Player 1 start as button 1

[mahoneyt944]

My mame cabinet was made from a cabinet that did not have many buttons originally so for all my games, the player 1 and player 2 start are also my button 1 and button 2. This works for just about every game but some games don't like start 1 and button 1 being the same button.

Issues I've found

1. When entering your name on some high score screens, instead of inputting the letter you select it exits to the attract screen.
   --- I think this is because the game takes your button 1 press as start 1, which cancels the high score screen instead and goes back to the attract screen. Example game of this: Joust

2. When trying to start the game, start buttons are disabled
   --- I think this is because some games disable all buttons besides start 1 /2, and the game is seeing button 1 before start 1 so it disables the input. Example game of this: defender

I was wondering if there were any known fixes for this besides the obvious, map them to different buttons. Since my cabinet's control panel is very limited this isn't an option.

Thoughts

• Why would start 1 be disabled when button 1 is sharing the same button for some games? Could this be the order in which the buttons are listed or seen by mame, or how the input entries are made for each input. Maybe dually mapped buttons need their input entries listed separately in some way?

• exits high score screen, is there some way to disable the start button perhaps in this instance where it would be re-enabled when you return to the attract screen?

thank you for any tips / help!