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Scramble Machine – Making a 60-in-1 – fire / player button wiring question
Question from Tom: Hello Guys. Thank you for your videos and website. It has truly been my single source during this project. I had an old Scramble machine that wasn’t working and decided to turn it into a 60-in-1 multicade game. My question has to do with re-wiring the control panel. Currently the control panel has 2 buttons left and right of a center joystick. I would like to keep the look of the control panel as is. My plan is to use 2 buttons on left as fire buttons and the 2 on right as player 1 & 2 buttons. My question is that can I also make the right buttons function as fire buttons? If I connect them will it cause any issues with the games? My initial thoughts were that it would be ok but the more I thought about it I am concerned about setup menus. If I have the player 1 & 2 buttons setup to be also fire buttons how will the board know if it’s a player 1 /2 or fire input? If this is ok….is it as simple as splicing the wires together? Thank you in advance for your assistance. Tom
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: Tom,
First off, thank you for your kind words about our videos and web site. We are glad that you find our content helpful.
As for your questions, yes I believe you can wire the right buttons as both fire/action buttons and 1 & 2 player start buttons. The game selection screen should give precedence to the start function over the action/fire function (which usually shows a preview of the selected game in most 60-in-1 boards). While I have not tested this myself, I’ve read several forum posts that have confirmed that this is the case.
As for the setup menu, I don’t think you’ll have a problem there either as long as you have the 2 action/fire buttons on the left side of the control panel. Those should allow you to navigate the menus. Saving the settings might be a little more tricky. I would think that pressing the right button that controls button 1/start 1 would save the settings then move on to the next screen but I could be wrong. Of course, you could always setup the 60-in-1 board settings the way you want them and then add the action/fire wires to the right buttons after you’re done.
Yes, it should be as simple as splicing the wires together. You might connect them using wire nuts first just to make sure everything is working properly. You can always come back later and connect them using a more permanent method (solder and heat shrink, crimp, etc.) once your testing is done.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your questions and good luck with your project.
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