Simple explanation of I-pac

[osman]

Hello All,

I am new to this Mame stuff and I am drooling to build my first machine.

Theirs a great satisfaction to playing a system that you made with your own hands.

My problem is the coin mechanism, I understand that I-pac is used to register coins to the pc game, but how? How does the game detect that a coin has been put in, does the i-pac hit a keyboard funciton or something, and what is this Shift-key I have been reading about.

I have went to the ultimarc website but it doesn't offer an easy chidish explanation.

If someone has pictures of how it works with detailed descriptions, please help me out.

If I wanted to play the voin version of the u64 killer instinct 1and2, how does it know when a coin has been put in?
-Thanks,
-Osman

[StarChild]

The ipac is meant to translate microswitch presses with keyboard presses.  

When you use MAME, you're pressing keys to emulate the joystick and button presses of the arcade.  The IPAC is wired to the switches and joysticks.  When you wire up a cabinet, you use the IPAC to interface your arcade control devices to your computer via the USB or PS/2 interface.

From http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

I-PAC The world's most advanced PC interface for buttons and joysticks.

-*

[XtraSmiley]

Simple answer, you can just set a press to equal a coin insertion.  I think the coolest way to do it is to set it so that when you hit coin return (pressing in on the lighted orange part of the coin box, in the arcades used to get your quarter back if it got stuck) to count as a coin drop.  That way you don't have to use coins, but it still counts as a drop when you push it in.  Let me know if you need it spelled out simpler than this.

[pointdablame]

Simple answer, you can just set a press to equal a coin insertion.  I think the coolest way to do it is to set it so that when you hit coin return (pressing in on the lighted orange part of the coin box, in the arcades used to get your quarter back if it got stuck) to count as a coin drop.  That way you don't have to use coins, but it still counts as a drop when you push it in.  Let me know if you need it spelled out simpler than this.

Wiring up the coin returns for coins is cool, but it doesn't really answer his question.

Basically, when you drop a coin in a coin mechanism the coin drops and hits a wire which is connected to a microswitch.  You would wire up that microswitch to the Ipac to correspond the the '5' key in MAME, which is the input for coin 1.  Then, its just like every other button put through the Ipac.... you push a button, the Ipac recognizes it and converts it to the correct keystroke, and MAME does its thing.

So... coin goes in, hits wire connected to switch, switch is connected to Ipac, Ipac sends coin input to MAME.... that't pretty much all there is to it.