Mixing JAMMA and IPAC

[Esom]

Hi-o!

I'm building a cabinet to house a JAMMA board and a MAME PC. I was intending to have both setups wired and only have power to one at a time, but have run in to a problem.

My idea was to run a signal wire from the JAMMA harness to the IPAC, and then continue that wire to the buttons/lever, essentially treating the IPAC as a butt splice. However when the JAMMA system is on, it registers all the buttons being pressed, even while the PC is off or the IPAC is not plugged in.

Is there a way to make the IPAC play nicely? If I use the button as the splice would it make a difference? Two wires to each button, one to JAMMA harness, one to IPAC?

 

[grendelrt]

I may not be following but for my iPac setup for groovymame , it's USB from computer to iPac then each iPac button is wired to a jamma fingerboard, then you slide the jamma harness onto that fingerboard.

 

[Esom]

Forgive the crude drawing, but this is essentially my setup:



Not sure how you're interfacing with the fingerboard, are you using a JPAC?

 

[grendelrt]

Are you using an normal arcade cabinet interface? Or maybe a Super gun inside?
You should have a harness that connects to whatever your video and control system is going to be. A typical jamma harness , like this

or a connection on your supergun like this

To interface with the arcade boards Jamma connector.

That connection carries power, controls, and video. You can split things off depending on what you are doing.

For my Ipac setup with groovy mame\ PC I have a male fingerboard that I wired only controls (no power needed, no video or audio needed) to the Ipac and

you slide the above interface onto it. Then the ipac connects to the PC via USB. This was before I found nice silicone stranded wire so its ugly but works lol. If I wanted to run a PCB I move the Jamma interface\connector to the PCB (MVS, CPS2) or IO Board (Naomi).

 

[Esom]

Ah, okay, so you're basically doing half of what I'm trying to do. In my case,, the JAMMA harness is connected to an arcade board, with the leads connected to the screw terminals at the IPAC. Then, from the screw terminals, another lead is going to the buttons.

I'm trying to avoid opening the control panel to swap from arcade boards to PC, just using which ever one is powered on with the same CP.