Posted by GAP on 1, 2001 at 11:36 AM:
In Reply to: Thank you - However, I have two more questions..... I-Pac, O-Pac related posted by ZigRiz on 1, 2001 at 11:00 AM:
[ 1) I see that the O-Pac supports two buttons that can be used as mouse buttons. Can these buttons be Happ Push buttons as well? If so I may add two extra buttons to my design, this would be handy with GUI navigation. ]
Sure, the Happ buttons will work great.
[ where does the I-Pac get it's power from? ]
The I-PAC gets power from the keyboard or USB port... no additional power source is needed. It doesn't attach to the serial port... the O-PAC does.
Some other comments...
You list a total of ten buttons, with three per player. What are the other four buttons?
Some of the other buttons you might want are:
- Coin-1 button (usually mapped to "5" key)
- 1 player start ("1")
- 2 player start ("2")
- Escape to exit ("ESC")
- Pause ("P")
- Menu ("TAB")
- Enter to select games ("ENTER")
The I-PAC has a "shift" feature that allows each button to serve two purposes. But even with this feature, you probably want at least some of the above function on dedicated keys. (Plus "1 player start" is used as the "shift" key... I'm not sure if that's configurable).
Happ has cool-looking one-player and two-player start buttons that just about everyone uses.
My suggestion would be to use your computer's keyboard and play around with MAME for a while, taking note of which keys you use and how often.
Also keep in mind your audience. I want my control panel to be easily understood by guests, so I'm including dedicated buttons where appropriate.
Other functions, like Menu, Reset, snapshot, etc. will be used only by me, so they can be implemented via I-PAC's "shift" functionality.
Of course, if this is just a control panel for games and not part of a dedicated cabinet, then you'll always have the PC's keyboard available and won't need the extra buttons.