KEYBOARD HACK

[MameMaster!]

 

GREETS ALL.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to take my keyboard (which I'm presently accessing through my coin door on my arcade cab); and access the all important:

Escape, Tab and Pause buttons

from some sort of external buttons I can rig up.

Any suggestions?....does anyone know if I can literally take a key off and wire it with an arcade button?

I've thought about externally mounting a mini keyboard as a drawer on my machine is not an option.

Thanks!

The Mame Master!

[AlanS17]

What's the objection to leaving it in your coin door? Inconvenience? Plus, do you have have any buttons at all left over from your encoder (keywiz, ipac, jpac, etc) that you haven't used? (assuming you're using an encoder)

[Thenasty]

why not assign let say ESC in MAME (general) to be one of the buttons on player along with another button like the p1 start. So in order for you to ESC, you must push both button. Chose which buttons you want ( acombination of 2 buttons).

[Zeitgeist]

Thenasty has your answer.
Just configure two buttons that you will not push at the same time to do this for you.
Or if you have one button left over, use it like a shift key.
Good luck.
Z

[grafixmonkey]

In answer to your question, you can do that, but you don't want to.  Even if you don't have a keyboard encoder like the IPac, you'd save yourself time and probably also money just buying one and using it instead.  

[MameMaster!]

The Nasty--- you da' man.

That's so simple and straight forward. I sometimes always make these things more complicated than necessary.

thanks for an excellent suggestion.....

....oh by the way, regarding the "why not just open the coin door".....it "break" the experience for me.....you don't open a coin door in the arcade....  (OK....so I'm trying to keep it real!  

Thanks for all of the suggestions!!!

The MameMaster

[Thenasty]

glad you got what ya looking for.

[SirPoonga]

why not assign let say ESC in MAME (general) to be one of the buttons on player along with another button like the p1 start. So in order for you to ESC, you must push both button. Chose which buttons you want ( acombination of 2 buttons).

Assuming you only use mame  You may find more emulators you like.  Just a heads up.