Problem with ke72 encoder. 2 sec. delay

[miked]

I have been in the Mame crowd for quite sometime now. Reading anything and everything about Arcade Emulators,ect.  I purchased a Ke72 Encoder from Hagstrom a couple of days ago and have a simple question. I conected all the buttons using a standard 25 pin D-sub conector, and  Daisy chained all the ground wires together. When I try to play a game, there is a 2 sec. delay, from when I hit a button, and then it responds. Do you have any ideas that might assist me.  

[Vectoraster]

This is highly unusual.  I have built 2 cabs with 2 separate KE72's with no problem whatsoever...instant response.  I assume your keyboard works?  If so it's one of 2 things - (1) a short in your wiring-make sure your solder connections are neat, firm, and don't cross between terminals, especially at the 25 pin D-sub -or- (2) it's a faulty unit-return it to Hagstrom.  In troubleshooting I would probably try the simplest circuit (1 button connected to pin 1 ground and pin 2) to see if there's a short I'm missing.

[miked]

I apperiate your feedback. I have in fact checked the connetors to make sure they are secure. I used a simple 40 pin connector to set up the 25 pin D-sub.  To test out the buttons, I open notepad, and make sure I am getting a response, " Yes ". I don't know if it matters, but in note pad, there is no 2 sec. delay. Now that I think of it, is it possible that the ground I am running off the 40 pin ribbon, "# 1 wire" could be the wrong wire to use as a ground!  

[Scott Albright]

I also experienced the exact same problems and solved them as noted below creating and loading a correct KE72 "config" file.  Good Luck!

Posted by Scott Albright on January 06, 2002 at 13:20:27:

I wanted to share the following information I discovered late last night for other New KE72 users in case they are having problems.

I am working on a complete cabinet (I have slowly been doing this for about 9 months). It can get pretty frustrating near the end with all the little snags. Anyway, I read through about 300 archived messages at BYOAC and found a few items last night. I did create a config file for the KE72 and loaded it. I don't know what the default config that comes loaded into the KE72 looks like but it would be nice to see it. One person stated that many emulators have trouble with the KE72 case sensitive characters as they are defined in the config file as: IN01:[(~)1]. I removed the ~ symbol and defined all of my inputs as: IN01:[A] without the "~". The other reported issue was that someone stated that you should not define an input in the config file for an input which is not connected on your Encoder. For instance, I currently am using only 32 of the 72 inputs on the encoder so I should insure that I am not defining an input for IN33 - IN72 in the config file assuming I have wired to inputs 1-32. This all seemed to work. I lastly had to tweak some settings in the MAME config in both the General settings & the This Game settings as they had conflicting information. An example of this was that my coin 1 button was defined as the character "P" so I entered this in the general settings in MAME but MAME also held "P" as the pause key in General settings (I hadn't hooked up my pause button yet and therfore had not defined it) so anytime I pressed the coin button it would also pause the game. I essentially went in to the General Settings and removed all the defined settings (Hit enter to define the key and then the Escape button to define it as "None") for any buttons that I had not yet hooked up.

[miked]

Thanks Scott for your assistance. Like you, I have been working on my Arcade cabnit for sometime now, "1yr". Anyhow, let's talk about the Encoder. I have spent a lot of time looking at sample " Cfg " files for the 72 Encoder. You are absoutly correct when you stated, " Mame does not like lower case inputs IN02:[(~)]. I used a simular CFG file from Jeff McClain. A simple setup really, 2.  8 way joysticks, 6 buttons each, and the usual 1 player- Pause....  After I configured my CFG file, I went into dos, found the Encoder Directory, and ran the KE72.exe.
Perhaps it has something to do with the ini file stored in Mame. I am going to try a couple of things when I get home. By the way, I don't know if it matters but I am running an old version of Mame ( ver 13).


Thanks again for the feedback.

[miked]

Thank you Steve, you were right. Last night I took a look at the Key Strokes that the KE72 Encoder was sending to my computer, is was not reconizing my Config file. After running the KE72 LOAD program, the buttons worked perfect.  I might add that in the manual, it explains how to define a specific CFG file.  KE72LOAD KE72.CFG 2 "

Now that I have completed my mame cabnit,  let's the games begin.

[Scott Albright]

Glad I could help!....Have FUN!