Posted by Just Michael on 23, 2000 at 3:42 AM:
With a keyboard hack, you are very limited by the number of keys you can have pressed at once. In my honest opinion, keyboard hacks are only useful for 1 player cabinets where you need very few buttons (like 1 joystick and 2 fire buttons (my cab)). Since you don't want an IPAC, you can buy other keyboards and try them to see if they can do what you want. I figure at $5-$10 for each keyboard, you can try 4-8 keyboards before you start passing the price of the IPAC. To do a keyboard hack, first you have to figure out what keys you want to use (ie: work) with the keyboard you have. Then you have to figure out which pin in one row of the matrix connected to one pin in the other row makes the keys you want. This does take a little bit of knowledge to do. There are write ups on the net but each keyboard I have opened has been a bit different from the last so I can't tell you how to do a hack step by step. That is part of the project. Figuring stuff out and getting that feeling of accomplishment.
Take a look at this picture (hopefully it shows):
The reason people keep suggesting Andy's IPAC is using the thing is a no brainer. All the inputs are labeled. Just connect the common pin on all the switches to either of the grounds and then connect the normally open (NO) pin to the appropriate input. This will save you a lot of headaches. Yes it is more expensive (money wise) than a keyboard hack but will save you lots of time and you won't have buttons not responding because someone is going up-left and hitting both fire buttons. Unless you get extremely lucky (almost lucky enough to win the lottery), and find a keyboard that lets you have lots of keys at the same time and you can push them in any order without loosing any, you will have to suffer with the problems of that keyboard hacks have.
