Posted by c0nsumer on 20, 2000 at 12:55 PM:
In Reply to: Wiring the KE72 posted by Matt B. on 19, 2000 at 3:56 AM:
: I thinking about getting a KE72. From the picture it looks as if the connection is similar to an IDE drive cable, is this true? What is the best way to wire this up? Thanks
I recieved my KE72-T on Thursday and went to work on it over the weekend. It's a REALLY nice board. Extremely easy to program and connect. Here's how I connected it. I took a 50-conductor SCSI cable and split it in half. Then I soldered each of the 25 conductors on each cable to a pin on a male DB25 connector. I crimped the other end onto a salvaged 40-pin IDE IDC connector with pin 1 at the appropriate place (one of the cables). This gives me more than enough connections for two players with six buttons each as well as a slew of extra (~, TAB, etc) buttons. I split the second cable pretty much in half, giving me 13 pins for the keyboard portion of the controller and the other 12 for the trackball/spinner connection. So far everything works, I'm just waiting for an order of wire and Amp connectors from Digikey to finish up the second connector.
After I made and tested the solder connections on the DB25's I wrapped a narrow piece of clear tape around the solder connections to make a cup of sorts. Then I filled this with standard off the shelf epoxy to prevent any potential damage/flexing to the solder connections.
My whole goal of wiring everything up this way is to allow for two simple connections on the back of the PC which I can just plug a control panel into. This will cut down on LOTS of work if I ever want to make another control panel or remove the current one during shipping or whatnot.
This will all eventually go into a case modeled off of an original Bad Dudes cabinet which a friend of mine and I salvaged from a local arcade game distributor. I just still need to make the cabinet...