Help me convert Gauntlet Legends from 49way to 8way sticks

PsHayes

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Help me convert Gauntlet Legends from 49way to 8way sticks

Hi,

There have been a few threads on this question already but not in the repair and help forum. Please read this thread quick for reference on background:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=95889

Both Demogo and I have Gauntlet Legends dedicated cabs that we would like to convert to use 8way sticks on to be able to swap in other jamma boards. Both of us have changed out the factory medium res monitor for one that supports medium and standard res (his is tri-res).

I can't seem to figure out how to wire up the 8way sticks in this Gauntlet Legends cab. I'd prefer to use the existing cabling rather than add a new harness if it can be avoided so I only have to move one jamma harness to switch games. I know player3/player4 wiring is a separate issue when swapping 4p games so lets just concentrate on getting Gauntlet Legends working with 8way sticks first in this thread.

Here is what I know. The cab comes with all 49way sticks and it appears that Atari re-used the pins on the jamma harness to feed the 49way sticks for player1 and player2. Players 3 and 4 have separate connections to the Vegas IO board just to the left of the jamma connector.

See picture here:

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8393/img3706l.jpg

In my cab all these wires are bundled together and zip tied all the way up to the control panel where they break off into 4 white plastic 14wire connectors.

See picture here:

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/5377/img3700.jpg

These connectors come apart and are key'd to each player so they can't be hooked up wrong (p1 to p1, etc). The key part involves the missing pin being in a different spot per player.

See picture here:

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8195/img3703v.jpg

These plastic connectors then break off to feed the 49way joystick 10wire input and the 4 buttons on the control panel per player.

See picture here:

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4818/img3702.jpg


So now, the base of my question is can we just unhook the plastic connector side going to the control panel, remove the wires from the 49way sticks and buttons, replace the 49ways with 8ways, and get a connector like what is pictured that we could wire to the buttons and 8way sticks? If so, I would think we could wire up all 4 players to the 8way sticks.

Knowing what wire goes where is another question.

Here is a link to the Gauntlet Legends manual link:

http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/GauntletLegends.man.pdf

Look at the wiring section, which shows for me on page 51 of the pdf doc, labelled 3-2 on the bottom of the page. This image shows the jamma edge connector wiring. You can see the player1 and player2 inputs are different from normal 8way setup with directions and buttons.

Now compare that to this Guantlet Dark Legacy Conversion manual:

http://arcarc.xmission.com/PDF_Arcade_Manuals_and_Schematics/Gauntlet Dark Legacy Conversion Kit.pdf

Look at the same edge connector breakout on page 34 of the pdf.

You will see that this manual is for setting up an 8way stick verison of Gauntlet Dark Legacy which is a rom/hd upgrade from the Gauntlet Legends game. Is it safe to assume if we toggle the dips that this would be the new pinout on the jamma harness?

If so and if we could get a connector that fits the white 14wire connector in the control panel now I would think we could try and wire things up.

What do you guys think? Any ideas if this would work, or where I could find the connector/wiring? Or alternate ways of hooking up the 8ways?

Thanks..
 
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So the wires in picture 3700 definitely tie into the Jamma plug on the main board?
 
Yep.. from what I can tell P1 and P2 go to the Jamma harness and P3/P4 go to the separate connectors on the IO board to the left of the jamma connector. I have one main bundle of wires coming from the game boards to the front of the cab. The some wires split off for the coin door, and another set for the volume adjustment/test board, and the rest split into two bundles and head up into the control panel. One bundle had a label on some of the wires that says Player1, and the other bundle had a label that says Player3.

I didn't mention that gun1 and gun2 on the left side of the IO board in the picture are hooked up and I'm not sure what they do.
 
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Yep.. from what I can tell P1 and P2 go to the Jamma harness and P3/P4 go to the separate connectors on the IO board to the left of the jamma connector. I have one main bundle of wires coming from the game boards to the front of the cab. The some wires split off for the coin door, and another set for the volume adjustment/test board, and the rest split into two bundles and head up into the control panel. One bundle had a label on some of the wires that says Player1, and the other bundle had a label that says Player3.

I didn't mention that gun1 and gun2 on the left side of the IO board in the picture are hooked up and I'm not sure what they do.

I'm just not sure how they can do that with P1 and P2. I thought there were about 10 wires going to each joystick and the Jamma harness only carries 4 per joystick per player -- I thought.

I'll get my multimeter out tomorrow and see if I can measure continuity between the wires on the harness and the ones on the 49 way plug. Something is weird here.
 
Looking at the wiring data, it looks like the hack to let you play Sinistar on an 8-way joystick may be useful here. There are several place you can find this info, but here is one I know has it: http://www.robotron-2084.co.uk/techsinistarjoystick.html

This hack will only work with microswitch joysticks (unless you have an extremely rare dual contact leaf joystick).

This basically uses the Normally Closed side of some of the the microswitchs to act like the optical switch where at some point the actuator moves past the light source and turns on the opto switch. After doodling the operation, it looks like a very clever hack. This way you can use the wiring as a direct replacement for the optical joys.

Hope this helps.

ken
 
Good God, Ken, go to sleep. :)

I've been up all night pouring over wiring diagrams, examining connector diagrams, and pondering and think I've solved most of the problems.

Keep in mind that I'm a newbie at this so it's taking me a while.

I haven't looked at your post yet in detail because my brain is now very tired but I think I know what has to be done to get us past this problem. I just need to trace some wires tomorrow and confirm my suspicions.

And I really need to get confirmation that the kick harnesses are the same for Jam and GL (using an 8 way). One appears to be a 14 pin connector, the other a 15 pin but one person here swears they are the same.

Or if your post pans out I may not need to switch out the 49 ways at all which would really be a great solution.

So close...

Thanks for your tip!
 
Hi Ken,

I read the link you sent and it sounds like Sinistar has some type of an interface board like the I40 that goes into other Midway games like Blitz for use with the 49way joysticks. Unfortunately Gauntlet Legends does not make use of an I40 interface board and wires directly to the jamma harness for P1/P2 and to the I/O board for P3/P4.

I might not be understanding the article correctly. Maybe you need to explain it a bit more if they are not talking about some type of external interface board between the jamma boardset and the optical sticks.

Thanks..

Joe
 
It was late when I looked at your wiring diagram picture, but I was struck by the similarity in the wiring pinouts.

Your diagram:
gauntletlegendscompared.jpg


From a Sinistar Joystick Pinout:
3J2: Player Panel
1 - Up-Down Switch A1 (Orn-Brn)
2 - Up-Down Switch B1 (Orn-Red)
3 - Up-Down Switch C1 (Orn)
4 - Up-Down Direction 1 (Orn-Yel)
5 - Right-Left Switch A1 (Orn-Grn)
6 - Right-Left Switch B1 (Orn-Blu)
7 - Key
8 - Right-Left Switch C1 (Orn-Gry)

9 - Right-Left Direction 1 (Orn-Wht)

Looking at the pinout in the box on the pink side, the pinouts are an exact match, which is what I would expect. All of the 49 way optos (Sinistar, Arch Rivals, Blitz, etc.) I have run into use the same pattern. So if the hack for Sinistar works to generate the same signal outputs from an 8 way joystick that Sinistar is looking for, then you should be able to use the original wiring for Legends.

Sinistar uses an integrated board to produce the on-off signals that correspond to a traditional switch, The Midway board does the same thing (it was a cost cutting measure, they got Wico to produce the joysticks without the opto interface board and built one themselves. They probably saved $0.50 per joystick that way).

If you can figure out how the joysticks connected to the Legends wiring harness then hack a set of 8 way joysticks and match the Legends wiring with the 8 ways as if they were optical joys.


All they did was to map the 8 joystick outputs per player to the corresponding JAMMA joystick pins + the Button 1-4 pins on the JAMMA wiring harness. The Sinistar hack should work.

ken
 
Thanks for the follow-up post. If I'm understanding this hack correctly it lets you use an 8way stick into a 49way game. This may work to use the 8way sticks to talk to the Gauntlet Legend vegas set if I left it in 49way mode. I'd much rather flip the dip switch on the game to set it for 8way sticks, and figure out the proper way to wire players 1-4.

I guess I wasn't really clear as to my end goal here. I have some other 4p games I want to swap into this cabinet such as:

Blitz 97
Blitz 99
Blitz 2000 gold
NBA Maximum Hangtime
2 on 2 Open Ice
Wayne Gretzky 3D Hockey
WWF Wrestlefest
Captain Commando

I know P3 and P4 will be issues for swapping these but I would think if I can fix the wiring for P1/P2 out of the jamma harness that is the cab now it would work for these games if they are set for 8way sticks which some only support.

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding the Sinistar hack. Thanks..
 
I don't have any experience with any of those games, but some other JAMMA games I have looked at use an on-board connector to "extend" the spec to 4 player. I don't know if there are any common wiring patterns in the games you are looking for, but one thing I have done in the past is to wire my test control panel to a set of molex connectors. When I need to adapt to different boards I create a small pigtail that bridges the board wiring to my control panel wiring. That way I don't have to rewire for every board I plug in. I just have to figure out how to bridge between the control panel wiring to the I/O for the board I am testing.

My test control panel has two 8 way joysticks and 3 buttons per player. When I plug it into a Bubbles board set, it only takes one 8 way joystick, so I have a pigtail that connects to the widget board and to a connector that attaches to the player 1 joystick. When I test a Joust, I have a pigtail that connects to the widget board and plugs into the left & right switches of the joysticks and a "flap" button.

The same sort of thing may help you. Wire the controls up to a set of connectors and then build pigtails to adapt the controls to the game you are plugging in.

ken
 
Can you provide a link to where you go the connectors and equipment to build the pigtails? I'm fine with this type of solution if I can get the parts and some instructions. Thanks..
 
I think I'd like to construct an adapter between the existing wiring coming up from the current harness outputs at the current joys/buttons to plug into the new p1 and p2 8-ways and buttons.

Here's what I think I'll need. Can someone look over my shoulder and tell me if I'm correct?

Remember, this is just for p1 and p2 because I think some purchased kick harnesses will cover me for p3 and p4.

On the controls side I'll need the quick disconnect plugs to the joysticks and buttons. That will be 8 quick disconnect plugs per joystick (1 for each direction and 1 for ground) and a wire to go from each qd plug to the harness. I'll also need 8 qd plugs for each of the players 4 buttons along with a wire from each qd plug to the harness.

On the harness side I'll need a .100 11 or 12 position header to plug into the existing .100 12 pin housing.

From there I'll have to solder each wire onto the header to the appropriate connector on the control side.

Does that sound like it will cover it?
 
Can you provide a link to where you go the connectors and equipment to build the pigtails? I'm fine with this type of solution if I can get the parts and some instructions. Thanks..

I buy most of my connectors and headers from Great Plains Electronics (www.greatplainselectronics.com). The owner, Ed, is on this board as G-P-E. He is very knowledgeable about the connectors and can help out, especially if you have pictures.

The equipment is pretty basic. The Molex connectors are crimp connectors, so you just need the right crimper (Ed carries most of them) and I usually solder the connections after I crimp them (OK, so I am a little paranoid :motz:).

ken
 
On the harness side I'll need a .100 11 or 12 position header to plug into the existing .100 12 pin housing.

From there I'll have to solder each wire onto the header to the appropriate connector on the control side.

Does that sound like it will cover it?

The only thing I would add is some heat shrink tubing over the solder joints to act as an insulator. Some people use silicon caulking as an insulator, but that just looks messy to me. Plus it is a pain to pull off if you need to fix anything.

ken
 
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