I-PAC 2 Help

[gb_phil]

Hey Everyone!

I purchased a custom arcade machine several months back and just received it yesterday. Long story short but this build was plagued with issues and missed it's shipping deadline multiple times. I was expecting to have the machine a month or two sooner than I received it. The day the machine was set to go out last week the company found that two of the buttons on the machine weren't registering for some reason. They wanted to keep it and fix it but the two buttons are honestly not essential (pinball buttons) and I didn't want to postpone getting my machine any longer. I'm new to arcades but I'm not new to Hyperspin, emulators, etc. So I figured I could either figure it out myself or find someone online that could help.

I'll include a picture of my panel below. It's a two player set up with a dedicated four way in the middle with some buttons. There's also a trackball, two pinball buttons on the left side of the panel, two pinball buttons on the right side of the panel, and a pinball plunger on the front of the panel. Everything but the four pinball buttons is pictured below.



Whenever I go into Notepad all the other buttons clearly work but the two pinball buttons on the right do nothing. I went into WinIpac and started from scratch with a new panel overlay and telling it how every button was wired up and everything shows as working there expect for the two pinball buttons. I can see they are clearly wired into the Ipac 2 but not sure where to start troubleshooting. I've never wired one of these up before so this will all be new territory for me. Any suggestions?

[yotsuya]

Hi, Phil!

Who'd you buy it from?

Try taking the wires off the pinball switch and hook them up to another button to see if it's the lines or the microswitches on the buttons.

[gb_phil]

Great idea! I actually just switched some wires around before coming back here to see if anyone had any suggestions and it seems I'm narrowing down the issue. One pinball button was plugged into 1SW8 and the other was plugged into 1B. I took the plunger wire from 1SW7 and swapped it with the pinball button at 1SW8 and voila. The button worked but the plunger didn't. So could it be an issue with those two ports on the IPAC itself? I went ahead and swapped those two back and then put the pinball buttons into 1Start and 1Coin and all is working. I'm not familiar with all this stuff but I'm assuming having those buttons in other ports being used shouldn't hurt anything right? I mean if I map the keys to unique keys the system shouldn't care right? Or would mapping to them to different keys not matter and the system always will insert coins if the pinball button or the insert coins button is pressed? If that's the case then I guess I'll need to find some other places on the IPAC to double up. Certainly open to suggestion there.

The build company was InsertCoins.com out in Vegas. They did a good job. Most of the hold ups where the fault of the shipping company, bad boards, late artwork, late crating company, etc.

[gamer83]

Well phil i could be wrong,but it sounds like maybe the ports the pinball is plugged into on the ipac arent mapped to a keyboard key yet? Why are you testing the buttons in notepad?thats what the winipac utility is for.dont test inside notepad because if a button is mapped to keyboard ctrl shift alt etc nothing will show up in notepad when you press that key.
What you should do is,load up the ipac utility,make sure all your buttons and joysticks are showing in the virtual panel exacyly as your real panel is laid out.if its all set up press the pinball buttons and see if they light up on the virtual panel.if not then either the button is missing from the virtual panel,no keyboard key is assigned to it, or it is not binded correctly to the ipac in the panel configuration.

[gb_phil]

Thanks for the advise gamer83!

I was using Notepad just because I'm accustomed to using it for keyboard mapping (I have an HTPC set up with Hyperspin and four Xbox Controllers). Originally the buttons weren't showing on the layout so I created a new layout from scratch. I manually put the controls on the virtual panel to mimic the pattern of my physical panel and then I assigned each control the correct wiring information. I know it's the correct wiring information because I followed each wire to the IPAC. Most of the stuff was connected in an obvious fashion (Player 1 Start connected to Player 1 Start, Player 1 Button 1 connected to Player 1 Button 1, etc). The company that built it thankfully used color coded wires so that made tracing the wires back a whole lot easier. So even after creating a virtual panel from scratch and mapping what control went to each slot on the IPAC I still found the two pinball buttons did not work. I mapped certain keys to those to see what it would do and still nothing. It's odd but it seems those two slots on the IPAC just aren't working unless I'm missing something here.

[PL1]

With the power off, check the resistance from the screw on top of the IPac to the NC (normally closed) terminal on the microswitch.

If that is good, (<2 ohms) press the button while checking from the screw on top of the IPac input to the NO (normally open) terminal on the microswitch.

Also check from the COM (common) tab of the switch to the com tab of another switch that works properly.

This will help you to mostly (99%) rule out the wires and microswitch as sources of trouble.

The KADE Loader program also has a great keyboard test utility.


Scott

[gamer83]

Hmmm...this is very odd.so p1 sw8 and the A B  ipac slots wont work? It could be possible ipac is defective.have you tried the sw8 and A B  ports on p2 side to see if they work?my best advice would be to get some kind of warranty from the company if the ipac really is the problem.regardless you should give them a call,a product you purchased from them thats supposed to be ready to go,well isnt.

[gb_phil]

Scott,

Thanks for the help! I don't have a voltmeter (or whatever is needed to test this) currently. I'll see if anyone I know has one so I can run that test.

gamer83, It's P1 SW8 and P1 1B that aren't working.

P1 1A and P2 2A both work.

P2 SW8 is working.

P2 2B has nothing plugged into it so I've yet to test that.

For now I just have those two pinball buttons mapped to P1 SW6 and P1 SW7. Earlier I had them in P1 Start and P1 Coin but it looks like that will conflict with stuff and make the pinball buttons useless. I haven't test out the pinball emulator yet to make sure things work right as I'm still trying to set up other stuff like LEDBlinky but I assume it'll work.

Oh, I should note, the company was willing to try and fix the buttons. It was me who told them to send it. I was tired of waiting as this machine was supposed to be here over a month ago but things kept going wrong to prevent it from going out. I told them to send the machine and I'd finish figuring out the pinball buttons or just go without pinball. So it's all on me. But I'm a hands on kind of guy so I'm happy to dive in and learn about how all this stuff works.

[PL1]

What??!!?? No multi-meter?

50 lashes with a wet noodle and one demerit for coming to class unprepared.   

For now I just have those two pinball buttons mapped to P1 SW6 and P1 SW7. Earlier I had them in P1 Start and P1 Coin but it looks like that will conflict with stuff and make the pinball buttons useless. I haven't test out the pinball emulator yet to make sure things work right as I'm still trying to set up other stuff like LEDBlinky but I assume it'll work.

You definitely don't want a pinball flipper on P1 Start, since that is the "shifted function" button for the IPac.

It won't send a keystroke until it is released or a button with a shifted function is pressed.

You can piggyback flippers on certain player buttons.

The pinball emulators are not as easily-configurable as MAME, so I suggest wiring the pinball controls according to this chart.




Scott

[DeLuSioNal29]

If memory serves me correctly, by DEFAULT, only buttons 1 -6 are pre-programmed on an i-Pac.  SW7 and SW8 need to be added in the WiniPac utility.  (not sure on this, as it's been a while!)  I recall having to add the extra buttons on my iPac4.  (This may have changed though).

If you look closely at the defaults on this image, only 1-6 are listed.  You need to add 1SW7, 1SW8, 2SW7 and 2SW8 by adding them to the layout.



DeLuSioNaL29

[gb_phil]

Yea, I did add 7 and 8 to my virtual layout. P1 SW7 and P1 1A work but P1 SW8 and P1 1B don't work. On the P2 side they all work except I haven't test P2 2B yet.

[AndyWarne]

A couple of points:

WinIPAC should not be used to test the controls because it will give misleading results. It is for configuration. The best way to test is use the keyboard test from www.passmark.com which has a 30 day trial.

Its best in these cases to click on "table view" and use the table for checking all the keycode assignments.

If you are still stuck drop me an email : andy@ultimarc.com