• Home

IPAC FAQ

The unit was designed around MAME and normally you would use a front-end menu for selecting games. But of course, as the I-PAC emulates a real keyboard (without all the drawbacks) you can use any PC application which uses keyboard input.

Yes. You can use the fully programmable code sets of I-PAC to customise for any emulator or other application. Several popular front-end menus even have integrated support for downloading I-PAC codesets on-the-fly.

NO. Using the key-code programming is entirely optional. When the board is shipped, all codes are automatically assigned to MAME standard keys. As many people have found, this makes installation very quick and easy. 

One method is to hack a keyboard, i.e. connect all the controls to the keyswitches so each button appears as a key. This is pretty unsatisfactory for several reasons: It takes ages to wire up as 2 wires need to be run to each switch. 
Most arcade cabs have one side of all switches commoned so you have to re-wire everything. 
Key Ghosting: This happens because of the matrix nature of keyboard encoders. 
Extra buttons: With this solution, with some emulators you have to have extra buttons on the cabinet for functions such as "escape", "insert coin" etc. Nobody likes drilling extra holes in their nice original arcade cab! 
Speed: Keyboard encoders use a scanning method. So each key is checked in sequence for a press or release. I-PAC does not use a matrix or scanning. 

Shifted function keys will do various functions ie press "1 player start" and "fire" and you will insert a coin. Press "1 player start" and "2 player start" and you will jump back to the menu. You can also use the MAME game config menus with shift buttons, ie tab and enter are shift joystick right and left. The 1 player start button is always the shift button if you are using the standard MAME codes. In programmable mode you can assign any input to be the shift button and you can program all of the buttons to have shifted codes. The unique feature of the shift function is that it requires no dedicated extra button.

When the board is shipped it contains all standard MAME codes including the shift codes mentioned above. If you only ever use MAME and want a quick and easy install this will probably do for you. But if you need to, you can re-program as required, including "on the fly", and the board will remember your new settings.

You may find you need to change the assignment of keys for other emulators or maybe you don't want to have the shift functions of the MAME code set. The code set can be programmed either using a DOS or Windows utility on the PC or using the interactive programming method. Programming details here.
Normally you would install and test the board before getting into programming.

Yes the I-PAC will work on a MAC with USB. There is even a Mac version of the programming utility. 

More about programming:

Alternative key code sets can be programmed and stored. The programming can be done either via a utility on the PC or using the built-in Interactive Mode. You can assign the key code for each input in shifted or unshifted mode and select which of the inputs is the shift button. After assigning all the buttons, the codes are downloaded to the I-PAC and stored in EEPROM which keeps the settings even after power-off. The settings are also written to a file so you can have as many of these configuration files as you want and download as required, either manually or automatically via a batch routine. Click here for more info about programming. There is no practical limit on the number of times the flash can be re-written. In fact the chip manufacturer guarantees one million R/W cycles, but in practice the actual limit would be even higher.

What is the size of the board?

Dimensions shown below. Height is approx 17mm.