I have a cabaret Klax that I got some months ago. These are nice cabarets, with a 19" monitor, and enough room for two folks to play together. Atari also did a small run of Tetris in these Klax cabaret cabinets (the only 'dedicated' Atari Tetris cabinets, the rest were kits).
Klax uses a 4 way joystick, and a button to flip. Cabinet has a button on each side of the joystick.
Tetris uses a 3 way (left right and down), and a button to spin the tetrominos.
There's no start button, the P1-BTN1 and P2-BTN1 start the games on both boards.
I decided it'd be a great cabinet to multi the original Klax with Tetris.
I purchased a 2 in 1 Jamma switcher from RiddledTV; these are gorgeous boards, and I'm very happy to report he provided excellent support. I also bought a cheap $9 Jamma extender from eBay.
When connected straight, Klax and Tetris would work. But with RiddledTV's switcher it did not. It turns out, the harness in the cabaret does separate ground leads for P1 and P2, which connect to JAMMA pins 27+e (28+f are ground for the coin door). Normally, Klax and Tetris share the ground plane on their PCBs across 27/28 and e+f pins so everything works. RiddledTV's switcher isolates 27+e for boards that use them as buttons instead of signal grounds.
The solution was to modify the harness, tying the grounds together for 27+28 and e+f.
The next issue was how to make the game switching work; by default the switcher board looks for P1+P2 Start to be pressed simultaneously to make the switch between games. As mentioned above, no Start buttons on this cabinet!
Fortunately RiddledTV planned for this scenario. I found an old PC wired jumper connector, hooked it up to the appropriate pins on the switcher board (see the white and blue leads in pic). I also ran a ground wire to the power supply. These were connected to a separate switch. Drilled a 1 1/8" hole in the bottom of the control panel box. I then installed this switch in the center underside of the cabinet, in front of the speaker.
I think it's a tasteful modification - it's unobtrusive, no one will accidentally bump it during play, and the cabinet comes up with Klax first, so no one would be the wiser.
Maybe I'll order up one of those lit buttons to replace the plain black one I have there, but that's for some other time.
(pics aren't uploading, I'll try again later)
Klax uses a 4 way joystick, and a button to flip. Cabinet has a button on each side of the joystick.
Tetris uses a 3 way (left right and down), and a button to spin the tetrominos.
There's no start button, the P1-BTN1 and P2-BTN1 start the games on both boards.
I decided it'd be a great cabinet to multi the original Klax with Tetris.
I purchased a 2 in 1 Jamma switcher from RiddledTV; these are gorgeous boards, and I'm very happy to report he provided excellent support. I also bought a cheap $9 Jamma extender from eBay.
When connected straight, Klax and Tetris would work. But with RiddledTV's switcher it did not. It turns out, the harness in the cabaret does separate ground leads for P1 and P2, which connect to JAMMA pins 27+e (28+f are ground for the coin door). Normally, Klax and Tetris share the ground plane on their PCBs across 27/28 and e+f pins so everything works. RiddledTV's switcher isolates 27+e for boards that use them as buttons instead of signal grounds.
The solution was to modify the harness, tying the grounds together for 27+28 and e+f.
The next issue was how to make the game switching work; by default the switcher board looks for P1+P2 Start to be pressed simultaneously to make the switch between games. As mentioned above, no Start buttons on this cabinet!
Fortunately RiddledTV planned for this scenario. I found an old PC wired jumper connector, hooked it up to the appropriate pins on the switcher board (see the white and blue leads in pic). I also ran a ground wire to the power supply. These were connected to a separate switch. Drilled a 1 1/8" hole in the bottom of the control panel box. I then installed this switch in the center underside of the cabinet, in front of the speaker.
I think it's a tasteful modification - it's unobtrusive, no one will accidentally bump it during play, and the cabinet comes up with Klax first, so no one would be the wiser.
Maybe I'll order up one of those lit buttons to replace the plain black one I have there, but that's for some other time.
(pics aren't uploading, I'll try again later)

