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For my part, I've not committed any changes to my control panel that I had already modified for a straight 6 layout. I got it all wired up for fighters, and have a hanging JAMMA 4 lead, so if I really need to switch it, I can just flip open the control panel and swap it for kick harness 4.

It satisfies me for now, and I can finally enjoy this CPS2 multi.
 
I’m looking at the cps2 kick harness pinouts for 6 button games and 3/4 player games. Anyone know what coin lock means? Looks like I need to switch 8 connections to go from one to the other.

edit: seems each player has common on a different place, so just need to switch 6 connections. Should be easy enough.
 
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I’m looking at the cps2 kick harness pinouts for 6 button games and 3/4 player games. Anyone know what coin lock means? Looks like I need to switch 8 connections to go from one to the other.

edit: seems each player has common on a different place, so just need to switch 6 connections. Should be easy enough.
I actually made an account just to comment on this. I made a controller that lets you swap between 2 player and 4 player button layouts, and its open source.
2 player and 4 player button layout in the same cabinet (with CPS2 Multi kit game detection)
 
very cool project and pretty clever tapping the the data from the LCD.

relays for the buttons seem a bit overkill though; you could accomplish the same thing with some Tri-State buffers, it'd be a lot cheaper and a lot more compact. 6x 74F244 could cover the buttons http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sdfs063a/sdfs063a.pdf and you use a single relay for the lamps.

if you wanted a minimized setup you could use diodes on all the switched inputs and separate the common grounds into switched groups to enable the/disable them together... you could get away with doing that with a single relay or a single 74F244.
 
Those are both really good ideas!

Ive played with the idea of using ATMega2560 as a sort of virtual relay. That way you could technically rewire any pin to any other pin on the fly, instead of the current fixed model. This would scan the state of all the inputs, then toggle the corresponding outputs in a continuous loop. In testing this has proven to work without any noticeable delays, even when using interrupts to read the LCD, but I'm slightly weary of this approach until further testing proves it to be reliable or not. (edit: I've used this same method to create a Beatmania controller, which requires timing to be perfect with zero delay, and I've had no issues)
 
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While you might not notice any lag there will absolutely be lag introduced with that approach, it's just a matter of how much and if it's relevant to the users of the end product. Heck even the buffers are adding lag it's just on a micro-second scale, but something like an ATMega would be adding lag on a milli-second scale which is definitely gameplay affecting territory.

I can tell you from experience that if you're only a casual player of a game lag isn't noticeable unless it's really REALLY BAD. however if you're a very experienced player of a game and can play it at a high level, you know immediacy when even a few ms of lag has been introduced into the system.

I've played Street Fighter II a ton over the years, but I never really played it seriously and if you put me on a setup that had some lag, I probably wouldn't really be able to tell.

But I've put in a lot of time on UMK3 and KI2 as I own original dedicated cabs for both of those games and for a time I would play them almost every day. and on those games I'm used to being so finely tuned to the action in the game that playing those games on an emulator or even on original arcade hardware but through a "lag free" LCD setup I can feel the lag in the games reactions immediately, all the timing windows are shortened and counter actions that I can normally hit 100% of the time drops off to a coin toss.

The "I don't feel any lag" test I see posted all the time. But IMO, if you're playing on original arcade hardware it's because you care about gameplay accuracy and if you're going to talk lag, you need to setup actual tests and confirm it by numbers as opposed to just perception.

just my 2 cents.
 
I completely agree. That's the reason I went with relays for this build. But now I'm torn between flexibility with lag, or no flexibility and zero lag.

Maybe I should be looking at FPGA's?
 
Oh my gosh, that is pretty darn cool. I worked on modifying my little 3p/4p box and instead of buying a fancy switch I just used 6 cheap ones and it was a pain in the ass to solder but I think it works. I spliced into the harness I had which unfortunately made the cps2 connector too short so I made a straight through one which was a pain because it was 48 crimps on 24 wires. Anyway I finally finished the thing and I don’t have it in me to test tonight so I’ll save it for tomorrow. So my solution involves flipping 6 switches to change from 6 button 2p to 3/4p. Hopefully all this crap is wired right, I have been checking as I go but we will see tomorrow. I usually screw up something. I’m still fairly new to doing things like this but I’m enjoying learning and going through the process. This Already makes me want to do a more elegant version 2 with a fancy switch.

The two cables other than the cps2 connector go to my supergun sticks. I wired them 4 button to the jamma and left a little 4 pin connector for the kick harness buttons. Wired neo geo pinout. I have heatshrink ready to go but want to test first before I commit that. I’m using some old usb cables for my 4 wire runs. One is an apple cable that stopped working because Apple is ridiculous and puts stupid logic into their cables for no good reason, other came from a borked x360 fightstick I cut and used a neo geo extension for my supergun. It’s always fun to reuse stuff I would have probably just tossed in the past.
 

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