Posted by Jim K on 22, 2000 at 6:02 AM:
In Reply to: keyboard hacking posted by Newbie on 21, 2000 at 7:45 AM:
If it isn't too late to change your keyboard there is an easy way to do it and not fry your board. I used a mitsumi keyboard for my controller (Jim's Arcade Controller in the examples) and the led's were soldered directly to the pcb. so instead of tracing out all those damn mylar things all I had to do was solder directly to the board. Walla.. no worries about the led's and power... and if I want the led's I could have wired directly to them too. I am at work right now and don't have the mitsumi model number but if you would like it, post here and I will get it for you. Check out the examples page here. There is a pretty good picture of my hack.
Hope this helps,
Jim K.
: Hopefully one of you veterans can help me:-)
: How do you SAFELY find which lines are the LEDs on the PCB. After going through all 110 cabinet projects and the 24 standalone controls, and checking various other links like PC Jamma,I thought I had enough information to hack the keyboard. Alot of the sites gave warning about the + 5 volts from the CAPS,NUM,SCROLL locks LED's, so I thought if I trace those three keys on the mylar, and then stay away from them I would be ok. WRONG!!! I got to checking the 8th contact on my PCB and my CPU went down. So much for my logic. Luckily it doesn't appear to be damaged.
:
: In Brains stand alone project he makes reference to a site using a multimeter to make the connections fromm mylar to PCB. I've never used a multimeter so if anybody knows where this information is or can tell me more about the LEDs I would be very grateful!!!