| ARCADEPARADISE.ORG |

Planning / Design

I knew that I would want the encoder box to be just that: an encoder box. As hip as I was initially to the concept of building a controller to play You Don't Know Jack, I didn't want to necessarily be limited to just that one game. I wanted it to be very modular in design. In other words, I was looking for versatility and expandability.

The basic function of the encoder box is to house the encoder itself and its interface leading out to any controls.

Encoder

For the encoder, I once again went with the Hagstrom Electronics LP24. There are a couple of reasons that I went with the LP24 versus some of the other solutions:

• The first possibility that went through my head was to give the I-PAC Encoder a spin. It seems like a really good encoder, and people on the BYOAC FAQ board who have used it really seem to like it. Its only downfall for this particular project is that it's not programmable*, and it doesn't have the keys needed to play You Don't Know Jack. Oh well.
  
  * Postnote: The I-PAC encoder is now programmable. It wasn't at the time of this project, though, which obviously disqualified it for this project.
• The original plans on the Build Your Own Arcade Controls website used a hacked keyboard for the interface, touting it as an inexpensive solution. That's true; a keyboard hack usually is the least expensive way to go...except for when you're using a $50 wireless keyboard!
• I'm using an LP24 in the Arcade Paradise cabinet and I've been very happy with it, so I purchased one for this project as well. I should add here that Hagstrom's shipping once again rose to the occasion: I ordered the encoder on a Thursday, and it arrived the very next Monday.

Interface

So now the question comes up of how to connect the controllers to the encoder itself. Remember: the controls and the encoder are (obviously) housed in two separate units. The big thing to keep in mind is that the controls and the encoder are separated so that the encoder box remained modular in design.

The simplest and most effective way that I could think of was to have everything connectable with D-SUB connectors. A 25-pin D-SUB on the encoder box would be perfect: since the LP24 has (obviously) 24 inputs on it, I could wire each of the pins to a DB25. I could put a DB25 connector on whatever device that would be plugging into the encoder box, and I could then use a regular 25-pin-to-25-pin cable to connect the two together. Simple, right?

In hindsight, I also should have devised a way to have a PS/2 mouse connector on the Encoder Box as well. Right now, the Encoder Box is only set up to accept keystrokes going to the encoder; it's not set up to accept optical (mouse, trackball, etc.) inputs. Everyting works fine for You Don't Know Jack, but I'll have to address this later on if I will want an optical device to go through the Encoder Box. Stay tuned for that one.

©1999-2004 arcadeparadise.org. Please see the "About" page for more details on copyright notification, the site disclaimer, and the privacy policy.

Arcadeparadise.org will look best at a minimum of 800x600 at true color, and on a real browser.