Arcade Cabinet Questions

[Stone]

Hey - I got a Taito Egret II from Arcade Infinity yesterday. They installed an extra two buttons on each side (6 button sticks total), but it looks like only the top three buttons on each side have been wired (connected to anything).

Does anyone have any idea where I could go to get instructions on how to wire the other three buttons?

I need some pcbs.

[Videodrone]

Probably contact this guy.

His has some good info and he has a message board, though it isn't used much.

[Stone]

Ah, cool, yeah, I saw that, and the Egret I and II are pretty similar.

I wanted to try to figure out how to get the other buttons functioning without bothering him, though. I might send him an e-mail.

[JefmcC]

I'm not positive, but if the PCB is a six button game, like Street Fighter 2, then you need to wire the other 3 buttons directly off the PCB. I think it's called a "kick" harness, as in kick buttons.

[Matt]

Yes, Jef's right. You'll only ever use the extra 3 buttons with 6-button fighting games. Those are non-standard, so the idea is that you're supposed to wire them up yourself when youfind a 6-button PCB.

Bob Roberts sells some smartly designed and (mostly) ready-made kick harnesses on his web page:

http://www.dameon.net/BBBB/parts.html

He's got a very good explanation of the situation on this page - it'll probably answer most of your questions:

http://www.dameon.net/BBBB/plus.html

[JMET]

Yeah Infinity did the same for me... added buttons but no wires.. for like 25+ I thought they'd at least wire it.. hell I could have gotten out the drill and added 2 buttons.. I was trying to save myself some wire work..

[galvatron]

Yeah, the Mortal Kombat series also has a special harness to do its 5 or 6 button layout. Neo Geo uses the jamma harness to support its D button and select button. Standard JAMMA only supports 3 buttons, which is why they only wired up those 3... If you get some neo or IGS stuff, then you'll have very minimal rewiring to do. Most of the info you'd need for JAMMA to MVS conversion is at hardMVS.com.

[Stone]

Cool, thanks for the information. The first game I plan on getting is a Raizing shooter I haven't played yet, so I don't need to wire the buttons. After that, though, I want to get SSF2T, so I'll need 6 buttons.

Is there a book someone could suggest that would give me a basic understanding of wiring, how it works, some of the terminology, so on? I don't have any experience with this stuff - the most I've ever done is stuck a PCI card into a motherboard slot.

[Stone]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3077209728

Woohah, I got my first PCB. Raizing, Capcom, from an American with 100% feedback, at an okay price.

[Matt]

Good choice! That was my first PCB purchase as well . Dimahoo is an awesome game and still probably my favourite board. The egret has a monitor that's easy to rotate, right?

If your cab uses Japanese buttons, you'll probably have to solder on the kick harness wires yourself. It's really easy to do with a bit of practice - there should be books on soldering/electronics work at your local library and probably resources online too. If you want to save yourself some trouble, just buy the whole harness setup from Bob Roberts and cut off the quick connects.