The Ingredients - the encoder

As I'm a newbie to Arcade cabinet building, I chose a keyboard encoder that I thought would be the easiest to fit and best supported by MAME and MALA.

For this reason I saw the I-PAC2 as the only choice. According to the blurb it is "the world's most advanced PC interface for buttons and joysticks". I sourced this in the UK from Arcade World UK:

http://www.arcadeworlduk.com/products/I-PAC-2-FS32-Keyboard-Encoder.html

The I-PAC2 supports enough buttons for my cabinet:

As you may be able to make out from the labelling on the PCB, the I-PAC2 has support for:

• Player 1 Up, Down, Left and Right (joystick)
• Player 2 Up, Down, Left and Right (joystick)
• Player 1 Start
• Player 2 Start
• Player 1 Coin
• Player 2 Coin
• Player 1 SW1-SW8
• Player 2 SW1-SW8
• Player 1 A/B
• Player 2 A/B

As well as the Start and Coin buttons, I will have six buttons for each player on the front of my cabinet and one side paddle button for each player. I also intend to have several "control" buttons that I will use as a means to navigate MALA and MAME e.g. Tab, Escape, Enter, Shift etc.

The controller that I bought included the board above, a full set of pre-crimped cables (i.e. one end is crimped ready for fixing onto the buttons) and a PS2 to USB cable for connecting the encoder to the PC. It also came with little L-shaped stand-offs that can be screwed into the cabinet base so that the PCB can be securely mounted.

As for the configuration, it appears that the MALA front end has direct support for the I-PAC2 encoder. I haven't tried this yet but I will post again once I have.