Posted by Rockin' G on 5, 2000 at 10:49 PM:
In Reply to: Nope, but the problem gets a bit stranger posted by JP4 on 5, 2000 at 5:45 PM:
I posted a week or so ago (URL linked below) about key problems I've seen with my P1B1 button (left CTRL key). Maybe it is a general problem with MAME or the Allegro key scanning libraries? My P1B1 behaves like what you describe, with the first press being ignored at the "press any key to continue" screen (among other things).
Maybe Andy Warne or other keyboard encoder expert can answer this... does the I-PAC (or any other keyboard encoders that anybody knows about) "negotiate" into "Mode 3", where each key on the keyboard is assigned a SINGLE BYTE to identify it? Modes 1 and 2 result in things like the "arrow keys" having to send 4 or 5 bytes for each key down and another 4 or 5 for each key up. Mode 3 makes each key just a single byte. I don't know much about PC keyboards, but I've been curious if a keyboard encoder can say "I'm a Mode 3 device" to reduce the number of bytes sent over the keyboard channel? Just curious.