how to ... WIRE A CONE BUTTON???

[Superully]

ok guys, here's another one: i'd like to wire up my pac-mania start buttons so that the leds blink / light up. as you can see on the following picture, the button has three terminals: the 3 parallel lugs are common (COM), normally open (NO), and normally closed (NC). There are only two wires going to the cone buttons and I've hooked those up to COM and NO - works like a charm to start a game!

the other 2 parallel lugs are for the LED (+5v and GND).



my question: where can i draw power from to hook of those LED lugs so that the leds blink / light up? can i simply connect two wires to the switcher (to ground and +5V) and then to the LED lugs? how does it work with those leds? do they stay on all the time, do they light up once enough coins are inserted, do they start blinking then?

as always, i need some input!

[Etienne MacGyver]

if you connect them straight to the powersupply, they will be on continue..

i suppose there is already a resistor inside these buttons ?  normally a LED is fed with 1,6 Volts instead of 5...

maybe we can ask Atari-Andre 

He changed the leds inside them, so surely knows how to hook them up
can't find his klov threath though..

[PunkRockCaveman]

Usually the LEDs are fired up by the pcb. No extra resistors neccessary. In your case you need two resistors. I used 220Ohms when I remember right ... There will be no blinking and constant lighting of course. When the LEDs shine to bright you could use stronger resistors.

[level42]

Exactly. Do NOT hook them up directly to the power supply as you will immediately burn out the LED(s).

You can hook them up in series and use a single resistor. And of course if you power them from the power supply they will be constantly on.

The blinking (and swiching to continuously on or off) is controlled by the game PCB. Atari provided connections for this and put the required resistor on the PCB.

You can't have the blinking/continuos lit if there is no logic that controls this on the game PCB. If it's not a standard thing for that game to act like that, there is no logic for it on the PCB and there's no way (without a lot of electronics) to change that.

[Superully]

Exactly. Do NOT hook them up directly to the power supply as you will immediately burn out the LED(s).
You can't have the blinking/continuos lit if there is no logic that controls this on the game PCB. If it's not a standard thing for that game to act like that, there is no logic for it on the PCB and there's no way (without a lot of electronics) to change that.

thx a lot! how can i find out if pac-mania boards offer that option?

[PunkRockCaveman]

Since the pcb has standard jamma pinout I think the buttons are not supposed to be lit. 

[Superully]

guess i'll just leave it like that then. i don't want the leds to be ON all the time, would have been cool if they had been blinking, but you can't have everything, can you?

but thanks for your input, i've learned something new!