Determining and sourcing arcade connectors - a guide

[awbacon1]

schematics do one of two things; the good ones tell you “oh this connector here. It’s a JST VL 9 Pin! Now you know ” or they just call it “Conn 7”...which doesn’t tell you jack squat. My Hyper Neo Geo schematics were the worst at this...just calling things “34 pin connector”

so I made this to hopefully help others for the times the schematic is useless and Google won’t help! It’s as sure fire fool proof as it can ever be! Which is to say it’s not perfect but it’s a huge start!

hopefully it saves some people time and money by not guessing and ordering multiple rounds of connectors and paying shipping all while keeping your fingers crossed!

 

[LittleLarrySellers]

this is really awesome vid. I have mistakenly ordered a few parts from Digikey before and been bummed out when the finally arrived. Great advice

 

[awbacon1]

this is really awesome vid. I have mistakenly ordered a few parts from Digikey before and been bummed out when the finally arrived. Great advice

Well that’s what you get when you F a stranger in the ass Larry!

haha but yes it sucks waiting on parts just for them to not be correct. Especially when it costs 90 cents and you paid $7 just to ship it

 

[Simon]

A better way to measure the pin pitch would be to measure the full distance between two, including two pins. Then measure the thickness of one pin. Subtract the second measurement from the first.

Be very careful not to squeeze the pins when measuring them.

Very small differences are important, as an imperial header might have a 2.54 pitch which is 0.100". Metric connectors will be 2.5 pitch. You usually wont find locking connectors in both imperial and metric, so it's for those more generic ones that you have to watch out for. For a few pins it's not a big deal, but a lot of pins and it wont fit.

I would also recommend looking for the connector that is part of the PCB first, then looking at the datasheet for the conector (found through digikey or similar), and it will list part numbers for various mating connectors and pins, as well as tools for removing pins and crimping pins.

I enjoyed the video, thank you

 

[awbacon1]

A better way to measure the pin pitch would be to measure the full distance between two, including two pins. Then measure the thickness of one pin. Subtract the second measurement from the first.

Be very careful not to squeeze the pins when measuring them.

Very small differences are important, as an imperial header might have a 2.54 pitch which is 0.100". Metric connectors will be 2.5 pitch. You usually wont find locking connectors in both imperial and metric, so it's for those more generic ones that you have to watch out for. For a few pins it's not a big deal, but a lot of pins and it wont fit.

I would also recommend looking for the connector that is part of the PCB first, then looking at the datasheet for the conector (found through digikey or similar), and it will list part numbers for various mating connectors and pins, as well as tools for removing pins and crimping pins.

I enjoyed the video, thank you

funny I have way more luck looking for the harness connector and using the data sheets / mating product I got find the PCB connector!