49-way joystick and JROK multi-Williams issues

obitus1990

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I'm trying to get Sinistar running on my JROK with a Williams 49-way stick. I have two of the optical sticks and both are giving me the exact same issue. I built a harness to connect the sticks to the JROK board. They are both wired properly, and, there is no break in continuity between the stick and the board. The issue is that all directions work except straight up. Pushing the stick in any other direction results in the proper direction (including diagonal left/right + up). This is on both sticks, so, what are the odds that the same exact problem would be present on two different sticks? I would think not too high, but I guess anything is possible on 40 year old parts. I went back and double and triple checked my wiring against the schematics for the game and the JROK manual for the header on the board. Is there something I'm missing here?
 
those wire to like a separate header right? I don't do JROK, I fix the original hardware, but the fact the other directions are working as they should would imply it's not a fault in the optos. did you change the joystick type in the test mode settings?
 
Yes, the JROK is set to use the 49-way in its settings, and, yes, the JROK board has an 8-pin 2.54 pitch pin header on the board for the 49-way to plug into, hence having to make one's own harness.

Or, do you mean the test mode settings within Sinistar itself, when you use the test switches in the cabinet?
 
Don't forget to bring in the +5vdc and ground to the joystick separately.

(Photo Credit - @DLP - Jeff Kinder)!

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~Brad
 
I have +5V and GND wired up separately, yes, so the stick is powered. Do I need to attach both ground pins on my harness (on the stick side), though? The two ground pins on the joystick PCB are connected, so, I don't see why I'd need to.
 
Can you jumper the pins directly on the header to see if UP registers?

I don't know if that's possible. Each of the 8 pins goes to its directional indicator (two are for up/down vs left/right, and six are for each of the optos handling l/r vs up/dn), and there's not a ground in that bank of 8. @braedel , to test this, would I ground the one of these pins in the up/down segment to make it register a direction?
 
ground is ground. from the power supply, to your 49 way power plug, to JAMMA ground, that circulates within the board. the ground for the directions is the power plug ground.

if you watch how the flaps go through the optos they have like base positions where I think 1 flap will break an opto and the other 2 are outside the opto. the up/down and left/right dynamic means one of each direction is open and the other is closed. I gave away my joysticks last year, I can't really vouch for how they go anymore. by virtue of the fact that you have 3 directions that work, it's literally impossible for Up to not work. does the joystick pull the ship down in game?
 
@mecha Is the ship supposed to be stationary when the stick is left in a neutral position, or does it move no matter what? I'll have to go check and see what it does, after I replace the width cap on the monitor (image is too tall in the vertically mounted monitor).
 
it won't move until you press the joystick in a direction. the fact it's doing it with 2 different joysticks is confusing.
 
The data is encoded in the 4 digital inputs for each axis (U/D - Y | L/R - X). Manually grounding one output will not necessarily give you an expected movement (unless you know the state of the others)

Here is an image from my Wiki Page on it.. Normally pins 10 & 11 are NC (No Connection), only 1 ground on P-12 (but could be 11, really doesn't matter).

1674880913306.png

~Brad
 
The data is encoded in the 4 digital inputs for each axis (U/D - Y | L/R - X). Manually grounding one output will not necessarily give you an expected movement (unless you know the state of the others)

Here is an image from my Wiki Page on it.. Normally pins 10 & 11 are NC (No Connection), only 1 ground on P-12 (but could be 11, really doesn't matter).

View attachment 641085

~Brad
right, I haven't had to fix one of those in a long time, I forgot the up/down and left/right were independent of the 3 optos per side.

I've had the actual input boards eat 4049s and 74257s and the joystick will do all kinds of strange things like running slow or autopiloting in random directions.

I'm reaching here, but if Down is normally high, that means the fault may be in the up/down wire because to go up it has to be closed to go low to get Up. with your 2nd joystick that's not mounted in the game hold it upside down and watch how the flaps guide through the optos to see how it works while rotating the joystick around. you'll see what I was alluding to before.

the 49 way header looks like a 16 pin ribbon cable goes there. how did you interface the joystick with that?
 
the 49 way header looks like a 16 pin ribbon cable goes there. how did you interface the joystick with that?

On one side of my harness, I used Molex KK connectors, and on the board side, I used an 8 pin DuPont style connector (the other 8 pins on the Jrok are for using an external sound board, so I didn't connect to them).
 
On one side of my harness, I used Molex KK connectors, and on the board side, I used an 8 pin DuPont style connector (the other 8 pins on the Jrok are for using an external sound board, so I didn't connect to them).

I'd check how the up-down input it wired, for the 1.3 boards and later the pinout is in this thread. https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/jrok-sinistar-49-way-wiring-help.410676/

In the Switch Test mode from the Setup Menu, you can see the raw state of the 8 inputs for the 49-way, header pin 1 is the leftmost input. When moving the stick in all directions, all the inputs should register at some point.
Also try a logic probe on pin one and see if moving up/down toggles pin 1.
 
@jrok

I'll check all this later, but, I do know that the ship will move up without me touching the stick. Pushing the stick up makes it fly down. Pushing it down will also make the ship fly down. I'll check the wiring. I thought pin 5 on the board was the UP/DOWN direction switch, not pin 1?
 
@jrok ;

This is what the switch screen shows with the stick at idle:

IMG_4021.jpg


So, this tells me that the UP/DOWN pin is not being held high, but rather, the next switch is. I swear, I went back and checked my wiring again, and found
that I had wired it correctly (the yellow wire is the UP/DOWN select wire, and is on PIN 4 of the joystick).

IMG_4024.jpg

Here is the yellow wire attached to pin 5 of the jROk header, as it should be.

IMG_4015.jpg



So, then, if I go to the schematics, and look to see where the up/down select wire should be connected, on the joystick, it shows it is pin 4, and this in turn
is wired to pin 5 of the JROK header, which is the UP/DOWN select pin. So, either the schematic is wrong, or the JROK documentation is wrong as to
what pin is the select up/down pin. I'm guessing it's the schematic.



SCHEMATIC SNIP FROM SINISTAR, at connector to joystick:
1674964142352.png

JROK WIRING:

1674964270347.png


The solution was swapping the orange and yellow wires at the PCB (pins 5 and 6), and now all directions work properly.
 
Cool ! Good to hear you got it working.

It looks like the first version of the Sinistar drawing set did have the wrong pinout on the stick, looking at the drawing set labelled '16-3004-103' without a date, it's showing 2,4,3,5 ( with 4 being Direction ) but the Sinistar drawing set labelled "16P-3004-103 February 1983" shows the correct wiring at the joystick side with 2, 5, 3, 4 ( with 5 being Direction ).
 
Working on a sinistar cockpit with original pcb and an aftermarket control panel harness. I had the exact same issue as op. Switching orange and orange/yellow on the harness fixed my issue as well.

Thanks @obitus1990 my joystick tested good and I was stumped. if not for this thread I would have thrown this game off a cliff lol. I am guessing this is an undocumented difference in the sinistar harness that even the guy who made the harness has copied.
 
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