Mamewah / Ipac - start game - start key holds down?!

[chris2922]

I currently have a mamewah driven arcade cab. It sports a 2 player 6 button CP wired to an ipac2 USB.  I also have a pass-through usb kayboard and a ubs mouse connected.  Ive set up various ipac configurations for each of the emus as well as mamewah itself and these are written to the ipac by the 'pre' and 'post' Mamewah command lines.
(The mamewah ipac file doesnt have any Switch keys.)

Everything worked fine - until tonight.  I must have done something; i know its not likely that a computer will suddenly just 'not work' as it did before; but i cant think of anything ive done.

Each time i use the player1 start button on the CP to start a game (its mapped to '1' in the mamewah ipac config file) it starts the game as usual - but then that key press is continually pressed for the next few seconds.

In a NES game like 'Batman (U)!' this just skips straight past the start and intro screens and starts the game.  Leave the game running for a few seconds, exit with escape, and everything is fine.

In the PC games that i have running from Shortcuts instead of rom files, it creates a loop where i cant get out of the game in question.  Instead of pressing '1' several times during the game intro, it presses it again when the game exits.

Take Virtua Tennis for example.  Start the game using the control panels 1p start button ('1') and it starts fine.  Exit the game using escape and it goes straight back in again.  It doesnt matter how long i leave the game running, it just goes straight back in.  Actually, there is a tiny burst of the Mamewah background music - but pretty much straight back in.

The only way to prevent this is the enter key presses during the transition from the game exiting and starting back up again - left/right/left/right on the joystick for example.  This seems the disturb it and mamewah comes back up.

Heres the really strange part - if i start the games from the pass-through Keyboard i never get this problem.  It works fine everytime.  This leads me to point at the Ipac, but im not sure whats going on yet so im not going to be to hastey.

I dont think ive got anything set wrong - as last week it was fine!

Ever heard of this problem before?

[Aurich]

I'm curious, is the Start key mapped as an IPac shift key? That does seem to change the keypress behavior somewhat.

[chris2922]

I thought about the shift keys too...

For the Ipac config file that controls the Mamewah frontend i only have 1, 2, up, down, left and right mapped to one button each.  No shift keys.

When it loads a pc game it loads a config file that only has Escape mapped to a button as i use ps2 pads to control the pc games.

[chris2922]

Im not sure if this belongs in the software or the hardware section any more.

Ive narrowed down the problem a bit.

When i removed the 'post_emulator_app_commandlines' line in the Mamewah config that loaded my 'Mamewah.ipc' configuration for the control panel, the problem no longer existed and exiting to the front-end was fine.

Im not sure if it is the loading of the Mamewah ipac config file i have built with the Ipac config file that is causing the problem, or if its the Ipac itself thats causing it.

I deleted the Mamewah.ipc file and created a new one but that didnt help.

I also tried wiping it clean and just having the '1' key mapped (to several different buttons) and that hasnt helped either.

Can anyone suggest something to try?