Replacing an ipac 4 in an arcade cabinet

[fjser]

Hello everyone - I have a 8 year old pedestal arcade cabinet (4 player) that uses an ipac 4 for controls.  It appears the ipac has blown, as when i plug it into a windows i get a hardware malfunction error and I dont see any lights on the ipac at all.  Two questions:

1) Anyone have any suggestion/confirmation on fixing the ipac4 or confirming its fried?

2) If i replace it, should i stick with an ipac4, or switch to joystick encoders?  Ive used joystick encoders with my more recent projects using Pi4 images, but I have never used them on a full sized PC build.  Will windows have any trouble mixing up controllers on reboot if there are 4 or more generic usb joystick encoders attached? any downside to using ipac over joytick encoders?


 

[PL1]

2) If i replace it, should i stick with an ipac4, or switch to joystick encoders?  Ive used joystick encoders with my more recent projects using Pi4 images, but I have never used them on a full sized PC build.  Will windows have any trouble mixing up controllers on reboot if there are 4 or more generic usb joystick encoders attached? any downside to using ipac over joytick encoders?

If you were happy with the old IPac4, it makes sense to use the same thing again.
- You'll probably need to get the new version of the WINIPAC software for your new board.
- You'll probably need to go through your MAME settings so you can program the new board the same as the old one.
-- For example, there is overlap between some of the MAME and IPAC4 defaults (yellow) so some of those, and maybe some others, were probably changed and you might want to remove the "P1 Start" + "P1 Joy Right" shifted function (TAB) since you don't want button-mashing kids or drunk friends getting into the MAME menu system.



The Windows device renumbering issue you mention is enough of a reason for some people to stick with keyboard encoders instead of switching to gamepad encoders.


Scott