Noob Question: Kick Harness Splicing

rockman11

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Howdy! Not sure if this has been covered somewhere, but what tools and items are needed to splice together 2 or more kick harnesses? Also, would someone be kind enough to draw a rudimentary diagram of what I would need to do? I really appreciate it! If only those multijamma switches routed kick harnesses...
 
kick harness for what game(s)?

You could just cut and splice, use butt connectors, solder and shrink tubing...

Do you plan on having multiple boards in the cab all connected at the same time? If so they all need to be powered up. If you have any boards off and dont isolate the connections the signals will be pulled down on the boards that re powered up.
 
I have Mike's double jamma switch and am running MvC (the main board) and D&D: Shadow Over Mystara. I have everything working except the "use item" button on D&D, which I forgot is routed to the kick harness. I imagine one could also just solder the appropriate wires to the buttons as a quick/ghetto solution?
 
I have Mike's double jamma switch and am running MvC (the main board) and D&D: Shadow Over Mystara. I have everything working except the "use item" button on D&D, which I forgot is routed to the kick harness. I imagine one could also just solder the appropriate wires to the buttons as a quick/ghetto solution?

Yeah, that would work. So long as both boards are powered up you wont have any problems.
 
Yeah, Mike's switch powers everything on at the same time. What happens if the boards aren't powered on at the same time? I imagine the grounds get effed up?

I might just put some effort into this and properly splice the cables though. What gauge are the cables?
 
If you've got two boards in the machine and only one of them is "ON" the one thats off will drag all of the switch signals down (basically acting as though the buttons are pressed) on the other board. It wont damage anything but the inputs wont work. A simple way to isolate the inputs from each other is to use diodes but if both boards are powered up you dont need to worry about it.

I'd imagine that the wires are 16-18ga.
 
Yeah, Mike's switch powers everything on at the same time. What happens if the boards aren't powered on at the same time? I imagine the grounds get effed up?

I might just put some effort into this and properly splice the cables though. What gauge are the cables?

20-22 gauge is fine for kick harness cables. You can solder directly to the board, but I wouldn't recommend that. Kick harnesses are cheap on ebay and other places, you can sort of make one yourself as well with a similar molex connecter, dremel and some wire. I have a multi jamma 6 in 1 that only powers one board at a time - it doesn't matter if the boards aren't powered on at the same time so long as both sets of buttons are low voltage grounded.

[game 1 kick harness] \
``````````````````` [splice point similar buttons] -- [joystick kick buttons]
[game 2 kick harness] /
```````````````````
 
Yeah so long as both wires are spliced together before they reach the buttons you shouldn't have a problem. I used some telephone wire splicer clips cuz that's what I had at the time, but anything capable of joining 3 wires together should be fine.
 
I sell a PCB to do this
mkkick.jpg
 
Woah, awesome! How does it work? I assume there's one slot that goes to the buttons and the others are just relay slots? Is this CPS2 compatible? Also, I take it that you need run the kick harness into a molex connector of sorts? I think I might explode with joy...
 
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