iPac woes

[MameMe]

I added 2 extra buttons to my control panel, one purple and one yellow.  The purple was added so that I could 'Pause' the game I was playing, and yellow was added to 'Exit' back to the Mamewah screen.

Okay so the letter "P" pauses and "Esc" key escapes if I use a keyboard right? Right.  So I connected the purple button to my ipac's Player 1 button 7.  I connected the yellow button to Player 2's button 7.  I connected to #7 because I only have 6 buttons per player.

Okay so how do I change my ipac/mamewah/mame or whatever I need to change to do what I need to do?  Please I'm soo close to finishing the CP.  Btw it took me 2 hours to wire and it worked on the first try..wahoo  Except I can't figure out this last problem.

[crashwg]

you need to change a jumper on the I-pac, says something like mame/alt???

you will also need the program found at http://www.ultimarc.com/download.html

Good luck

[microwrx]

The default MAME setting on the I-PAC and other Ultimarc encoders is SHIFT+PLAYER 2 START for ESC and SHIFT+PLAYER 1 DOWN for pause (SHIFT being PLAYER 1 START).  If you want to change them to something else you will have to use the ALT jumper setting and program the encoder with the WinIPAC software.

[Ghoward]

The default MAME setting on the I-PAC and other Ultimarc encoders is SHIFT+PLAYER 2 START for ESC and SHIFT+PLAYER 1 DOWN for pause (SHIFT being PLAYER 1 START).  If you want to change them to something else you will have to use the ALT jumper setting and program the encoder with the WinIPAC software.

Cool I always wanted to know how to pause the game with an IPac but never got around to asking anyone.

Gary

[SirPoonga]

The default ipac mappings suck for many reasons.  Anyway, the default mappings are located either int he instrucitons or the FAQ of the IPAC on ultimarc.com.

[microwrx]

The default ipac mappings suck for many reasons.  Anyway, the default mappings are located either int he instrucitons or the FAQ of the IPAC on ultimarc.com.

Funny you should mention that.  Pause stopped working for me last week, the shift button still works for everything else and the unshifted function works still just not pause.  I reckon if I reboot the PC it'll probably be fine but I haven't bothered yet.

[big_garryb]

im also having ipac trouble - didnt wanna start a new thread.

First, im getting married and moving house all at the same time - and the wife to be has allowed me 1/2 on a tues & thurs night for cab work.......... so not much gets done as you might guess....

ANYWAY MY PROBLEMS IS THIS:
got the ipac rigged up and working, played some double dragon etc etc etc. However everytime i tried to save my winipac settings at said not saved. Not much of i prob i thought as my 1/2 hour came to an end. I will get it thursday.

But when i boot it up on thursday none of the arcade controls work........ when i disconnect and reconect the ipac it gives me the du-dum (new add-on detected) sound. But nothing works.

Before i spend my next wife-allocated half hour un-doing the wiring, is there maybe something stupid i aint thought about.

thanks for any help - and feel free to laugh about being time-restricted by the other-half........ i know some of you are the same really!!!!!!

garry

[whammoed]

im also having ipac trouble - didnt wanna start a new thread.

First, im getting married and moving house all at the same time - and the wife to be has allowed me 1/2 on a tues & thurs night for cab work.......... so not much gets done as you might guess....

ANYWAY MY PROBLEMS IS THIS:
got the ipac rigged up and working, played some double dragon etc etc etc. However everytime i tried to save my winipac settings at said not saved. Not much of i prob i thought as my 1/2 hour came to an end. I will get it thursday.

But when i boot it up on thursday none of the arcade controls work........ when i disconnect and reconect the ipac it gives me the du-dum (new add-on detected) sound. But nothing works.

Before i spend my next wife-allocated half hour un-doing the wiring, is there maybe something stupid i aint thought about.

thanks for any help - and feel free to laugh about being time-restricted by the other-half........ i know some of you are the same really!!!!!!

garry

(I assume you are using USB) Once in Windows 2000 I had to to into the device manager and remove the Ipac entries, then unplug the ipac and plug it back in.  It was fine then.  I believe I found that info on the ultimarc site.  Check there as well and email andy if you can't get it resolved.

[chrisinauz]

Hahaha i'd die before some girlfriend or wife said "your only allowed to work on your cab thursday and tuesday night" hahahah....

[Soulcon]

Sounds like you might be un married

My wife is very understanding in the aspect of cab building. That is as long as I build her a pacman Cocktail . But this whole thing is the same thing that is happening with me. How I am fixing it is I am double wiring. What this means is basically this.

You have one ground four your purple button that is shared with all other grounds. And one power button for your purple and one for your other button. So lets say youwant to wire the exit key to th epurple button what you would need to do is. Solder two positive wires to your Poistive tab. Then run one wire to P2 start and p1 start. Now when you press the one Purple button it will simulate you pressing Both P1 and P2 causing you to exit the game. Do the same for Pause and you should have both buttons as happy as a clam.

-Soul

[MameMe]

Call me crazy or call me retarded but I don't have a "jumper" that indicates MAME or anything like that.  The closest thing on the board is a strip of pins but non of them are labelled and there isn't a little jumper to move aroun.  These rows of pins look similar to a HDD's where you move the pin according to Primary or Slave, etc...

But again its not labelled nor is there a pin connector thingy to move around.

Any ideas?

[Soulcon]

You have the newer version like I do. Apperently the Jumper is not needed anylonger. However I haven't the slightest clue on how to test if you do need one.

-Soul

[MameMe]

Okay cool so I don't need a jumper.  Now I got the ipac programming utility installed and I setup all my buttons etc...

When I click Program I get an error telling me to "download failed: reconnect ipac". I do what it says but with no luck it still won't program.

Wtf is up with this?  This should be easier.  Btw I have a 2 player ipac connected via ps2.  And under the options button I have ps/2 selected & ipac/2.

 

[MameMe]

Looks like its only getting worse for me.  I can't program this ipac/2 & now  most of my buoons are mapped out all out of whack.  HOW DO I RESET MY IPAC?

[Scoobie]

There seems to be a trend happening...I too have the newer Ipac VE (usb only, no jumpers).

I wired my control panel and both joysticks and all buttons worked, except for the following:

Pause
Tab
Enter
coin 1 & 2
Player 1 & 2 start
Player 2 buttons 5 & 6

I then opened the Interactive Design Software and started laying out and mapping the buttons to the proper key presses, so all the buttons would be recognized.

This completely messed up everything, including the joysticks and buttons that worked before!

I tried mapping the buttons by pressing them (this either gave me a wrong key press, or no key press was recognized at all).

I also tried using both the interactive and regular keyboards to get the software to recognize my button presses.  This gave me the same error responses.

What am I doing wrong?

Please help!

[clanggedin]

My player 2 buttons 5 and 6 weren't working in MAME either, but I found out that for some reason they are not given values by default. Go into a game and press "tab" then select "General Input" and map button 5 to "i" and 6 to "k".

That fixed it for me. Now, I have an IPAC4 ps/2 version and when I try and program p1 b7 to "p" I get a "device not found" error in WinXP.

[Tiger-Heli]

Sounds like you might be un married

My wife is very understanding in the aspect of cab building. That is as long as I build her a pacman Cocktail . But this whole thing is the same thing that is happening with me. How I am fixing it is I am double wiring. What this means is basically this.

You have one ground four your purple button that is shared with all other grounds. And one power button for your purple and one for your other button. So lets say youwant to wire the exit key to th epurple button what you would need to do is. Solder two positive wires to your Poistive tab. Then run one wire to P2 start and p1 start. Now when you press the one Purple button it will simulate you pressing Both P1 and P2 causing you to exit the game. Do the same for Pause and you should have both buttons as happy as a clam.

-Soul

If I read this right, what you are doing is wiring one button to both the P1 and P2 Start inputs to have an exit button.

This won't work reliably b/c the I-PAC expects P1Start THEN P2Start, not both simultaneously.

You can do it if you wire a resistor and capacitor into the circuit as shown at http://www.ultimarc.com/extra_shift.html

[Scoobie]

Okay, I was able to get all the buttons working.  It turns out that when using the Ipac VE, you need to program in "Table View" and not "Panel View".  The Table View shows all the inputs on the Ipac VE, where the Panel View only shows the inputs on a regular Ipac2 (even though the Winipac software is recognizing my board as a VE and not a regular Ipac2).

So now that I have the buttons working...the Ipac doesn't load my new panel/settings on the next power up.  I have saved and resaved, but I'm still getting the same result.  I'm only having a problem with the Pause, Esc, Tab and Enter buttons saving/loading.

Any thoughts on saving/loading the new panel settings on power down/up?  

Thanks!!

[Scoobie]

Here is what Andy at Ultimarc said about the Ipac VE:

"This is the main difference between the regluar I-PAC and the VE: it does not save settings.

So you will need to save your IPC file, and then run WinIPAC from a command
prompt each time you reboot. This can be placed in the startup group so it runs on re-boot. The command is Winipac.exe myconfig.ipc. myconfig.ipc being the name of the saved IPC file.

Andy"

Can someone explain how exactly I can set this up?  I haven't been able to reach Andy in the last couple days.

Thanks!!

[Tiger-Heli]

Here is what Andy at Ultimarc said about the Ipac VE:

"This is the main difference between the regluar I-PAC and the VE: it does not save settings.

So you will need to save your IPC file, and then run WinIPAC from a command
prompt each time you reboot. This can be placed in the startup group so it runs on re-boot. The command is Winipac.exe myconfig.ipc. myconfig.ipc being the name of the saved IPC file.

Andy"

Can someone explain how exactly I can set this up?  I haven't been able to reach Andy in the last couple days.

Thanks!!

Right-click on C:\autoexec.bat and select Edit.  At the end of the file, type in

C:\winipac myconfig.ipc

Save the file and close NotePad.

[Scoobie]

Right-click on C:\autoexec.bat and select Edit.  At the end of the file, type in

C:\winipac myconfig.ipc

Save the file and close NotePad.

Where do I find the C:\autoexec.bat file?  I looked in my C drive and did some searches, but came up empty.  Is it inside of another folder in the C drive?

Thanks!

[Tiger-Heli]

Right-click on C:\autoexec.bat and select Edit.  At the end of the file, type in

C:\winipac myconfig.ipc

Save the file and close NotePad.

Where do I find the C:\autoexec.bat file?  I looked in my C drive and did some searches, but came up empty.  Is it inside of another folder in the C drive?

Thanks!

You might not have one - Just type that line in a blank Notepad screen and save it as C:\autoexec.bat.

If your using WinXP, I'm not sure if this still works, if not then go to C:\winipac and right click on winipac.exe and select Create shortcut. Right-click the shortcut and select properties and put that line in the Target field of the shortcut.  Then drag the shortcut to the startup folder of your Start - Programs menu.

[Scoobie]

You might not have one - Just type that line in a blank Notepad screen and save it as C:\autoexec.bat.

If your using WinXP, I'm not sure if this still works, if not then go to C:\winipac and right click on winipac.exe and select Create shortcut. Right-click the shortcut and select properties and put that line in the Target field of the shortcut.  Then drag the shortcut to the startup folder of your Start - Programs menu.

I am using XP Home and I tried both suggestions, but it didn't work.  The second suggestion of putting "that line" in the startup folder seems like it should work...What exactly do I type in the "Target" field in the Winipac shortcut properties?  I typed "C:\autoexec.bat" (wtihout the quotes) in the "Target" field.  I then tried typing "C:\winipac myconfig.ipc" (without quotes), still nothing.

I even changed the name of my .ipc file in winipac to "myconfig.ipc" (it was just named "Winipac.ipc".  Neither of these worked either.

Just to be clear, I'm using the IpacVE (USB only, no jumpers).  Andy at Ultimarc tells me that I need to run a command promt each time I reboot, and that I can put this command in my startup folder.

Tiger-Heli,
This sounds like what you are expaining, only without the command prompt.  Is it even possible to have winipac run (and load/program) on startup?  I hope I don't need to manually use the mouse/trackball to click "program" in wininpac each time I reboot.  

I don't know why this would be...Andy makes very good products and this would be a big setback for one's use in a cab.

Please help me?!

Thank you!!!

[reebboy]

I also bought an I-pac4 USB version several months back and had numerous programming problems with it. As far as I'm concerned, thers is no good instructions on how to set it up. The WINIPAC looks simple enough to program but it either said I had to reconnect the IPAC or the settings on the screen were not being programed into the IPAC. I just gave up and used the Notepad way of programming which I found to be much simpler. All you do is press the button you want to program on your control panel and it asks you what key you want to assign to it.

[Tiger-Heli]

First, a dumb question - You DID open the Winipac software, program your desired keys and SAVE this as myconfig.ipc, correct?

I might see the problem.  I think target field should be C:\winipac\winipac myconfig.ipc

Otherwise, I'm going out on a limb here, but . . .

First, assume you have a folder of C:\winipac. and this folder contains winipac.exe and myconfig.ipc.

Now, go to the command prompt (Start-Programs-All Programs-Accessories-Command Prompt).

Type CD\ and enter (should be at the C:\ prompt)
Type CD Winipac and enter (should be at the C:\Winipac prompt)
Type "winipac.exe myconfig.ipc" (without the quotes) and enter.

Now try your controls and see if the new configs loaded.  This verifies that the software loaded the I-PAC correctly.  If it didn't work, then there's either a problem with the board or the software, e-mail Andy about that.  If it did work, do the following:

Open Notepad and type in the following:

cd\
cd winipac
winipac.exe myconfig.ipc

Save the file in txt mode in the winipac folder as "winipac.bat".  Then right click and "Create Shortcut" and copy the shortcut to your startup folder.

[Scoobie]

Yes, I did use the winipac software and programed it.  Everything worked okay, it just didn't run on reboot.

Well, the solution was "Taret: c:\winipac\winipac myconfig.ipc"

That did it!  It now loads on reboot!  

I've been telling people how great and helpful this community is.

Thanks again for the help, Tiger-Heli!!