Joysticks stopped working after I-Pac factory reset

[gravitar80]

I’m working on refurbishing my old arcade cabinet, it’s been in storage for a while after a few moves and I’m working on getting it working again.

I have a SlikStik 4 player controller setup with spinner and trackball, it uses an I-Pac 4 to pass the inputs to the PC. I’m not sure what specific hardware revision of I-Pac it is, but it has no jumpers. Based on the dates I originally set up this cabinet it has to be a 2004 or older model.

I plugged this in to my new arcade box using the USB adapter, the player 1 stick was working and sending arrow key input to the system. I tried playing some games but my buttons were wrong for MAME so I decided to reconfigure them.

I attached a PS/2 keyboard to the pass thru and used the CTRL-ALT-P interactive mode to bring up the configuration menu, I reset the IPAC to MAME defaults and saved.

Now, my buttons all seem to work fine but none of the sticks do anything at all, they send no input at all, like they’re totally dead.. But I KNOW they were working before I did the reset.  I used the Mac configuration utility to confirm they’re supposedly configured but they fail to send any input. My buttons work but none of my sticks do, does that make any sense? Is there a way to fix this? I can’t reconfigure the sticks in I-Pac's interactive mode because they’re not seen when I move them.

[gravitar80]

None of my 4 8-way joysticks show any input in the I-Pac utility, but the 4 way joystick was crashing it with any motion, the app would lose connection to the board for a few seconds.

Is it possible this could happen if I put an LED on the wrong pins of the LED header? I took the one i have off to inspect it and I'm 95% sure I got it back on the same pins, but it's not lighting anymore (it did before) and after removing it the 4 way joystick no longer crashes the board, it sends bad input though and moving it around for a few seconds kills half the buttons that work before you touch the 4-way stick.

Regardless of whether this is something I did, does it sound like my I-Pac board is fried? Is there any hope that something else is wrong, like a short or something? It seems unlikely to be wiring to me because all 4 8-way sticks are 100% dead. I'm OK with ordering a new I-Pac if that's what I have to do to fix this but if it's avoidable I'd rather avoid it.

[Titchgamer]

Have you tried unplugging all of the LED's and testing just the controls out of interest?

Unless you have a short between the 2 circuits somehow I think it unlikely to be anything to do with the LED side of things.

But if there is some kind of short between the 2 different circuits that will cause you much grief I would guess!!

[AndyWarne]

If the sticks are not responding in the interactive menu, the problem is likely to be wiring.

In particular a break in the ground daisy-chain which would cause multiple switches not to work.

[gravitar80]

Thanks, Andy. I'll try to track down a break in the ground wire and see if I can find it.

[gravitar80]

Ahahaha, I found the problem.  The LED had its ground wired in with the ground on the joysticks, so when i had it plugged in wrong or not plugged in, of course they don't work.

Thanks for the advice, Andy. Got it working now!!

[gravitar80]

Still have an issue with buttons 5, 6, & 7 for players 3 & 4. They don't send any signal to the I-Pac but they look to be connected properly.

It can't be a ground issue because the non-working buttons are all on the same ground wire as other buttons that do work, in some cases a non-working button is on the ground right in between two other buttons that work.  Odd that it's only the player 3 & 4 buttons above button 4 that don't work, is this a familiar problem to anyone?

[Titchgamer]

There is no need to have more than 4 buttons for p3 & 4

[gravitar80]

There's admittedly not MUCH need for buttons 5-7 on player 3 & 4, they're available as inputs on the I-Pac and they're wired up so they should work.

I llke to set up my button mappings differently for certain games like NBA Jam where instead of using the row of buttons 1-3 I prefer to map buttons 1, 4, & 7 (closest to the stick) instead. But I can't do that with button 7 totally dead.

[Titchgamer]

Well it could still be a ground problem, loose/bad connection,
Could also be the same on the "live" side.
You can also check the switches with a multimeter set to ohms to prove they are ok. but as its the same buttons for both players I think it more likely to be a software/programming issue.

Have you checked they have been mapped in the Ipac utility?

[gravitar80]

Using the I-Pac utility, the buttons in question don't send a signal regardless of whether they've been mapped or not.  Seems like a hardware issue but it has to be something different than the ground problem I had earlier.

[Titchgamer]

You can test your switches and wiring with a multimeter.

[gravitar80]

I'm going to have to do that, the player 3 and 4 joysticks are sending a signal to the IPac but it's not on the correct inputs AT ALL.  The player 3 joystick is firing buttons 5 & 6 for player 2 instead of up and down for player 3. The rest of the directions are similarly cross signaling.

I ordered a multimeter from Amazon, I'll try testing with that when I get it. 

[PL1]

The player 3 joystick is firing buttons 5 & 6 for player 2 instead of up and down for player 3.

Are you using the factory default settings?

There are some overlapping keystrokes.

Why does the IPac4 use I, K, J, and L for Player 2 Button 5-8 and Player 3 directional default keys?

Scott

[Titchgamer]

In that case as Scott says its almost certainly due to incorrect mapping in software.

[gravitar80]

No. That's not the issue. This has nothing to do with software or keyboard mappings, I am using the I-Pac utility to test it and I'm seeing my signals coming in on the wrong I-Pac inputs.

I traced the wiring of the player 4 button 5 and it is wired up to the proper P4SW5 input of the I-Pac. The wire travels nowhere NEAR the wire that leads to P1SW2, but pressing the player 4 button 5 activates player 1 button 2.  I traced the ground on the misbehaving button and that ground passes through several working buttons before going to one of the GROUND terminals on the I-Pac.

Everything LOOKS normal, I suppose when my multimeter comes i'll be able to test to see if the signal is going to the correct I-Pac input or if I have some sort of a hidden short.

[Titchgamer]

If the button is showing up on the utility when pressed (even showing up as the wrong input) it is wired correctly.

I would suspect its mapped incorrectly

 ie p1 button 2 = 2 on keyboard
& p4 button 5 = 2 on keyboard

That way when you press it shows as p1 button 2 which is correctly mapped in the utility/board and not p4.

[Titchgamer]

Just to test it you can swap the mapping for p1 b2 to something else then see what happens.

[gravitar80]

You're right, the unofficial Mac I-Pac utility I used didn't actually configure the player 3 and 4 controls, despite appearing to. They were still set to mame defaults on the I-Pac, the utility was lying to me.

I used the direct interactive mode and set them properly, I think it will work now but I haven't tested yet.  Thanks for the help.

[Titchgamer]

Good stuff no prob