@MISTERHOLLYW00D great choice, i use AdvanceMame and FBNeo (for NeoGeo) and am very satisfied with this combination.
I also like Nitroball 😊, i recommend to play "Gunball" also. That is the japanese Version of Nitroball which is totally different concerning the Level Design 😉

@fitincontact Atari jaguar doesn't run full speed on my overclocked pi 3. I'm curious how the pi 4 will handle it but as Herb said the pi zero will be a slideshow if you can even get it to run at all.

Yes thx herb I am. Booting from an OLDEN 1TB hardrive that was top of the line a long time ago. I tried easus. waste of time. I tried mini partition tool. Nop. Only thing that worked? gParted. FTW!
fdisk -l shows

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 8192 124927 116736 57M e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 124928 1953523711 1953398784 931.5G 83 Linux

Moral of the story just use gPared. Everythig else is a waste of time.

Thanks! I think I'll probably go the imaging route then. Any suggestions on a good imaging tool? Or do the same tools we use to write images, such as Win32 Disk Imager or balenaEtcher, create them as well?

I figured it out, at least for Nintendo.
I had been testing in Atari 2600, attempting to tweak both the retroarch.cfg file under /opt/configs/atari2600, in addition to the file under /opt/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/Microchip Technology Inc. Ultimate 2.cfg

I was doing some testing on Nintendo, and ended up doing the final modifications under the Microchip file referenced above.

Here are my settings, and "Enter" (19) is my new hotkey, and "6" (13) works to exit!

input_device = "Microchip Technology Inc. Ultimate 2"
input_driver = "udev"
input_l_btn = "14"
input_load_state_btn = "14"
input_start_btn = "12"
input_exit_emulator_btn = "13"
input_down_axis = "+1"
input_r_btn = "17"
input_save_state_btn = "17"
input_right_axis = "+0"
input_state_slot_increase_axis = "+0"
input_select_btn = "11"
input_left_axis = "-0"
input_state_slot_decrease_axis = "-0"
input_up_axis = "-1"
input_a_btn = "0"
input_b_btn = "1"
input_reset_btn = "1"
input_enable_hotkey_btn = "19"

Hope this helps someone.

Thank you for doing what you do.

The digital speed settings were key (overriding the default values of "10"). Your settings may vary.

The digital speed settings should not affect analog controls like trackpads.

There is no sensitivity for all games, each needs to be set according to the encoder wheel used in each machine.

Information here on finding the sensitivity value needed for each game:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160421175734/http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Spinner_Turn_Count

I got it working, but I can't say exactly what I did to fix it. The only thing I can think of is that the Mini-PAC needs to be plugged in before any other controller - so no mouse, no keyboard, just the controller USB. Then plug in a keyboard. I'm not sure if this is what fixed it, since I was attempting other remedies concurrently.

Though not entirely the same configuration (it was a Pi 4), I encountered an issue wherein after the boot sequence the display would be completely blank. I eventually narrowed it down to the memory split setting - I had changed it, trying to follow the instructions for RetroPie 'manual installation.' Keeping it default resolved the problem.

I replied to that same old thread that you are talking about:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22692/fake-8bitdo-sf30-pro-way-to-get-working/21

As I mentioned over there these controllers work just fine over Bluetooth on my Linux PC, but aren't detected over Bluetooth on the pie. Thought I'd drop a comment here also so I can see if any progress is made by anyone else.

@wstanek said in I-PAC2, connecting 1 Button to 2 Switches?:

I wouldn't recommend doing that though. Its better to have things straight forward, especially if you have guests.

That was one of the reasons why I was thinking about using dedicated buttons for "Hotkeys", as IMHO it is far easier to explain "Exit here this red Button, Save State that one with the record icon and Load this green one here...."

But then, maybe I will get myself into to much things to consider - as this is my 1st Build of a Control Panel I think you two are right to stick with the Basics (Retropies own Hotkeys + I-Pacs Shift - so far I thought to use the Shift ability of the I-Pac to get some of the most crucial Keys for Amiga/CBM64/etc. Games).
And thanks to you both as I now know that it is possible and that with a later (re)build and gained experience I could think again about single button double-links :cheers:

@Rutjes Hey
I had the sam issue with my arcade china controllers. I rotated the joystick 180 ( up to down ) and now it works. ( Only on the Pi 3+)
My new problem is, on retropie x86 ( on ubuntu), the reicast controller configurations doesn't work. When i launch the game no button works.
Could you fix your problems with your cabinet?

@kristjan1111 As other services started on boot, the splashscreen has to wait until the system is minimally start before it can start. Since the splashscreen image/videos are on your local disk, there's nothing that can be done before the disk check is complete.
I remember that there was a bug on RPI's related to fake-hwclock that would make the disk check trigger every boot - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=198937&start=25 - so try to run a system update and see if it fixes the long boot time.

@mitu Thank you so much! ApplePiBaker worked so much better!!!

hey hi
how did you solved your problem? I have similar issues with the arcade controller of my cabinet. After configured the arcade Control in the reicast conf/menu, I launched a game and try to play. But no buttons work.

@mitu I just did it and now seems to work correctly. Thank you. I'll let you know if I get other issues

@AndersHP Yeah, since ES loads the artwork on the fly, the access speed is relevant for the user experience. Apart from slow USB drives, network drives are another bottleneck that can be avoided by putting the artwork on the internal SD.

@SlipperyPickle Just happened to get back to this project and turns out this was the problem! Thanks!