Random keypresses

[zorrobandito]

Hi all,

My cabinet has been working fine for years but recently developed a strange 'poltergeist' effect that sends random keypresses. Sometimes it will scroll through the menus forever (in a continuous loop), sometimes it will start a game or send a whole series of random keypresses (mind you they are all CP-related, no ';' or '8').

I've checked all the wiring and can't find a fault, unplugged the crappy mini-keyboard I use and cleaned everything out. Tonight I fired it up with just notepad and saw the keypresses for myself (so it's nothing to do with the front-end I use).  I sometimes see a weird speckling on screen as well, which I guess could be a result of the keyboard buffer filling. Once this behaviour starts it's difficult to break but Ctrl-Alt-Del always stops it. But it will start up again.

Any thoughts on what it might be?

Here's an example bit of text:

"k5r61fiwzxw Qk52"

I have a J-PAC and run WinXP.

[WhereEaglesDare]

hmmm....  I'd send  message to Andy at Ultimarc, that is strange, its doing 5s and 2s and 6s which sounds like it could be the board or buttons becuase those are obviously some of you MAME keys.

[headkaze]

You say you've unplugged the mini keyboard, but have you unplugged the JPAC and tested to see if it's definately not the keyboard causing the problem?

[zorrobandito]

Thanks for the suggestions. I did get in touch with Andy and he gave me some helpful suggestions, fortunately I had the luxury of a nearby friend who owns my first cab and so I borrowed his J-Pac. In the process of swapping them out to test, I guess I must have restored some connection between the J-Pac and Jamma connector because when I replaced mine, all was back to normal.

Now back to configuring all those Commodore 64 games! Karateka rules!