IPAC 4 and coin buttons not working

[Santo8742]

I have all of my buttons hooked up to the IPAC 4 and they are all functioning with the exception of the 4P coin door, 4 free credit buttons (each have coin door and free button wired into the same slot in the IPAC), and my 4 admin buttons. I checked the wiring and these buttons seem to be connected fine. In addition all of these buttons are at the end of the ground daisey chain, some at one end and some at the other end. The coin buttons were working fine a couple of days ago, but now nothing. I'm getting no signal for them in the winipac program. My question is, is it possible that the IPAC lost its program for these slots somehow making these buttons not register? If not, any other suggestions?

[Thenasty]

well you cna bypass the switch by shorting the wires together, so this will tell you if the switch is bad or you can use a continuity tester to see ig the switches are working properly. Also check the settings in MAME, I think 3 & 4 player settings don't have default settings (not sure). If all this check OK, then shoot for the IPAC.

[original_maxlamer]

Also check the settings in MAME, I think 3 & 4 player settings don't have default settings (not sure). If all this check OK, then shoot for the IPAC.

Mame has default keys assigned for players 3 & 4, and they also happen to also be the default keys in the ipac4 

Santo
If it was a programming issue, it would more likely just return to default key assignments.

When you said you checked the wiring, with a multimeter or just a visual check ??

[AndyWarne]

Probably worth some basic I-PAC troubleshooting tips at this point.
Firstly these kinds of problems are often caused by a shorted or stuck switch. The I-PAC will detect this at power on and the LED will flash then stay off. The number of flashes will indicate which switch is the culprit and this is shown in the table at the foot of the page www.ultimarc.com/ipac2.html.
If the LED stays on, then its an open circuit rather than shorted. So check wiring. You can OK the I-PAC by running a test program (Notepad is fine for the coin inputs which are printable characters such as 5,6,7,8). If you connect a short piece of wire to GND and touch to the correct screws, characters should be typed.
There is also an interactive test mode built-in but this probably would not be needed here. Check out www.ultimarc.com/interact.html for details of this.
Or drop me an email of course, if stuck: andy@ultimarc.com

[Santo8742]

I just visually checked these, but they were working and it'd seem a little odd that 8 buttons just all of a sudden quit working. Like a said it can't be the grounds for at least half of them because each of these buttons are at the end of the daisy chain, some at one end and some at the other end. I'll try what Andy said at touch some wires to the screws that should tell me for sure if the IPAC is functioning correctly. I'll also check the LEDs on the IPAC and report back.