New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

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Shaikoten
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New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

I just bought my first candy cab a couple weeks back, a New Astro City. It was in excellent shape, but I purchased it as a 2 player 4 button cab wired for MVS that came with a 150-in-1 cart. Everything worked great in that config! I then swapped over to using my Raspberry JAMMA, still with the four button config. Everything still worked great, buttons 1-4 on p1 and p2 all worked fine.

I ran into issues when I purchased a new CP with six buttons for each player. I hooked the new buttons (4-6 on p1 and p2) into the Raspberry JAMMA's kick harness and am noticing some weird behavior. Button 4 does not work at all, and when I hit button 5 and button 6 at the same time, it counts as a button 6 press. This behavior is identical on both p1 and p2 controls.

My hunch here is that to get this to work correctly I'd have to remove the button 4 leads on the JAMMA pinout and return it to a more stock New Astro City config for this to work, but I'm not sure, and definitely don't want to re-wire anything without consulting someone with more experience. Anyone run into anything like this before?

Thanks, and sorry if any terminology is off, still new at this!
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by copados33 »

Maybe a few pictures can help, because afaik, buttons 4,5 & 6 on astro city CPs go into a different conector separated from the jamma harness, its a 10 pin female amp conector, that plugs into a male/male loom, so if the other end of the kick harness isn't connected to a 6 butoon PCB which also has to have a separate conector for those extra inputs, buttons 4,5 and 6 should not do anything on a 4 button pcb such as a Neogeo or chinese multis which use more than 3 buttons through the jamma harness.
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

Sure thing, here's some images!

Image

Here's where they come directly into the CP. The one on the right is the astro city aux harness with 4-6 for both P1 and P2. The one to the left of that is the P2 harness, and before that is P1. Both P1 and P2 had the wiring for a button 4 when I got it. That wiring is still intact.

Image

This is the front of the JAMMA with it plugged into the Raspberry JAMMA board, and the kick harness plugged direct into the Jaspberry JAMMA. Maybe this is misleading, but what leads me to believe I might want to de-solder stuff is the fact that there's a lot of stuff soldered together on the far ends of the board.

Image

This is what I was able to find for a pin-out for a New Geo MVS JAMMA though, and things don't quite line up...

Image

And here is the back of the JAMMA, very similar pattern of soldering.
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by copados33 »

Ok, now I think I can see the problem, try to desolder the button 4 pin from the jamma connector, if that doesn't workl you will need to rearrange the pins inside the female AMP connector, it seems that one of the ground wires might be connected to some of the button pins;
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

copados33 wrote:Ok, now I think I can see the problem, try to desolder the button 4 pin from the jamma connector, if that doesn't workl you will need to rearrange the pins inside the female AMP connector, it seems that one of the ground wires might be connected to some of the button pins;
So I tried de-soldering the yellow wire, fourth from the right, and just disconnecting it completely. The board wouldn't power on without that connected. However I did desolder the connection between the two sets of posts and then reattach it, so it's now just connected to Ac and 23 rather than both of those as well as Ad 26. That makes the board run, but still sees the same behavior with buttons 4 through 6.

Not sure what exactly you mean by the female amp connector: is that perhaps the 4pin on the left hand side beneath my CP? Thanks for your responses and bearing with me here!
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by copados33 »

Shaikoten wrote:
copados33 wrote:Ok, now I think I can see the problem, try to desolder the button 4 pin from the jamma connector, if that doesn't workl you will need to rearrange the pins inside the female AMP connector, it seems that one of the ground wires might be connected to some of the button pins;
So I tried de-soldering the yellow wire, fourth from the right, and just disconnecting it completely. The board wouldn't power on without that connected. However I did desolder the connection between the two sets of posts and then reattach it, so it's now just connected to Ac and 23 rather than both of those as well as Ad 26. That makes the board run, but still sees the same behavior with buttons 4 through 6.

Not sure what exactly you mean by the female amp connector: is that perhaps the 4pin on the left hand side beneath my CP? Thanks for your responses and bearing with me here!

The connector with the white/coloured wires at the right on your first photo, thats the kick harness, a female 10 pin AMP .
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by nem »

Honestly, if the fourth button works on the jamma edge, I would have left it as is.

Can you show the loom that you're using to connect the Raspberry to the extra buttons? I can see the connector on the Rasp, but where does the wiring go to?
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

copados33 wrote: The connector with the white/coloured wires at the right on your first photo, thats the kick harness, a female 10 pin AMP .
Ah, understood! Yeah, I have re-wired the kick harness a couple times to no effect. However, now that I think about it, only the six current buttons are wired into Raspberry JAMMA's board, and not the remaining four. Two of these appear to be the grounds, and the other two unused. Would them not being grounded cause this issue? And without me having a set place to ground on the PCB, is there some sort of best practice to finding a location to ground them to? I noticed with the 4 button setup, some of the grounding occurred inside of the CP.
nem wrote:Honestly, if the fourth button works on the jamma edge, I would have left it as is.

Can you show the loom that you're using to connect the Raspberry to the extra buttons? I can see the connector on the Rasp, but where does the wiring go to?
The wiring goes to the above pictured 10 pin AMP as copados33 described, but four of the wires are just plugged into the stock 10 pin amp ending terminal which has nothing to plug into.
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by hikaru »

the best way is to use this interface ;)
https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Sega_2L12B_Adapter
between the panel and the cabinet
to go from jamma to jamma +
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

hikaru wrote:the best way is to use this interface ;)
https://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Sega_2L12B_Adapter
between the panel and the cabinet
to go from jamma to jamma +
Excellent! I'll probably end up just daisy chaining the kick grounds straight to the JAMMA first before I start looking for any additional parts but in the long run I want it done clean.
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Re: New Astro City 4 button vs. Kick Harness JAMMA issue

Post by Shaikoten »

Just a little update, looks like it was the lack of grounding all along! Buttons 4 and 5 work great now. Buttons 6 are still acting weird, requiring both 5 and 6 to be pressed to work properly, but I can probably figure that out on my own with some continuity tests.

As a little tax, here's a picture of the cab, with Morrigan reminding me how bad I am at electronics:

Image

Hey, just watch who you're calling retado, lady.
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