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.