What's new
By:
Filters

newbie questions- racing cabinet

a bit confused - the markings on this are "DC Motor" DTM-7060 by unitec.

When I checked the voltage coming up to it, on DC - it showed "1" which means out of range. I then checked it on AC - and I saw it ramping up from 10 up to about 80 and then down.

Does this motor take AC as it's input? And if so - how does it reverse direction?

UPDATE - I don't really know what I was seeing here - today's testing was all DC readings.

Matt
 
Last edited:
It probably accepts DC. The controller board likely uses PWM to control the power that goes to the motor. This means that you feed it pulses of a little higher voltage. The larger those pulses, the more average voltage that reaches the motor.

You could simply construct a small circuit with a diode or bridge rectifier and a capacitor to create a pseudo DC supply to test your motor.
In fact, all those components can be found in a pc power supply. They just rectify the mains voltage and have a large capacitor after that to smoothen the ripple. Just make sure your motor can freewheel as motors don't like to be blocked when they get some voltage. You'll burn the windings of your motor in no time. Dc motors use brushes to get the electricity to the rotor. Those can wear out over time. They are usually pushed to the rotor with a spring. When they become 2 short, they don't make good contact anymore. That's the most common failure of DC motors. The other one is an open or shorted rotor winding. You basically need a small serie resistor and a scope to discover such issues.
 
There area a couple of integral pieces in the setup for these Namco FFB boards.

If the board does its own self test successfully, then I would expect much of the setup is working properly, including the motor.

Off the top of my head:
The board has an analog pass-through so that it is directly sensing the wheel pot to know if it's moving, and the JVS I/O board gets the pass-through analog for its own sensing. In a scenario where the FFB self test passes, that means the board is properly reading the wheel pot. Basically all the self test does is move the wheel a little and expects the pot value to change. It will barely move the wheel during this test.

If the game and/or JVS test show wheel pot movement, then you know the pass-through is working.

There's a connector on the FFB board that has the serial in and out lines that go to the connector on the Chihiro. It's not very complex, but all connections/wires need to be good. You should be able to check for continuity from the Chihiro header to the FFB. This also requires correct FFB DIP settings for proper serial standard setup.

There is a wire called POWER that goes to the JVS I/O. It basically just acts like a switch that gets grounded that the FFB board senses. This wire allows the I/O board to sink power and effectively drive the switch. The FFB board send info to the game board over serial whenever the power line is high or low, and the game will fail communications if it doesn't see the expected output from its control of the power line. It is possible to manually ground power at the right time in the boot process to get it to boot and isolate your issue to something in this power line process (maybe JVS I/O isn't driving that output or connection isn't good).

That's all I can think of.

Incidentally, I tried booting Mario Kart the other day and failed to figure out why FFB wasn't working, even with DIP changes. I didn't mess with it for very long, but for sure there's enough stuff needed to make the process work, and I guess it's easy for there to be a breakdown if swapping stuff in an out all the time.
 
Thanks @winteriscoming for the above information!

Here is where I am at currently. I have the V315 FFB board with the WMM1 chip on it - and the self test passes fine (the motor moves the wheel just a tiny bit during the self test).

The red LED on the board I assume is whether or not the FFB is engaged/active or not - so during the rolling demo before quarters are entered, it's off as no force feedback is applied, but once the game starts the red LED goes off.

I hooked a multimeter up so I could see what was going on during the game - as the game is loading off the CF card - if I spin the wheel to the left, I get a max of about -10v and if I spin the wheel to the right, i get a max of about +10v. Which, is what I would expect (that me moving the wheel would generate current).

During the game - I do see voltage going to the motor, even if I am not moving the wheel - but all very small - like between 1 and 2 volts. I would have expected more? I validated that 100V AC is going into the board.

And yes - the passthrough is working perfectly fine - the game is completely playable, just no force feedback.

I have a line on a new motor - but I am just not convinced the motor is bad yet... I am not sure how much voltage the motor needs for the game to operate appropriately.

UPDATE: I just supplied both 5v and 12v DC directly to the motor - and it worked fine... 5v obviously was a slower movement than 12v.

So - it seems like the root issue here is that the FFB board isn't giving the right voltage levels, although my next step will be test continuity of the connectors off the board, just to make sure. I do know that the POT values are being fed through appropriately.

Matt
 
Last edited:
I messed a little bit with Mario Kart today and got my FFB working after re-seating some connectors.

From what I observed today, if the wheel is doing the self test at the beginning of game boot, then that is an indicator that the I/O board is correctly driving the "power" line. I think that's a necessary step. If I recall correctly, you can reset the FFB board, manually ground power and get it to the self test without a game present.

At any rate, I'm not sure what else to suggest at the moment. If the game is doing the self test, that means it's at least driving the motor to move at that point. I'm not sure I would suspect a bad motor.

I have a thread around here somewhere where I detailed the communication protocol. It would be possible to hook up a PC or Arduino to the FFB board and send commands to drive it.

It has been too long since I worked on it, so my memory of the details is foggy, but I recall getting WMMT into a state where it was essentially sending anemic FFB commands. I don't recall what the solution was, but I'm pretty sure I had documented it in my FFB translator thread. I'm on my phone right now, so it's not easy for me to search and track down the post right now.
 
I just wired up a jumper for the RS232 comms between the FFB and chihiro - just to rule out wiring.... when its wired properly it passes the self test, when i swap TX/RX it fails - so that tells me that at least the communication protocol is working.

I ordered a RS232 breakout so I can connect that to the devices to see what is happening.

So far - everything appears to be working, it just isn't!

Steering Pot is good.
DC Motor is good
FFB card is good
Chihiro (I think) is good.

More to come as I troubleshoot. Thanks for the conversation/ideas so far!

Matt
 
Last edited:
So, if I understand correctly, both boards pass the selftest fine and move the steering wheel during this procedure (or is one still giving you the E20)

In game, none of them is giving you any force feedback.

One of the boards is having a WMMT1 chip. The game you are trying to run is that WMMT1 (or is it WMMT2?)
 
As it stands right now - just the WMMT1 board passes the self test - the MKA1 board does not (regardless of the position of dipsw4) - I get an E20 error.

In game - no force feedback.

I tried both WMMT1 and WMMT2 - same behavior.

Matt
 
Are you netbooting? It might be worth trying WMMT2 to see if any changes are observed.

I checked, and I think all the boards I have are variations of the WMMT one, so I don't have a MKA one to test. Though my boards seem to work fine in Mario Kart, so I'm not sure what difference there is the revisions to know if that makes a difference.

I can't recall off hand how WMMT manages it, but Mario Kart (at least number 2) allows you to set the strength of the force feedback in the game settings. I would expect that unless you've changed it that it defaults to ON at normal power.

If you want to go the route of ordering a USB serial converter, I might be able to send you a Python script you can use for sniffing and/or driving the board.
https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Con...=1540926005&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=tu-s9&psc=1

I'm curious to know 2 things:
1. What is the game sending? Is it sending expected commands and do they come through with values for holding force?
2. Can the board be driven with known commands and does it have sufficient force when doing so?

I could probably throw together some test scripts and we can both go through the same steps to see if we can isolate the issue.
 
Hi @winteriscoming - I am CF booting (and can netboot also) - I have tried both WMMT and WMMT2 - same results on both. I don't have a Triforce so can't really test that.

I already did order the USB Serial to breakout - I think it arrives tonight or tomorrow.

I am interested on both 1 and 2 - specifically 2, which would prove that the FFB is actually working as expected.

Test scripts would be GREAT! :)

Thanks again for helping me with this.

Matt
 
Got the same problem too. Everything looks fine but no FB. The machine I bought, brought me two extra cd's. I could leaned you one but I don't have an extra pic. It's my kids favorite so he plays it everyday without the FB. It's a GDX-0016.
 
@Gonzo - don't think I need the CD or PIC - I am working great as it is now to load the software.

I will let you know what our testing shows - maybe it will help you get FFB working in your cab as well!

Matt
 
Can you post a pic where the wires are connected to make sure mine is right. And I notice on boot up, the leds (5&6) are on (green and red) on the FFB PCB. But when I turn off steering wheel power, 6 turns off and 5 is still red.
 
@Gonzo mine is taken apart right now for testing - but send me a pic of your FFB board and I can tell you if I think it's hooked up like mine... :)

On bootup - the red LED should be on, and the green will blink. After testing the green blinking should be off, and the red (i believe) indicates whether or not the FFB motor is engaged... so during the attract mode, the light should be red, and then when you start the game the red light should go out (at least, that is what mine does).

@winteriscoming - I got my adapter tonite - I had ordered this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BBPX8B8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I got it hooked up to the FFB board and set DIPSW3 to ON, so I could see the copyright message - no matter how I set the port (using Putty in win10 - 9600N81 or 19200N81) I get the same bit of gibberish on boot up. Not a stranger to RS232 communication - I have the RX,TX and GND hooked up on the serial board over to pins 2/3/4 on the FFB board.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: Looks like I messed up and got a TTL device - which has voltage swings between 0 and Vcc (either 3.3 or 5) - but RS323 tends to be -13ish to +13ish. I just ordered the cable you suggested - which is RS232 - I will test more tomorrow!

Matt
 
Last edited:
Ok will do tommorow night, Thanks for the reply.
 
Forgot to ask, what's that reset button for?
 
@Gonzo - I assume the reset button just resets power to it - I haven't used it before.

@winteriscoming - ok, I got the right cable! hooking it up to the FFB board, with DIPSW3 and 4 set to "on" (3 is debug info, 4 is 9600baud) I get the bootup message that I saw you post before...

And - hooked up to the FFB board, after the selftest I see "E00E00"...

So - I think I am ready to test once you send me the python script.

Thanks,

Matt
 
I'll see what I can do. I haven't had time to work on a script yet, but it should be pretty easy to do.
 
I also am getting a second serial port tonite and am going to try and use a "bridge" piece of software to see and log all comms between the devices.

Matt
 
If you're able to send/receive serial commands, and you want to play around with it until I get a script together, you might be able to do some tests by just simply sending some commands.

I have the protocol documented here:
Force Feedback Translator - Sega MIDI, Sega RS422 and Namco RS232

It looks like based on my notes that you need to get the board into a state where it has passed the self test before it will accept commands. This is accomplished by grounding the POWER pin at specific points. I might have it documented somewhere which header and pin that is, but it should be shown in the wiring diagram in the manual.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top