Well first of all you don't place the the layout file in the MAME crt folder, well you can but you don't have to. OK to program it with WinIpac software, all you do is create your button layout, assign the buttons, then go to File --> Save Panel As... Save it somewere, then just click on the "Program" button at the bottom of WinIpac. Then you can create as many layouts as you want and save them. Now what i was saying about MaLa being able to reprogram your ipac on the fly is, lets say your playing MAME and now you what to switch over to your SNES emulator and you like your buttons to be assind differently from MAME. Well that's exactly what you can tell MaLa to do. So when your playing SNES you have your specific button layout, then when you switch to MAME it will switch to your MAME button layout. If the frontend does not support this feature you would have to manually open up WinIpac software and reprogram the ipac each time you switched emulators. I hope this clears things up.