| melchman's guide to: | DIP Switches |
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| Prerequisites: | Binary Numbers |
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| Sources: | Various Sources |
DIP Switches
Early age electronic hardware suffered from a lack of programmable, non-volatile storage. This hardware predates small reliable hard drives, memory stick and other such media. A method for configuring options on hardware is DIP switches.
Using a bank of hardware switches provides a large array of configurable options. Banks of 4 or 8 switches can provide direct physical acces to memorized start parameters.
Notation
I devised a notation for DIP switch settings. This page is the key to my library of arcade game DIP settings.
Setting
The first column is called setting. This is a brief description of the option that can be configured. Example include "# SHIPS", "COINS / PLAY" and "DIFFICULTY".
A setting of "NOT USED" will designate that the switches in that row are not used by the game and will have the default (usually "OFF") settings in each of the columns.
Values
The second column is one of the possible values for the setting. Using the "# SHIPS" settings as an example values would include 3, 4 and 5. A row with the appropriate DIP diagram will exist for each value.
The default value or factory preset will be noted by an asterisk (*) at the end of the value description.
The value row may be empty in cases where the switch is not used.
Switch Notation
A switch that is ON is represented by 
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A switch that is OFF is represented by 
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Switches not involved in a particular Value row are
noted by the "Not Applicable" image: 
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A sample Setting Value row follows:
| Setting | Value | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
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This Setting has switch 1 ON, Switch 2 OFF and 3-8 are not involved in this setting.
Second Sample
This sample is for a game with 3, 4 or 5 lives and the coin settings. The defualt is 3 lives and 1 coin / 1 play. The last 3 switches are not used.
| Setting | Value | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
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| LIVES | 3* | |
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| 4 | |
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| 5 | |
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| COINS | 1 Coin = 1 Play* | |
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| 2 Coins = 1 Play | |
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| Free Play | |
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| NOT USED | OFF* | |
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