Really Struggling With Arcade Setup and MiSTer

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TheBR
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Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2023 11:38 am

Really Struggling With Arcade Setup and MiSTer

Unread post by TheBR »

Hey All,

So i have a 2 player, 6 button, + 2 x COIN and P1 and P2 Start and no matter what i try it just wont work consistently with anything i try, so much so I'm not even sure where to start here as I'm either fundamentally misunderstanding how this works or it just wont work as specified.

So i also have all buttons wired into an iPac-2 in the correct ports for that particular button. They all work as I've tested this on a PC to make sure i get output when buttons etc are pressed.

I have updated the MiSTer.ini to include the jamma_vid and jamma_pid of the iPAC2 and i have also attached a USB keyboard for ease of use.

I can mostly get things working but with the MiSTer menu but if i take Pacman as an example (although its not limited to Pacman) i just CANNOT get P2 Start to work.

If i map it in the core it will refuse to take P2 start as button press, i believe this may be to do with how it handles the iPac in that the controls for P1 are mapped to P2 so it may be seeing P2 start as P1 start but that's a guess on my part. So i though OK, what if i rewired P2 Start to an entirely different connector on the iPAC, say 1A for example and then remap it in the core?

So, now it lets me map it, yay!, so i save the settings in the core go back to the game feeling smug aaaaannnnd, it wont start on P2 press, just ignores the button press. Works in the define pacman buttons, not in the game. :roll:

So, at the end of my tether with iPAC, i see this page - https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_M ... y2parcade/ and think ok, i can teardown my old keyboard and use that instead, but before i do that i'm gonna test it works, so following that guide i disconnect the iPac, change the jamma_vid and jamma_pid to the keyboard and restart MiSTer.

And does it work? Does it ****.

Now it wont even take keyboard inputs properly in the MiSTer menu. Aha, it must be keeping some old config somewhere so i pull out the SD card, delete all the configs in the config directory and try again, same issue. :roll:

Add to that - SSH to the device also stops working when i set this to the keyboard VID/PID - and yeah - that makes no sense to me either.

However, i change the VID/PID to something random then restart, ssh AND the keyboard works properly again in the menus.

If i then leave it like that i can start pacman, use core controls to map keys and it WORKS!

But if i then start Commando for example and try to define Commando buttons it flat out IGNORES any input i put in here, for example, using WASD for directions in define Commando buttons instead of arrow keys. You can enter WSAD save it and it will still want you to use arrow keys for movement.

This means i cannot rely on a Key being able to be set to A button / direction.

I feel like asking here is my last kick of the ball to get this working somehow - it shouldn't be this hard - i'm reading the docs, following instructions but it just refuses to work in a consistent manner no matter what i try.

It seems every core does its own thing making it impossible to map buttons reliably, yet you watch youtube videos of folk doing and it all works flawlessly... :o

Can anyone give me some direction here?

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Newsdee
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Re: Really Struggling With Arcade Setup and MiSTer

Unread post by Newsdee »

Have you seen this? It may help with the iPac:
viewtopic.php?t=448

Usually every controller needs to be defined in the menu core first. But that special keyboard mode may not work in the same way. The iPac support also has some limitations described in the link above.

If all else fails, I've found the "Xinmmotek" pcbs from aliexpress work well with low latency. Ive used them in my builds when I couldnt get Daemonbyte adapters.

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