Bringing back my monster from the dead

[tayl428]

Hi all, I finally retrieved my mame cabinet that's been in storage at my parent's garage on the other side of the universe from around 2004 and I'm looking to resurrect it. The MDF has survived amazingly well. I could use some early advise on the controls side. I currently have a KE72-T in it with both a Happ trackball and cheap mouse encoder spinner, (2 8-way joysticks and 1 4 way joystick), 6 buttons each player (2), 4 misc buttons, and P1 and P2 start buttons.  Now that PS2 is pretty much gone, does the KE72 still work fine with newer Windows if I just convert the PS2 hardware to USB, the RS232 to USB, and try it? Or, will the dos-based KE72LOAD.EXE belch at looking for PS2 keyboard ports, RS232 COM1 ports, etc?  Any recommendations of where to start are greatly appreciated so it might save me some time early on. I'm excited to get back onboard.
(p.s. I'm not sure yet if the KE72 even still works still but working on that in the next day or two once I find some PS2 to USB connectors).

[arfink]

The ps2 side will likely work just fine with a USB adapter but serial mouse likely will not. I'd look at an iPac if you can not get this old encoder working with a modern PC.

[nexusmtz]

Many PS2 to USB adapters don't handle multiple simultaneous key presses. You'd have to find one that specifically states that how many keys it can handle.

[tayl428]

Thanks much for the advice. Sounds like the PS2 stuff will be more trouble than it's worth to test out and I should jump on the iPac wagon.  I just really hated to trash the KE72, she was a good 'ol girl back in the day.