Posted by Tiger-Heli on 4, 2000 at 7:18 AM:
In Reply to: how many buttons do joysticks ttake up on keyboard hack posted by charlie on 3, 2000 at 1:04 PM:
: if i have one 4 way joystick on a keyboard hack, how many buttons will this take up, for example if i have a 16x8 matrix and want one joystick, how many buttons can i have. what about if i have an 8 way joystick. thanks for the help
Either 4- or 8-way joysticks use 4 switches. If it's a 16x8 matrix, you would have 12 non-ghosting buttons available. You could also use more buttons than these for Pause, etc., if you weren't concerned about ghosting effects with these keys.
All this was explained in my article at MameWorld which Andy Warne referenced in his response to your previous post. The article will take you step by step through hacking a keyboard. It's long, but well worth reading.
P.S. Thanks for the plug Andy. BTW, I personally have decided to go with the I-PAC for my personal arcade controls. The keyboard hack should work fine for most controls, but you probably will not be able to use all the default MAME inputs and it's time consuming.
Good luck on your project!
Tiger-Heli (aka Marshall Brooks)