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Just Put my NAOMI back into action - Kick buttons not Working

YesAffinity

YesAffinity

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Hi all! Hopefully this is a simple problem to solve. I just gave life back to my NAOMI board, which has been sitting for probably 7-8 years. The only games I own for it are Dead or Alive 2, and Capcom Vs SNK Millenium Fight 2000. I was never a fan of the DOA series, it's the game and the hardware that was in the cabinet when I bought it from a local arcade that was liquidating, probably 10 years ago. The CVS cart I bought probably 8 years ago, played it a few times, and haven't really played it since. I'm a big fan of Street Fighter, but not of the 4-button setup that was used on that game. The NAOMI setup and CVS have sat since then, until today.

Anyway, I decided to re-install the NAOMI in my MAME cab, if for no other reason than to give it a home that is not just sitting on a shelf. The MAME cab will continue to be primarily MAME use, but I may fire up CVS from time to time.

So, long story short, I hooked everything up, booted CVS, and got everything working except for kick buttons. Punches, starts, service, test and coin all work fine. My setup uses a Capcom I/O board. I have the CPS-2 kick harness plugged into it, with no joy. I went into the button test menu, and the kick buttons are not registering. All other inputs register fine.

I have the button setup switch on the I/O board set to 2P/6 button (all the way to the right, if looking at the jamma side of the board). I tried switching it to 4P/4 button, and it didn't seem to make any difference.

I tested the cab with a CPS-2 and CPS-1 game, with the appropriate kick harnesses hooked up , and kick buttons work fine on CPS-2 and CPS-1. I have a CPS-2 and CPS-1 kick harness both spliced on the kick button wiring, which wires directly to the Ultimarc J-PAC board that drives my MAME setup. I also booted the cab with all the MAME workings connected, and kick buttons work fine in MAME.

My first thought is: is CPS-2 kick harness pinout and NAOMI pinout the same?

let me know what other information I can share, to help solve this issue.
 
If you are using the Capcom I/O and the CPS2 kick harness it is the same. Sounds like a I/O issue or a grounding issue. Did you test the other pcbs in the same cab with the wiring harness?
 
looks like it is possibly a ground issue. i went back into the input test menu and found that the kicks are stuck 'on'. On a hunch, I powered up my mame pc, which powers the jpac (via USB), and the kicks went off. I then tested them, and they worked. So, it seems that the pc is the ground reference, and when it is off, ground goes with it. I'm wondering, if I run a ground directly to the power supply, bypassing all the other component grounding, and connect it to the daisy-chained grounds at the buttons, might that solve it? Would there be any issue with having parallel ground paths?

I would just run the PC simultaneously with the NAOMI setup, however, I am using a audio splitter to take audio from the PC and from NAOMI, to a single set of PC speakers. Once the PC is on, the NAOMI audio is almost inaudible. And, I'd rather have the wiring cleaned up than doing a work-around for the audio.
 
Sounds like you may have the wiring on your kick buttons reversed. If they are US bttons with cherry switches there are three prongs.
With the other two, onene is for always off which activates when pushed and the other is for always on which deactivates when pushed. Check to make sure they aren't reversed.
 
I agree that it sounds like the button wires are on the wrong connectors. Also your ground reference for the kick buttons should either be tied in with the ground for the rest of the buttons or using the ground reference from the cps2 kick harness itself. The connector should have pins for a ground reference for each player.
 
Okay, so I've done some extensive continuity testing, at least as much as I can do without climbing back into the cabinet tonight. I already spent the whole day curled up in there, installing the NAOMI and doing some wire management while I was at it.

Anyway, the more I test, the further I feel I'm getting from the cause of the issue.

I tested ground, from many points to many points, and it is continuous throughout all buttons, the jamma and the CPS-2 kick harness.

Once I turn NAOMI/CVS on, the kick buttons are all shorted closed. The following is true for all kick buttons, in this scenario:
  • There is continuity between ground and signal
  • There is continuity between each signal to all grounds
  • There is no continuity from one signal to other signals
  • -On P1 button 4 (short kick), I removed the signal connection from the middle connector of the microswitch, and put it on the bottom connector. The result was the same.
  • -I then removed signal and ground, and checked for continuity, and there is NO continuity when they are not connected to a microswitch (ruling out a short external to the microswitch)
  • If I remove the CPS-2 kick harness from the I/O board, there is no short condition at the microswitches
I again tested with a CPS-1 board, ensuring the MAME PC was off, and there is no problem with the kick buttons. They all work normally.

And, just to be certain I have things hooked up correctly, although this is how they've been wired for 10+ years with no other known issues, below is how the microswitches are all wired.


95-0733-90_view_1.jpg
 
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I poked around in the test menus, too, and didn't find much useful, except for the JVS test menu. Attached is a screenshot of the input test within the JVS test menu. It shows the kicks all permanently closed. Something else interesting, not sure if it's normal or not, under analog, the second digit of each grouping of four digits is constantly cycling. What appears here as a 7, 6, or 4, is constantly cycling, probably at least 10 times per second (hard to tell, though, it's going so fast).20160520_201227_2.jpg
 
re-reading what you posted earlier it sounds like you have your J-PAC wired up to the buttons at the same time as the Capcom I/O... if this is the case then that could be your problem. the boards will interfere with each other and you generally need to separate the button inputs with diodes to keep them from interfering.
 
twistedsymphony said:
re-reading what you posted earlier it sounds like you have your J-PAC wired up to the buttons at the same time as the Capcom I/O... if this is the case then that could be your problem. the boards will interfere with each other and you generally need to separate the button inputs with diodes to keep them from interfering.
Click to expand...
Ah-ha. I thought it might be something like that, but that's where my knowledge of electrical and electronics doesn't quite reach. Is there anything commercially available that could handle the job (inexpensively), or is it more of a DIY thing?
 
twistedsymphony, can you also tell me why the condition with the NAOMI is only true for the NAOMI, and not true when running CPS-1 or CPS-2 hardware, and why the condition goes away when the J-PAC is powered? Just looking for a high-level understanding, if possible, to satisfy my curiousity. And if not, that's okay too.

It seems the quickest immediate solution is A) powering the MAME PC (and therefore, the JPAC) whenever running the NAOMI setup, and B) implement some solution to disconnect the MAME audio, so that the speakers are only hooked up to the NAOMI setup, when running NAOMI. 'A' is no problem, because the whole cab is powered by a power strip, and the MAME PC is set up to power on whenever it receives power, therefore whenever I turn the power strip on, MAME and NAOMI both power on simultaneously (along with the rest of the cab). A slight improvement on 'B' might be to get a simple 2-channel audio mixer for both audio inputs to route cleanly to the speakers. This would have the added benefit of giving me some additional volume control for MAME, which as most of us know, has games that play at varying sound levels.
 
YesAffinity said:
twistedsymphony, can you also tell me why the condition with the NAOMI is only true for the NAOMI, and not true when running CPS-1 or CPS-2 hardware, and why the condition goes away when the J-PAC is powered? Just looking for a high-level understanding, if possible, to satisfy my curiousity. And if not, that's okay too.
Click to expand...
when a button is not being pressed the game board expects the wire to be floating/not connected to anything, when you have that wire also connected to another game board then it connected to whatever electrical components are on that other game board which can have some unexpected consequences, what will happen exactly depends on how the boards are designed (as you discovered). Summit used to make a product for this for a multi MK setup but it was designed for the Midway kick harness connectors. Really all you need to do is hook up a diode to the button input pin on each board so that the electrical signals can only flow into the board and the board can't flow any signals back out that might interfere with the other boards.
But this is all with button inputs...

I don't know why you're mentioning audio, which generally doesn't have this problem and there are many audio switching products out there if you do suffer interference problems.
 
Okay, thanks for the help. I only mentioned the audio because it's another complication, but only because it's a bit ghetto-rigged. I'm using a Y-splitter to take audio out from each setup into one set of speakers. When PC powers on, the PC audio overrides the NAOMI audio. I understand the Y-splitter isn't really intended for that, and it was only temporary to test things. I found a $25 2-channel stereo mixer on ebay, which looks like it will work nicely for properly channeling the two pcb audio outputs to a single set of speakers. Plus, if I mount it on the outside of the cabinet, it will give me the freedom to easily adjust volume when playing games in MAME that natively have differing volume levels (like Track N Field, which is very low volume natively, and NBA JAM which is much louder).
 
just an FYI, in MAME you can adjust the volume for each game and save it. being a PC you might also be able to find some kind of audio normalization program to run and keep things more consistent volume wise.
 
twistedsymphony said:
just an FYI, in MAME you can adjust the volume for each game and save it. being a PC you might also be able to find some kind of audio normalization program to run and keep things more consistent volume wise.
Click to expand...
How do you do it in MAME? I usually press the ~ button to adjust things down, but like with Track N Field in particular, it is very low, and all games are at max volume by default, so there's no room to increase its volume without turning the speakers up (not feasible, as they're in the cabinet above the original speaker grills), or turning up Windows volume (resulting in all other games being too loud).

:edit: I found the way to change volume in MAME. TAB -> Slider Controls. I was able to adjust the individual volume components all the way up on Track N Field, to make it equally as loud as other games. Thanks!
 
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