizontal sync coming from the
computer and tied them all together and it worked fine. The best way to
find out what the wires are on your monitor is the manual. Another way is
if your cabinet is a JAMMA cabinet, then means that the JAMMA wiring harness
tells what every wire is, this is how I knew which wires were which.
Supplying Power to the Arcade After a couple months of my computer messing up, it was time for
a change. I have supplied a wiring diagram showing the power flow.
The initial power is routed to a surge protector that is always on. The
surge protector power the computer and the speakers at all times. From the surge protector I also have a light switch in the
circuit. Of course this allows me to switch power on and off at any time
for whatever is behind the switch. The switch supplies power to the
internal arcade transformer, which in turn supplies power to the lights and the
monitor. This allows the computer to stay on all the time, but when I am
not playing the arcade I just flip the switch and turn off the monitor and
lights. Since I have wired my arcade this way the computer has not messed
up once from the continuous on/off switching.
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