IPAC problem IDENTIFIED! Need assistance

[Mugzilla]

-ipac 4 is installed.
-All grounds have been tested sat (Satisfactory) using an ohm-meter.
-All buttons have been tested sat using an ohm meter.
-Jumpers are set to PS2 and MAME.
-When running win-ipac (And I am in ALT mode), buttons 5 and 6 do NOTHING.
-Attempted to plug in my LED harness. IT HAS ALL 10 PINS!
-"Default" mame button assignments are NOT what the ultimarc board says they should be.

What is your take on all of this? (Programming as well as having too many pins, so I CANNOT physically plug in my LED harness...)

mjp

[grafixmonkey]

-ipac 4 is installed.
-All grounds have been tested sat (Satisfactory) using an ohm-meter.
-All buttons have been tested sat using an ohm meter.

This means you've checked that the switches work, or that you've checked they work and are connected to the correct pins on the board?  i.e. the P1B1 pin on ipac goes to the player 1 button 1 on the panel?

-Jumpers are set to PS2 and MAME.
-When running win-ipac (And I am in ALT mode), buttons 5 and 6 do NOTHING.

buttons 5 and 6 of which player?  it's normal I think for buttons 5 and 6 to be unassigned for players 3 and 4...  or maybe that's just mame, and the ipac4 is supposed to be.  It's been too long since I programmed my ipac.
Also, they do nothing in what, in mame?  or are you testing in Notepad?  If you attach a keyboard to the pass-through port on the ipac, you can press ctrl-alt-P on that keyboard and enter a programming utility.  Just make sure you have Notepad or some other text editor open when you do.  It will "type out" a menu and you make choices with keyboard keys.  If you get into that, you can reprogram keys to your liking, and enter a test mode to check which buttons work or are shorted, without hassling with the programming software.

-Attempted to plug in my LED harness. IT HAS ALL 10 PINS!
-"Default" mame button assignments are NOT what the ultimarc board says they should be.

A picture or drawing of the harness might help.  If I remember right, the pin header on the IPAC board didn't have any key blocks in it, just spaces, so any plug with the right spacing should fit on it.  I first played with it using a plug I yanked out of an old CD player that had gone bad.  That fit on the pins just fine.

[Mugzilla]

Yes, everything is connected to the correct spots.

Cherry switches, I just tested them. They work fine.

There is only supposed to be 9 pins on the ipac. One of the holes on the harness to plug in are filled in.

-ipac 4 is installed.
-All grounds have been tested sat (Satisfactory) using an ohm-meter.
-All buttons have been tested sat using an ohm meter.

This means you've checked that the switches work, or that you've checked they work and are connected to the correct pins on the board?  i.e. the P1B1 pin on ipac goes to the player 1 button 1 on the panel?

-Jumpers are set to PS2 and MAME.
-When running win-ipac (And I am in ALT mode), buttons 5 and 6 do NOTHING.

buttons 5 and 6 of which player?  it's normal I think for buttons 5 and 6 to be unassigned for players 3 and 4...  or maybe that's just mame, and the ipac4 is supposed to be.  It's been too long since I programmed my ipac.
Also, they do nothing in what, in mame?  or are you testing in Notepad?  If you attach a keyboard to the pass-through port on the ipac, you can press ctrl-alt-P on that keyboard and enter a programming utility.  Just make sure you have Notepad or some other text editor open when you do.  It will "type out" a menu and you make choices with keyboard keys.  If you get into that, you can reprogram keys to your liking, and enter a test mode to check which buttons work or are shorted, without hassling with the programming software.

-Attempted to plug in my LED harness. IT HAS ALL 10 PINS!
-"Default" mame button assignments are NOT what the ultimarc board says they should be.

A picture or drawing of the harness might help.  If I remember right, the pin header on the IPAC board didn't have any key blocks in it, just spaces, so any plug with the right spacing should fit on it.  I first played with it using a plug I yanked out of an old CD player that had gone bad.  That fit on the pins just fine.

[Mugzilla]

Oh yeah, my pass thru keyboard wont allow me to do the ctrl alt p...

It does nothing when notebook is opened.

[Mugzilla]

UPDATE: Yes, my jumper is in MAME mode. Yes, all of the inputs show up in the winipac utility in the correct place.

NO RESPONSE from any joystick. No response from the p1, p2 buttons. No shift function.

I can use my pass through keyboard to start up a game, but my fancy new CP does nearly nothing. 1p3 button works...

[2slk]

 Write Andy at Ultimarc. He provides the best service/support that you will find anywhere.

[Mugzilla]

Write Andy at Ultimarc. He provides the best service/support that you will find anywhere.

We have been bouncing emails back and forth this morning already. Andy has been really helpful.

It seems that the builders forgot to chop off one of the pins where the LED harness plugs into the ipac.

We are puzzling out why the "ctrl alt p" keystroke is NOT opening up a test page in notepad.

We are puzzling out why not all of the keystrokes give me a character in Wordpad, but 99% of the keystrokes with win-ipac open indicate that it IS working.

Could it have anything to do with the "sliders" in the OPTIONS part of the winipac program?

Is there something in MAME32 that I have to set up to recognize keystrokes? (I know there SHOULDN'T be, from reading the ipac FAQ...)

[grafixmonkey]

Are you pressing ctrl-alt-P in that order, relatively quickly?   you have to first hold ctrl, then alt, then P, and do it in under a few seconds.

[Mugzilla]

I got the CTRL ALT P to work.

I have the wires in the correct place, per the writing on the card.

PROBEM FOUND: When I check player 1, it is working all the mame palyer 3 controls! When I press all the player 2 buttons, all of the player FOUR controls work!!!!

So, I switched ALL of the wires. (Thank god I left enough slack!)

... THE PLAYER 3 AND 4 ARE PROGRAMMED CORRECTLY TO P3 AND P4!

So, my PROMS are BOTH programmed to 3 and 4.

Suggestions?

[grafixmonkey]

Just reprogram them.  It really doesn't matter, unless you absolutely must have the ALT jumper available to switch to a different config on the fly.  (but you can't even do that...  don't you have to power down the ipac to change jumper settings?)

Besides, I completely remapped the default settings anyway.  Having ctrl, alt, shift, and space on player 1 plays absolute havoc with having 'enter' and 'c' on other players' buttons.  First time I got three people playing at once, the game kept switching between full screen and windowed mode as fast as it could.  Found out the reason was p1 was slapping 'alt' and p3 was slapping 'enter'!

[Mugzilla]

Just reprogram them.  It really doesn't matter, unless you absolutely must have the ALT jumper available to switch to a different config on the fly.  (but you can't even do that...  don't you have to power down the ipac to change jumper settings?)

Besides, I completely remapped the default settings anyway.  Having ctrl, alt, shift, and space on player 1 plays absolute havoc with having 'enter' and 'c' on other players' buttons.  First time I got three people playing at once, the game kept switching between full screen and windowed mode as fast as it could.  Found out the reason was p1 was slapping 'alt' and p3 was slapping 'enter'!

No go. I have another thread http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=12276 in which I talk about my inability to rewrite my ipac4.

The problem is, my p1 and p2 prom thinks it is for p3 and p4. When I click rewrite prom, it just sits there, not knowing what to write to.

Andy and I are on top of this.

[grafixmonkey]

I had problems programming my ipac4 when it was plugged through USB.  When I hooked a keyboard to the pass-thru port and used ctrl-alt-P  to program it, it kept its info just fine.  I figure it's some issue with the USB connection, but I didn't try programming it with a PS2 cable.  

Well, at least that's how I got around my programming issue...  if that doesn't fix it for you then it's all up to Andy.

[josehoser]

I built my board the past Saturday and had the same problem.  I was trying to play Street Fighter CE with my cousin, but his 5 and 6 buttons didn't work.  I also tried the keystrokes and they also didn't work.  I hit TAB to enter the configuration menu in MAME32.  I went to the key configuration option, scorlled down to P2 Button 5 and Button 6, and discovered that MAME32 did not have keystrokes assigned for these buttons.  My control panel was sending the right keystrokes, but MAME wasn't doing anything with them.  I hit ENTER then the correct keystroke (I=5, K=6) then returned to the game.  It worked perfectly.  Best of luck and hopefully this will help.

[grafixmonkey]

Wow.  That's a big picture of donkey kong you have attached to that post.

ummmm...

why is there a big picture of donkey kong attached to that post?  

 

[mow_dee]

I built my board the past Saturday and had the same problem.

[brophog]

That problem is on ultimarc's site.

[AndyWarne]

The "Player 2 buttons 5 and 6 not mapped in MAME" problem is our number one support email, although it is mentioned on our site, and is something out of our control of course.
Open request to MAME devs: Please PLEASE can you map these controls by default!
Incidentally while on this subject, the second most frequent is "can I program my I-PAC to send "OK".  (just left/right on the stick will do for this).
Third is problems caused by connection of switches to "NC".
Andy W