Bacteria's project - MAME arcade controller mod

[bacteria]

When I was looking to test the SNES bluetooth controller I made recently, I was looking for an emulator to show and ended up with the MegaDrive one. Fine. I wanted to test showing 1942 on MAME, however although the controller entered keys on the keypad on Wordpad, etc, it didn't work on MAME.

Got me thinking though... rather than playing about with a keyboard, about time to make a completely PC compatable arcade controller for playing anything on the PC, emulators, etc.

The best way to make something compatable with the PC is to use something that is 100% designed for it - no configuration, etc needed.

Decided therefore to use an old computer keyboard and map the buttons on the controller to them.

The PS1 ASCIIware Arcade Stick unit cost £1.50 at a car boot sale; and the keyboard 50p; so the project cost is £2 plus spraypaint, solder, % use of soldering iron, etc - so under £5 for the whole project!

Anyone got a cool name BTW for this project, please post it!

Anyroad, here are the two items - you notice the keyboard is a PS2; can be used as that, or with a £3 adaptor can be made USB easily.

The two components:



Unscrewed the keyboard, all the tiny bits are just rubber domes designed to raise the keys after being pressed.



Turns out there are two acetate sheets with metallic traces printed on top, and in the middle a plain piece of acetate with holes cut out for the contacts. When pressed together, contact is made and keyboard button is activated. I have seen this before on keypads. The middle plain acetate sheet is there to stop the two other sheets from touching.



This is the board that makes it work:



Removed the rest of the keyboard casing and just kept that part.



The arcade stick:



Opened up, two screws hidden under the pads.



Nice and easy - just need to wire to the traces for the buttons and modify the board a little.



All disassembled, including the joystick.



All I need to do is wire to some keyboard contacts, fold the rest of the acetates into a roll so it all fits in the arcade casing; connect those keyboard contacts to the buttons in the arcade stick sections, change the board a bit; respray the case and buttons (metallic purple and black); job done. Just a few hours work.

[ieatramen]

Excellent idea. Please show the finished product!

[bacteria]

...won't take more than a few project hours - i'll have it done in just over a week's time.

Spray painted it, after making a d-pad hole in the casing. Looks georgeous! The casing is metallic purple and the buttons are all metallic black.

[CRTGAMER]

Very slick! Smart going with a PC keyboard PS2 connector.

I did the same thing with a salvaged Zaxxon Arcade Controller. Installed extra HAPP buttons and used the guts of a PC PS2 plug Keyboard encoder. To ensure sequence I ran Checkit 3.0 in DOS and test jumpered the PC keyboard encoder contacts to verify the MAME default keyboard keys. Yes there is a ghosting issue when too many buttons pressed, but for single player controller, it works just fine. Could have gone with a USB encoder but I wanted 100% compatibility with Win XP, Win98 and DOS for the older EMUs. Went a step further using an IDE connector as the "Toggle Switch", I also have wired in an Atari 2600/C64 plug and PSX PCB.

[Lord_Santa]

very nice

I tried something similar for Elite back on the C-64, connecting a crude home-made joystick (made from a gearstick), together with a couple of "buttons" (wooden) and connectors, etc. trying to hook it up to the C-64

unfortunately the C-64 keyboard and computer is one and the same, hence it was pretty much improbable that I would ever get it working (I was about 14-15 at the time)

I've been thinking of a way of doing this to USB keyboards, using my TAC-2 (Amiga/C64/Atari) joysticks

please post more pictures and description for *how* to wire the controller buttons, since I am far, far from technical enough to figure it out on my own

[CRTGAMER]

very nice

I tried something similar for Elite back on the C-64, connecting a crude home-made joystick (made from a gearstick), together with a couple of "buttons" (wooden) and connectors, etc. trying to hook it up to the C-64

unfortunately the C-64 keyboard and computer is one and the same, hence it was pretty much improbable that I would ever get it working (I was about 14-15 at the time)

I've been thinking of a way of doing this to USB keyboards, using my TAC-2 (Amiga/C64/Atari) joysticks

please post more pictures and description for *how* to wire the controller buttons, since I am far, far from technical enough to figure it out on my own

C64
A button at a time, one of the C64 joy ports shares with keyboard. Only 5 switches to deal with.
Use the Direction and Fire Button pins. Return line is the Ground pin. Other pins are for Light pen and Paddles.

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... s4joy.html




PC and Mac
Here is a sample pic. With keyboard PCB gutted out of an old keyboard, plug in and run a test program such as Checkit. then jumper a short wire onto two contacts at a time (where the original keyboard matrix plugs in) until you find the keys you want to use.

Mame Player One Defaults
CURSOR KEYS = Direction
CTRL, ALT, SPACE, SHIFT, Z and X are the Fire Buttons. CTRL and ALT are the first two.

[bacteria]

Left it to dry:

[t0yrobo]

Looks nice. Cheaper keyboards like that tend to only detect 3-4 simultaneous button presses. Which shouldn't be a problem for most things, but it could cause problems occasionally.

[jeffro11]

Looks great! Cant wait to see what you do with the buttons.

[CRTGAMER]

Looks nice. ALL PC keyboards tend to only detect 3-4 simultaneous button presses. Which shouldn't be a problem for most things, but it could cause problems occasionally.

Fixed.

Left it to dry:

Wow! That looks like custom paint at a local car show!