How to: use naomi crazy taxi cabinet with M.A.M.E. in a PC ?

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 1:52 am

Hi, I want to know how I could use a Naomi Crazy Taxi cabinet to play MAME or PC games.

I watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDs14P1NHfc

I asked to its creator and he said me:

Well, basically you need to tap into the controls of the cabinet.

The picture and sound is already there by using cables you buy in any store; the stereo audio cable (two RCA in one ens and an audio-connector fitting your PC sound-card in the other end), and a regular VGA-cable. I was using the one already in the cabinet. The naomi has the same VGA-plug as your graphics card in your PC.

What I did was I used the PCs game-port for the analog controls, that's gas, brake and steering, and also two buttons.

I bought the connectors necessary for this on ebay. The gameport type is a 15 pin D-Sub:

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-Pcs-D-Sub-15-pin- ... 3a5aced87a

.. and the connections for the controls I used:

http://cgi.ebay.com/4-pcs-2x40-Pin-2-54 ... 27b4b29eb8

Then you just disconnect the IO-board inside the cabinet and use the wires you built to connect the controls, using the long black 2x30 pin plug and the smaller black connector 2x13 pin, via those pin-connectors from ebay to your PCs game port.

You will need to find out the pinouts for your controls, thus refer to your game manual, and also your PCs game port, for that Google is fine.

While hooking your controls to your game port, you will then need to calibrate the controls to work properly. I used the Windows driver for ''gamepad with 6 buttons'', I think it was. As long as you get at least three axis, steering, gas and brake, you will be OK. There are several other drivers that could also work for this.

Good luck.

But, im newbie and I need more help, diagrams, photos or something more.

Can anyone help me with this? Thanks a lot

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 12:59 pm

Here, there is another video of a Crazy Taxi pedal hack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VXwFbUCt-w

Please, anybody could help me?

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 1:18 pm

Although I like your enthousiasm, you should probably take this one step at a time. You indicated you are a newbie in this regard, yet what you are trying to accomplish requires knowledge en technical skills in basic electronics and components. Nearly anything can be done, but converting a driver to work on MAME is not for the faint-hearted

I suggest you start by browsing and searching this wonderful forum we have here, and be more specific in your questions. Also, check andygeezers facebook page. He was working on a bespoke arcade-to-pc conversion: http://www.facebook.com/pages/AndyGeeze ... 5601559588

We are more than willing to help, but 'please help me' is a little too vague

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 1:44 pm

I'm the one who posted the video on youtube, and I gave up with the idea of hacking an x360 controller, because it doesn't go all the way the potentiometers should to use it fully. Instead I used an APAC and it works without any problem with a PC (see this video, and this one). The only issue I have is with Model2 emu, I think it can be solved using a device that has at least 3 axes per player like this one.

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 6:38 pm

susmab wrote:I'm the one who posted the video on youtube, and I gave up with the idea of hacking an x360 controller, because it doesn't go all the way the potentiometers should to use it fully. Instead I used an APAC and it works without any problem with a PC (see this video, and this one). The only issue I have is with Model2 emu, I think it can be solved using a device that has at least 3 axes per player like this one.

Oh! Thanks a lot for this info.

So, If I want to connect a Crazy Taxi Naomi cabinet to a PC I only need to buy an A-pac or an u-hid ?

Then, I "only" need to connect a few cables to the A-Pac and the A-Pac to my PC usb?

I have a noob question:

How I can connect the cables to A-Pac? Where are the cables and how many cables is neccesary to connect?

Thanks a lor friends, thanks for be patients with me.

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:47 pm

NaomiCT wrote:Thanks a lor friends, thanks for be patients with me.

No problem. Good you found susmab..! You'll get there

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 3:41 pm

I'll try to make it short :

Actually, every analog control on the cab is a simple potentiometer. The Crazy Taxi cab has three of them : one for the steering, and one for each pedal. On my APAC, I wanted it to be converted to 2 axes : one for direction, and the other for accel/brake. Each potentiometer has 3 connectors, so that's 3 wires per potentiometer (and 3*3=9 wires for all potentiometers alltogether). I just plugged the potentiometers as showed on the pic from ultimarc (notice that the black one, aka the ground, is shared by every potentiometer).

At this point, you should have one question : how the heck did you manage to plug two potentiometers on one axe only ? It's very simple, I plugged the third one like the second one, except the red and yellow wires were inverted. Here is an example based on the ultimarc picture : say that the potentiometer on the upper left is the second one. The third one would have the red wire plugged to 1UP and the yellow one to 1DOWN. That way, when calibrated, the axe with 2 potentiometers would stay in the middle when you don't touch anything, move one way when you step on the gas, and move the opposite way when you push the brake. A lot of games/emulators can deal with having accel and brakes on one axe only (except model2 emu).

Here is a picture of the wiring like I just explained :

Of course, with an UHID device you would just have to assign the third potentiometer to an axe of its own. This way model2 emu should work flawlessly.

One may also tell me that I could use the axes of the second player to make the APAC go 4 axes, but sort of tried to : I plugged my APAC like the picture above, and in the same time plugged one pedal to one axe on the 2P side, and the other pedal to the other axe. So in the end the pedals were wired on 1 axe on the 1P side, and to 2 different axes on the 2P side. I don't know if the double wiring caused some problems, but that didn't work for model2 emu (assigning the wheel on 1P side, and accel/brake on 2P side in the config menu of the emulator).

Sorry if my explanations are not clear. It's already difficult to explain without having to translate it in English

EDIT : forgot to talk about the wires location

I plugged everything inside the control panel (the part where the wheel is fixed). Every potentiometer wires arrive there, in three triple connectors (one per potentiometer). If I recall correctly, the connectors for the pedals are one blue and one black, and the one for the wheel is red. You can take a look at the following pictures, but if you're new to this kind of manipulation if may discourage you more than motivate. Actually it is quite simple.

You can see the red connector on the very bottom, connected to 3 wires that come from the APAC. The red connector with no wires plugged in is supposed to be connected to the first one when the APAC is not working.

Here are the two pedal connectors (blue and black) on the front. Only pay attention to the wires that have a metallic pin and connected to the bespoke colored connectors. The other blue and black connectors that have only one wired connected serve another purpose.

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 5:51 pm

WOW !! Brilliant !! Thanks a lot and thanks for the photographs.

Now the question is... ?Where I could buy an cheap A-Pac or U-HID?

I saw there is 2 versions of U-HID:

U-HID:

http://www.u-hid.com/home/overview_board.php

U-HID Nano:

http://www.u-hid.com/home/uhid_nano.php

U-HID is more expensive that U-HID Nano so... Could I use U-HID Nano to conect wheel, 2 pedals and a few buttons ??

Thanks a lot.

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:49 pm

It looks like the UHID nano only has 10 connectors, so in the better scenario it should be able to provide 3 axes and 3 buttons (assuming it is common grounded). If it were for me, I'd go for a standard UHID.

OldFoo · Post by **OldFoo** » Wed Feb 09, 2011 6:56 pm

susmab wrote:It looks like the UHID nano only has 10 connectors, so in the better scenario it should be able to provide 3 axes and 3 buttons (assuming it is common grounded). If it were for me, I'd go for a standard UHID.

Ok, when Ill be able to connect the cables of the Naomi to the U-HID I connect the U-HID usb to the PC and Windows recognizes the Naomi cabinet like a Wheel with pedals?

Will I need to programing something or calibrate something or is plug'n'play?

I saw this page and I have fear :smt012 :

http://www.u-hid.com/home/u_config_utils.php

Do you know another store to build U-HID?

Thanks a lot, really thanks, thanks.