"sticking" controls

[Sephroth57]

last night was my first real play time with my new controls and everything set up. the day before i tested a little bit, but i had only wired up the 1 player side, and everything seemed normal. so yesterday i hooked up both players wiring and me and my friend played all the way through metal slug 3. we noticed when going through it, that if we both pressed the same direction, at the same time, our chars would keep running that way until we wiggled the joysticks around and stuff, and it was really annoying cause metal slug is very easy to die in. then this morning i was playing marvel vs capcom and i noticed i would keep getting stuck in down-left or sometimes going to do a big swirlie move just wouldnt feel right.


since we figured out both player sides have something to do with each other, the only thing connecting them is the daisy chained ground, could this have something to do with it? I have both players sides grounded on 1 terminal on the i-pac. starts from the terminal, goes from 1P side all the way across to the last button on 2p side...

any ideas?

[OSCAR]

What joysticks are you using?

[Stingray]

I hope the daisy chained ground isn't the problem. I just started re-wiring my CP last night and I did the same, both players to one ground terminal on the IPAC.

-S

[Sephroth57]

happs competition 8 ways

[Sephroth57]

do you guys think the grounds thing will matter or not really? anyone else got ideas?

[Stingray]

It doesn't seem like that would be the cause to me, but I'll let you know if I get the same when I get mine back together. I'm using happs sticks too.

-S

[Sephroth57]

hmm i just went home for lunch and played some metal slug by myself, and the controls were still sticking. not just the joysticks sometimes the fire button would stop working for a sec if i moved a certain way its really weird...

[cdbrown]

I used to get mine sticking sometimes - Happs Super - and i  found that the actuator arm on the microswitch was too close to "hourglass" piece of the joystick.  During games it would register the movement and then get stuck.  I have now bent the actuators slightly so they are just not quite touching the joystick.  I don't know if it could help you at all.

[OSCAR]

I initially thought your joysticks may not be assembled correctly, that's why I asked what kind they were.  But since you are using Comp's, there's really not much you can do to those to assembly them wrong.  A Super or P360 will be sticky if the conical bushing is installed upside down, but the Comp uses a cylindrical spacer.  Also like cdbrown mentioned, the acutator levers on Supers can be not aligned properly, but that wouldn't be a problem on the Comp's.

If you open up notepad and type in characters with your controls, do you see the characters repeating like it is stuck?  If so, I suspect a definite wiring problem.  Do you happen to have any other joysticks you can swap in to see if the same thing happens?  If the notepad test is okay, then your MAME install is flaked out.  This has happened to me before, and what I do is just delete the entire MAME directory (except the roms folder!), and then unzip a fresh copy of MAME.

[Sephroth57]

well i tried the notepad thing and i couldnt get it to do it. its not doing it consistantly or in any type of pattern it just happens. but i played around in there for a while and couldnt get it to stick. i got the new mame32 .80 did a clean unzip moved the roms etc. and it still does it. also its not the just joysticks that get stuck its the buttons also, although they seem to only get stuck in conjuction with joystick use. because i was playing popnmusic and using buttons only and they dont seem to get stuck.

im really stumped here i hope someone can help me =(

[Apollo]

Try this. Go into "control panel" and then "keyboard". Under the "speed" tab set repeat delay to longest setting and the repeat rate to slowest possible ( if you are using WinXP that is, otherwise do the equivalent for your OS ).

[JustMichael]

Here is a short checklist:

1.  Make sure there are no loose wires flopping around causing problems.

2.  Make sure the ground wire(s) only go from a GND (ground) terminal on the I-PAC to the COM (common) tab on the microswitches.

3.  Make sure the input wires only go from an input pin (like BTN1 or COIN2, etc.) on the I-PAC to the NO (normally open) tab on the microswitches.  Please do not use multiple wires to 1 input unless you want more than 1 thing to activate that input.

With all of this done, your controls should work just fine.

[AndyWarne]

Some good info here. I would like to add a couple of points:
There is an excellent keyboard test program at www.passmark.com which I am going to recommend in the I-PAC troubleshooting section on our site when I update it. It is a 30 day free trial download. This should help to identify the problem.
Another issue: I am getting increasingly frequent reports of this problem from MAME32 users. It seems to be related to MAME32 itself, not the I-PAC. (the above mentioned keyboard test shows no problems). It happens with both USB and PS/2 keyboards (or I-PAC) but only a few users are affected. Every user who has contacted me about this has gone on to try regular MAME (eg with MAMEWAH) and the problem has gone away. I have not yet been able to find any common factor in the configuration of MAME32 which causes it. It's possble that Direct-X levels might affect it but this is only a wild guess. I'll keep monitoring the situation. There are some posts about the problem on the MAME32 message board, but no conclusive fix, other than not use MAME32.
Andy

[Sephroth57]

hmm, i planned on using MAMEWAH eventually but wasnt really into going through all the setup stuff... i guess ill try that and let you know what happens. thanks for the info

[u_rebelscum]

It's possble that Direct-X levels might affect it but this is only a wild guess.

Hmm, might be possible.  Mame32 compiles using dx5, mame uses dx7.  Has anyone with the problems tried recompiling after changing line 50 in src/ui/ui.mak to "-DDIRECTINPUT_VERSION=0x0700 \" (change the 5 to the 7)?

[slug54]

I had a similar problem with mame32, It would get stuck going to the right. what it turned out to be was
the joystick option was enabled in mame32 but I didn't have a "joystick" connected to the joystick port. just through the ipac. Dis-ableing the joystick option fixed it.

                            Slug
 

[Stingray]

Finished re-wiring my CP last night and have been playing all morning. I haven't had any sticking, so I would suspect that the ground ins't an issue.

-S