Ipac2 full tutorial

Cole_48

I have read across the form and have seen that the newer ipac is registered as a joystick not a controller. I am prototyping an arcade setup soon and was wondering exactly what to do and how to solve this problem. I liked on the wiki and did not see any help. I do not have an ipac yet, but it is coming soon and I want to know what I am doing when I get it. So? can anyone help me or show me a forum posting or something on how to set up an Ipac for retropie step by step with it being registered as a joystick

caver01

@Cole_48 you are right. We really do need some documentation for the IPAC. I would write something for the wiki, but mine is an early model IPAC4 so my notes won't be much help starting out with a brand new one.

Here are a few things that might be worth investigating, and the topics I'd like to write about:

If a joypad is not what you are after and you want your IPAC to behave like a keyboard controller (which is how the older models like mine work) I know folks have been able to update their firmware for this. Contact Andy at Ultimarc, as I know he has sent others a variation of firmware for this. Here's the thing: I don't know if it's available on the website, if the WinIPAC utility can be used to update it, or if Andy is happy or frustrated by these requests. --I have only heard anecdotally about this to know that it's possible. I wish I could write about this with authority, but as I mentioned, my IPAC4 is old and doesn't even have a joypad option (which is fine by me). What I do know is that using it as a keyboard has a long history of compatibility with most emulators--especially MAME.
If a Joypad is what you want, well, I can't really speak to those details either because my experience falls outside of this. For example, does the IPAC look like one giant joypad or are inputs from each player# recognized as separate joypads? I just don't know. This would be very important details we would want to put into the wiki page. I would write it if I knew how it worked.

Once it's determined which way you are going to run the IPAC—Keyboard vs. Joypad(s)—the setup is actually quite simple. If Joypads, I would not expect there to be much difference from how other USB controllers behave. If Keyboard, you branch off into possibilities. The easiest is to leave everything stock and allow your joysticks and buttons to generate standard MAME keys for every input. Most folks can probably get away with that and do any remapping within the emulator configurations or in retroarch.cfg. This is just keyboard input mapping, really, and not specifically relevant to the IPAC. It could be someone who decided to hack an existing keyboard and solder their own arcade controls to the key switch pads.

If stock configuration is NOT what you want (you want to setup different keys, customize shift keys, etc.) you will need to program the IPAC with a utility, either on a Mac, a PC (by far the easiest and most feature-rich option) or using the Linux utility. Now HERE is where we might be able to do some good documentation. I have not used the Linux utility, but I compiled it once. It would be handy to setup some spot in the repository for storying the binaries for this and getting some clear steps documented about how to use it. I know there are config files to edit and permissions to set in order to run the Linux IPAC utility, but it's one of those things that takes a long time to do, and I think it has been easier for most IPAC users to simply plug it into a Mac or PC and get it setup.

All of that said, I love my IPAC and I have been using it for years, but I think I would want to flash a new one back to keyboard mode if I bought another one today. I'd like to hear what Andy says about it because he clearly went the Joypad route for a reason.

megatron99

It's really simple to setup. The hard part was getting the second player going but I was looking in the wrong area. I just setup my Ipac a month ago.

rbaker

@megatron99 Could you please explain the correct area to look and what you did to get player 2 working?

rbaker

@Cole_48 This is the best I can offer and it worked for me...

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1722/if-you-have-purchased-an-ipac2-and-want-to-save-time

I contacted Andy at Ultimarc and he sent me a new firmware but he is frustrated by requests as he says there is a bug in Retropie that prevents the device from being detected as a keyboard during auto configure. I haven't updated mine yet as it's working based on my above order of connection. However, you will get messages that say ipac not configured which is ok if you want gamepads too. I think I stumbled on this solution but it works for my requirements.