Arcade1up MAME cab conversion; a few issues I'm stumped on!

[Pavlovtiger]

I've been working on my Arcade1Up mod for a couple years now and semi-recently got (most of) my components.  It's all running off a Dell PC serving up MAME and a couple other arcade-heavy emulators, and the last week I've been putting in heavy work trying to finish.

This is a 4-player setup, driven off an Ultimarc Ipac Ultimate; all RGB LED channels are being used.  8 player buttons for the two centre control banks, and 3 each for the left/rightmost areas (naturally these are meant for Player 1 and Player 4 on 4P games like TMNT.)  I have a Spintrak spinner and 8 additional buttons up top for tab/pause/service/escape.  Control panel is a custom from X99LivesArcade.  I just added two double-entry coin doors from XArcade, for a total of four coin mechs.

My issues so far: far-right-side joystick is completely nonfunctional in MAME.  To my knowledge I've wired it correctly, and to the marked wires on the Ipac.  No connections seem to have popped off, they're all there, everything is grounded, I just don't GET anything from it.

The far-left-side joystick does give me something in MAME, but due to how cramped the custom panel is, I was forced to mount the two outside sticks at a bit of a tilted angle.  I can't imagine that should -really- affect things, especially given how those players would have to stand at an angle, but that left stick refuses to send (what amounts to) Left or Right directions.  Up/Down work fine.  I can't get MAME to recognise left/right even if I physically trip the microswitches for those with a pen cap.

Lastly, and this might be the source of the other issues, but I notice that if I touch any of the four joystick shafts with a metal object, the ball tops light up.  They're meant to be RGB ball tops, but...isn't that a BAD thing if that happens if I touch with metal?  Isn't this indicative of a grounding issue?  I ask because ALL the other controls...including the four microswitches in the coin mechs...function as desired in MAME.  I was under the impression that if any ground point failed to be solid, the entire chain would be rendered useless.

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions, I'll provide any other info necessary.  I obviously understand I've very possibly crammed an inadvisable amount of Stuff into this bloody thing.  My only other thought is it could be a USB power issue, but all I can say to that is I have a powered USB hub on the way.  As it is now, the Ipac is running off a normal USB port from the PC.

[Pavlovtiger]

As a quick addendum, the weird metal-contact phenomenon does not occur if I touch the joystick shafts with anything else apart from the metal keyboard I have hooked to the PC.  So that "loop" only happens with that.  Again, I'm not sure if this indicates bad ground or if that's simply one of those "of course that happens" truths of electricity.  As I mentioned, I remain under the impression that grounding an arcade control setup is all-or-nothing and it won't work if even one ground contact in the chain is not set...though I'm not sure if I'm correct on that or if it's less simple.

[Gilrock]

More details would help. 

1)  Do all 4 ball tops light up when you touch them or just the one you touch?
2)  What color are the ball tops when you use the metal keyboard to light them up?
3)  Are they the Ultimarc Servo Stiks?

If the led in the ball is wired so that the common is hot and then each color is latched to ground to light it up then one of those colors must be touching metal inside the shaft and so grounding it completes the circuit for that color.  If its the servo stiks I had one that was brand new and one of the colors did not work at all.  I tried to open it up to fix it but its near impossible to get the wires in or out of that shaft.

For any joystick switches that aren't working I would use standard troubleshooting practices.  Try to plug in a known good switch into that input and see if it works.  Try plugging in the one not working into a known good input.  You should be able to isolate what's bad.  But I would spend a lot of time being sure its not just a mapping issue before cutting any wires or anything irreversible.

[Pavlovtiger]

Only the ball top I touch with the plugged-in keyboard lights.  They always light up red.  Two of my sticks are Servostiks, only one of which is equipped with a motor, the other two are J-Stik.  All four sticks have been swapped out for the RGB ones, and all 32 four-across banks of pins on the Ipac have been used.  Lighting works as intended on every equipped LED, to my knowledge, and LEDBlinky runs the default rainbow light show when I fire up Hyperspin.

I have yet to dig into the six joystick microswitches that aren't sending anything to the Ipac, I'm a bit burnt out on the project and I plan to get back to it later tonight.  I appreciate your responce, feel free to keep them coming, literally anything is helpful, thank you for that.

[Gilrock]

If the ball tops are all lighting up correctly with the rainbow effect I wouldn't worry about it.  Most of us haven't tried touching a metal keyboard to our joystick shafts maybe we would all see that effect.

[Pavlovtiger]

It could be interesting.  For science.

[Gilrock]

I just don't recall ever seeing a metal keyboard.  Closest I can remember is an Apple keyboard which was made with an aluminum shell.

[Pavlovtiger]

Mine is a Corsair...something-or-other.  Mechanical, RGB keyboard, the lot.  It's dying, or at least won't respond to the Corsair software suite and the lighting refuses to change.  The frame is metal anyway, I just don't know why it took me so long to test a different metal object and realise that the keyboard is physically connected to the computer the LEDs are connected to.  It's completing a circuit.   

[Pavlovtiger]

In case anyone is reading topics for leisure and takes the smallest interest, enough to go, "oh, that's cool then," I sorted out my issues.

My ground wiring is fine.  WinIpac software has the Ultimate i/o's player 3/4 inputs disabled by default; simply enabling them let me select functions as per normal and everything works beautifully, even with the angled positions in which I was forced to mount the joystick hardware.

This discovery came more or less just in time for me to add a Pixelcade LCD marquee to my cabinet, and after THAT caused me about a week of grief setting up, that's wonderful too.  Now I'm just queuing on my Sinden light guns I sent away for, which I -might- get this year.  I might.  Hey, it could happen!