The Q*bert-panel

The one player control panel has besides the joystick and startbuttons three extra buttons. I would have used buttons with leafswitches, but couldn't find any so i use microswitches.

First, i connect all switches with the ground terminal. Therefor, i cut some pieces of wire to connect one microswitch with the next. After stripping the insulation off the end of the wires, i drill them together and add a cable shoe.

I connect all terminals marked with 'COM' in series (black cable). The ends of the cables are connected via the IDE-cable to the ground terminal on the I-pac. All connectors marked 'NO' are connected to the corresponding wires of the IDE-cable.

After soldering and isolating all wires with shrink-hose, i add additional isolation using insulating tape.

After rearranging a few wrong connected wires everything worked fine. But after a few games of Ghosts'n Goblins, the shiftbutton (Start 1) stopped working. After a lot of searching i found the bug: the standard MAME configuration of the I-pac was deleted. I never found out how that happend, but the solution is easy:

• Start a text editor (Notepad or in my case nano or whatever you have). This isn't necessary, but you can see what you do.
• Press the keys ctrl-alt-p in this order and hold them.
• After the menu appears, press r for reset
• Press e for exit.

The 2 player control panel