I hacked a game pad from Amazon, thread here
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=120797.0.
The issue is that Windows sees all the buttons (when touching the wires together since i haven't mounted the buttons yet), but when i get into MAME32 and open any game, hit tab to get to menu, and try and adjust controls, the game pad doesn't register any of the wire touches...
I got frustrated and haven't tried to configure the controllers in my other emulators yet, but MAME is the one that I really wanted to get working.
Any ideas? did i miss something when doing my research and not configure something right? or have i just messed up the game pad?
I did get MALA to recognize the game pad and had it configured to work basically, and since windows recognized all the button presses i just assumed that MAME would work too.