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Uh oh... ran out of buttons on my I-PAC2...

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sofakng:

Well, due to poor planning on my part I have a problem.

I'm building my control panel and I have an I-PAC2.  My overlay artwork (already printed) is designed for a couple of extra buttons, only about 3.  These 3 are administration buttons (game pause, game options, etc) but I thought I was going to have enough spots on the I-PAC to put everything.

Here are my buttons:

1) Player 1 -- 7 buttons
2) Player 2 -- 7 buttons
3) Player 1 Joystick -- 4 buttons
4) Player 2 Joystick -- 4 buttons
5) Administration buttons -- 4 buttons
6) Start buttons -- 2 buttons
7) Credit buttons -- 2 buttons

(I also have another 4-way joystick with buttons, but they will share the player #1 buttons)

Total = 30 buttons

The I-PAC2 only has 28 inputs.  Now I also have an Opti-Pac and that has spots for two buttons-- left and right mouse button (which I also use on my control panel).

So am I stuck?  Is there a trick I'm missing to squeeze two more buttons out of this keyboard encoder?  

I've purchased it about 6 weeks ago (but never hooked it up yet), but I doubt I can exchange it for an I-PAC4.  I'm not sure I'd want to though just for two lousy buttons, but at the same time I don't want two useful buttons sitting on my control panel.

Any suggestions?



whammoed:

I have no idea if this would work, but perhaps you could set up a shift function on the ipac.  Say player1 start and player1 button 1 = something.  Then wire up a button that would trigger both player1 start and player1 button1. (attatch both wires to the NO position of the microswitch)  Again, not sure it would work, just a thought.  And I hope that made sense!

MrBond:

Exactly what I was thinking!   ...but I don't know if it would work or not...

RayB:

Personally I always though the 7 button layout is overkill. So perhaps you can remove those two extra buttons from that layout.... Just color one of the 6 differently, for games that need only 1 button.


MrBond:


--- Quote from: whammoed on July 12, 2004, 10:21:49 pm ---I have no idea if this would work, but perhaps you could set up a shift function on the ipac.  Say player1 start and player1 button 1 = something.  Then wire up a button that would trigger both player1 start and player1 button1. (attatch both wires to the NO position of the microswitch)  Again, not sure it would work, just a thought.  And I hope that made sense!

--- End quote ---

I just tried this out.  I connected both my shift key and down (a button that has a shift function: p for pause) to the same button.  When the button was pressed, the IPAC registered the down button first, then when I let go, it registered '1' (my shift key).  Some times I could get both 1 and down to register at the same time, but never 'p'.  I was using leaf switches, but I doubt it will be any different for microswitches.
Curious if anyone gets this to work...

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