Skip to content

Control panels & buttons (layouts + wiring)

The control panel ("CP") carries the joystick and buttons. This page brings together the standard layouts (Vewlix, Sega, Neo-Geo…) and the real wiring: microswitches, Faston terminals, daisy-chained ground, to the JAMMA edge or the JVS I/O board.

Vewlix, Sega, Neo-Geo button layouts
Three reference layouts. Indicative diagram — for drilling, use slagcoin.com's dimensioned templates.

Button layouts (the big standards)

Layout Buttons Geometry Cabinets
Vewlix 7 button holes (4 top, 3 bottom) + 1 start hole apart — 8 in all, 6 game buttons fitted ⚠️ 2 rows, top row offset right, gentle curve; ~36 mm pitch Taito Vewlix, most fightsticks (⚠️ not the Namco Noir, see its row)
Sega (Astro/Blast) 6 row slanted ~10°, flatter than Vewlix Sega Astro City, Blast City, New Astro…
Neo-Geo 4 (A B C D) gentle 4-button arc Neo-Geo MVS (SNK cabinets)
Namco Noir 6 holes per player + start (counted on a unit) Vewlix-like Noir cabinets
  • Button diameter: Ø 30 mm for gameplay (Japanese standard: Sanwa OBSF-30, Seimitsu), Ø 24 mm for side functions (start, admin).
  • Joystick: 8-way (Sanwa JLF, Seimitsu LS-32…), to the left of the buttons on a right-handed panel.
  • Slagcoin is the reference for dimensioned templates (Vewlix, Sega, Astro, Hori…). Never invent a drill pattern — start from its template.

“Vewlix layout”: the Taito panel and the fightstick convention do not count the same

This page used to claim 8 buttons for the Vewlix. No source said so: Slagcoin, which we cite, publishes dimensioned templates and writes only "the precise layout used in Taito Vewlix cabinets" — with no button count. The 8 was this wiki's own addition.

Here is what the archived Taito documents say, and they agree with one another:

Document What it writes
Vewlix L flyer ボタン穴は上段4、下段3の計7個 — 7 holes, 4 top, 3 bottom
L manual, folio 7 1ジョイスティック・6ボタン（1J7B） — 6 game buttons ⚠️ the 7B counts the buttons supplied, start included, not the holes
L manual, §4-3 option VL コントロールパネル 2J14B【2ジョイスティック・14ボタン】 — 7 per player
C manual 1ジョイスティック・6ボタン・スタートボタン — start is counted separately**

§4-4-2 of the L's manual shows it: the play cluster has 7 holes with 6 fitted, the spare one is closed off with a supplied ボタンカバー, and start is a separate button at the lower right, outside the cluster.

So 7 + 1, not 8 in a line. The figure 8 circulates mostly about "Vewlix" fightsticks — ⚠️ no document is archived here for that, and we do not verify it — but whatever the stick market does, it is not the Taito cabinet's hole pattern. On a panel you are about to drill, the difference is one hole too many.

Vewlix: the spacing trap

On the Vewlix, some top-row buttons sit closer than 36 mm to each other → Sanwa screw nuts can clash. Plan for snap-in buttons or check the spacing before drilling.

Wiring a button

Microswitch, Faston, daisy-chained ground wiring
Each button: a microswitch (COM + NO); the signal goes to its pin, the ground is chained.
  • Microswitch under each button, with 3 terminals: COM (common), NO (normally open), NC (normally closed, unused here).
  • Active-low logic: the button ties its pin to ground when pressed. So you wire:
    • COM → ground (GND),
    • NO → the signal pin (button 1, 2, direction… on the JAMMA edge or the CN3 connector of the JVS I/O board).
  • Daisy-chained ground: a single ground wire runs COM to COM across all buttons/directions, then joins one GND pin on the connector. Saves wiring and guarantees a common ground.
  • Faston terminals: 4.8 mm (aka "110" / ".187") on buttons and joystick; sometimes 2.8 mm on some microswitches. Crimp cleanly (crimping tool).

Joystick

  • 4 microswitches (up/down/left/right), wired like the buttons: COM to the common ground, each NO to its direction (Up/Down/Left/Right on the connector).
  • Square restrictor (8-way) or octagonal; interchangeable gate per game.
  • Some sticks have a 5-pin connector (4 dir + ground) instead of individual terminals.

Panel harness

  • JAMMA: the CP wires to the edge's control pins (see JAMMA pinout) — active-low, ground on a GND pin.
  • JVS: the CP wires to CN3 (60-pin) on the JVS I/O board — same principle (active-low, +5 V/GND supplied by the board).
  • Interchangeable panel (Sega/Taito candy cabs): the CP unclips and reconnects via a multi-pin connector — hence the easy config swaps.
  • Buttons 4/5/6 (6-button games): outside the 56-pin JAMMA → dedicated kick harness (see JAMMA).

The candy panel's extra-buttons connector

On Sega candy cabs the extra-buttons run between panel and base is a straight-through (signal-agnostic) cable of the AMP Universal MATE-N-LOK family. Two sizes:

  • Astro / Blast City — 10-pin (buttons 4/5/6 for both players + GND, In-Line), see Astro City.
  • Net City, New Net City, Naomi Universal — 15-pin (3×5 matrix): adds button 7 per player, plus +12 V / +5 V for lighting:
conn-candy-extra-15
15-pin extra-buttons after GameSX/NFG — pin 1 marked by the key.

10 ↔ 15-pin compatibility

A 10-pin plug fits a 15-pin receptacle: an Astro panel (10-pin) works in a Naomi cabinet (15-pin). The reverse does not (a 15-pin plug won't fit a 10-pin receptacle).

Outputs (lit start, lamps)

On JVS, the I/O board drives +12 V outputs (lit start, billboard lamps, solenoids) via its output connector (see JVS I/O board). On JAMMA, only coin counters and lockout are provided; lighting runs on the cabinet's own harnesses.

→ Repair: PCB fault-finding · Traces & vias.

Sources & attribution

Review & corrections

How this space is used

Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board? Say so here, with what you observed (model, board revision, serial number, measurement). Every report is cross-checked against a source before anything changes — an unverifiable correction is published as “reported by …, not cross-checked” rather than silently applied.

Reading is open to everyone; posting requires signing in with Discord. Reports from the wiki's declared reviewers are handled first; anyone else's are read too, but go through a human before anything is changed.