Doh! I think I screwed up!

[mamefreak2]

Hey everyone, I'm new here. Like most of you, I'm a huge fan of classic arcade games and wanted to have my own cabinet. This site has been a tremendous help. Thanks!

Here's where I'm at. I bought an old cabinet and have begun refurbing it. I rebuilt a custom control panel with graphics that have been printed out on a plotter and it looks great. I've cut the holes through the plexi-glass and I'm at the point of getting ready to wire this thing up. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the I-Pac would only allow so many buttons. So now I'm kind of stuck. Because I had already thown in lots of buttons to make the cabinet easy to use.

The control panel is cut for 2 players with 6 buttons each. I also have a 4-way joystick with 3 buttons (one of which I was thinking of using as an enter button)

Here are the buttons I wanted to put in:

Escape, Tab, Volume, Coin1, Coin2, Service, Reset & Pause. I also had a slot on the control panel for an enter button, but I do not need to use it.

The I-Pac looks like it will allow for 4 of these, plus Coins 1 and 2. I don't really feel like wasting a bunch of money on a bigger I-Pac so, my questions to you are as follows.

1. Can I get by without an enter button? When I use a sidewinder joystick, button A seems to function as an enter button so I'm wondering if I really need it.

2. Could I wire Coin1 and Coin2 together to get an extra button to function properly or are there certain games that this might cause problems with?

3. If I can get away without using an enter button, I'm thinking I'll probably just wire up the Tab, Esc, Reset and Pause buttons, does that make sense to you?

4. Is the service button really necessary for these games? I've only used it once for Joust and that's about it.

Thanks in advance. I really appreciate the help that this website has provided.

[Rocky]

The biggest way you can "save" buttons for your Ipac2 is by running your 4-way in parallel with Player 1's 8-way joystick.

Basically have them use the same inputs (by daisy-chaining wires from one to the other). The only problem is that both joysticks will be active at all times. I do it this way and have not had any problems.

Good luck,

Rocky

(And welcome to the boards  )

[mamefreak2]

Rocky,

Thanks! I had actually planned on wiring the 4-way and its buttons with the player 1 and player 2 joysticks from the beginning. I figured that since I had enough space on the control panel it would be nice to play pac-man and donkey kong without any issues.

[Biff Byford]

Don't forget that you can use the iPAC's shift functionality to get multiple functions out of each button.

For example, I have a 4-player panel using an iPAC4, and wanted only one 'Coin' button. I made the Coin button the iPAC's Shift key, and had it affect the 'Player Start' buttons. So, if you want to play a one-player game, you'd hit Coin and then Player 1 Start. If you want a two-player game, you hit Coin/Player 2 Start (to insert the coin) and then Player 2 Start again (to begin the game).

(A side note for anyone that's trying to do this -- I couldn't get the shift key to affect any buttons wired to the 'Player Start' inputs, so I simply moved them to another port on the IPAC and sorted it all out with the keymapping software.)

You can get a lot of mileage out of the iPAC shift functionality if you're creative. Another thing to consider is using shift combinations to make your admin functions a little less accessible. For example, in my setup you have to hit 'Coin/Escape' (instead of just Escape) to exit the front end, and 'Coin/Tab' (instead of Tab) to deploy the front end's admin menu. This prevents kids who are banging randomly on your CP from winding up back in Windows or in your admin menu -- "Daaad, it's broooken agaaain ..." (The above examples were mapped in the front end, not on the iPAC.)

Have fun!

[mamefreak2]

Thanks Biff,

I had no idea you could do that. So the next question is HOW do you do that? Is it in mame that I'm supposed to do this?

Also, will I need an enter button as well? Thanks.

[SoundDoc]

You can also wire additional buttons to the extra shift function as Andy shows on this page:
www.ultimarc.com/extra_shift.html
Thats thr route I went, I have a 16 button "extra" keypad thats wired to my cab, out of the way, but adds for some extra controls when needed.

sd

[danny_galaga]

Thanks Biff,

I had no idea you could do that. So the next question is HOW do you do that? Is it in mame that I'm supposed to do this?

Also, will I need an enter button as well? Thanks.

ipac is programmable. go to their site and you will find the software to download. i havent tried it myself though as it scares me!! but from what ive heard its not supposed to be hard. you can then customise any function in ipac to suit your requirements. for instance, the default for enter on an ipac is player one (p1 is a default shift) and left joystick. but you can change it to whatever you want. maybe just a fire button for enter for instance...

[Tiger-Heli]

Welcome to the hobby, as others have said, you can use the shift functions to eliminate specific buttons and still have the inputs available.  I will try to answer your specific questions below:

1. Can I get by without an enter button? When I use a sidewinder joystick, button A seems to function as an enter button so I'm wondering if I really need it.

Depends - I use EmuLoader for a frontend and the only way to launch a game is enter or a mouse click.  In MAME, if you disable startup screens, then you can move the joystick left and right, or run NoNAMEMAME and disable all nag screens, and then you don't really need enter at all.

2. Could I wire Coin1 and Coin2 together to get an extra button to function properly or are there certain games that this might cause problems with?

Will cause problems with games like Gauntlet and Quartet which were looking for individual coin slots.

3. If I can get away without using an enter button, I'm thinking I'll probably just wire up the Tab, Esc, Reset and Pause buttons, does that make sense to you?

Tab - Personally, I would prefer to leave this off - Only required for config changes and I prefer to swap the I-PAC for a keyboard and do that and then swap the I-PAC back in so only I and not accidentally someone else can mess with my MAME setup.

Esc - Yes, I recommend this one.  If you want to save space or inputs, set Pause as your shift key, and then Pause + P1 Start as Escape.

Reset - I assume you mean F3 - Can be useful if you don't hit it accidentally, but it's about as easy to escape to the frontend and restart the game.  I wouldn't go out of my way for this one.

Pause - If I could only have one admin button on the panel it would be this one, I would disable the Coin 2 before I left it off, but you could activate it via a shift function.

4. Is the service button really necessary for these games? I've only used it once for Joust and that's about it.

Service for the Williams (Joust) games is F2 - you will press it the first time you launch the game and then you can forget about it.  Like Tab, connect a keyboard, set up the game, plug the I-PAC back in.

[mamefreak2]

Thanks for all of the help guys.