Re: Newbie..theoretical question..thanks

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: Note that most normal keyboard encoders are slower than those used in the I-pac, Hagstroms, etc. With the bandwidth limits of the keyboard port, you still will get some polls while the changes are still "in the pipe", but a lot less than with slower encoders. : : I don't think the original poster was talking about ghosting, I think he was saying that on an original game, the processor could just go out and read all the inputs at once, whereas in MAME, or with the keyboard or IPAC etc, the PC will actually get the individual key presses over the serial keyboard link, so that if you press say : : "a, b, and c" at the same time, on the original arcade game, the processor would see exactly that. On a keyboard or encoder, the processor will see a keypress event for a, then a keypress for b, then a keypress for c. (although the order may be : : random). I think that people on some of the mame message boards have reported that some moves in some of the fighting games are harder or impossible to do in MAME for this very reason. This may only have been true with certain versions of MAME. : : Realistically, both MAME and the original arcade game are likely to "poll" for the current input state, i.e. they will periodically read what the input state is. This would mean that as long as the 3 key presses came in between two reads, the game will not see any difference between the direct connection and a serialized connection like the keyboard. : : If you wanted to have direct connection of controls or buttons, you could used the parallel port to provide that. : : : : : keyboards use a matrix so they can get more keystrokes easier. But the downside is muliple keys and ghosting (press 3 buttons and a 4th acts like it's pressed) : : : the solution : : : 1) (best) get a keyboard encoder. Ipacs are the best cheapest solution if you have 28 buttons or less (only 4 per joystick..). I have a mk64 (64buttons) since i have a 4 player cabinet. Hagstroms are considered the best by many, but expensive. Goto the links to find each. And you will be happy with any of them since they are all great. The all allow you to press all the keys at once individually and they are all fast. The all also allow for hotswapping of control panels (very nice feature) : : : 2) (cheaper) hack a joystick or gamepad. These are designed to have all the buttons pressed at onces so you wont have any trouble there. But you loose some of the nice look of the encoders and you probably wont get as many buttons/keys : : : 3) (cheapest) hack a keyboard. Matrix and ghosting are major problems. And you can get two keyboards from the same year same manufacturer and they will act different.

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