Sections
updated 10 th January 2K5
Wiring
When I built my template based controller test rig I used the wire kit that I bought from Andy's (Ultimarc) site. This came was a bundle of wires cut to a uniform length. I didn't bother collecting the cables together so the lengths of wire I used were not appropriate for my finished control panel.
I had a 5m Parallel to centronics cable lying around at home so I decided to use this for my finished cp wiring. The nice thing about the wire inside this cable is that each wire is uniquely coloured so hooking up controls with this is easy. Crimp connectors also take the danger of damaging your controls with heat and solder runs which is always a bonus. The only problem is it's very boring crimping a 100 wires.
The I-Pac has two terminals for ground connections. This at first glance seems a bit inadequate, but Andy's hint is to daisy chain the grounds.
This involves connecting a wire to the ground terminal then crimping this with another wire and so on. I used one ground terminal for Player 1 and 3 and the other for Player 2 and 4. It leaves you with a cable a little like christmas tree lights.
When I wired my trackballs to the Opti-pac I was going to use the player One buttons 1 and 2 linked to the left and right buttons of the Opti-Pac, but this causes problems with game operation so I used one of flipper buttons I setup on the side of my control panel to act as the left mouse button. It works reasonably well.
Because the TV is connected to the graphics card via the S-Vhs socket the channel has to be manually changed. In order to get round this you need to supply a voltage to pin 8 of the scart socket. Despite the scart specifications which say that a signal of 9-12V is required as a switching signal I have found in the past that almost any level of voltage will be picked up by the TV as a switch signal. I could of got the 12V from one of the power connectors in the computer but I decided to take a wire from the Opti-Pac which supplies a 5V line. It works really well.