Joystick support in older MAME releases

[TheNoodleMan]

I'm trying to configure an older version of MAME because 0.129 lags on the machine I'm using ( an old AMD 1.25 ghz w/ 1 gig of RAM), but every older version I've tried isn't recognizing my usb josticks.

I'm using MALA, and joystick support works while choosing games in the FE, but then once the games start I get nothing.
When I bring up the menu with the tab key, I can't get mame to recognize button strokes at all. I've tried numerous previous versions of mame ( 0.103, 0.119 off the top of my head) and I keep having this same problem. the only one that I can get the joysticks to work with is 0.129, which is no good for my system specs due to the aforementioned lag issue. What am I doing wrong? Its driving me crazy.

[Minwah]

Have you set joystick 1 in your mame.ini file??

[TheNoodleMan]

that was it.

Sometime I spend so much time working on something that I overlook something really simple.

Thanks for the quick help, I shudder to think how much long I would have pulled my hair out over something so simple.