booting straight into mame

[kustcom]

After setting up my own theme and configuring a nice small gamelist that works 100%.
I figured I'd try my joystick box. 2 joysticks (16 buttons). I made them from XP USB gamepads, soldering was fine and I tested each connection with multimeter.
Went into mala joystick configuration and plugged in player 1 side of the joystick box (1 joystick, 10 buttons). they all showed up in the test tab. I moved the joystick nad had to swap right and left around, but that was no big deal. Each one of the buttons worked, even if they were a bit all over the place. I then setup the joystick to scroll up and down the list setting joy_up, jpoy_down, and I set my 2 nav buttons to select and quit which ended up being buttons 6 and 8 respectively.

I hit OK, and then it launched straight into a game, I exited, and the game reloaded, kept hitting esc, but the game kept trying to load. I tried going back into mala settings but while the joystick plugged in this is impossible.

It doesn't make much sense to me, it could be that the button was stuck down... but if that was the case then the test joystick page should have reflected that, but it didn't when I hit the button 8 it I could see the little icon flash as if I had pressed it and it wasn't stuck down.


anyone got any ideas what this is or what I can do to narrow down the problem?

[mgb]

It sounds like maybe your button being used for esc is actually linked to reset (usually f3 by default) double check your settings.

[kustcom]

That still doesn't explain why the game is starting automajickly unless of course the button is in fact stuck down (solder bridged data and ground connections).

I have 4 settings setup so far, and nothing set for mame, as I couldn't figure out what mame's default select key was so I couldn't enter the menu to get joystick to work.
So that's another problem I'm having.

The 4 settings are: 1up: J1up, 1down: J1down, Start game: Button 8, Exit Menu/Mala: Button 6.


edit: is there some way I can test the button?

[kustcom]

wait nevermind, if it is bridged then the multimeter should tell me if I check pos to neg.

[kustcom]

OK, I think I solved the problem. I tested the wires and it beeped, then I realized I was testing the wrong button. So of course every button I tested beeped. Except the directional joysticks didn't beep.
The joystick micro-controller has 2 prongs; com and dat, while the buttons had 3 prongs; com dat1, dat2. I figured both the dat's were the same so I connected each to dat1. However seems like this is wired inside the button to ground. dat2 causes no beeps from the multimeter so I'm guessing that was the problem.
 

Now I just need to figure out why or what the default select key is for mame so I can configure the joystick for it. Anyone?

[kustcom]

All fixed. For some weird reason the 'Enter' key wasn't working when I first tried it in mame, but works now so I can navigate menu.