What to do, what to do.. (mame software problems? i-pac?) and my awful day

[gurnie]

So, i get the new i-pac2 chip (the black chip thing, not the whole board)  from Andy (who has been super kind and I can't say enough good things about him and his company) and i wire everything up and everything seems to be ok when i have it hooked up to our big screen in the tv room (since I can't read the dang screen on the arcade).

So for whatever reason, even thought all the inputs are wired correctly, things are screwing up and I am going nuts

(deep breath... "serenity now...")


Left on player 1 will continue to go left after the direction of left is selected.... and it just keeps wanting to go left. it can't be the stick b/c it's andy's new 4/8way switch from the top thinga-ma-jigger(and i've gone through so much BS, i'm soo not googling it to find the proper name)

I'll strike certain keys and the input either seems delayed or unresponsive, yet show up fine in notepad. 

Sometimes, if you click one of the player 2 buttons, (but not player 2 start button) it ejects you out of the game...

Coin insert for player 1 works fine on one game..,. but doesn't register for others.

Buttons decide to work for some games.. others not.

I've reset defaults.

I've looked at the wiring... everything is right.

I've said please.

And on a side note, I'm so PO'ed at microsoft and their sticky keys.  It does not seem to matter what you do, the thing keeps coming back (i run mame in a window until things are done with tweeking )..

This is just upsetting for me because I was hoping to have this cabinet at least beta testing today.  I've got friends from out of town, so not only am I playing programmer, I'm play hostess.


I have mame .61 roms but i think I am running Mame .81, Mame32 .  Do i need to revert back to .61? Where can I download mame32 .61?

Is the i-pac busted? Ugh....

P3, 900 mhz, 384 ram.  Dell optiplex GS150

I had gutted my hotrod and put in and I-pac.


I tried installing Mala, Atomic FE and MameWah last night. I couldn't get a single one up and running for me.

Save my sanity please

And if your so interested here's my day:


• Got up this morning, my Mac Aquarium (that I am thisclose to finishing) is leaking from the overnight test (bad)
• Work, it was a half day (good)
• work on arcade (good)
• working on arcade unsuccessful (bad)
• boyfriend doesn't tell me that i received a 2nd package today marked as "LIVE FISH" (indeed there were live fish in the box, which weren't suppose to show up till tuesday or wednesday of next week... This is very Bad).
• Fish are alive (good, but I have to pull a tank out of my butt because I wasn't expecting the fish to show up so soon, so good/bad... gobad)
• Go bowling with friends from out of town.  Whip their butts first game and fall into miserable defeat the last two games. (good)
  
• Come back to find friend's car towed by towing nazi's (Bad)
• Go to get friend's car from the towing nazi's, boyfriend can't read directions, gets us lost, i get pissed in front of friends (bad)
  
• Get the car, tempted to slash tires in the lot as revenge (amusing)
• Get back here,my traveling friends are tired from the day we had, and crash (badish)
• The arcade is still not working (this makes me want to explode)

[/li]

[Matthew Anderson]

I would suggest that you try things in notepad.... not the most exciting game but it sounds like you are running into shift key issues at the very least....


However, I am sure others will have much more helpful suggestions.


Good Luck   

[gurnie]

What file should I edit and what should i type?  If someone can forward me to a post, i'd be most appreciative.

and does anyone know whats up with the left direction on the 1play's joystick?

[BobA]

Just open notepad from your start all programs/accessories/notepad

Then use the controls and see if the correct characters/action occurs in notepad.

How is your ipac mounted?   Is there anything underneath that could be shorting?

To get rid of sticky keys and other annoyances follow this

Link

[gurnie]

Ok, welcome to bizzar-o land

Go through the first player buttons, everything is cool, everything is where it should be. (1Player Left is L arrow, 1SW1 is L-ctrl, ect)

Go through the 2nd player buttons and nothing is popping up...So i start striking keys again on the 1st player... Suddenly 1player Left is Y, Up on player 1 is now V... it just switches all of asudden... it was perfectly fine 30 seconds ago.... 

[BobA]

Have you gone thru the selftest function on the IPAC?   Did you get any LED error codes?    Are you using the standard MAME key set that the ipac comes with?

[gurnie]

I have not had a chance to do the  self test function (i have only typed stuff in txt).  The Panel is mounted (So i can't plug a keyboard into the pass through) and I will only have a chance to remove it tomorrow after my guest leave.

I was able to check the LED test, the light did flash for a second on start up, then it did not stay lit.  Does that mean the board is faulty, or is it signaling the error code below:

It did give me 12 flashes, meaning Player 2 Switch 4 is incorrectly wired (which doesn't make sense since it comes up fine the first time I type the key the first time. If i go through all the buttons again, everything screws up).  I don't know if there are more that have errors because I can't disconnect the buttons at the moment.
 

I wonder if I just need to send the board and the chip to andy. 

Ugh, disappointing that this didn't work for my friends  

[robot8319]

i had the exact same problems with my J-pac..

the only way to fix it was to use the cd that came with the j-pac..i know it sounds crazy but that fixed all my problems..

just leave it running while using mame and see how it acts it should straighten itself out.

[Zebidee]

I really doubt that there is a problem with your ipac chip.

Sounds like wiring shorts somewhere in your CP, maybe a joystick microswitch is sticking too.

If I was you, I'd patiently go over the whole CP switches and contacts with a fine-tooth comb.

Oh, and use the Winipac sofware because it mght help you identify which switches are causing problems.  EG, a stuck switch will stay highlighted.

[gurnie]

Update:

So i figured out the problem (and how dim was I not to catch this), basically the Player one button was connected so it constantly sent the shift signal, making the i-pac send shift signals to every key.. To bad i didn't figure that out friday   

Now if I can only find the solution to fixing the directional button sticking,  Apparently (according to andy's documents) its something dealing with the Mame32 software (i have Mame32 .81)

Oh a searching the forums I go 

**edit
For now i downloaded mame32 .61 and it has resolved my directional button sticking problem.  So I'll probably just hold on to this version for awhile.

Too bad I couldn't have figured this out on friday when my friends were here, it would have taken less than an hour to fix