Weird variety of control problems with AdvanceMAME & I-Pac, please help!

[TurboC--]

So I had a situation with an older MAME PC setup which really confused me.  First the general setup:

Advance MAME & Advance Menu w/ MAME 0.96
A quite old PC (Celeron 400)
Happ Arcade monitor, vertical (Pac-man type)
Authentic Pac-man controller & buttons wired into an I-Pac

The setup has been working for many years.  Now it had started acting flaky.  First, I would be navigating the AdvanceMAME menu, moving up and down without problems.  But when I pushed the 1p start button (which doubles as fire & game start button) instead of starting the game, it started wigging out and infinitely going Up Up Up Up Up... I have reason to believe that someone hit some buttons on the keyboard which may have instituted some kind of bad AdvanceMAME/AdvanceMenu "event" or macro which caused that to happen.  I spent a couple hours looking through the Advance MAME / Advance Menu RC(?) files to try to find such an event.  Simultaneously I untwisted and retwisted & taped all of the button and joystick connections, as well as blew dust off the I-Pac and other things.  SOMETHING I did fixed it but I really don't know what. 

Now, another problem is that the Right-direction is barely working on the stick.  When I try to push on the Right leaf switch manually, I get it to work reliably (I think), but otherwise I can barely move right using the controller itself.  This seems like I just need a new right leaf switch, but the other problems (like with the 1p button) make me suspicious. 

Can you think of an easy diagnostic method I can use to determine whether I just need some new leaf switches / controller, whether my I-Pac is going bad, or whether the wiring connections might be going flaky?  I'm afraid to waste money on a new controller if that isn't the problem, but I also don't want to waste a lot of time on it either.  Is there an easy method I can use to try to fix flaky leaf switches?  I tried gentle sanding on the contacts but that did not seem to help.

Also, how hard / worthwhile is it to try to replace individual leaf switches on a genuine Pac-Man controller, vs. just getting a new controller?

Thanks!

[TurboC--]

Anyone?  Can anyone at least tell me whether I should try to replace leaf switches, or try to find a new authentic Pac-man leaf joystick?  I haven't had luck in some preliminary searches for such a joystick.

[bclout]

Hi
Can you try winipac, a program you cam download from ultimarc. Or a different frontend, just to see if you can reproduce the error in another program? If yes, then i would check all the connections first.
Cheerd

[nitrogen_widget]

I-pac is a keyboard encoder right?
It just takes inputs from arcade controls and translates them to key-presses correct?

If so why can't you just open up wordpad or notepad & start pressing buttons & moving the joystick to see what the output is?
I don't own one so I don't know if this would work.

Also, go to harbor frieght and grab one of their $7 digital multi-meter's and some of these aligator clip wires.
http://www.harborfreight.com/36-inch-low-voltage-test-leads-66712.html

Set the cheapie meter to diode test function, clip your clips on each probe & on each contact for your control panel & see if the meter moves when you activate each switch.

[TurboC--]

Yes I-pac is an interface which takes arcade control inputs and sends them into a PS/2 port.  Forgot to mention that I did press keys on the keyboard and those are fine.  I did try the joystick and buttons in DOS but for some reason I don't have a cursor so it was hard to be sure.  I seemed to get the same problems with the right joystick, and no problems with the buttons.  I am a bit confounded as to what the 1p/fire button made the AdvanceMenu go Up Up Up Up ... I didn't think I removed any macros but now I'm not sure.  I still think that might have been an accidental macro.  Was hoping someone could at least tell me if such a macro would be possible in AdvanceMenu.

I really think now the problem is simply the right leaf switch on the joystick.  I either need to fix/replace this one leaf switch, or replace the entire joystick with an identical Pac-man joystick.  Can anyone tell me which of those would be easier/cheaper?

[nitrogen_widget]

Are you going to test anything?

Neither option is cheaper if you have a bad interface or corrupt advmenu.rc file.
Because it will still be broken after you spend the money.

[Malenko]

swap P1 and P2 controls, see if the issue persists with the sticks swapped.

[Dawgz Rule]

Forgot to mention that I did press keys on the keyboard and those are fine.

Instead of this, open notepad and then push buttons/move joystick.  Verify that these are recording the correct keystroke and verify that you don't have something repeating due to a bad switch.

[TurboC--]

I tested it in DOS Edit and the command line (basically my only options), nothing repeated in there ever.  I was really asking if it was POSSIBLE there could have been an Advmenu setting which would have done that.  Because it seems to have been cleared, indicating that somehow I fixed the .rc file. 

I can't switch controls, it's 1p only, it's an original Pac-man joystick + 2 player buttons which double as fire.

I just really need to get an answer about replacing entire joystick vs. replacing leaf switches vs. attempting to fix leaf switches.  The right leaf switch doesn't make anywhere near proper contact through pushing the joystick.  I'm not really getting the responses I need so I'll just start a new thread.