Hi
I bought my first arcade (mame setup) back in 2013. I was very naive (still am really) but realised I've been ripped off.

Anyway this wasn't a post to ---smurfette--- about that but more of how I've turned my resentment into a machine I'm a little more proud of by making my own

Originally it came with outdated mame "software"

, had low res, out of date imagery, a copy of GameEX and was installed on Windows XP. I've since updated all the software, images, videos etc, bought a copy of BigBox (LaunchBox) and bought windows 7 Pro and upgraded it to 10. I've also bought a new higher quality memory and added 4Gb (making it 8Gb). I've installed a bigger HDD and I think the whole thing feels much better.
On to my issues
1. I have a MiniPac (it says so on the board) problem is I don't know if its a 32 input or a 28 input. I can't see any way of seeing the difference as they all look the same. Is there any way of checking?
2. I have two sticks with 8 buttons each (1p start, 1p coin, 2 rows of 3 buttons and the same for p2 side). there's also a button under the CP which I used to use for exiting an arcade game. I've checked that it is wired into the MiniPac (red wire goes to set J1 pins). Windows picks this key press up as 'tab' and the IPac Setup program registers it as a tab press also. The issue is that it isn't recognised as any of the inputs and I've tried both 28 input and 32 input but nothing lights up for the P1 or P2 key buttons for some reason. I don't think its probably that important but thought I'd try and get my head around this whole MiniPac thing.
3. Since windows notepad is picking up most (if not all these buttons as some form of keystroke) then is it just a case of using the emulators to map the keys or is there an easier/better way to manage these things?
Since I always end up with problems uploading images on here I'll try getting a few images using tapatalk app as a reply to this post.
Thanks for reading
Cheers
Dal