minipac set up properly, except for williams games, it seems

[happyfunball]

after collection arcade controller hardware, tools I didn't have, wood, etc and freezing my butt off in my first winter in Ohio, I finally have a couple of control panels built to try out some configurations to see how I like them.
my main issue is the first one, a slightly modified multi-williams style layout. two 4/8 way joysticks, coin button, 1,2 player buttons, and 6 buttons for gameplay.

it seems to work pretty well until I tried robotron, which really doesn't seem to work at all. the 2nd joystick isn't firing and the 1st isn't moving anywhere but down.

this seems odd since the 1st joystick is working with no problems in every other game I've tried, as well as at least the first two buttons.
Defender and Stargate won't fully load with the minipac plugged in, and if I wait till it gets to the attract screen, nothing I press or move will register in the game. its very odd.
I built the control panel to play williams games, and they spurn me.

does anyone have any suggestions on this bizarre circumstance?

many thanks

[Dervacumen]

You've probably already done this, but hook a keyboard up to the minipac, load up Robotron and try going in to the configuration screen (Tab key).  Then go to Input (this game) and reassign the keys to the ones on your controller.  For example, move the cursor down to P1 UP, press the ESC the field blanks out and then you can just move the player 1 joystick up and reassign the input to that joystick direction.  Try that for all directions on both sticks and see if Robotron works.  I think I had to reassign the player 2 joystick on Robotron.  I can check tomorrow if someone else doesn't get you going first.

[happyfunball]

I haven't tried much of anything yet. mostly just been dorking around with it and testing it with games. I only thought it might be a problem after 3 williams games didn't want to work.

not sure what you mean by hooking a keyboard up to the ipac.. could you sort of step through that in a bit more detail?
before last weekend I hadn't really gotten my hands dirty into this, just had a big pile of parts to put together. its been a fair bit of a learning experience.

[MTPPC]

Try holding the Player 1 start button while pushing Joystick 1 to the right and see if the menu comes up where you can set the controls.

[happyfunball]

that worked. robotron is now playing perfectly. I've been looking how to set specifc controls for specific games but hadn't been able to find that in the documentation.

now if only I could get defender/stargate to work..

[happyfunball]

and thanks for the tip, its much appreciated.

[PL1]

One way to be sure that it's not the game is to use either WinIPAC (Menu item Tools - Test Mode) or open MS Notepad/Wordpad.

Download WinIPAC here: http://www.ultimarc.com/download.html

The output of the minipac "types" the character corresponding to the joystick direction or button pushed.

Compare this to the MAME default keys.

[happyfunball]

defender seems to be going to a maintenance menu or something. I can scroll through options to change settings but I can't see how to exit it to the main attract screen

[PL1]

defender seems to be going to a maintenance menu or something. I can scroll through options to change settings but I can't see how to exit it to the main attract screen

Are you talking about the MAME menu? (see attachment) "Esc" key will take you to the next higher menu, "Tab" will toggle the menu on/off, "Enter" selects options.

Did you use wire P2-B for exit on your admin panel? (Default key = Escape button)
P2-B is the brown wire on button/joystick harness farthest from the USB connector, very close to the daisy chain ground--one pin over, one pin up.

Did you accidently change the MAME exit command?
Bring up the MAME Menu - Input(general) - User Interface "UI Cancel" should be set to "Esc".  If not, move down to UI Cancel and press "Enter" then "Esc". UI Cancel will show "None". Next press "Enter" then "Esc" - it will be back to the default "Esc". This returns the selected setting back to the default. Great trick to remember if you program extra/wrong keys in MAME.

Scott

[happyfunball]

no, i meant the defender in game panel, but it seems it was a glitch in mame32, which I was using cause Maximus Arcade decided to stop loading games.
I threw up hyperspin and defender is working fine, but stargate is still stuck at the screen saying the game has been restored to factory defaults.

its progress of a sort.

[PL1]

stargate is still stuck at the screen saying the game has been restored to factory defaults.

Have you tried pressing "F3" to reset the game within MAME?

[happyfunball]

i don't think so. I'll try it. I was digging in the menus for something like that to try but nothing looked quite right.

[happyfunball]

that did the trick. thanks to everyone for the help. Much appreciated helping me get out of the weeds.

its going to be even more fun when I have the other control panel up and running, with the trackball and spinner.

[boardjunkie]

Williams games are like pinballs in that they come up in diagnostics mode the first time they are powered up. Either do the F3 reset or just exit the game and bring it back up....same thing. Early Taito games will do that too.

Since it stores all the setup/options in cmos ram with battery back up they default to that state.

[happyfunball]

good times. can't wait to find out what other fun quirks there are, now that i can finally play most of them properly.

getting these panels built and set up seems to be Step 1.