[solved] IPAC: Enter key stops repeating when held down

[TheElectricMonk]

I've cloned my arcade machine to a friend's cabinet and we noticed a problem with a few racing games...

I have my Player One Button 1 wired as Enter, so I can move through Windows Explorer menus and such in a pinch if I need to troubleshoot something. I have no shifted keys set up.

For all other keys, when I hold them down, the IPAC sends a continuous key stream to the computer. However, with P1B1, sending the Enter key seems to stop after a while. Very quickly in Night Driver on MAME, rather quickly on Super Mario Kart on the SNES, and after about 15 seconds in Out Run on MAME.

Now my guess is that Windows is not programmed for situations in which the Enter key is constantly being spammed. I get that. The weird thing is, it worked on my old machine without a problem.
My old machine has an IPAC with a PS/2 plug, while my friend's newer IPAC is the current USB version. I also seem to recall readiing somewhere that using the different connectors is responsible for this phenomenon.

My question is twofold:

a) Can I configure my friend's USB IPAC to send Enter repeatedly like my old PS/2 IPAC did?
b) If that isn't possible, would a USB to PS/2 adapter like the one in the attached picture help?

I'd very much like to avoid having to reconfigure the whole system from the Enter key to something else (especially since a long time ago I configured all roughly 3000 MAME roms on the machine manually for each game...)

[adder]

there is usually two 'enter' keys on a keyboard ('enter key', and 'return key' ... one could be on your numeric keypad), you could try to set the ipac P1B1 to your other enter key.  you may not need to reconfigure in mame, as i think mame might accept either 'enter' key on your keyboard.  perhaps the other 'enter' key you use will repeat properly.

perhaps something else you can try ....  also do a test in windows, if you open eg. a notepad/wordpad screen, then one at a time try both 'enter' keys there to see if either one of them doesnt keep repeating

[AndyWarne]

The I-PAC treats all keys the same, there is no different behaviour of Enter.

This could be confirmed by running a keyboard test program which displays held keys. That would be the first thing to try.
The keyboard test at www.passmark.com is good, it has a 30-day trial.

Andy

[BadMouth]

I've cloned my arcade machine to a friend's cabinet and we noticed a problem with a few racing games...
For all other keys, when I hold them down, the IPAC sends a continuous key stream to the computer. However, with P1B1, sending the Enter key seems to stop after a while. Very quickly in Night Driver on MAME, rather quickly on Super Mario Kart on the SNES, and after about 15 seconds in Out Run on MAME.

What exactly are you mapping the Enter key to in MAME?
To me it sounds like it's mapped to an analog control and MAME isn't configured correctly.
A pic of the mapping in MAME and the settings under Analog Controls (also in MAME's in-game  menu) would help.

Also, is this an official MAME build or some other one like MAMEUI?


EDIT: Fork keyboard testing, my preference is the KADE utility (despite not owning any KADE products)
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=131879.0
It shows multiple key presses simultaneously.  Some other utilities do not.

[adder]

For keyboard testing, my preference is the KADE utility (despite not owning any KADE products)

download link:
http://www.kadevice.net/loader/utils/

[TheElectricMonk]

Thanks for all of your replies - the solution turned out to be something completely different.

The "Left" key had "Enter" set as its shifted key, so whenever I was holding down Enter and pressed left (as you occasionally do in a racing game), the key release for Enter was triggered and the constant "Enter stream" was interrupted. We found this out today while playing R-Type when the charged shot would suddenly fire for no apparent reason.

Anyway, I cleared the shifted Enter key, and now it works like a charm!