Jpac to jamma board help

[BBBrennaNNN]

my hyperspin has a couple of things to finetune but i just received my jpac today. my original cabinet is a jamma board connected to a PCB. when i try to use the jpac to connect it to the usb in my cpu, the joystick doesnt function at all. am i doing anything wrong? initially i thought it would be a simple plug and play but it doesnt seem to work that way. will post some photos slightly later on.

[JoyStickKilla]

I would post on the arcade controls forum. Much more likely to get people to see your issue who have experience with that stuff.

[BBBrennaNNN]

roger that shall do that.

[BBBrennaNNN]

 

for anyone that knows what is going on. the jpac is connected to the jamma harness. the blue wire im holding is the usb thats supposed to be connected to my cpu. my cpu connects the sound/monitor directly while the only thing the jamma harness is doing is to enable me to play on the joystick. is there any software i need or do i need to enable anything? when i plug in the usb the computer does detect that it is a joystick but i am unable to calibrate it.

[JoyStickKilla]

That isn't a JPAC. What you have there from what I recall is a device that takes the jamma inputs and emulates it as a gamepad. Which means you need to use software such as xpadder, joy2key, etc to have it the buttons show up as key presses

 

On your PC type in the run/search box joy.cpl and open that up. See if it lists that device as a controller.

[BBBrennaNNN]

i do have joytokey (not paid for yet). and it does show up when its connected. however at joytokey when i click "<-" and move my joystick to the left it does not register. or when i click the button1 to configure it doesnt register. let me know if more info/pictures are needed.

 

a little something to add on. when i open notepad and move my joystick / press the buttons. nothing comes out. however my pc is clearly detecting 2 joysticks when its connected. if the joystick/buttons are mapped into keys like "wasd" or something i would be able to configure it but nothing comes out.

[JayC]

If you open the joystick panel in windows and open on of the joysticks you said are in there and press the buttons on your cab, does the red button icons light up? If not, the board is working but the jamma connection isn't. Are you sure you have the jamma connector the right way? It fits both ways.

[BBBrennaNNN]

the red button icons do not light up. if the jamma is connected the wrong way i was thinking the computer would not even detect the 2 joysticks. maybe i will try reconnecting the jamma the other way. let you know the results again soon as my cpu/internet connection is in the room while the empty cabinet (which is too heavy) is downstairs without internet access!

 

edit : ok i've just checked and i think the jamma connection is correct. my guess is that the jamma controls (joysticks and buttons) are not given any keys to it (like asdw or 4568). is there a way to program my jamma controls to be given a keyboard function? like when i move the joystick to the left it means "a" so when i open notepad and hold my joystick down to the left it types aaaaaaa

[BBBrennaNNN]

ok one thing i know for sure now is that the converter is working because when i just plug the usb to the converter without connecting it to the jamma harness it detects "2 joysticks"

 

the second thing i know is jamma harness when plug into a pandora box is able to function as per normal. so inbetween im either doing something wrong or missing something crucial. i follow a video to connect the converter to the harness so that shouldnt be wrong.

 

 

i am able to see this when connecting the usb port even if its not connected to my jamma harness.

[JayC]

Yeah, the board is basically putting out the signal from two joystics/controllers. So even if you have nothing connected to it it still shows up. So the problem is between the jamma connection and the board. Did you try switching the jamma connector the other way around just to be sure? I use a JPAC and just had to connect it and it worked. Do you have a link to any info about that board?

[BBBrennaNNN]

bought it on taobao. https://world.taobao.com/item/530328058407.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.dzVmNf#detail

 

will try switching it just to make sure. did you get your jpac from ultimarc? and is your jamma harness the same as mine? lots of chinese words

[JayC]

Pretty hard to get anything out of that site lol, but it looks pretty straight forward. I assume the 3,5mm plug output is for sound? Does it need any drivers? You'd think not since it's supposed to work as a normal game controller.

Weird...you should be able to get signal from the jamma harness but there doesn't seem to be any. Not sure what to try next.

[BBBrennaNNN]

yeah the plug is for the sound which i dont use i just directly connect the sound to my cpu. the last and final step is the joystick for me now. the manual they gave did not mention anything about drivers. i guess my best bet is connecting it the other way round and trying again. will do that soon. downloading some videos for my hyperspin setup now still many systems missing videos.

 

btw does your jamma function like a keyboard too? like if you hold the joystick to the left it types aaaaa and to the right it types ddddd something like that?

[JayC]

the real J-PAC works like a keyboard yes. But your device isn't supposed to do that. Your device is modelling two game controllers instead of a keyboard so totally different types, to get keystrokes you need joytokey to get game controller signals to keystrokes.

 

The JAMMA connector has a slot in it so you shouldn't be able to connect it wrong if it indeed is a full size JAMMA connector on your new board (it looks pretty small to me, but the pin numbers seem to be correct) you shouldn't be able to connect it the wrong way.

 

If you can't get it to work I'd recommend a real J-PAC from Ultimarc, they work great and you don't need joytokey or anything else...just plug it in and go for it. Only problem with it is that it only have JAMMA connections for 4 buttons per person, so you have to manually add cables for the remaning buttons, no big deal since there is already screw terminals on the J-PAC for them. http://ultimarc.com/jpac.html

[BBBrennaNNN]

this happens when i connect it the wrong way.

 

 

when i turned it to connect it the right way, i can use 1 button. button 9 which happens to be the "coin" button on my machine. nothing else works. when i press button 9 it lights up and stuff the rest still dont respond.

[JayC]

Are you sure that JAMMA harness is correctly installed to the JAMMA connector and that they are all working? Sounds like something isn't wired correctly, maybe the common ground is broken at some point? They should all be daisy-chained, get out a multimeter and check the connections in the cab first (probably the easiest way to start).

[BBBrennaNNN]

you mean use the multimeter to test each individual button/wire on the jamma harness first?

[JayC]

well, at least start to check that every button has one of the connectors connected to ground. They should all be daisy-chained (check the black cable in the image), so if you put one of the multimeter poles on the jamma conectors ground pin (pins A,B,1,2,e,f,27,28) and check the last button in the daisy chain. If it works you don't have to check the grounds of the other buttons. After that check the other pins on the buttons if you didn't find your problem.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a handy JAMMA connector table:

[BBBrennaNNN]

the jamma controls (joystick) are all working fine. i just tested it with my pandora box and it has no problems. so the only issue im guessing is with the connection to jamma to usb converter.

[BBBrennaNNN]

just took a look below at the wires connection for the joystick.

 

for the button thats working button 9 it looks like there are 2 ground wires

 

for those that arent working look like this. one ground one coloured.

 

when i tried to use both ground wires for the buttons that dont work, it still doesnt work. so no idea what else i can do. please advise.

[JayC]

I don't think the working button has two ground wires, I think the button wire just happens to be black as well as the ground wire.

 

What I would do next is check if the ground button from the working button is connected to the ground of ALL the other buttons. They should be, if not...check to what pole in the JAMMA connector the working buttons ground wire is connected to. Then check where the other buttons daisy-chained ground wire is connected to...as there is 8 different ground poles in a JAMMA connector it might be that your USB board isn't using all of them. Just a thought.