Tutorial: How to set up your MiSTer with a J-PAC/I-PAC

[Giddygoon]

My Jouurey to Set-up a 6 Button and 2 joysticks Jamma Cab

I was almost going to give up on JPAC and look to other options but if you follow these steps then the JPAC works fine and is seen as two Game Controllers. I have a player one and two fully playable and all six buttons each side responding to the Mister.

First make sure you download the 2020 Fireware from Ultimarc, Please note this only works on a brand new JPAC. update the JPAC with the WinPAC software to update.

Then re-asssign the keys via WinPac software so instead of the Jamma Startard i.e Left Ctrl, Space
its should be like this Button 1 A, Button 2 B etc and do the same for the player 2 side.

Then connect to your Mister and Jamma loom, then switch on your Arcade Cab and Hold down Player 1 and Button 3, To test plug back into a Laptop and check with WinPac sortware and it should say XInput at the bottom of the screen. you should not see keyboard, if you do see keyboard then rinse and repaeat, player 1 button 3 then JPAC will flash when it changes modes then disconnet and check with the WinPAC software.

YOU DONT WANT THE WINPAC SOFTWARE OR THE MISTER TO SEE YOUR JPAC AS A KEYBOARD.

I struggled with this for a while, while you can use the JPAC in keyboard mode, you will run into problems with the Neo Geo core seeing your JPAC as one device and you can't trigger player 2.

I had to try and three or four times to get the JPAC in to dual controller mode, i.e turn off turn it on and hold the player and 3 button on the player 1 side to get the JPAC into the correct mode.

Once this is done then connect to Mister and re-define keys it should say D-Pad R ... not Keyobard Right
Then just set up the keys as normal and now you can hit Space bar to skip buttons you don't need to set I.e Mouse left

Now the Neo Geo core will see the JPAC as two controllers. and you will have to set up each arcade core game by game ( a bit of a pain ) but its worth it, I also set my arcade games to FreePlay but not all games have this option.

So there you have it, I have seen a lot of videos on YouTube saying that the JPAC can't deal with two players, not true
This why I have left this for others who want to get there Jamma Cabs connected to Mister FPGA using a JPAC

[kingbuzzo]

My Jouurey to Set-up a 6 Button and 2 joysticks Jamma Cab

Thank you for this. Was it also required for you to set the jamma_pid and jamma_vid values in Mister.ini file? What about the no_merge_vid / pid variables?

I was able to map my joystick and buttons for player1, but player 2's controls are just duplicates of those. I am not sure if I missed a mapping step of the above ini variables need to be set.

I also found it difficult to switch the JPAC to gamepad mode. Why this cannot be done through their Windows config utility is beyond me.

[AmanoJacu]

My Jouurey to Set-up a 6 Button and 2 joysticks Jamma Cab

Thank you for this. Was it also required for you to set the jamma_pid and jamma_vid values in Mister.ini file? What about the no_merge_vid / pid variables?

I was able to map my joystick and buttons for player1, but player 2's controls are just duplicates of those. I am not sure if I missed a mapping step of the above ini variables need to be set.

I also found it difficult to switch the JPAC to gamepad mode. Why this cannot be done through their Windows config utility is beyond me.

Do you mean you can't play 2 players (the second controller acts as the first controller), or that you can't map the buttons differently between the two players? I don't think you can have separate button mappings for both players using this, they should be the same for both, which shouldn't be a problem in most cases.

[kingbuzzo]

Do you mean you can't play 2 players (the second controller acts as the first controller), or that you can't map the buttons differently between the two players? I don't think you can have separate button mappings for both players using this, they should be the same for both, which shouldn't be a problem in most cases.

What I meant was that player 2 joy and buttons were only a duplicate of player 1. After mapping this was confirmed by testing in the Mister input testing utility.

HOWEVER The good news is I was able to resolve this. By setting only the no_merge_vid and no_merge_pid to the values presented by the J-PAC (which were the same as the commented out values already in the current ini file), now player 2 inputs are seen as separate player two. I haven't tested with any cores yet, but now Mister sees separate Player 1 and Player 2 controls, I don't think there will be any problems.

So to summarize, this is what worked for me;

Using the the most current J-PAC version:

• Configure J-PAC to Mode 3 (Xinput) as mentioned by Giddygoon (more info here: https://www.ultimarc.com/control-interf ... cs/i-pac2/). WinIPAC V2 software will show which mode the board is in. It took multiple tries to get the board to switch modes.
• Using the WinIPAC V2 software, reassign the JPAC buttons from "key" to the correct "gamepad" buttons. I found this a bit of a pain. For me the "gamepad" option is grayed out for all of the inputs. I had to select each input pin in the displayed image, change the Function to "Disabled", then back to "Switch" and the "Gamepad" radio button was selectable.
• Uncomment the no_merge_vid and pid lines in Mister.ini.
• Remap the joystick buttons in the main Mister menu.

My cabinet has a standard 25" WG CRT and the J-Pac displays beautifully on it. I have used both analog video out from the add-on board and with HDMI set to direct video out through an HDMI adapter device. They both work equally well. However do note, I did need a VGA port gender bender (F2F).